Ashton Forbes Over Unity Challenge

[Nominal Animal]

Physics Youtuber Sabine Hossenfelder was just tricked into following Forbes on X today 

Don't immediately think the worst of her.  Maybe she just wanted to ensure she can see all his posts, so she can do a better researched response later! 

(That's exactly what I'd do, too.  Even though she is a rare physicist willing to very publicly talk about "fringe science" like faster than light travel and such, she is very down-to earth and practical, not easily swayed by hype and social pressure, based on the videos I watched.)

I find it very funny that languages like English and German use "free" for both "zero-cost" and "libre": in Finnish these cannot be confused, as the former is ilmainen and the latter is vapaa.  "Free energy" does not really translate to Finnish, and the idiotic idiom "energy out of nothing" (energiaa tyhjästä) must be used for it.  (Because of this, Finns are naturally quite sceptical of such claims, as it is not "natural" to get something for nothing at all.  I can imagine how in germanic languages, people would be drawn to the idea of zero-cost energy and not intuitively grasp the energy out of nothing aspect at all.)

[VinzC]

Physics Youtuber Sabine Hossenfelder was just tricked into following Forbes on X today 

Don't immediately think the worst of her.  Maybe she just wanted to ensure she can see all his posts, so she can do a better researched response later! 

(That's exactly what I'd do, too.  Even though she is a rare physicist willing to very publicly talk about "fringe science" like faster than light travel and such, she is very down-to earth and practical, not easily swayed by hype and social pressure, based on the videos I watched.)

Exactly what I thought. This video from her typically is the kind of "reaction" (read: sarcasm) I'd expect (check the end of the main topic around 5 minutes in). See https://youtu.be/maqwEI3VpTA?t=301 and how she insists on not saying ... you get the picture

[IanB]

I find it very funny that languages like English and German use "free" for both "zero-cost" and "libre"

As a native English speaker, I am not sure I am even very conscious of the difference. "Free" means unconstrained, untethered. So in the special case of money, an item which is free of charge is an item free for the taking, unconstrained by financial cost. Items displayed in a shop are confined there, and you have to pay a price to release them from that confinement.

[Nominal Animal]

As a native English speaker, I am not sure I am even very conscious of the difference.

That is exactly what I mean!  To a Finn, the two are completely different, and translating "free" always depends on the context.  To you, the two concepts meld together; for Finns at least, it combines two separate terms under a single English word.

"Free energy" itself is a nonsensical term even in English, because you cannot "constrain" or "tether" energy anyway.  Of course, using the proper term, "energy out of nothing", would immediately make listeners sceptical.

[Xena E]

Physics Youtuber Sabine Hossenfelder was just tricked into following Forbes on X today 

Don't immediately think the worst of her.  Maybe she just wanted to ensure she can see all his posts, so she can do a better researched response later! 

(That's exactly what I'd do, too...

Yes, but perhaps through a sock puppet account...

I find it very funny that languages like English and German use "free" for both "zero-cost" and "libre": in Finnish these cannot be confused, as the former is ilmainen and the latter is vapaa.  "Free energy" does not really translate to Finnish, and the idiotic idiom "energy out of nothing" (energiaa tyhjästä) must be used for it.  (Because of this, Finns are naturally quite sceptical of such claims, as it is not "natural" to get something for nothing at all.  I can imagine how in germanic languages, people would be drawn to the idea of zero-cost energy and not intuitively grasp the energy out of nothing aspect at all.)

I would tend to agree but it's a pre conditioning exercise that the term free energy was chosen by the charlatan blags.

When people who can't grasp that the laws of thermodynamics are extant, and will be in perpetuity, start talking about free energy, I just tell them that the only free energy there is has to be stolen from somewhere.

I don't care that stupid people are being fleeced by the charlatans, but I do not like it when it seems public money, and investment funds also gets thrown at free energy research and wank technology.

[IanB]

The irony is that real "free" energy is out there, in wind and solar. Except it is not really free, because there is a massive infrastructure cost to capture it.

So why do people think that actual "free energy", if it were to exist, would just jump out and make itself available to us, without us doing a lot of work to get hold of it?

[Nominal Animal]

The irony is that real "free" energy is out there, in wind and solar.

And hydro and hydrothermal; see Iceland and Norway as examples.

I've said it before in other threads: I don't want these overunity/"free energy" enthusiasts to stop per se; I'd like for them to see the untapped possibilities in harvesting energy and converting it into more useful forms, especially in the practical one-house and smaller scales.  Research funding is only available for potentially massive installations, so practically nobody is looking at the practical one-household scale.

If we consider the effects of affordable heat pumps with indoors and outdoors units in the last two or three decades, it shows that such "small scale" changes can make a huge difference overall.

For example, you do not actually need AC for a household: there are low-voltage (12V-24V) DC appliances for just about everything one might want, including fully equipped kitchens.  If you used copper pipes for transferring DC power everywhere in a small house, how much energy could you save from say a rooftop solar installation like Dave's?  Sure, such a house would probably have to be designed for the purpose, and pay more attention to materials and insulation; I'm saying that researching that sounds like an extremely interesting practical project we (humans in general, and specifically in different climates around the world) really should be doing.

[SiliconWizard]

Almost all energy making anything possible on Earth comes or has come from the Sun. There may be a comparatively small amount of energy coming from the core of the Earth (which itself would have come from the times when Earth was formed) too. The Earth rotation around itself and the Sun is also energy that has been gathered when it was formed. That's it.

All we can do is either harvest energy that has already been stored in some form (like "fossil" fuels), or in "real time" directly from the Sun's (or again, Earth core) radiation.

As Earth will not survive the Sun (and long before its "death", by the time the Sun's radiation will have significantly decreased, Earth will have long been inhabitable anyway), the energy we get from it is completely "free".

Yes there's always some cost depending on how we need to transform this energy, but obviously the net gain is always positive, otherwise it won't last long and we'll be forced to stop.

The adjective "free" needs to be defined. All energy in the universe is "free". Life is "free". Yet, it comes with a cost (which, in the end, is related to entropy), which can be roughly translated to "nothing lasts forever". Or something.

Energy IS free, but again due to entropy, the "usable" forms of energy for a given context (organization => a local decrease of entropy) are always decreasing over time. So all energy can be considered "free", but locally non-perpetual. Free and perpetual are two different things, yet very often conflated when lunatics talk about energy.

[EEVblog]

Physics Youtuber Sabine Hossenfelder was just tricked into following Forbes on X today 

Do you?   I would need to sign up to see.

No I don't follow him. I saw it because I follow Sabine.
For those interested, this is how it happened:


Then his followers smell big physics youtuber verification blood and try and try to draw her into their world.

[EEVblog]

All this talk about "free energy" is IMO the wrong frame. If you use that term it's easy to get dragged down into the gutter and forced to admit in some way there there is "free energy" to be had, i.e. energy harvesting.
Once you admit that, they have got you and will ride you all the way into town.

The term which they really mean is over-unity and/or perpetual motion. In this case Ashton literally uses the term over-uniy and has said that once set in motion his machine will run a load like the computer continuously forever.

[EEVblog]

Physics Youtuber Sabine Hossenfelder was just tricked into following Forbes on X today 

Don't immediately think the worst of her.  Maybe she just wanted to ensure she can see all his posts, so she can do a better researched response later! 

No I don't think anything bad of her, she'll obviously see through the bullshit. My only concern is that she'll get dragged into "his world" and give him what he so desperately craves, attention and validation from a big physics or engineering youtuber. Even if one of us does a video just debunking and laughing at his rubbish, he gets what he wanted, the attention.
Look at the wording in the message that sucked her in, it's "we" and "call him and listen with an open mind", "we love you". He has this big community to true believers that are absolutely desperate for someone with mainstream credibility to give them the time of day.

[IanB]

The term which they really mean is over-unity and/or perpetual motion. In this case Ashton literally uses the term over-uniy and has said that once set in motion his machine will run a load like the computer continuously forever.

The real problem with over-unity is that even the tiniest amount of over-unity can be scaled up to infinite over-unity by compounding. But nobody ever demonstrates that. Forget running a computer. Make a machine that can produce megawatts. But, of course, there will always be excuses why they cannot do that.

[langwadt]

All this talk about "free energy" is IMO the wrong frame. If you use that term it's easy to get dragged down into the gutter and forced to admit in some way there there is "free energy" to be had, i.e. energy harvesting.
Once you admit that, they have got you and will ride you all the way into town.

The term which they really mean is over-unity and/or perpetual motion. In this case Ashton literally uses the term over-uniy and has said that once set in motion his machine will run a load like the computer continuously forever.

and I'm sure "over-unity" was initially made up to avoid saying perpetual motion, just like all the silly tiktok frases for words that are too "dangerous" to get past the censor

[langwadt]

The term which they really mean is over-unity and/or perpetual motion. In this case Ashton literally uses the term over-uniy and has said that once set in motion his machine will run a load like the computer continuously forever.

The real problem with over-unity is that even the tiniest amount of over-unity can be scaled up to infinite over-unity by compounding. But nobody ever demonstrates that. Forget running a computer. Make a machine that can produce megawatts. But, of course, there will always be excuses why they cannot do that.

just another round of funding and some more work refining it, it's getting real close ...

[EEVblog]

The real problem with over-unity is that even the tiniest amount of over-unity can be scaled up to infinite over-unity by compounding. But nobody ever demonstrates that. Forget running a computer. Make a machine that can produce megawatts. But, of course, there will always be excuses why they cannot do that.

They can't even demonstrate the computer running continuously 
It's not rocket science to get your Nobel prize and fortune and glory, just sit yourself in an empty room with no cords with your magic woo-woo machine running a computer and say a bar heater and then live stream the whole thing for a week using that computer.

[BrianHG]

  The only 3 known over-unity forces which can exist...

The Casimir Effect.  -> No meaningful energy can be captured from the zero point background energy.
Dark Energy.     -> To capture this, you would need to operate on the scale of distances over multiple Galaxy clusters.
White Holes  -> They are only theoretical, but if one existed, you will be cooked when getting too close trying to capture the output energy.

For the most part, we are being flooded with energy from the sun every day and modern battery packs can with enough investment meet your power needs in the multi kilowatt arena with nothing more than a bunch of 400 watt solar panels on our roof.

Even new small modular nuclear reactors are beginning to become viable delivering enough power for small-medium sized city blocks each.

But to think this BS toy box could even heat or air-condition my entire house, cook my food, and charge my cars is ludicrous, let alone power an AM radio which again, it cannot.  Otherwise, it would break laws of physics, or, somehow, we all of mankind has somehow missed the easily accessible megawatts of free energy flowing through us at all times coming from the ether.

[Xena E]

Thanks for the recommendation, just followed him.

For sure, that was an error of judgement.

[VinzC]

No I don't think anything bad of her, she'll obviously see through the bullshit. My only concern is that she'll get dragged into "his world" and give him what he so desperately craves, attention and validation from a big physics or engineering youtuber. Even if one of us does a video just debunking and laughing at his rubbish, he gets what he wanted, the attention.
Look at the wording in the message that sucked her in, it's "we" and "call him and listen with an open mind", "we love you". He has this big community to true believers that are absolutely desperate for someone with mainstream credibility to give them the time of day.

I think I see your point now. It's not about free energy at all in fact, nor whether it's true or BS, it's about (although not limited to) grabbing the attention of renown and reputable people, just for the sake of being talked about, if I get you right.

If true then it poses a paradox: when those attention vampires propagate bullshit, what is the appropriate behaviour? leave them alone (in the secret hope the "noise" dies all naturally)? or debunk their fallacies and be transparent to seeking truth (in the secret hope people with an ounce of critical thinking will get the point)? The thing is it's not a problem that spawned on its own but one consequence of a much deeper issue.

I personally am not even sure leaving those idiots alone will eventually cure the problem of stupidity though. It's contagious, obviously. But it's much deeper than that and IMHO a societal problem to tackle before it's too late. Science educators like you and many others sure have a great deal of efforts to go into that daunting task (to a point it's probably overwhelming). To paraphrase a French science educator, it's true that obscurantism should return to obscurity but it obviously and definitely *is* making its way (it has already IMHO) into recognition.

And when you think of it, the answer lies in "education". Science educators alone aren't enough. They do their best to compensate for the decreasing quality of teaching in general, which itself is partly caused by the decreasing political interest (education, especially public, has been suffering from decreasing funding from governments¹) to a point the people have now realized (or are starting to realize) there is an enormous gap to fill. We may all bear some responsibility in educating others, especially if/when we deem it necessary. And it's easier said than done, for multiple reasons and it's a huge responsibility.

¹ To back up my claims, I've worked a couple of years in both public and catholic — these are the official categories where I live — education systems, i.e. engineering high schools and have witnessed the decline of both, at least in my area. As to engineering education high schools, the situation of the public system is catastrophic: the institution I worked in went from ~350 registered students 15 years ago, they are less than 90 this year. When I made my studies in the nineties, we were about 40 graduates. 5 years ago, there were only 4. One could write a book about it...

[Nominal Animal]

If true then it poses a paradox: when those attention vampires propagate bullshit, what is the appropriate behaviour?

I do not know, but I currently believe that promoting rational and logical thinking and discourse, and the scientific method in all aspects of life, is the key.

(It is not education in general, but a specific kind of education, one that I believe is not emphasized enough at all levels of formal education from kindergarten to universities.)

[VinzC]

I do not know, but I currently believe that promoting rational and logical thinking and discourse, and the scientific method in all aspects of life, is the key.

(It is not education in general, but a specific kind of education, one that I believe is not emphasized enough at all levels of formal education from kindergarten to universities.)

I also believe that.

[EEVblog]

Thanks for the recommendation, just followed him.

For sure, that was an error of judgement.

Not necessarily. I often follow people because I saw one post I liked for some reason, I don't usually research them much or make judgements.
Maybe she just looked at his profile as saw a few things she saw interesting and hit Follow.

[EEVblog]

No I don't think anything bad of her, she'll obviously see through the bullshit. My only concern is that she'll get dragged into "his world" and give him what he so desperately craves, attention and validation from a big physics or engineering youtuber. Even if one of us does a video just debunking and laughing at his rubbish, he gets what he wanted, the attention.
Look at the wording in the message that sucked her in, it's "we" and "call him and listen with an open mind", "we love you". He has this big community to true believers that are absolutely desperate for someone with mainstream credibility to give them the time of day.

I think I see your point now. It's not about free energy at all in fact, nor whether it's true or BS, it's about (although not limited to) grabbing the attention of renown and reputable people, just for the sake of being talked about, if I get you right.

If true then it poses a paradox: when those attention vampires propagate bullshit, what is the appropriate behaviour? leave them alone (in the secret hope the "noise" dies all naturally)? or debunk their fallacies and be transparent to seeking truth (in the secret hope people with an ounce of critical thinking will get the point)? The thing is it's not a problem that spawned on its own but one consequence of a much deeper issue.

And therein lies the dilemma of every high profile debunker like myself, Sabine, Thunderf00t, Electroboom, Common Sense Skeptic etc
In the case of Aston Forbes the answer is obvious, avoid like the plauge. It was obvious with the NDA request, and then he showed his true hand by getting angry and saying he'll use our non-interest as "proof" that his device works.

The other one is the audiophools, you simply can't debunk that stuff, because they will always have the comeback that you have to actually listen to it etc. Or anything medical related because you can't possibly prove the magic woo-woo has no impact.
And then you are just giving them ammunition to take whatever you say out of context for promotional purposes, that's always a risk.

It's easier with say a commercial crowdfunder. They have made specific claims, have raised a lot of money, and a lot of people have been duped.

[Xena E]

Thanks for the recommendation, just followed him.

For sure, that was an error of judgement.

Not necessarily. I often follow people because I saw one post I liked for some reason, I don't usually research them much or make judgements.
Maybe she just looked at his profile as saw a few things she saw interesting and hit Follow.

Yes, that's how I see it, but it could be used as cult propaganda. Let's hope she's able to give it a reality check, and not do the NDA thing.

[EEVblog]

Yes, that's how I see it, but it could be used as cult propaganda. Let's hope she's able to give it a reality check, and not do the NDA thing.

No, I hope she completely avoids this guy. He has proven he is not a genuine player. Doing any video on this guy, or getting involved in his timeline would be a big mistake IMO

[VinzC]

Yeah, in a sense, ignoring them is the "worst reward": let their frustration speak for not being recognized and heard until they eventually shoot themselves in the foot. The strategy is to not confront them on logic but emotional grounds, so in this case by completely ignoring them. It's the only language (read: mode) they "understand" (I shall say "are receptive").