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I was casually shopping for test gear when Amazon gave me these search results:
What's with the electromagnetic quack products!?
How are those quack products.
They look more legit than some of the junk posted here. -
The magic earth wave generators, not the AWGs...
How on earth is 7.8Hz wave, magnetic field, or whatever is supposed to help!? What are the supposed health benefits?
I mean, those things might "work" as advertised, but won't provide the advertised benefits... Maybe you could use one as a degauser? -
Sub-audible acoustic waves are annoying.
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Sub-audible acoustic waves are annoying.
Tell me about it.
Like the total assholes who drive by my place with their amped-up car stereos turned up to 11 with 400-watt amps and gigantic subwoofers.
My fucking windows rattle when that happens.
If I were the Ayatollah around here I would ban those things outright. -
At much lower amplitude, the subsonic stuff is still annoying since it is perceived but not heard.
It can cause anxiety, especially if the victim is unaware of the source. -
The magic earth wave generators, not the AWGs...
How on earth is 7.8Hz wave, magnetic field, or whatever is supposed to help!? What are the supposed health benefits?
I mean, those things might "work" as advertised, but won't provide the advertised benefits... Maybe you could use one as a degauser?
Something something "schumann resonance". Its part of the crystal healing "magic frequency" "everything has a natural frequency" and "energy" medcine crap. Its a way for relgious people to try and use science to justify their beliefs, like scientology - but it uses electronics! = science!. -
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Its part of the crystal healing "magic frequency" "everything has a natural frequency"
As everybody is a different size and shape 1 magic frequency wont fit all,but fear not for a modest fee we can calculate your magic frequency and tune the crystals specifically to your body.For best results due to body changes as you age,we suggest you have your frequency calculated annually and have the crystal re tuned. -
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Its part of the crystal healing "magic frequency" "everything has a natural frequency"
As everybody is a different size and shape 1 magic frequency wont fit all,but fear not for a modest fee we can calculate your magic frequency and tune the crystals specifically to your body.For best results due to body changes as you age,we suggest you have your frequency calculated annually and have the crystal re tuned.
That just sounds like a shrewd business model! A subscription model for reiki... -
Hi all.
Here's some video youtube suggested: https://youtu.be/gYDr-uvl4wc
It's about making electricity from falling rain, based on alleged principle of getting current from water ions. Personally, I don't buy it and suspect the main bias here is the scaling factor¹ but I am no expert in the field. Is this really valid?
Peace to everyone.
¹ I mean this system might not scale well, just like solar friggin' roadways. -
Falling water droplets used to produce charge is a real phenomenon, but not much energy is available. This is at the "energy harvesting" level along with thermal gradients, vibrations, and electromagnetic noise as energy sources. Whether this is a practical method of harvesting microwatts depends on whether it can be implemented as cheaply as those alternative sources.
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Hi all.
Here's some video youtube suggested: https://youtu.be/gYDr-uvl4wc
It's about making electricity from falling rain, based on alleged principle of getting current from water ions. Personally, I don't buy it and suspect the main bias here is the scaling factor¹ but I am no expert in the field. Is this really valid?
Peace to everyone.
¹ I mean this system might not scale well, just like solar friggin' roadways.
The supposed snake oil in question is a phenomena called contact electrification aka static electricity known about for a few thousand years or so. The paper can be found here, https://pubs.acs.org/doi/full/10.1021/acscentsci.4c02110
In effect, whenever two different materials contact and separate they produce a charge separation. The amount of charge separation per contact can be found in the triboelectric series tables. Here the water is one material and the pipe it contacts is the other. The same as when our feet contact the carpet and when we lift them a charge separation occurs. So in effect, you prove the concept every day.
It's funny because I'm an energy consultant specializing in electrostatics and was literally working on this technology this morning.
Think of it this way, the rain falls, is stored in a dam, the water head or pressure goes through a nozzle to spin a turbine which whirls magnets past some coils of wire to generate power. However if we used the same rain falling as drops over the same height as the dam through this technology we could produce similar power with no dam or moving parts. This is because energy is energy any way we slice it.
The energy is transformed by the fact a medium must move through the system in order to do work and produce a charge separation. The force to move the medium is gravity the same as in a hydroelectric dam. It just seems more confusing because the medium is broken up into smaller pieces however the energy is the same.
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The magic earth wave generators, not the AWGs...
How on earth is 7.8Hz wave, magnetic field, or whatever is supposed to help!? What are the supposed health benefits?
I mean, those things might "work" as advertised, but won't provide the advertised benefits... Maybe you could use one as a degauser?
Something something "schumann resonance". Its part of the crystal healing "magic frequency" "everything has a natural frequency" and "energy" medcine crap. Its a way for relgious people to try and use science to justify their beliefs, like scientology - but it uses electronics! = science!.
As always it's debatable and depends on our understanding and knowledge base.
For example, the concept of "grounding" or "earthing" is considered quackery by most. However grounding aka charge neutralization and static prevention is a billion dollar industry utilized by electronics, manufacturing, pharmaceutical and food industries. The food industry also uses charged cling wrap creating ozone/reactive oxygen species which are antimicrobial. Also related to research into using electrostatic or plasma-based food preservation, spoilage being a global trillion dollar problem. It's also know the surface charge effects oxidation and the local pH through ion accumulation. This isn’t “magic”, it’s physics and electro chemistry influencing microbial and chemical processes.
A better question is why would anyone be crazy enough to think our external environment wouldn't effect us in some way?.
It's kind of weird that in this day and age anyone could just ask an AI to explain all these concepts to them to get the actual facts of the matter. Why perpetuate ignorance when we could have the entire history of a concept and the science explained to us in minutes?.
Sure there are countless scams out there but in many cases there can be a kernel of truth in it. Ask an AI to explain it to you.
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anyone could just ask an AI to explain all these concepts to them
Who should they get to verify the answer the AI gives them is correct and not made-up slop? -
I taught at a science museum in the van de graff and static electricity demos, that it was not the friction, but the triboelectric substances being separated. Kids didn't care, they just like the hair raising and sticking balloons and such.
More fun was having everyone store their cell phones near the van de graff, Kept the place quieter after. -
The magic earth wave generators, not the AWGs...
How on earth is 7.8Hz wave, magnetic field, or whatever is supposed to help!? What are the supposed health benefits?
I mean, those things might "work" as advertised, but won't provide the advertised benefits... Maybe you could use one as a degauser?
Something something "schumann resonance". Its part of the crystal healing "magic frequency" "everything has a natural frequency" and "energy" medcine crap. Its a way for relgious people to try and use science to justify their beliefs, like scientology - but it uses electronics! = science!.
As always it's debatable and depends on our understanding and knowledge base.
For example, the concept of "grounding" or "earthing" is considered quackery by most. However grounding aka charge neutralization and static prevention is a billion dollar industry utilized by electronics, manufacturing, pharmaceutical and food industries. The food industry also uses charged cling wrap creating ozone/reactive oxygen species which are antimicrobial. Also related to research into using electrostatic or plasma-based food preservation, spoilage being a global trillion dollar problem. It's also know the surface charge effects oxidation and the local pH through ion accumulation. This isn’t “magic”, it’s physics and electro chemistry influencing microbial and chemical processes.
A better question is why would anyone be crazy enough to think our external environment wouldn't effect us in some way?.
It's kind of weird that in this day and age anyone could just ask an AI to explain all these concepts to them to get the actual facts of the matter. Why perpetuate ignorance when we could have the entire history of a concept and the science explained to us in minutes?.
Sure there are countless scams out there but in many cases there can be a kernel of truth in it. Ask an AI to explain it to you.
Yeah I'm not sure what you said here has anything to do with my statement. My point was - if the quotation marks weren't hint enough - that all this is so vague that its meaningless. Such claims aren't really claims at all because they have no substance.. like "frequency" frequency of what?
And the whole "grounding" thing is a clear misunderstanding - its quite common for people to try to adopt science/technology or engineering principles to explain their beliefs. Just because we ground vehicles manufacturing and applicances, doesn't validate their beliefs or change the principles. Just google "quantum health" and you'll see. If someone makes claims, if those claims can't be tested, then they are worthless. -
Falling water droplets used to produce charge is a real phenomenon, but not much energy is available. This is at the "energy harvesting" level along with thermal gradients, vibrations, and electromagnetic noise as energy sources. Whether this is a practical method of harvesting microwatts depends on whether it can be implemented as cheaply as those alternative sources.
That is my... perception as well and what I meant by "scaling factor". When it comes to microwatts, okay, maybe. But how does that scale to producing kilowatts or megawatts...The supposed snake oil in question is a phenomena called contact electrification aka static electricity known about for a few thousand years or so. The paper can be found here, https://pubs.acs.org/doi/full/10.1021/acscentsci.4c02110
It's funny because I'm an energy consultant specializing in electrostatics and was literally working on this technology this morning.
That is interesting indeed; glad to talk to someone who is actively committed to that. Also note in that regard, many people are also committed to making solar roadways, that doesn't make them prove their concept is worth investigating... which is false since it has been countlessly demonstrated the principle itself is flawed and won't ever produce meaningful results compared to other existing technologies, which are used and effective.
It is just interesting to me to have someone knwoledgeable in that regard.
On that note, my field is electronics, unfortunately not [that branch of] physics or quantum physics. I can read any number of scientific papers, I can't make any sense out of that, it's too abstract to me. So I need some translation in between.
My main concern, as expressed above, is how does that technology scale. I am not sure extracting electricity from a molecule such as water comes as easy as leaving it sweep between two electrodes (I'm not implying that's how it's presented, only how I understood it from the video). I'm curious to know the ratio between the expectancy of extracting electrical energy and that of extracting energy via gravity.
The latter, I can infer even on the back of a napkin since a drop of water is approximately 1/2 of a tenth of a cube millimeter, aka 0.05mm³. That would be a mass of 0.05mg if I'm not mistaken. Assuming the terminal velocity of a droplet is about 10m/s (source: https://journals.ametsoc.org/downloadpdf/view/journals/atsc/6/4/1520-0469_1949_006_0243_ttvoff_2_0_co_2.pdf although the chart stops at 5µg, not 50 like I assumed); that would make a kinetic energy e = mv² between 0.5mJ and 5mJ on impact, again if I'm not mistaken.
Would contact electrification be able to produce as much as that? -
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anyone could just ask an AI to explain all these concepts to them
Who should they get to verify the answer the AI gives them is correct and not made-up slop?
C'm'on... we all know AI is reliably unbiased and factually accurate. Right?
Right?
Nvm
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anyone could just ask an AI to explain all these concepts to them
Who should they get to verify the answer the AI gives them is correct and not made-up slop?
C'm'on... we all know AI is reliably unbiased and factually accurate. Right?
Right?
Nvm
-->[]
I love AI for science, technology and calculations. The stuff which seems really hard if not impossible for people but is easy with an AI.
For example we ask an AI, if we have a 1cm cube of aluminum and we separate all the positive and negative charges apart to a distance of 1m what is the force pulling them back together?. The answer is 14 quadrillion tons of pull — roughly equal to: The gravitational weight of all the water in the Great Lakes combined or About 2 billion times the mass of Mount Everest.
So we can calculate almost anything and compare it to almost anything else in seconds. This is why people are so afraid and critical of AI imo. It gives us facts vs false beliefs and misguided opinions. It also renders some of the most knowledgeable people kind of useless. An AI can literally access the combined knowledge of mankind in seconds.
So all these questions you have on technology or the energy in a drop of water can easily to calculated and compared to anything else in seconds by an AI.
On the water drop generator, the limit is not what most think. So one drop of water contacts a surface then separates producing a charge separation. The limit relates to the vertical distance between each contact/separation element and how many elements can be built in parallel to one another. Ergo, working element density which then determines the energy density.
As well we could ask an AI, if we have one drop of water and split it in half how much does the surface area change?.
The answer is the total surface area increases by about 26% when you split one spherical drop of water evenly into two smaller ones. Interesting, we can increase the charge generation/carrying ability by splitting the drop. In effect, some of the stuff which was inside the drop is now outside and available to use as a charge carrier surface where before it was not. As well split the halves we just split and we get an increase of 59%. Now were getting somewhere.
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This is why people are so afraid and critical of AI imo
The reason why they are critical - not afraid - is because AI lies and you don't know when it is doing so. Thus any answer may or may not be correct and since you have no idea if it is, it might as well be not. There are many instances where people have come undone because of this: in law courts it has made up not just cases but references used in those cases, and then presented in court as fact because the user of the AI couldn't be arsed to actually check that it was correct.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/apr/06/ai-chatgpt-guardian-technology-risks-fake-article
and
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/mar/16/the-stupidity-of-ai-artificial-intelligence-dall-e-chatgptQuoteArtificial intelligence in its current form is based on the wholesale appropriation of existing culture, and the notion that it is actually intelligent could be actively dangerous
Plenty more instances if you're not afraid to look for them. Maybe ask your AI to search? -
So we can calculate almost anything and compare it to almost anything else in seconds. This is why people are so afraid and critical of AI imo. It gives us facts vs false beliefs and misguided opinions. It also renders some of the most knowledgeable people kind of useless.
That's dangerous, and if used in a professional situation without checking the results, could be disastrous. Case in point - here's an example that I have used for training purposes for cautioning junior engineers to not implicitly trust the results of any AI calculations. In this instance Copilot failed to (1) ask if the inputs meant gauge or atmospheric pressure and (2) wasn't 'aware' enough to realize that a gas getting compressed and ending up COLDER than it started violates physics. Part of the problem here is Copilot is not an appropriate LLM to use for solving physics problems, but unlike a human with common sense, it doesn't know its own limitations and proceeds to give a confident sounding wrong answer anyway.
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This is why people are so afraid and critical of AI imo
The reason why they are critical - not afraid - is because AI lies and you don't know when it is doing so. Thus any answer may or may not be correct and since you have no idea if it is, it might as well be not. There are many instances where people have come undone because of this: in law courts it has made up not just cases but references used in those cases, and then presented in court as fact because the user of the AI couldn't be arsed to actually check that it was correct.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/apr/06/ai-chatgpt-guardian-technology-risks-fake-article
and
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/mar/16/the-stupidity-of-ai-artificial-intelligence-dall-e-chatgptQuoteArtificial intelligence in its current form is based on the wholesale appropriation of existing culture, and the notion that it is actually intelligent could be actively dangerous
Plenty more instances if you're not afraid to look for them. Maybe ask your AI to search?
Kind of funny but AI is pretty sure your afraid
AI- Yes, many people are afraid of AI due to concerns about job displacement, loss of control, and the potential for misuse. This fear is often fueled by misconceptions and the portrayal of AI in science fiction.
Maybe it's just me, my wife accused me of being part Vulcan, but most people seem to be really afraid. An AI can explain it better than myself, mention AI and most people...
Eyes: looking away, minimal or brief eye contact, glancing toward exits, or rolling eyes subtly.
Gestures: turning the body slightly away, crossed arms, leaning back, tense mouth or lips pressed tight, and physically distancing from the person.
It's not rocket science, say something people have a phobia about then watch and listen. Now mention AI then watch and listen. Your observations are probably the correct answer.
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So we can calculate almost anything and compare it to almost anything else in seconds. This is why people are so afraid and critical of AI imo. It gives us facts vs false beliefs and misguided opinions. It also renders some of the most knowledgeable people kind of useless.
That's dangerous, and if used in a professional situation without checking the results, could be disastrous. Case in point - here's an example that I have used for training purposes for cautioning junior engineers to not implicitly trust the results of any AI calculations. In this instance Copilot failed to (1) ask if the inputs meant gauge or atmospheric pressure and (2) wasn't 'aware' enough to realize that a gas getting compressed and ending up COLDER than it started violates physics. Part of the problem here is Copilot is not an appropriate LLM to use for solving physics problems, but unlike a human with common sense, it doesn't know its own limitations and proceeds to give a confident sounding wrong answer anyway.
One could accuse many people of the same defect...
I went on holidays for two weeks, came back to work and my supervisor casually asked me to go look at an automation system problem. It was an easy fix and took 15 minutes. I came back and my supervisor looked at me weird asked what I was doing, I replied I'm done and fixed the problem. He then informed me over the last two weeks eight Engineers, three controls people and two electricians were working there and could not find the problem.
So we should never confuse a job title with the person or their abilities... that's dangerous.
Sure AI makes mistakes, I catch it all the time using it to help program micro computers for automation. I equate it with setting up my DSO for a complex measurement. If were not smart enough to set it up right were probably not smart enough to know what were seeing and mistakes will be made. AI is like any tool and in the wrong hands it's an accident waiting to happen imo. -
This isn't the thread to discuss AI - its about pseudoscience or techgnology that has no real basis in fact.
There should probably be a seperate sub for AI (is there one already?) but I would say that "trust" in AI is different from "trust" in people and their abilities. THe latter we have lots of data and experience of, so we know how and why people are inaccurate - AI is different, and can give completely wild results - the criticisms are that people put too much faith in AI results without knowing its limitations, and there-in lies the danger. Most LLM are also designed for user experience - they are trained and designed to give the user what they want - and sadly that includes things that the user wants to hear, but simply isn't true. -
This isn't the thread to discuss AI - its about pseudoscience or techgnology that has no real basis in fact.
There should probably be a seperate sub for AI (is there one already?) but I would say that "trust" in AI is different from "trust" in people and their abilities. THe latter we have lots of data and experience of, so we know how and why people are inaccurate - AI is different, and can give completely wild results - the criticisms are that people put too much faith in AI results without knowing its limitations, and there-in lies the danger. Most LLM are also designed for user experience - they are trained and designed to give the user what they want - and sadly that includes things that the user wants to hear, but simply isn't true.
I was pointing out that one persons supposed snake oil or pseudoscience can be based on real science and facts.
For example, many claimed silver or colloidal silver is a scam which is false. Yes the use of silver as a health supplement is questionable but it has well-documented antimicrobial properties and is used in various medical and industrial anti microbial/bacterial applications.
Common mouthwash also has ingredients designed to be antimicrobial or antibacterial similar to colloidal silver. It's weird, AI claims ingesting large amounts of colloidal silver is not recommended because it could impact our health. However it also claims ingesting mouthwash is toxic and can be lethal. In fact, common mouthwash contains a crazy amount of toxic materials like 20% ethanol, Chlorhexidine and hydrogen peroxide.
So I find your claim, "This isn't the thread to discuss AI - its about pseudoscience or techgnology that has no real basis in fact." a little misguided. How would we know what is fact or not without all the science and data showing the whole picture?. Obviously you cannot show the combined knowledge of mankind on a given subject so ... who would we ask?. Ergo, this has everything to do with the subject at hand, imo.
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"colloidal silver" is a great example of "pseudoscience": It relies on the real antibacterial effect of metallic silver - but claims that ingesting it has those same benefits - when it doesn't. Poeple make the assumption that if it works in one situation, it must work in others, and ingesting it.. of course! that must make it better!
Really that is the definition of pseudoscience - it leads people to believe that it has been validated by the scientific method, by co-opting adjacent principles and experimental results and misapplying them to different circumstances where the results no longer apply. In this case, it has been repeatedly shown there is no benefit to ingesting colloidal silver, and can have some harms.
Your example of mouthwash being toxic is another example - you look at the ingredients and superficially claim that because those ingredients can be toxic in certain amounts, they must be toxic in any amount. Also you (and your AI) seem to have missed an important point about mouthwash - you're not meant to ingest/swallow it.
Water is toxic in a certain amount. Cyanide isn't toxic in a certain amount, the dose makes the poison.
And again.. you're just quoting AI as proof that.. AI always tells the truth? In fact, I would say that your post actually validates discussing AI in this thread, since you've kind of proved my point
So I was wrong to say you shouldn't discuss your AI results here - its a great place to post the pseudoscience it can occassionally create.