Shouldn't we give up on fusion?

[MigL]

The cure for cancer hasn't made much headway in the last 50 years, and it has probably cost a lot more than fusion research.
Let's stop research into that also.
Or diabetes and  heart disease for that matter.

 

[swansont]

1 hour ago, dimreepr said:

I said the numbers don't matter if you're the wrong side of the solution...

But you don’t know that it won’t work, only that it hasn’t, which is true of all research at some point.

[StringJunky]

39 minutes ago, MigL said:

The cure for cancer hasn't made much headway in the last 50 years, and it has probably cost a lot more than fusion research.
Let's stop research into that also.
Or diabetes and  heart disease for that matter.

 

Or into neuroplastically regenerating my auditory nerves, so that I and others can hear properly. 62 years and I'm still waiting.   People think like there's just like one pot of money.

[MigL]

Yeah, String Junky.
I need my optic nerves ( more specifically the ganglion cells in the 'bend' from retina to optic nerve ) regenerated.
Been waiting 30 years.

[swansont]

7 hours ago, StringJunky said:

Or into neuroplastically regenerating my auditory nerves, so that I and others can hear properly. 62 years and I'm still waiting.   People think like there's just like one pot of money.

To think you could have had nuclear physicists working on this, except they worked on fusion instead.

[Ken Fabian]

I'm not impressed by the equivalency arguments. I think it is a false equivalence between things that cause human suffering for which no or only deeply inadequate solutions exist and with fusion to do what a range of technologies already do successfully, just to do it better, maybe, in a future far beyond the time frames we have for doing low emissions energy better. Medical science is not concentrated into a few programs and a few approaches; the advances come from wide ranging research, from fundamental science outwards, lots of which does get abandoned for not panning out within a timeframe and budget.

[dimreepr]

21 hours ago, swansont said:

But you don’t know that it won’t work, only that it hasn’t, which is true of all research at some point.

Indeed, but without significant evidence from such a large dataset, it's starting to pass into pure belief; hence my 'perpetual motion' reference, the only difference is, we know PM is impossible. 

21 hours ago, StringJunky said:

People think like there's just like one pot of money.

There is just one pot of money, 'The Golgafrinchams' thought it would be more valuable if we burnt most of it. 

A policy that's still favoured today, unfortunately; one day we'll learn... 🤞

Edited July 2 by dimreepr

[swansont]

2 hours ago, dimreepr said:

Indeed, but without significant evidence from such a large dataset, it's starting to pass into pure belief; hence my 'perpetual motion' reference, the only difference is, we know PM is impossible. 

We also know fusion is possible, unlike some research efforts. Similar to heavier-than-air flight - we know it can happen, but didn’t know if certain implementations would work.

[MigL]

23 hours ago, Ken Fabian said:

I think it is a false equivalence between things that cause human suffering for which no or only deeply inadequate solutions exist and with fusion

And lack of energy resources doesn't cause human suffering ???

[dimreepr]

21 hours ago, swansont said:

We also know fusion is possible, unlike some research efforts. Similar to heavier-than-air flight - we know it can happen, but didn’t know if certain implementations would work.

We don't know that it's possible, sustainably, on Earth; a wormhole is possible, how much of our finite pot of money should we spend on that research?

How big a dataset do we need before we concede, that it's not a valuable line of enquiry?

9 hours ago, MigL said:

And lack of energy resources doesn't cause human suffering ???

What's that got to do with fusion?

If there's one thing we can be sure of with fusion, it might be 'cleanish', but it's, as sure as shit, not gonna be cheap, for everyone...

Edited July 3 by dimreepr

[MigL]

1 hour ago, dimreepr said:

a wormhole is possible

Not unless you can provide other materials which ARE impossible.

 

1 hour ago, dimreepr said:

If there's one thing we can be sure of with fusion, it might be 'cleanish', but it's, as sure as shit, not gonna be cheap, for everyone...

I wonder if you realize that ALL renewable sources of, as well as fossil, fuels are the direct result of an enormous fusion reactor 93 Miillion miles away.
And we only receive a miniscule amount of that energy; almost all of it is radiated into space.

Imagine what could be done, and how much human suffering could be eliminated with distributed fusion reactors providing cheap and abundant power to all the world.
This is not percentage increases in power supply; it is orders of magnitude.

[dimreepr]

2 minutes ago, MigL said:

I wonder if you realize that ALL renewable sources of, as well as fossil, fuels are the direct result of an enormous fusion reactor 93 Miillion miles away.

I do indeed, it's similar to 'not all shit is a good furtiliser'...😉

[MigL]

5 minutes ago, dimreepr said:

'not all shit is a good furtiliser'.

Actually, it is.
You can grow potatoes on Mars with human sh*t.

Edited July 3 by MigL

[dimreepr]

Just now, MigL said:

Actually, it is.

Only if you can get it to work...

[MigL]

That's the beauty of sh*t. 
You just toss it in and hope it works.

Much like some posts in this thread.

[dimreepr]

4 minutes ago, MigL said:

That's the beauty of sh*t. 
You just toss it in and hope it works.

Much like some posts in this thread.

We, in Britain have been testing this hypothesis recently by throwing all of our shit into all of our river's; it turns out that most of us are sick of it...

[swansont]

2 hours ago, dimreepr said:

If there's one thing we can be sure of with fusion, it might be 'cleanish', but it's, as sure as shit, not gonna be cheap, for everyone..

Your technical analysis is quite convincing. The way you broke down the costs to show this…breathtaking.

[dimreepr]

7 minutes ago, swansont said:

Your technical analysis is quite convincing. The way you broke down the costs to show this…breathtaking.

Do you have evidence to the contrary?

[swansont]

Just now, dimreepr said:

Do you have evidence to the contrary?

You made the claim. You own the burden of proof. Surely you’ve noticed how “prove me wrong” is received. It’s usually a tacit admission that one is blowing smoke.

[dimreepr]

16 minutes ago, swansont said:

You made the claim. You own the burden of proof. Surely you’ve noticed how “prove me wrong” is received. It’s usually a tacit admission that one is blowing smoke.

That depends on which end of the cutlery you view the problem.

For instance, how often are we required to believe in the disease before we pay for the cure?

[Sensei]

2 hours ago, MigL said:

Imagine what could be done, and how much human suffering could be eliminated with distributed fusion reactors providing cheap and abundant power to all the world.
This is not percentage increases in power supply; it is orders of magnitude.

The same can be said for putting solar panels around the sun and harvesting all the energy from it ("dyson sphere")..

ps. For dimreepr to create a Dyson sphere would be an even bigger waste of money..

Edited July 3 by Sensei

[MigL]

A little too ambitious Sensei.
A Dyson sphere, or even a ringworld, requires the use of the whole planet ( and maybe more ); where would you live in the meanwhile ?

And this is going in the opposite direction; a Dyson sphere requires many many orders of magnitude greater expense

[swansont]

2 hours ago, dimreepr said:

That depends on which end of the cutlery you view the problem.

Not at all. I’m citing protocols we follow here on SFN. If you make a claim, you should be prepared to back it up. Shifting the burden of proof is a logical fallacy.

https://www.qcc.cuny.edu/socialSciences/ppecorino/PHIL_of_RELIGION_TEXT/CHAPTER_5_ARGUMENTS_EXPERIENCE/Burden-of-Proof.htm#:~:text=Shifting the burden of proof%2C a special case of argumentum,questions the assertion being made.

 

2 hours ago, dimreepr said:

For instance, how often are we required to believe in the disease before we pay for the cure?

But people believing in a disease is not a requirement; science is all about the stuff that’s true even if you don’t believe it. Scientists (or bureaucrats) aren’t required to convince random idiots who reject (or are agnostic toward) science in order to try and implement solutions.

 

1 hour ago, Sensei said:

The same can be said for putting solar panels around the sun and harvesting all the energy from it ("dyson sphere")..

ps. For dimreepr to create a Dyson sphere would be an even bigger waste of money..

You’re right, we should pull all government funding of dyson sphere construction.

i.e. I’m not sure that a project nobody is pursuing is a valid counterexample.

[Sensei]

14 hours ago, MigL said:

A little too ambitious Sensei.

I don't think so. It is not immediately rewarding project, so you invest a lot and then have (hypothetically) hundred or thousands years to get a return from an investment, so not interesting from commercial POV for a human being living here and now.. just like fusion..

Put thousands of satellites around the Earth that deliver Internet to customers, and they will pay every month for Internet (have you seen how much Elon demands? I paid less in 7 years than he wants in a month ). Put thousands of satellites around the Sun (or around the Earth) that deliver power to spacecrafts and/or Earth and how do you get a return on investment?

This energy would be most optimally used to build even larger facilities in space, instead of delivering it to Earth.

In capitalism, everything revolves around money. If you have money, you fly to the Moon or Mars. If you don't have money (but you have knowledge and know-how), you don't fly to the Moon or Mars. Silly.

In fusion, one does not know when it will 'click' and 'the light at the end of the tunnel' will appear..

For eventual investor, with energy from the Sun delivered to satellites around it, it would be easier to estimate when they will pay off, than from nuclear fusion.

 

[dimreepr]

17 hours ago, swansont said:

Not at all. I’m citing protocols we follow here on SFN. If you make a claim, you should be prepared to back it up. Shifting the burden of proof is a logical fallacy.

https://www.qcc.cuny.edu/socialSciences/ppecorino/PHIL_of_RELIGION_TEXT/CHAPTER_5_ARGUMENTS_EXPERIENCE/Burden-of-Proof.htm#:~:text=Shifting the burden of proof%2C a special case of argumentum,questions the assertion being made.

 

But people believing in a disease is not a requirement; science is all about the stuff that’s true even if you don’t believe it. Scientists (or bureaucrats) aren’t required to convince random idiots who reject (or are agnostic toward) science in order to try and implement solutions.

 

You’re right, we should pull all government funding of dyson sphere construction.

i.e. I’m not sure that a project nobody is pursuing is a valid counterexample.

Our little anthropocene depends on eternal progess, it's like Moore's law on steroids.

Quote

Moore's law is an observation and projection of a historical trend. Rather than a law of physics

 

3 hours ago, Sensei said:

In fusion, one does not know when it will 'click' and 'the light at the end of the tunnel' will appear..

That's just blind faith that a/ we can travel far enough through the tunnel to see light again, and b/ the light we see isn't just a torch, and even c/ this is not a tunnel...

I'm not shifting the burden of proof, how can I?

I'm not claiming that there's a tea-pot orbiting Mars...