I just finished reading Seife’s “Sun in a Bottle…the science of wishful thinking”. He has 0% confidence for conventional fusion. Tears them down. Utterly. Since pB11 fusion is much harder to achieve, would that make us wishful thinkers of wishful thinkers? Like “king of kings”.
My confidence is not totally deflated, because he doesn’t address the DPF. Hasn’t heard of it.
In fact, his book echoes our own critique of conventional fusion - you can’t control the instabilities. he also validates our whining: I worry that we sound like whiners because we aren’t with the “in crowd” of fusion scientists. But Seife paints such an unflattering picture of the mainstream and their own infighting - makes us look good & justified in comparison.
Finally, he drives home the point that it’s effectively impossible to control the instability of unpredictable plasmas, as the mainstream seeks to do. Thus, Focus Fusion is outside the scope of his critique, because it works with the instabilities, instead of trying to control them. We’re not written off.
But, will it work? I’d like to hope so, but, according to Seife, that’s the worst thing I could do. Hope. Optimism. Just another flavor of “delusional wishful thinking.” Per Seife, we must banish it from the process.
Consider the confidence monitor approach: it has four components: concern, commitment, optimism and confidence.
Seife’s book annihilates optimism. Optimism/delusion itself is the problem in fusion. Literally. His concluding sentence:
The promise of a fusion reactor a few decades away has been a cliche for a half century. Every time it is repeated, it just illuminates how generation after generation of scientists, drunk with the promise of personal glory and unlimited energy, keep forgetting the hard lessons learned by their predecessors. The quest to put a star in the bottle is intoxicating. Fusion might be the energy source of the future. If fusion scientists are unable to rid themselves of their intemperate self-deception, it always will be.
He doesn’t like it when people get excited about fusion. Best to approach things with a flat, unemotional tone.
His book keeps asserting that wishful thinking has predominated fusion, and has led to all these scandals with bad data (but he only produces a few examples, like the cold fusion debacle, and that other one.) I suspect that many other fields of science are full of scandals - equivalent in the short cuts and the delusional thinking - but with less media impact because it doesn’t get the whole world excited.
That’s a tu quoque argument, of course, and ultimately I don’t want to excuse bad scientists - but it appears the method worked. I mean, they debunked the cold fusion guys. And in fusion you can’t fake it. You can generate some hype for a while, but if your gizmo doesn’t work, it doesn’t work. Everyone will soon enough know.
So, then his argument seems to be that these fraudulent, delusional fusion scientists simply don’t deserve money. Any money spent in pursuit of a grand dream is a swindle.
I’m going to have to take another tu quoque moment here. Consider undeserved $. If we were to develop some sort of “corruption index” for science, economics and politics, or, let’s call it a “delusion index” - something which could quantify how many decisions are made from corruption or delusion, would fusion scientists, even in the most profligate experiment, rank poorly? The tens of billions of dollars spent on fusion energy so far have advanced our understanding of the problem - certainly our appreciation for it. A lot of this money has come from the defense industry, especially with NIF as Seife himself points out, because it isn’t even about fusion, it’s a cover for something nefarious and defense related. So, I don’t even think we should budget that under fusion.
Tens of billions (need a ref) total, for conventional fusion so far, with no fusion results, although knowledge has been advanced (can you put a price on knowledge?). Are the scientists fraudulent and undeserving? How about the 700 billion for the economic bailout, in just a few short years. A lot of economists and people in the banking industry are certainly undeserving. Very dramatic. And going to war in Iraq based on non-existent weapons of mass destruction, 500 billion? 8 years? $/year?
And here is Focus fusion, asking for a few million. When I spoke to the folks on capitol hill, they said “that’s a lot of money.” We need to prove the idea can work, before they’ll give us the money to prove the idea can work. Because we’re not with the “in crowd” (not desirable company per Seife, but still). and that makes us deluded wishful thinkers, rejected by debunked wishful thinkers, who, to be fair, as a class are no less deluded, wishful, or fraudulent than most of the professionals in most industries that make up our glorious economic and scientific establishment.
Deep sigh.
Arguing about optimism is frustrating. So, let’s look at those other factors - concern, committment and confidence.
Start with confidence. In light of this surreal hyper-optimism, hyper-pessimism, and weird accounting practices (swallowing camels of economic bailouts and wars in Iraq and giant reactors, but choking on the tiny $2mil dense plasma focus) - are we doing enough to make this happen?
Confidence: Those who should be doing something about X are doing so.
LPP is doing its bit, but on a limited budget, which could prove to be an obstacle. Anti-gov sentiments aside, government & humanitarin orgs need to kick in their support. Many more people need to be concerned with this question, intrigued by this approach. Because it’s important, and we’re committed. All those who should be doing something about it - are not.
Focus Fusion Society 
