Reply To: Brain: dualism of consciousness.

[Breakable]

Tulse wrote: The traditional Big Fusion approaches already have well-heeled advocates, as evidenced by the billions (and billions and billions) poured into ITER, NIF, and prior projects. I’m not sure that a grassroots effort is needed to promote these forms of fusion. It seems to me that aneutronic and other “alt-fusion” approaches are in far greater need of champions, especially as they are often dismissed by Big Fusion supporters.

If ITER ultimately produces something that can be turned into practical fusion power, it won’t need a non-profit society to help. So I don’t think advocacy for “fusion in general” in needed, so much as assistance to those approaches that aren’t supported by massive research funds.

While the BIG FUSION approaches have their supporters and probably don’t need more, it would not be a bad idea to entice those supporters to look at other fusion approaches as well. If FFS will encompass fusion support without discrimination, maybe it will be able to draw support from a broader base that includes current opposition to aneutronic fusion. At least we could become a place where discussion and analysis and comparison of different approaches takes place and this could lead to reevaluation of DPF route compared to Tokamak.

On the other hand if we try to distinguish and disenfranchise ourselves from big fusion supporters as much as possible, then they will probably reciprocate. As you might know LPP is called pseudoscience by some, so to loose that stigma it will take a lot of convincing on the rational as well as on the emotional levels. While this route might be preferred by some, on the other hand only demonstrated and peer-reviewed over-unity can conquer the skeptics, which is unfortunately still a little out-of-reach today.