[Rezwan]

I hate to break it to y’all, but pretty much most of what people do for a living is pointless. We tend to shuffle things back and forth. Try to accumulate stuff. Have bragging rights. Pursuit of knowledge? Just for the satisfaction of knowing something? Or to increase productivity? And hence profits? Woo. More for someone. Or more someones.

There’s something misanthropic about that line of questioning. “Shouldn’t you be doing something worthwhile? You sponge?” Really, if we look closely, we’d be hard pressed to find someone who is worthwhile. It’s by grace we’re here. Quantification of value is delusional.

I’m waxing existential here, of course.

I like having everyone around, and I like the ones that find fantastically useless things to do and make a killing at it! Master shufflers. (Football players! Shuffling a ball from one side of a field to another. Over and over again. Every year, the same contest begins.)

Sleight of hand. And not con artists. But people who make you think you really need whatever it is they’re offering.

Because it’s important to feel a need. Just to feel. Because really, we’re nothing, from nothing, to nothing.

But in the interim of nothing – there’re these blips. : )

I guess what I’m saying is, beloved, let us have more compassion for one another.

[Rezwan]

Very cool! Thanks for the link.

[Rezwan]

Another idea, parody your favorite scenes from fusion films. Videotape it. Put it on Youtube and send us a link.

[Rezwan]

A strange Nicholas Cage film comes to mind. The one where his children are abducted by aliens that are harbingers of solar flares destroying the planet. It’s nothing about fusion, but mega-flares are a plasma phenomenon.

Plasma phenomena seem relevant to fusion.

A bonus factor here is – when you’re explaining fusion to someone, or some facet of the science, and you’re getting that blank look, it helps to say “it’s like that movie where…”

[Rezwan]

I wouldn’t know how to do that and it seems a lot of trouble to figure out how, when you’ve just demonstrated the simply tinyurl fix.

You are welcome to visit the expression engine forums and find out what steps I need to take to get rid of that feature. If it’s something simple, I’ll consider it.

[Rezwan]

Yes, it seems parentheses can’t be used in urls. From the expression engine support forums:

Parenthesis aren’t allowed in URLs in ExpressionEngine because in certain circumstances it can cause parts of the URL to be interpreted as code, and are used as part of cross-site scripting hacks. Unfortunately because some browsers will even interpret URL encoded parenthesis in this manner and still allow code execution, ExpressionEngine takes the high road erring on the side of caution…

I suppose one could write the url down http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crank_(person) [note, just tested this – it didn’t work. The parentheses are stripped when you click the link.]

Or do it as code (use the “code” tab in the edit bar), and let people copy and paste:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crank_(person)

[Rezwan]

This is hilarious! They play it so straight. “Waterproof shoes”, of course! Brilliant.

[Rezwan]

Breakable wrote: Rezwan:I like your idea, but it will take more resources than FF to implement.

Absolutely! That’s why we have to outsource. So we’re putting these ideas out there, and hoping someone takes the initiative to do it. They are free to profit from the game if they design it. We just want the publicity, and some input into the design.

[Rezwan]

In farmville, the mechanics of farming are key.

Likewise, with fusionville, we can build the game around the mechanics of setting up a fusion lab. We have a variety of reactor types / experimental approaches to choose from – so the players get a choice of what type of facilities to work in.

Naturally, those people who want to “farm” with a tokamak will need really huge facilities. So they’ll have to go in together with a lot of other people to make the huge thing. This will be an important design factor – figuring out how much things “cost” so that proportional “fusioncash” is used for each reactor.

This will give people a sense of proportion. You’ll be able to SEE that one ITER costs as much as hundreds (thousands?) of smaller scale research endeavors.

Other reactor types can get off and running with smaller teams and resources.

Activities revolve around:

Pulling together the resources,
physical infrastructure
instrumentation,
power inputs
people with skills and resources (recruiting other players to your team)

Running experiments,
Sustaining damage to the machine – and repairing it
coming up with new fixes and ideas for improvement of the machine
Diagnosing what’s wrong with the machine

Getting fusion results
Experimental machines do achieve fusion – we just don’t have net energy yet.
So…the game machines also get fusion, and that’s one way to get points. Measuring your neutrons or alpha particles – coming up with ways of harnessing the output energy. Also, for those trying aneutronic experiments – different output is measured (not neutrons – except at stage 1)

False results:
Of course, you can have breakdowns and defective parts with all of the above, so your instrument doesn’t work (we’ll have a randomizer added to the game to alert you that it’s not working, or you may notice anomalous results).

Peer review
You can also publish false results and see how long it takes for people to peer review you back to reality.

Actual results from the real world:
The game could be set up to be linked to real world events. In other words, as a real fusion project goes forward, the homage project in fusionville gets to incorporate the results – we’ll have to set up an algorithm for that. So, if a project in the real world shows an improved density-confinement – you get a boost in your game, and your stocks go up. If your real world project starts breaking down, you likewise lose energy points.

[Rezwan]

This post in from someone who wishes to remain anonymous. Yay! More blackmail ammo for me. Only *slightly* edited.

What you really want is not Farmville but a massively multiple-player game. You need to have players both trying to make fusion work, and those who are trying to stop it. You have choice of various avatars. There are a variety of fusion scientists and assistants (choose your own characteristics, attire, wild hair, working style, igors), shyster lawyers whose game is to make the highest fees; high-roller capitalists scheming to take over the operation; agents of oil and gas companies—and the CIA, of course, trying to blow everyone up; unscrupulous suppliers selling faulty switches trying to sabotage the works and of course the glamorous, slightly exotic female free-lance fusion advocate who is trying to outsmart everyone and steer the project to its goal.

Unlike the standard games where everyone is accumulating gold to buy their way to the next level, each avatar is after their own point-equivalents. So the fusion scientist is accumulating fusion reactions, working up toward breakeven (and trading them for dollars to keep the show going) , the shyster lawyers are of course after dollars, the Oil and Gas characters after explosions and body counts, while the advocate is accumulating fusion converts. And of course you throw in the good old game idea of a race, with massively multiple labs all trying to get to fusion first, and massively multiple villains standing in their way. Anyway, you get the idea.

[Rezwan]

Breakable wrote: Something simple, implementable and easy to get addicted to:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cD69PAIqiYo

Hilarious! Thanks! Just tweeted it.

[Rezwan]

Breakable wrote:
http://fold.it/portal/

Looked at it a bit more. That’s really cool! They actually want to use people to solve the problem directly:

Figuring out which of the many, many possible structures is the best one is regarded as one of the hardest problems in biology today and current methods take a lot of money and time, even for computers. Foldit attempts to predict the structure of a protein by taking advantage of humans’ puzzle-solving intuitions and having people play competitively to fold the best proteins.

Not sure how we could use people that way for fusion.

[Rezwan]

There’s a two tier effort here. Hard core, thoughtful fusion aficionados who actually have some knowledge on the subject – they have already sought out fusion sites, and tend to be aware of our existence. They also tend to be few in number.

Then, there are the masses. Their eyes glaze over when you talk about fusion. This is the crowd for whom we seek to supply a nice, accessible rubber fusion reactor room for them to bang around it.

We want a majority of people to have a warm relationship with fusion. That whole “social currency” thing.

And perhaps, secretly, some physicists will set up a fusionville so that, when they’re frustrated by a slowdown down at the lab, they can go online, and click a bit on their virtual and obliging reactor, and get things powered up.

[Rezwan]

Breakable wrote: I play a little farm-ville. It is as dumb as it gets: You click everything you can.

The purpose of the game isn’t to do something smart, so much as give people hands on time with fusion. “Dumb” is fine, in this case. Easy and un-intimidating. The real purpose isn’t so much to “teach” people about fusion, but rather to get them to “touch” fusion. manhandle it, recklessly click away at it. Feel a sense of cavalier ownership. “Clicking” in that case is an apt metaphor. Click it, tag it, paint it fun colors, just make sure you have one (a fusion reactor) in your life.

If you want to make something smarter, you should probably think about
http://fold.it/portal/

Upscale games – great idea! A separate category, though. If you’re more inspired to develop a high end, thinking game, that’s great!

But the facebook approach isn’t about giving people difficult mental challenges. It’s about giving them excuses to poke each other with a pet rock painted to look like a fusion reactor : )

[Rezwan]

Brian H wrote:

Dangers are uncontrolled and unpredictable risks.

Wow. You either,
a) really don’t like to concede a point, or
b) are a bit delusional, thinking that most of the things in the world are under control.

There’s a certainty/uncertainty dynamic going on here.

[Author]

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