[Rezwan]

The key goals here are to bring more science projects online, to diversify, to move away from monopolistic tendencies.

Also, to lower the cost of collaboration and information.

Eventually, if done right, you might even be able to ween off the government entirely, make a self-sustaining online science market – provided that most people are investing with a sense of triple bottom line and not just for financial return.

i.e., They’re not looking primarily to make money, they see the intrinsic worth of the knowledge. They’re looking at the jobs created for scientists, the fact that their kids now see science as a viable field to go into, socially relevant with or without results, feel good, and adequately funded. They genuinely want to know about that mollusk and their world.

I suspect that, over time, many world changing inventions, methodologies, ideas will emerge from this process, theoretically more than we’re getting with our current system. The pool will actually make a lot of money and be shown to support more innovation than the system we have now.

Of course, I don’t know for sure. Just a fantasy for now. It’s got to be designed and tested. Which means, of course – we just need funding for a project to set this thing up.

[Rezwan]

“Little Science”

vansig wrote: unfortunately for small research companies, an investment fund manager would rather have one $100M account than one hundred $1M accounts.

You’re talking about “long tail” science. Both big government and big business are geared to cut things off at a certain point, and to look for immediately obvious hits.

True that Aeronauts numbers are easier to put on a spread sheet than achieve.

My favorite “how best to deploy markets to the aid of science” fantasy revolves around developing “long tail” organization approach for science research.

Scientists put their proposals online: “Marine biologist at xyz institute seeks $100k to investigate mating habits of the bleurplassian molusk. Project will assess impact of nearby cement plant on fertility and look at molusk adaptation patterns. This project mostly helps molusks. No molusks will be killed. Here’s a picture of a really cute molusk. Oh, and funding will mostly go to pay the salary of 1 marine biologist and 2 stipends for easily exploited grad students. Biologist has a family of 4 and resides in the great state of ____, at least 80% of project money will recirculate into this economy.”

Then, you allow people to invest (without that barrier that they need to be an accredited investor – a special law would have to be written to make this venture an exception to the SEC rules. No doubt, the ever paternalistic big gov and big biz will “worry about our safety” (try to keep us out of the game), but we could set caps on investment – a max based on income or something – but really, it’s none of anyone’s business what you throw your money away on). Now you have pools of investors forming over various science projects – based on popularity, but also a lot of information is out there – people discussing the quality of previous research, vouching for one another, etc. A public beyond the academic journals, but informed by them as well. A much freer flow of information about various endeavors, quicker feedback, and – as money is a factor – people are putting their money down on this – a good measure of true preference & value of the broader population.

Now you have a pool of investors growing for various projects, and when you get enough for the project – it kicks over. The dude gets the $.

We can also link this to government – get matching funds from Government. What we’ve done here is taken the decision-making out of government, and given it to whoever logs on to this scienceamazon site – taken it away from easily influenced individuals in office and diffused it across many more people. Harder to skew influence (although people still follow herds, so that won’t be eliminated).

Anyway, most of these projects will not have an immediate financial gain for “investors” – however, algorithms could be developed that model the value of commercial products that emerge, and trace them back to their basic science research, and you get a little bit of a financial return – or just really get to see your impact in the global economy. So for example, after this study, when there is a boom in molusk population due to applying the findings of this study, and the fishing industry has a surplus, and the surplus is taxed, the portion of the money that was your investment gets credited back to you. And you can go on and reinvest it, because you’re more interested in bragging to your friends about what a great patron of the sciences you are and how many nifty things you’re responsible for.

We really have not begun to exploit the long tail of science. Maybe because science is a bit reductive to begin with. Some kind of engineering mentality. Try to simplify things. Not too holistic or organic?

Below, a long tail image from http://www.aurorawdc.com/ci/000340.html

Attached files

[Rezwan]

Brian H wrote:
Your fear of big bizniss is, I think, ideological. The vast bulk of companies are small to medium-sized, and they employ the great majority of people. Profit-making is getting paid for the added value you contribute, whether that’s physical change, relocation, distribution, or anything else others would prefer to pay for rather than do themselves.

I’m all for people getting paid for added value. Also for a diverse ecology of small and medium-sized companies. Long tail and micro-finance, markets which accurately reflect preference and value.

In numbers, most companies are small and medium, and that’s great. But there’s something else going on here. Some “smart” guys acting like they are adding value, when they’re not. Taleb (“Black Swan“) puts it this way:

Globalization creates interlocking fragility, while reducing volatility and giving the appearance of stability. In other words it creates devastating Black Swans. We have never lived before under the threat of a global collapse. Financial Institutions have been merging into a smaller number of very large banks. Almost all banks are interrelated. So the financial ecology is swelling into gigantic, incestuous, bureaucratic banks – when one fails, they all fall. The increased concentration among banks seems to have the effect of making financial crises less likely, but when they happen they are more global in scale and hit us very hard. We have moved from a diversified ecology of small banks, with varied lending policies, to a more homogeneous framework of firms that all resemble one another. True, we now have fewer failures, but when they occur ….I shiver at the thought.

Banks hire dull people and train them to be even more dull. If they look conservative, it’s only because their loans go bust on rare, very rare occasions. But (…)bankers are not conservative at all. They are just phenomenally skilled at self-deception by burying the possibility of a large, devastating loss under the rug.

The government-sponsored institution Fannie Mae, when I look at its risks, seems to be sitting on a barrel of dynamite, vulnerable to the slightest hiccup. But not to worry: their large staff of scientists deemed these events “unlikely”.

There is no way to gauge the effectiveness of their lending activity by observing it over a day, a week, a month, or . . . even a century!

(…) the real- estate collapse of the early 1990s in which the now defunct savings and loan industry required a taxpayer-funded bailout of more than half a trillion dollars. The Federal Reserve bank protected them at our expense: when “conservative” bankers make profits, they get the benefits; when they are hurt, we pay the costs.

Once again, recall the story of banks hiding explosive risks in their portfolios. It is not a good idea to trust corporations with matters such as rare events because the performance of these executives is not observable on a short-term basis, and they will game the system by showing good performance so they can get their yearly bonus. The Achilles’ heel of capitalism is that if you make corporations compete, it is sometimes the one that is most exposed to the negative Black Swan that will appear to be the most fit for survival.

As if we did not have enough problems, banks are now more vulnerable to the Black Swan and the ludic fallacy than ever before with “scientists” among their staff taking care of exposures. The giant firm J. P. Morgan put the entire world at risk by introducing in the nineties RiskMetrics, a phony method aiming at managing people’s risks, causing the generalized use of the ludic fallacy, and bringing Dr. Johns into power in place of the skeptical Fat Tonys. (A related method called “Value-at-Risk,” which relies on the quantitative measurement of risk, has been spreading.)

Brian H wrote: There is constant turnover in who’s successful; e.g., less than 20% of the members of the Fortune 500 stay on the list 20 years.

Not a compelling metric. US population is over 300,000,000 now. So when the dude slips from the top 500 down to the top 10,000, he’s still in the top .003%

But it’s not about the individuals. It’s about the corporations. Get ’em to be triple bottom line, lose the corporate socialism, and we’re good. Meanwhile, take away some of the limitations on people, which hamper their effectiveness in the market (like limits on investing to “accredited investors” and… 2 tiered currency would be useful, too. Global and local. We have hardly begun to exploit long-tail markets. and… ).

I consider myself a capitalist. Taleb again:

Do not let someone making an “incentive” bonus manage a nuclear plant – or your financial risks. Odds are he would cut every corner on safety to show “profits” while claiming to be “conservative”. Bonuses do not accommodate the hidden risks of blow-ups. It is the asymmetry of the bonus system that got us here. No incentives without disincentives: capitalism is about rewards and punishments, not just rewards.

[Rezwan]

vansig wrote:

vansig, what you say may be true for commercial research where the goal is to patent, but isn’t the case for much of basic academic research, which often doesn’t have direct commercial application.

I’ve experienced the opposite: extreme paranoia and protectiveness within academics, because there are limited research dollars to go around.

There are a lot of factors which reduce collaboration and have a negative impact on discovery. You have inspired me to add Taleb’s “Peer cruelty” essay to the site.

Also think it could use a fresh forum thread.

[Rezwan]

Expression engine.

[Rezwan]

Example is cool. Do you have the code? Where do I download a “donation thermometer app” to install on the site?

[Rezwan]

FYI, that previous site has a fabulous forum on the “electric universe.” Right up your alley.

[Rezwan]

Also, this bit about a magnetic slinky.

Attached files

[Rezwan]

Google search of “plasmoid quasar sprite” turned up this post from 2005 – perhaps it can be reworked into our site as an article?

[Rezwan]

i was about to agree and say, i really like the frequent updates on their site at present (Dr Nebel take note).

Glad to see SOMEONE thinks our updates are frequent : )

The real problem here is the black swan effect, and that everyone wants to be in on the black swan hit, and not suffer through the bulk of misses (research which reveals “nothing”, also known as “failure”).

There are a lot of ways the pursuit of scientific innovation could be improved in our world. A full factor brainstorm would be constructive. Coordinating collaboration is a major challenge. When is competition best leveraged, what can help reduce the risk and isolation, etc. etc.

[Rezwan]

I like where Yvanhoe says

The summary also is funny in how it understates achievements of fusion research. I remember a physicist saying “The Sun ? Pfah ! Too cold and too inefficient ! If we were to reproduce the conditionss in the sun, we would never get anything that would interest industries !”

And then Pedestrian Crossing adds:

Indeed. From Wikipedia:

The energy production per unit time (power) produced by fusion in the core varies with distance from the solar center. At the center of the sun, fusion power is estimated by model to be about 276.5 watts/m3, a power production density which more nearly approximates reptile metabolism than a thermonuclear bomb. Peak power production in the Sun has been compared to the volumetric heats generated in an active compost heap. The tremendous power output of the Sun is not due to its high power per volume, but instead due to its large size.

[Rezwan]

Thanks for the clarification Brian H. Rezwan, I had to do a search for this information to find it in the new web design:

https://focusfusion.pmhclients.com/index.php/site/article/focus_fusion_vs_nuclear_reactors/

I think it used to be more accessible.

Quite right! I’ve set this up for now: https://focusfusion.org/index.php/site/category/C152/ a bit redundant with the “Aneutronic” category, but it’s important for people to get to this information from different approaches.

Still more clarification to do, but things are starting to gel.

[Rezwan]

OK as a baseline, start off with tokamak or iter project estimates. Are those estimates public?

[Rezwan]

benf wrote: I would answer that we’re already off to a very good start of taking on the debate and informing people with this website.

Thanks!

Environmentalists are in a bind, clearly, and looking for alternatives again, I think. They’re still against the idea of transporting and burying long half-life spent fuel. They also don’t want plants that have the potential to melt down or discharge hot water into the rivers. Focus Fusion addresses many of these issues and while there may be a fission component to the transmutation of the elements (if this is the right way to put it) it is near enough to inconsequential to my understanding.

I think there is still a lot of progress to be made on all fronts. Bill Gates TED talk suggested that there are some interesting fission ideas on the horizon that can actually use up that spent fuel and waste, which is great!

Focus Fusion is conceptually the best idea I’ve encountered so far, but the drawback is that it is still not a proven concept. Neither is Bill Gates advanced fission concept (“Terrapower”).

“Environmentalists are in a bind, looking for alternatives” – this speaks to me of a tendency I get from some environmentalists. I’m with Gates on this. He says:

We need to go for more research funding. When countries get together in places like Copenhagen, they shouldn’t just discuss the co2, they should discuss this innovation agenda, You’d be stunned at the ridiculously low levels of spending on these innovative approaches.

Exploring alternatives requires commitment to research. This takes time, money, talent, enthusiasm in the face of an apparent lack of progress.

Environmentalists tend to have a conservative streak about this, seeing only what is on the ground at this moment. Not a lot of faith in innovation to provide. Like someone who wants to stop the car or stop the game when things appear sketchy, rather than drive on through to the other side.

Keep in mind that for the general public, the idea of a “warp drive” power plant for space travel has been totally acceptable thing to aspire to for the future! We all would like it to be safe, if possible. Global Warming Deniers still have the problems of peak oil economics to contend with and will also be wanting hi-tech solutions beyond coal mining, so maybe they can learn to put up with the environmentalists and see a brighter future.

Where focus fusion blows everyone out of the water is, indeed, the future. If you can get small, decentralized plants that run on light elements like boron and hydrogen – that takes you up to a whole different level of existence. Beyond the planet. There’s something expansive about it. Beyond surplus.

With one teeny, tiny caveat, and that is the word “if”. If you can get it to work. Flippin’ proof of concept time.

[Rezwan]

Brian H wrote: And we Deniers don’t think burning or not burning coal or oil has squat to do with the climate; it’s a non-issue except insofar as the Warmists want to ride that horse to wealth and power …

Excerpt:

“The Greens do not particularly want a carbon-free world.
They want a world in which there are many fewer people; they want a world in which those people who are left are subordinate to nature, living very frugal but more equal lives under the guidance of an elect caste of high priests who decide on the doctrinal issues which arise under such a regime. The Greens are an authoritarian sect, with a new religion to establish, and for them nuclear energy is anathema, since it promises energy in abundance for a world with even more people than we have today.”

Really? That’s the issue? It’s not even about the science? Hmmm.

So, just imagine: what if they’re right? OK. Impossible. OK, what if they’re not right – it has nothing to do with anthropogenic causes, but for some other random reason, things fall apart. Climate catastrophe ensues, crops fail, cities are drowned, things collapse, etc etc. The alternative to the above envisioned greens authoritarian sect where people try to make do with less and cooperate, is a world where whoever has the best monopoly control of violence (access to arms & capital) can control resources and screw the rest. (Actually, that’s the system currently operating in our world, you’re a bit sheltered from it here in the states because you’re with the guys with the monopoly control of violence).

I suspect the green folk are truly afraid of limited resources. This may be a limitation of their imagination. But taken at face value, in light of these limitations, they are trying to be fair. The “green authoritarian sect” would probably be a lot nicer than other sorts of authoritarian sects that would emerge in a bad case environmental scenario.

I don’t see the harm of learning how to share or make do with less. Or of trying to calculate who is benefiting from an action and how to get them to also pay the environmental costs of that action. A triple bottom line seems like a logical accounting practice. I don’t see the “subordinate” to nature thing, but I would love to be more in touch with nature and its rhythms. See elsewhere my reference to a migrating animal app.

I like that you’re hoping for a fusion-ex-machina solution to this conundrum, I likewise, am working towards that end to avoid either authoritarian scenario. But in its absence, you might have to face this question. If it comes down to it, are you the kind of person who will explore ways of egalitarian cooperation and accommodate others’ needs, or are you the kind of person who will blow others away and take as much for yourself as possible? In a limited resources scenario, your primal character is revealed.

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