[Rezwan]

I agree, the prize thing is too much like gamification. You have to think this through.

What I like about this post is that it is about getting people to realize they have a role in getting fusion to happen. It’s not just the researchers in the lab.

In general, that’s great. When it gets down to specifics, things get sketchy. So we still have a bit of homework to do before some sort of mass mobilization can take place. It’s got to be part of a coordinated campaign. And it has to be genuine. Ethical. Logical. Obvious. “Well, of course I’m for that!”

It helps if the message is developed with the larger fusion community – adds to the coherence and credibility. Good news on the larger fusion community – I feel we’re making progress towards a more inclusive, constructive common story. And I think once the fusion community starts to circulate a more adventurous, alternatives-inclusive message, it will give many more people the confidence to build on the sentiment.

More on the emerging fusion framework in another post one day 🙂

Also, I think a big objection people might have here is that they don’t want to be “believers”, or to oversell, or promise something that may not be delivered.

Thus, again, message is important. Stripped of all hype, what does the message come down to?

For me, it is that the pursuit of aneutronic fusion is important, no matter the outcome.

It has intrinsic value, and if it’s at all possible, we owe it to ourselves and future generations to try and make it happen. Especially as the pursuit doesn’t consume a lot of resources.

Also, to me, pursuit of aneutronic involves support of fusion in general, and may end up leading to a concession to thorium and/or conservation other things for the duration of the time we can’t get it to work. I.e., I don’t like to be limited to aneutronic, even though I’m pursuing it.

OK, keeping it simple:

Aneutronic.
Aim high.
Post often.

[Rezwan]

To me it seems like a toss up. I see two main possibilities.

The first is the rosy picture you paint, the happy people with long lifespans who are vested in having a nicer universe to stick around in. Overcoming their pettiness, having greater perspective. Magnanimous, relaxed.

The second is a universe of wild inequality in which the genes of some are leveraging memes to sever the connection with other genes so that they don’t have to be altruistic any longer. Altruism has always been a necessary evil for them. And now you have a conscious person aligned with his genes. Twice the selfishness.

Knowing the darkness in my own heart, and realizing the value of term limits on presidents – I’m inclined to suspect sinister motivation for people who want to stick around a long time.

Clearly, you are all good people, not as dark as me. I’m going to self-select out of here. Perhaps that’s even more selfish. Depriving y’all of my magnificence : )

Y’all feel free to stick around! Pursue life-span extensions, hair extensions, memory chips and plastic surgery. God bless you. Hope your dreams will all come true.

Peace, out. DNR.

[Rezwan]

Thanks Eric! Well put!

[Rezwan]

Ooh! Simpler yet:

p +

pnpn
npn
pnpn

That has a basic “B” shape, or try this for lowercase b:

n
p
n
npn
p p
npn

>

pnpnp
n = C12: 6p, 6n.
p
npnpn

[Rezwan]

zapkitty wrote: You’re taunting me, aren’t you? 🙂

But of course 😛

[Rezwan]

zapkitty wrote:

PNP NPNP
P + NPNPN –> PNPN –> PNPN + PNPN + PNPN + 8.7 Mev
NPN NPNP

Hmm. How about going lowercase, and get the B11 bits to be in the shape of the letter “B”

p-n-p
| n
n-p + p ——>
| n
p-n-p

p n
n p
p + npn >
n p
p n

Hm. “C” is harder to do.

pn
pn
pn
pn
pn
pn

Ahhhh, fuggedaboudit.

[Rezwan]

JimmyT wrote: I don’t mean to put a damper on this topic. I realize that I started it to some extent. But we are reinventing the wheel here. Many of the topics being addressed have been discussed ad nauseaum in other venues. There are a couple of excellent google technical videos which discuss some of these topics also. Such as the desirability/morality of wanting to live longer lives.

LOL! And if we live forever, we can continue to discuss them ad nauseum. We might even get somewhere in the interminable conversation. Immortal hours of fun.

It’s not just you that gets old.

Links appreciated, @JimmyT. Save us the trouble of this conversation. So that we can store up our immortal hours for something really worthwhile. Like travelling the universe (so much SPACE), finding other genetic forms that live and die (animal planet/nature snuff films). Yet more hours of fun.

Not to knock it. The universe is filled with things to wonder at and do and see. I’m just exhausted by the thought and would rather outsource to others (immortal or no). It’s nice to see all those gajillions of posts on facebook, all those people living colorful lives and doing fun things and sharing. I’m happy to dissolve back into that. Content. Satisfied. No need for me to personally do it all or see it all. It’s being done. The bees are buzzing and the flowers are being attended to. I’ve enjoyed my tour. Peace, out.

@dennisp, this is posted in the “Cafe” forum, so it’s not off topic as long as people are having fun talking about it. In contrast, things that are annoying, or a monologue, we put down in “Noise” or eliminate all together.

The problem is, a lot of people are posting technical topics under “Cafe” – where it IS off topic. They need to post things about the experiment, most likely with the “Fusion Contenders” forum, under “LPPX”

Sorry, moderators are being lax. Backlog of thread moving.

[Rezwan]

Brian H wrote: As for the objection that the desire for immortality is “selfish” and “consumer oriented”, those who want the way cleared for selfless later generations who are refined non-consumers are duty bound to personally make room first. The line forms to the right. Or rather, the left.

I think it’s called ascension : ) I’m happy to go.

This is textbook selfishness. Memetic or genetic. There’s this book called, ” The Selfish Gene“. Own it.

@Jamesr, memetic vs. genetic, a fun novel about that is Fluke.

[Rezwan]

TimS wrote: What about those of us who are probably not going to be much help in “pursuing” it, but are here to cheer and take delight in it? (unless Eric wants to hire somebody to help cleaning the lab – I would take that job REAL cheap!)

Sounds like you’ve limited “pursuit” to direct lab work, discounting other things. Of course, if you just cheer in the solitude of your head, that’s not much of a pursuit, but if you take some action, like vocalize that cheering and share with others, then you are promoting fusion. This may or may not have the effect of connecting the project to someone who can fund it. But it counts as “pursuit”.

We live in a networked world. Leverage it.

[Rezwan]

What’s so great about being immortal? Seems possessive. Corrupt. Non-generative. Mechanistic. Definitively self centered. Consumer oriented.

Methuselah foundation, Christians who want to get resurrected, Reincarnation folks who want to keep coming back. Just can’t let go. Want themselves preserved, pickled, kept the same for eternity while they consume the changing world around them. Well, OK, the reincarnation folks are more diverse, but they’re still possessive and mechanistic, looking at new bodies as a vehicle for them to ride through time. I say those new bodies get their own experience, without our baggage, our soul/consciousness parasite. What an imposition. Let the new entities have their own experience.

With mortality, you have your chance, let’s see what you can do. And then clear the space for something new. Fresh. Innocent. Let your Dorian portrait burn. Let it go. What more are you going to do in an immortal span that you aren’t doing now? Just do it now. “Hold infinity in the palm of your hand and eternity in an hour”. And respect the physical, contextual entity you are – respect the physical finitude. Unique. Ephemeral. Extinguished in a blaze of glory.

Well, to each his own.

[Rezwan]

But we did have some interesting conversations with the organizers. One thing they’re talking about is changing the name. “Innovative Confinement Concepts” seems confining : ). Some ideas being kicked around:

Innovations in Fusion Science… Alternate Fusion Pathways…

Also, they will be having some sort of “town hall” to discuss the funding and support problem for alternatives.

And, of course, the latest science.

[Rezwan]

JimmyT wrote:

I saw an interesting statistic fairly recently. The gist of it was: If we eliminated all death from all forms of disease how long would the average individual live before he/she died from an accident/murder/other trauma.

The answer was around 600 years.

Really? I heard your outside lifespan is controlled by telomeres, and is naturally considerably shorter than 600 years.

Allegedly, every time the cells in your body replicate (your body replaces most of its cells so that every 7 years you have a whole new set of cells – you’re constantly dropping cells and creating new cells. Only brain, heart and cancer cells are immortal – I think). In any case, as these cells replicate, the DNA does its thing and the new cell gets its copy of the previous cell – minus a few bits on the end. Some genes just drop off. Or they would be in danger of dropping off without telomeres – but the telomeres are limited to a fixed number of divisions…so that sets the limit on lifespan.

You have a built in termination date predicated on the length of this extra tail in your DNA. For most people it maxes out at 120 years. For many people considerably less.

So, without disease, you would nevertheless, at some point, in a peak state of health – just keel over because your time is up.

Use it well.

[Rezwan]

jamesr wrote: I think if a cure for cancer was found it would be just as dramatic as a fusion breakthrough.

Yes, it certainly would.

What I meant to convey is that I suspect the solution to fusion is easier to achieve than a cure for cancer. I don’t see one dramatic cure moment for it, but rather more diffuse combination therapies. Fusion seems like a straightforward physics problem with an eventual specific “singularity” moment. But hopefully both will be resolved dramatically soon.

Now that I think about it, there are a lot of ways to compare health research and energy. The goal here is not to diminish health research, but to get people to realize how important to health energy research is.

Picking on cancer again – with both cancer and energy, prevention is a big part of the cure. A healthy lifestyle for cancer (food, exercise, rest), an energy conserving lifestyle for the energy problem.

You mention that

The problem from the public perspective is that they can see the benefits of cancer research in their everyday lives even though they have not reached a ‘cure’,

This may be because people haven’t made the link between energy research and quality of life improvements or longevity. What is the ROI of cancer research for those two things? And how much could cleaner energy supply increase quality of life, and lifespan? I was in Chicago during a heatwave once in which about 750 people died. Mostly folks without access to air conditioning. Energy related death.

But much more dramatically, we wouldn’t have such a high population without energy. The industrial revolution has given us this capacity, and this population, who now has the luxury to worry about dying of cancer. If we want to continue that kind of high population into the future, and increase the mortality rate in poor countries so that those folks, too, can start fearing cancer, we’ll need a lot of energy.

Energy supply is the biggest looming factor in matters of life and death and people find it too abstract.

[Rezwan]

Alas, no. We posted about it back in June. I wanted to go, and indeed, set up the film contest around the idea of going to Seattle. Alas, we didn’t raise the money for myself to attend on behalf of FFS. Also, we didn’t get enough film submissions, so we’ll be extending that deadline to coincide with some other event. If we had the resources, I’d be there in a nanosecond.

The LPP folks also didn’t plan to go. They allocated their conference budget for a few other conferences.

[Rezwan]

The cancer comparison is a good one. They still say that a good diet and lifestyle choices are the biggest factor in cancer – just as energy conservation would be a bigger factor in energy problems.

The cliff edge event would be much more dramatic for fusion, and more possible than the cancer cure, I think.

But there are quite a few applications from the research before that. You don’t need net energy for ionic propulsion, and there are all those isotopes. The New Scientist article points out:

Wallace thinks the new machines might take off first not for power generation, but as neutron sources that could be used to “transmute” the highly radioactive waste from today’s fission reactors into low-level isotopes and nuclear fuel. He estimates that 50 Fusion Engines of the size Helion is planning to build could within 20 years eliminate all the waste the US now has stockpiled.

That would make fission more attractive.

I think there are a lot of interesting observations that will be made in the pursuit of fusion that will be tangibly beneficial.

[Author]

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