Anybody ever wonder if we put 1/3 of the defense budget into Fusion energy research (literally a new Manhattan project, lets call it the Princeton Project) that we could have more impact than that entire defense budget? Think about it. Most of the worlds conflict arises over struggle for resources, and most of those resources are oil. If the world didn't lust for oil as a cheap energy source, could we defund dictatorships around the world? Could we start focusing on cultural and structural issues vs. the struggle for fossil fuels? Seems to make far more sense to spend a few hundred billion USD on fusion research vs. 1.59 million USD per cruise missile to fix/quell conflict that arrises from that struggle. Just a thought, but it seems fixing the cause rather than treating the symptoms is a far better approach in the long term.

Not to get too political, but I think that the US tends to have the policies it does to prevent the all out collapse of the Middle East. If you think it's a shit storm now, just wait until they have nothing.

Few of those states invested in their people and their infrastructure. Instead they created an almost UBI for their population. It's enough to keep them relatively passive. Cheap gas and just enough to get by. All the while they've created a sense of entitlement in their population. Look at how they treat immigrant labor.

Sadly this population didn't take their minimal freedom to pursue the arts or sciences. While there are instances of individuals improving their life, developing skills and preparing for a post-oil world, the bulk of their society just floats. Moving off oil will pull the plug on their basin. Their societies will probably go down the drain.

Watch out for Europe when that happens. These groups will migrate north and west. I don't think you'll see an exodus into Asia. Given their poor skills, Europe will have a hard time incorporating them into general society. In the end they will probably ghetto-ize. Now Europe will be a melting pot of terrorism. Disaffected young males, the primary target of extremist groups, will be sitting, by the millions, in slums in and around major European cities.

TL;DR: Oil, for all of its faults, stabilizes the world. The US military budget keeps that around.

A while back I read that states which get their funding from natural resources instead of taxes very seldom turn into liberal democracies. I think it was in Zakaria's Future of Freedom: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Future_of_Freedom

So maybe oil hasn't been a net benefit for these countries. In any case, if we stop needing their oil, their capacity for causing trouble will be drastically diminished.

> if we stop needing their oil, their capacity for causing trouble will be drastically diminished

I think in a few decades their new need for self reliance could pay dividends. They could be living much better in the long run.

Please at least have a cursory glance of the history of any of these countries from around WW1 to the present day instead of just assuming things magically came to be the way they were 6 hours before the first gulf war. States are _not_ abstract entities that just sort of float around existing at geographic locations

That is, by far, the most chilling and worrying vision of the future I have heard in a long time.

I really hope you're mistaken. I'm terrified you aren't.

Really? That's your nightmare scenario? A bunch of immigrants, and some of them will turn to terrorism - a threat that kills less people per year than, say, automobile accidents or medical mistakes.

How about climate change? Meteors, supervolcanos? These are all things that have destroyed the majority of either humanity or life on earth at some point in the past. And then there's horrors of war, plagues, earthquakes, and tsunamis, which have the capability of killing double-digit percents of regional populations in short amounts of time. Terrorism has never killed even a tenth of a single percent of any population.

Sure, you can worry that terrorists /might/ get nukes or biological weapons. But unstable national governments already have these things. The number of times that the USSR and the USA accidentally almost started a nuclear holocaust via tens of thousands of superbly-engineered ICBMs is vastly more concerning than a bunch of poorly funded, poorly organised idiots that might set off some homebrew weapon.

There are vastly more impactful things that /have already proven to exist/ to be worried about and prepared against.

>some of them will turn to terrorism - a threat that kills less people per year than, say, automobile accidents or medical mistakes.

Yes, some currently turn to terrorism and kill fewer people than automobiles. You're implying that the number of deaths won't grow at all when an entire region of the globe loses it's major cash cow.

The point I'm making is that it could grow 100 times and it still pales against other risks.

there is still something more human, more humanly-terrifying about human-created terror and destruction

An unsubstantiated theory that just happens to align with your ideology and interests -- how would you describe that if not as "very political"?

Even with fusion energy we'd still use oil. We do have cars after all.

Interesting hypothesis, has anything been written about it?

It's a little dated, but here's a Forbes article that discusses a decline in Western oil consumption (not necessarily from fusion).

http://www.forbes.com/sites/lorenthompson/2012/12/03/what-ha...

Actually I think you'll find more resistance to the new technology than anything. West Virginia is not doing so hot economically, the coal industry has been going downhill [0]. Do you hear of training centers popping up? No, everyone is up in arms about their jobs leaving. They're calling it a "war on coal".

Now try that at a global level, I'm betting entire countries would have their life styles completely altered. Who knows, maybe entire currencies would become worthless in the process. Would it eventually even out where everyone could do well. Yeah, probably, but would people let you see the plan play out?

I hope someday that yes, we could stop fighting over resources and come togehter as a world to ensure we all have what we need. This is one area that I wonder if we can change in time.

[0] http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/terence-p-jeffrey/us-has...

I think there would be more training centers popping up if there was funding for them; just because they help a region's economy doesn't mean they're a good investment, and it's plausible the state will have to get involved. Essentially, I think the talk of "saving coal" is less about the coal tradition and lifestyle and more about the fact that nothing seems to replace it; if former coal miners were getting new jobs, I think they'd quiet down on that front considerably.

True, I was thinking more from the perspective of trade schools. The whole, market responding to demands thing. I took a quick look, seems WV is well known for redirecting federal funds to random stuff. Like gold plating the dome on the capitol building. I also heard they were supposed to get really nice fiber internet, but I guess that was probably "redirected" as well.

That's from Senator Byrd. He was known for bringing home the bacon (pork spending).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Byrd

West Virginia politics being what they are they aren't likely to plan properly for a post coal mining future.

FWIW: Southern and Eastern Kentucky's economies are also virtually 99% coal (and 1% illicit marijuana).

Senator Mich McConnell has done the exact same for those poor people... Nada.

It's one thing to talk about propping up training centers, it's another to make them effective.

I supposed we have to try if nothing else. I don't have in mind any other solutions other than universal basic income.

Warren Buffet advocates an Earned Income Tax Credit. It's very similar to UBI except more politically possible.

http://www.wsj.com/articles/better-than-raising-the-minimum-...

Agree wholeheartedly, fixing symptoms seems to be the more popular and profitable, albeit less effective, action of choice. To be pedantic, however, a case for fresh water could be made to trump the oil problem. Both needs could be solved by a cheap supply of electricity(well pumps, desalination, sterilization). Alas, we are still perpetually '20 years away'.

How much of the perpetuity is the uncertain funding faced by researchers in the field? The same can be said of supercomputing which directly feeds fusion research. Instead of long term funding, we get 1-2 years of off and on "kickstarter" projects. Long term funding set aside for things like fusion through 5-10 year commitments could improve the outcome. You're totally right though, fresh water as you get to in the end is a direct result of power. Everything comes down to power. As we move from a factory industrial society to a additive manufacturing society this will become even more true. Those who have the power (literally, like electrons) will thrive, those that don't...will look like the middle east in 100 years.

I imagine in the near future with micro-machines that can produce molecules on demand, food will also become equal to power. Its all about the power.

Food is literally equal to power. It's fuel. The joules have to come from somewhere. And "micro-machines that can produce molecules on demand" would be life. If you have tons of free electricity you can turn it into food with greenhouses and grow lamps. As it is, it's usually cheaper to use solar directly.

But then defense contractors, infrastructure contractors, weapons manufacturers, bankers, oil magnates, politicians, and a whole slew of other people wouldn't be able to make as much money. :)

Give them money, just for a different purpose - I bet you they'll take it.

This may be cynical but every time I read the Princeton Lab's press I am reminded of how different fusion science is from fusion engineering. In the former the words are like "explore ways of doing x ..." or "Compare different forms of y ...". In the engineer press it is more like, "Once we achieve x which we expect to achieve by p, q, or worst case r, we will move on to y leaving us one step away from fully operational fusion plants."

As an engineer I much prefer the latter, something with a bit of urgency that "we need to develop this as quickly as possible because it unlocks a lot of solutions to problems which are threatening billions of people." Not "Ohh look at all the shiny ways we can turn three two small atoms into one slightly bigger atom!"

Recently I watched a presentation[1] by the director of MIT's fusion program, talking about their ARC design. They want to minimize physics risk by using a standard tokamak, but take advantage of new commercially-available superconductors to make a net-positive 200MW reactor that's ten times smaller than ITER.

He mostly talks about practical engineering issues: modular reactor construction, easy maintenance, testing current flow through joints in superconducting tapes, 3D printing a reactor chamber with complex cooling channels, immersion in FLiBe for ample cooling and breeding 14% more tritium than the reactor consumes, etc.

The reactor would be about the size of JET, which was built in four years. MIT has pretty good experience for this, since their Alcator C-Mod has more powerful magnetic fields than any other tokamak in the world.

Of course the startup companies pursuing fusion are also taking an engineering approach. Here's an interesting panel discussion[2] between the MIT guy and people from Tri Alpha, General Fusion, and Lockheed.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KkpqA8yG9T4

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nWjAJKPLMEo

Is it just me or does MIT seem to tend towards the more practical end of things when it comes to R&D?

I wonder where that p, q, or r comes from...

Generally problem constraints, but your implicit point that without the science the engineering would not be possible is certainly valid.

I would be the first person to tell you that I am way further on the D side of the R&D spectrum than the R side.

Yup, Engineers use science, craftsmen use intuition.

What does that say for software?

I think as often as not, engineers hit on something that works, and later on the scientists come along to explain why it works, and figure out a framework of rules around the principle that allows it to be systematized.

I think that the "it works part" is science ( measure quantify qualify) this is what the software community does really badly.

> Yup, Engineers use science, craftsmen use intuition.

Sometimes. The early history of radio was one instance where the engineering ran ahead of the science.

Purely for the esoteric linguistic amusement: tokamak is a Russian acronym where the "toka-" comes from тороидальная камера or toroidal chamber/cabin. So a spherical tokamak would be a 'spherical toroid', and a bit oxymoronic. By the bye, is there a likely set of pro/cons as compared to the stellarator configuration? (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wendelstein_7-X) It's at least interesting that "stellarator" appears in the posting's address: GPS: 100 Stellarator Road.

It's still a toroid, regardless of the shape getting revolved: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toroid

People generally say stellarators are harder to build but easier to operate.

If you are (like me) an armchair follower of energy news like this, these guys give a good overview of the challenges of fusion research: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8460493

As much as I want any of these "experiments" to succeed- and don't want to denigrate the hard work of people focused on these projects- this is one of those areas you have to really read between the lines on. It turns out it's really hard to create a mini sun in such a way that you can reliably and cost-effectively generate electricity from it.

Nothing against .Net developers, I'm one myself. But to see what some actual fusion scientists think about fusion, see the videos I posted here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12381137

The funny thing is science fiction like Star Trek capitalised on issues like plasma confinement (in a way that can fail) well before anyone could have anticipated it would be an issue.

It will be interesting to observe how science converges with science fiction

Interesting to see the trend continue towards spherical tokamaks.

Like actual AI (not the expert systems everyone is misleadingly labeling as 'AI' for marketing reasons), fusion power has been 20 years away for the last 60 years.

Those estimates aren't particularly insightful. In the case of fusion, a group could make a manmade net-positive fusion reaction tomorrow and we could still be many years away from mass commercialisation. The reason '20 years' is given when the real answer is 'we don't know' is to encourage investment. 20 years is the carrot on a stick used to get funding for the fundamental research required at this stage. I'd suggest the figure is chosen as it's at the outside edge of something that'll make an impact within the average investor's lifetime, though this is speculation on my part.

Also, when it comes to fusion, I suspect we'd be much closer to fusion energy generation if the bulk of funding hadn't been put into a single basket (the tokomak approach). There are promising fusion approaches that are closer to achieving net energy from fusion than tokomaks that are massively underfunded in comparison.

> There are promising fusion approaches that are closer to achieving net energy

While I agree there should be more funding for non-tokomak projects, this is simply not true. JET has reached 70% of breakeven and JT60 in Japan reached "theoretical" breakeven (if it had tritium). Nothing else has ever gotten close.

> "Nothing else has ever gotten close."

The following is taken from an article published on June 2016...

http://lppfusion.com/git-12-z-pinch-achieves-6-joule-fusion-...

"GIT-12 Z-Pinch Achieves 6 Joule Fusion Output with Deuterium Fuel"

"Z-pinch devices are closely related to plasma focus devices in that they also use the currents through the plasma itself, not external magnets, to produce the strong magnetic forces that confine hot plasma. In a z-pinch, however, the current flows between two electrodes in a line, rather than the plasma focus’s concentric electrodes. At the Prague conference, Russian and Eastern European physicists announced new experiments with the powerful GIT-12 z-pinch. They used a configuration in which the plasma was arranged in two concentric rings, puffed into the gap between the electrodes right before the discharge. Nearly 6 J of fusion energy (producing 6×1012 neutrons) were released with a 3 MA current and 3 MJ of input energy to the device. Since only 500 kJ of energy was released from the capacitor bank prior to the pinch, the ratio of 1.2 J of fusion per 100 kJ of input rivaled or slightly surpassed the best results obtained in either plasma focus devices or tokamaks, both of which are close to 1 J per 100 KJ input."

The implication is that both Z-Pinch and DPF devices are close to tokamaks in terms of energy efficiency, based on the experiments performed to date. Do you disagree with this? If so, why?

Yes, I disagree. They really should show their work that tokomaks have results as poor as:

> 1.2 J of fusion per 100 kJ

That's a "Q" value of 0.00001. Tokamaks have reached Q=0.7.

This graph might have something to do with it:

http://m.imgur.com/sjH5r?r

The graph is both accurate and misleading. Funding is often cumulative to an extent.

This is very unfortunate.

I'm not sure how that argument can be made for AI, considering the first commercial transistor is barely 60 years old.

Were people in ~1955 really so naive as to believe we'll have complete AI by 1975? Outside of science fiction writers, of course.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_artificial_intellig...:

The golden years 1956–1974

The years after the Dartmouth conference were an era of discovery, of sprinting across new ground. The programs that were developed during this time were, to most people, simply "astonishing": computers were solving algebra word problems, proving theorems in geometry and learning to speak English.

Few at the time would have believed that such "intelligent" behavior by machines was possible at all. Researchers expressed an intense optimism in private and in print, predicting that a fully intelligent machine would be built in less than 20 years.

That brings the earliest predictions to the range 1976-1994.

http://aiimpacts.org/category/ai-timelines/predictions-of-hu... has better data. It puts the earliest prediction at 1978 (but also has one predicting 1973-1985). Apparently, Minsky, in 1967, predicted "within a generation"

(Textual description of the part of their dataset that includes reasoning as to how the prediction was reached at http://aiimpacts.org/list-of-analyses-of-time-to-human-level.... That list is a bit less optimistic. Excel sheets for the full dataset also are available from that site)

In a way, yes. One popular belief was that you basically take world modelling and association tables and pile them onto a complicated logic system, until it magically understands everything and therefore becomes intelligent. This was a notion among actual researchers (especially in the 1950s/60s).

If you've just made the most complicated computer system (see e.g. the General Problem Solver), it's easy to believe that you just need to pile on some more complexity until you have a thinking thing.

Just a PSA: there is zero chance that nuclear fusion makes a meaningful impact in stopping climate change in the next 30 years.

Before it becomes a significant part of our energy mix, fusion needs to be cheap, safe, and reliable. It is nowhere close to any of these things right now, and it will take a lot of time and money to get there - especially the "cheap" part. It's simply not going to happen before the year ~2050.

The technologies that have a chance to stop climate change are solar, wind, and energy storage.

The combination of reduced spending on fusion researcher and increased demands of ITER, has resulted in a slowing of progress funneling funds aways from other designs and projects. So if we stay on the same underfunded trajectory, I agree. However, 34 years is a long time. Between now and 2050, if we had a Manhattan Project-style push, that number could be brought down to 2040 or maybe earlier depending on how soon we shifted.

And efficiency improvements.