> Very disappointed by the discourse in this HN thread. The same old quips over and over. "NIF is just a nuclear stewardship program", "it's not actually generating power", "fusion still 30 years away".
The interesting thing here is that every part of what you said I completely agree with. My behavior, however, indicates otherwise. I didn't read the article[0]. I went directly to the HN comments
mostly because I wanted to cut through the hype.
Basically, I came to the comments to hear from the skeptics. Of course, most of the skeptics fall victim to a mental trap.
I think there is one key difference between "what I was looking to read from skeptics" and "what most skeptics used as arguments". The information I was seeking: to understand the difference between what the "breakthrough" was being reported as and what the breakthrough actually was. The information I received was: "this is impossible for (reasons)"
An equally important thing I was seeking was to understand was how this work might affect other industries (before it results in "fusion power").
The thing I'm least interested in is hearing "why it will never happen." I think most of us know many of the reasons this is a "Marsshot" problem[1]. I think most of us get annoyed when the media presents news in a manner that provides the general public with extremely unrealistic expectations and are sensitive to the dangers of that, but we get frustrated by those kinds of comments because, likely, none of us need to be told that! :)
It's impossible to make a useful argument to a skeptic that "this technology will exist in (insert timeframe)." The point at which (timeframe) is a trustworthy estimate usually coincides with the technology maturing to the point that the skeptics fall off (or turn out to be right if "timeframe" is never). And there's a long way to go (I think I saw a list of 10 or so "extremely hard problems") but this certainly appears to be something that is chipping away at one of the "impossible problems." Over-simplifying as this is, the rate at which technology advances is not linear; it accelerates. The next problem may not be as difficult or knowledge we attain from solving this one may be able to be used to solve related problems[2].
[0] There were several others on the topic and being ft.com, I assumed it would require a subscription that I do not have.
[1] Maybe far more difficult, but I never liked "moonshot" when describing something that hasn't been done, yet.
[2] Again, not a physicist, but reading through various "fusion is doomed" lists, many of the problems center around "the word 'hot' is a woefully inadequate description".