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Comment by aidenn0 | Hacker News Reader

I'm 42 and there have been "breakthroughs" in fusion announced at least once per decade of my life. There's a very real chance that this breakthrough means the first fusion power plant will open after I'm dead, as none of the men in my family have reached 80.

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So, the issue is that the community here has grown old, cynical and unable to appreciate anything that might only help the next generations?

No, the community here is skeptical of science reporting that seems too good to be true and progress in fusion energy production fits the mould. I’m not an expert on fusion or the physics, so the best I can do is agree with this sentiment and note details from skeptical comments.

Hey, if we’re wrong life will change for the better for billions of people. I like being surprised with good news more than disappointment.

certainly the need to exaggerate the news has crept through all facets of media in this annoying "attention is our commodity" era. even the most "boring" outlet has its more subtle versions of the cringey YT "wow face" thumbnail.

but just because fusion energy will not be responsible for warming your frozen pizza next week does not mean we need to belittle a major milestone like this one. sure some damn reporter has a quota to hit and metrics to game. it just means we need to dedicate a bit more effort to read the article, read between the lines, and apply critical thinking.

this is the dream technology of the far future we're talking about. it doesnt even need to happen for 1000 years. if we nail it we are set for Billions of years. but obviously people are not accustomed or incentivized to think about things on that sort of timeline.

> but just because fusion energy will not be responsible for warming your frozen pizza next week does not mean we need to belittle a major milestone like this one. sure some damn reporter has a quota to hit and metrics to game. it just means we need to dedicate a bit more effort to read the article, read between the lines, and apply critical thinking.

When everything is presented as a "major milestone" then the term starts to lose meaning. Those with finite resources need to use imperfect heuristics to decide when to spend those resources, including the time and energy required to "read between the lines and apply critical thinking" For the majority of Gen X, "major milestone in fusion energy" has gotten the bogobit enabled by this point.

> this is the dream technology of the far future we're talking about. it doesnt even need to happen for 1000 years. if we nail it we are set for Billions of years. but obviously people are not accustomed or incentivized to think about things on that sort of timeline.

The main two issues I see with this are:

1. Maintaining a civilization capable of performing fusion research for 1000 years is an open problem

2. The estimates for how long fusion energy will last us are wildly optimistic. When you say "billions" I hear "maybe several thousand." At one point there was enough petroleum on this planet to replace all the whale-oil in use for thousands of years, and look at where we are now. Providing energy for several thousand years is great! But if we are going to think about "that sort of timeline" then fusion is a bridge-technology and with the improvements in renewables and chemical energy storage over my lifetime (which have been nothing short of astonishing!), I'm starting to suspect that it's an unneeded bridge.

I think "old and cynical" is correct, inasmuch as the human brain operates largely on pattern-matching and given that "scientists report breakthrough in X" gets proven to have a very small chance of actually affecting our lives, it becomes easy to be dismissive.

As far as "appreciate anything that might only help the next generations" I think if we are still significantly burning fossil fuels 40 years from now, the next generations are in for a lot of pain even if the very next day they get replaced by fusion, so fusion just feels like it's coming too late to make a major impact.

At the same time you are complaining about how the media handle scientific milestones (and this is unquestionably a major one), you are adopting the short term, one track, 24 hour news cycle perspective the media has spoonfed you. Global warming is only one problem. We don't need to give it a monopoly on concern. We need to push for a more nuanced, sophisticated longer term view on the major obstacles that guide a civilization. "Energy" in the public conversation should be about more than global warming.

Fusion is an energy solution that would set us up for billions of years. If we figure it out any time in the next millennium we'll have hit the jackpot.

Your take is like getting upset someone mentioned computing but didn't talk about javascript. You'd rather articles not be written about fusion until it's ready to heat your frozen pizza? God forbid we flood the news cycle with scienific progress and detract from what Elon thinks about cabbage.

Edit: for those of you feeling slightly anxious you missed new Elon gossip about cabbage, I made that up.

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