Fun with Fusion
(3) CommentsIs it possible to have fun while we chase down fusion? A quest isn’t just about the object sought, but also about the process, the people you go with, and what happens along the way. This makes it fun.
Fusion film festival, opera, cooking, it all goes in this section. Under construction.
Philosophy of fun
Think of it! Out there be global warming dragons and nefarious oil interests, and impossible scientific problems, and yet, we boldly seek the energy of the stars. How cool is that?
Why should we sit around twiddling our thumbs, dismissing a quest as quixotic and wishful? Why not engage in the search, discover ways to support it, and meet friends and characters along the way?
We’ve got the internet and social media to play with. Gadgets and creative commons licenses to leverage! Multiple related issues and themes to explore! Witty people to explore and spar with! Grumpy people to laugh at!
This is not to trivialize the pursuit of fusion. Science is serious. Peer review is essential. But science can also be fun. And all the ancillary activities in support of science that we will engage in can definitely be fun. Douglas Rushkoff says it well:
The language and logic of business are organized around the survival instinct, even when survival is not in question. This is inefficient, unprofitable, and, perhaps worst of all, depressing…Instead of relentlessly pursuing survival even after our survival needs are met, we must learn how to do things because they fulfill us - because they are, in a word, fun. Fun is not a distraction from work or a drain on our revenue; it is the very source of both our inspiration and our value. A genuine sense of play ignites our creativity, eases communication, promotes goodwill and engenders loyalty, yet we tend to shun it as detrimental to the seriousness with which we think we need to approach our businesses and careers…
…and, I might add, quests for aneutronic fusion.
Contenders…
Glossary
Comments
For a more in depth discussion, start a thread in the forums.Grumpy people to laugh at?
Some would, and have called me grumpy. But why,oh why would you laugh at me just because I am (called)grumpy? Don’t grumpy people have feelings?
Grumpy people can have fun too. Why, just the other day I was speaking to a grumpy person (speaking to her, not with her, because she was grumpy) and the only response from her was a series of grunts. I couldn’t help but laugh. Hell, I was having fun.
Fun is fine, but in trooth we do have to first survive the Greenies and their desire to ratchet back the clock to the feudal ages so they can play squire and noble to the peasantry (us). After suitably de-populating the planet, preferably. (See? Alliteration!)
It is ironic that the Greenest of all currently conceivable power sources will simultaneously eliminate pollution and waste (and render the climate change debate moot), while enabling the most intensive and extensive use of energy to extend and elaborate technology and “Western” living standards ever. An instance, indeed, of “be careful what you ask for; you might get it!”
The de-industrializers and de-populators thought they had the ideal lever and club and poison to use to revert the planet to their bucolic dreamworld, but have opened the gates to hyper-science, massive civilization of even the poorest parts of the planet, and the stars.
Not what they were hoping for!
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