If Fusion Has Arrived, Try People-Watching a bit…

https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/12/us/common-questions-nuclear-fusion-climate/index.html

Lets see what happens with fusion in the next months and years. If there is a genuine breakthrough, it might be instructive to look at the opinions of people who were saying “it will always be ten years away.”

This is something that used to confuse me. Why would they say that? Isn’t that implying that we would NEVER be able to harness fusion?

Personally, I think this was a bit of the “emergency room MD” pattern a doctor friend once told me about, that emergency room physicians are the LAST people you want to talk to about future medical developments. They want to know about what can be used TODAY to save lives. A mental focus, rather than a mental flaw…unless they imply it will never happen, and are dogmatic about it.

Then, that reluctance to dream about future developments is a mental rigidity that cannot even peek around the corner, and mocks those who can. It is tempting to ask what other arenas of human life we can find this:

1. Serious commitment to X
2. Doubt about the efficiency of Y, which would affect X
3. A hunger for Y if it affects X, that has to be clamped down TIGHT to prevent frustration
4. Leading to a denial that Y will ever exist — a form of self-protection.