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Indeed you are allowed to come to your own conclusions. I object to this statement. >Fusion is an example of sunk cost thinking. The only reason we're working
by willis936 6y ago
Indeed you are allowed to come to your own conclusions. I object to this statement.
>Fusion is an example of sunk cost thinking. The only reason we're working on it is because we had been.
This is putting forward the opinions of others. The premise is the people who stay in the field lacked some form of awareness of your arguments. They are aware and they disagree. You can’t assume your argument is accepted in the argument.
- pfdietz 6y agoNo, I'm sure the people in the field are, at some level, well aware of the arguments. They're not new, after all -- look at Lidsky from 1983. But the human power of rationalization is very powerful when your career depends on it. They get a comforting assurance that the argument was wrong, and they don't look too closely to see if the refutation was actually correct. What did Upton Sinclair say? "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it."
- willis936 6y agoIf the arguments are old, how is that a point in favor of people in the field being unaware of them? There has been 50 years of people arguing against the use of resources in pursuit of this field. You still think people in a field of physics have somehow sheltered themselves from these arguments? You have had a conversation with a physicist, yes? They will shred someone making dubious claims. Further, if you think plasma physicists would go hungry if fusion research ceased, you’re simply wrong. Nobody researches fusion for the paycheck. An industry paycheck for the equivalent quality of work is double.
- pfdietz 6y ago> how is that a point in favor of people in the field being unaware of them? Perhaps they are movtivated readers and deliberately don't read the argument for comprehension. Kind of like what you just did there.