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The only breakthrough innovation in my book would be cold fusion - it unlocks so many possbilities and enables solutions to problems which are unthinkable right

The only breakthrough innovation in my book would be cold fusion - it unlocks so many possbilities and enables solutions to problems which are unthinkable right now as they are to polluting the environment or are prohibitively inefficient. It will be a disruptive change like we saw with steam engines taking over, the ICE or electric power transmission. Second comes self-driving cars. Not because they unlock the potential to stare at your smartphone so that you can give away more of your personal data to the Internet advertisment industry. But it would result in a turmoil in an endless list of supply chains living from the car industry. With self-driving cars, actually owning a car becomes a luxury only a few will be able to afford. The insurance system or fuel supply system will experience dramatic changes. This Schumpeterian destruction will unlock something. I don't know if it will be growth. The past told us that high cultures also quickly disapeared from time to time.

pfdietz 6y ago
Cold fusion is mortal nonsense. That is, it's so unlikely you could safely bet your life on it being bogus.
- jeffreyrogers 6y ago
  I'm not as convinced as you. There does appear to be something going on with the experiments I've looked at, but I doubt it can be commercialized. For one thing, it's very unreliable and hard to reproduce, so if it is a real phenomenon it probably relies on some unknown conditions that we don't know how to bring about. For another, even in the experiments that demonstrate it, the amount of energy produced is not very much so unless someone can find a way to make it happen reliably and scale it up it seems more like a neat physical oddity than a useful power source.
  - pfdietz 6y ago
    Ah, the "there must be a pony in here somewhere" argument. No, that's the meaningless noise one gets when one throws enough bad researchers at a crap subject over a sufficiently long time.
    - jeffreyrogers 6y ago
      Maybe. That's why I hedged a bit by saying "if it is a real phenomenon". I'm not convinced it is real, but I'm also not convinced there's nothing to it. Schwinger thought there was something to it, so they're not all bad.

pfdietz 6y ago

Cold fusion is mortal nonsense. That is, it's so unlikely you could safely bet your life on it being bogus.

jeffreyrogers 6y ago
I'm not as convinced as you. There does appear to be something going on with the experiments I've looked at, but I doubt it can be commercialized. For one thing, it's very unreliable and hard to reproduce, so if it is a real phenomenon it probably relies on some unknown conditions that we don't know how to bring about. For another, even in the experiments that demonstrate it, the amount of energy produced is not very much so unless someone can find a way to make it happen reliably and scale it up it seems more like a neat physical oddity than a useful power source.
- pfdietz 6y ago
  Ah, the "there must be a pony in here somewhere" argument. No, that's the meaningless noise one gets when one throws enough bad researchers at a crap subject over a sufficiently long time.
  - jeffreyrogers 6y ago
    Maybe. That's why I hedged a bit by saying "if it is a real phenomenon". I'm not convinced it is real, but I'm also not convinced there's nothing to it. Schwinger thought there was something to it, so they're not all bad.