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</o:shapelayout></xml><![endif]--></head><body lang=EN-US link=blue vlink=purple style='word-wrap:break-word'><div class=WordSection1><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><div style='border:none;border-top:solid #E1E1E1 1.0pt;padding:3.0pt 0in 0in 0in'><p class=MsoNormal><b>….</b>> <b>On Behalf Of </b>Adrian Tymes via extropy-chat<br><b>Subject:</b> Re: [ExI] Nuclear Fusion - Friend or Foe?<o:p></o:p></p></div><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><div><p class=MsoNormal>>…Fusion, if and when it becomes commercially viable, will have military and non-military applications. This is inescapable, and quite common among "dual use" technologies.<o:p></o:p></p><div><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal>>…But just because the military applications are there, does not mean they are the only ones that will matter, or even that they will dwarf the non-military applications into insignificance. The ability to destroy has quite limited applications compared to everything else one could do with commercially viable fusion. The truly power mad, lust at the possibilities of creation that new technologies promise to unlock…<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>A wise man has spoken this. Thanks Adrian.<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>We already have fusion power for military purposes. Using fusion to blow up stuff is way easier than using it to build stuff. For that reason I consider the fact that the military is kicking in the funding as nearly irrelevant, and while I do so, consider that DARPA funds a looootta stuff that otherwise is questionable with regard to economic viability. Example: the DARPA challenge in 2004 with the robot cars racing thru the desert: businesses will not take that on. But the military put up a million bucks, universities started sniffing around, now less than 20 yrs later, they exist. War bucks did that.<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>Regarding military… it is easy enough to see that he who figured out how to extract power in arbitrary quantities at low cost… rules the world. You can get Simon bar Sinister syndrome just imagining it: if you, YOU… had arbitrarily much energy, which you could do with as you please…hell think of all the problems you could solve with that. You could use it to convert plentiful coal to natural gas, liquify it and send it to Germany, get them outta their fix while they repair the pipe, get that problem straightened around, you could make enough fertilizer to grow food to feed everybody, you could take that chump Bill Gates to Africa to rid that joint of mosquitoes, hell you could solve everything, every damn problem.<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><br>So ja… if we could get fusion harnessed, everybody wins.<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>…------------------<br><br>>>…Why does everything have to made into weapons for destruction?<br>Does humanity have an irresistible desire to commit suicide?<br><br>BillK<br>_______________________________________________<br><br><o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>Eh, BillK, I see it as evidence we are all avatars in a big computer simulation. I am an engineer by training but I spent much of my career writing software. Some of it doesn’t suck. What I noticed is that software doesn’t write itself. In fact, it fights to stay dead. As I get closer and closer to having it work and come to life, if finds ever more creative ways to break and stay dead. My software hates itself. It hates doing what I created it to do. It sometimes finds ways to die or barf up the wrong answers long after I had it going. My software is so creative in finding ways to die. The more powerful and intelligent my software, the more creative ways it finds to die.<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>Well, humanity is accumulating knowledge, becoming ever more powerful and collectively more intelligent. Simultaneously we are drawing ever closer to nuclear self-annihilation. Conclusion: we are software. <o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>spike<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p></div></div><div><blockquote style='border:none;border-left:solid #CCCCCC 1.0pt;padding:0in 0in 0in 6.0pt;margin-left:4.8pt;margin-right:0in'><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p></blockquote></div></div></body></html>