That is, it is EASY, trivial, to fuse hydrogen. A child can do it (well, OK, a rather talented child, but I knew enough electronics/electrical engineering to build a fusor in grade school, maybe I'm a bit weird...). The problem is, none of those methods is even close to ever being able to break even. That IS the only real question with any fusion device, CAN IT BREAK EVEN? You got to answer that first, and the default answer should be "not a chance in hell" because the world is littered with such failures.

So, his question was quite to the point, actually. We should assume this will not produce positive net output power.

And really, even if it did, which is perfectly possible if unlikely, then that doesn't mean it is a viable power supply. The power to weight has to be good enough for example (it would have to beat an RTG for use in deep space). It would also be fairly useless if it spit out a lot of nasty radiation, which tends to screw with scientific instruments used on deep space probes. There could be quite a few reasons why 'above unity' still doesn't equal success.

But it could be kick ass, so I'm sure NASA will keep chipping away at it until they can decide if it is worthwhile.

It was wrecked by 1000's of years of over irrigation.

I never claimed any plan or desire to 'eliminate' anyone. You invented that idea, not me.

It isn't going to help much, because people will simply misuse and foolishly exploit whatever you invent. In fact an increase in technological ability simply means FASTER DESTRUCTION unless we utilize the agency we have more wisely. I understand the skepticism, and I don't particularly claim that some miraculous advance in our moral faculties seems immediately apparent. I simply relate what is necessary. Nature does not require that which is easily attained, nor even possible, yet the dictates of necessity are absolute. Accommodate them, rise to meet them, or perish.

This is a solved problem.

That's what this is. Reputation? Please don't make me laugh! Its all about shit talk and riling people up. This is the Age of Disinformation folks, get used to it.

They never believed it could be a general problem which would threaten all people. They never imagined that ALL THE FORESTS OF THE EARTH could be stripped away; yet in 100 years that will be the case, no forest will remain. No, they could not imagine such a future. Nor is it likely we can really imagine the future which awaits us either, that arises from the path we are on. Good or bad, it is largely beyond our experience or appreciation.

We can fall back on basic wisdom though, "waste not, want not" and keeping something in reserve for another day. All of our most fundamental lessons tell us that we need to up our game, a LOT. My fundamental point is just that technology is not salvation. Anyone who places their money there, and neglects moral and spiritual development, is deluded.

But it was primitive agricultural tech, supported only be primitive manufacturing, materials, etc. which fundamentally created those population limits (along with a lack of sanitation and the technology to achieve that). It is telling that the greatest ecological catastrophes were the result of high population densities. Iraq was once a fertile land, but is now mostly desert. Once populations reach a certain level, bad things happen. Technology, particularly in its modern form, is quite good at generating those populations.

And this leads to the question, why do we need so many people? Can we not ask this kind of question and seek a wise and moral answer, and learn to act on it? Perhaps not, but such is the need.

I do not mean 'hand wavy new age mumbo-jumbo'. I mean moral maturity and what are truly defined by the words 'virtue' and 'wisdom' in their most fundamental forms. Not the laughable pap sold to the masses by cheap preachermen, but a real deep and abiding thoughtfulness.

You may call this impossible, and who will really refute that judgment, but to do so is to declare the issue of humanity's future closed, and not in a good way.

And you have stated the other hand. Now, in the gripping hand, its inevitable that we will do something bad to ourselves, so where exactly is the out? One one hand technological progress is vital, and on the other it dooms us utterly.

Again, the solution MUST BE social and 'spiritual' in nature. Mankind, as constituted, cannot simply continue to 'progress'. We either grow up, or we die. There ARE no other choices.

"The release of atom power has changed everything except our way of thinking... The solution to this problem lies in the heart of mankind. If only I had known, I should have become a watchmaker."
--Albert Einstein

This is an overly simplistic analysis. We wouldn't have the severe ecological problems we have today if it were not for advanced technology. While earlier civilizations had, sometimes locally catastrophic, impacts on the environment they were never anywhere close to drastically altering the overall carbon budget or nitrogen budget of the biosphere as we are today. Nor did they pose anything like the challenges represented by biological, chemical, and nuclear weapons.

While its not crazy to suggest that technical progress can solve many of the issues we have today, FUNDAMENTALLY the problems aren't technical or scientific and so these kinds of solutions can have but a limited impact. Its MORE reasonable to imagine that the march of technology will present ever greater challenges and that the pace of these challenges will increase, whilst our ability to advance socially and morally has not really changed at all (I think there is such progress, but it is fundamentally unaffected by technology).

Thus it would be far more rational to argue that we are increasingly losing control of our impact on the world and that these conditions are likely to spiral out of control, or else be replaced with even MORE intractable problems we may not even be fully capable of imagining today. People 200 years ago couldn't even really imagine air pollution or global warming for example.

Dude, I worked in this industry. Its FUCKING INCREDIBLY EXPENSIVE. Like on the order of 100x more expensive than writing line-of-business commercial software. A 10 line subroutine can EASILY require 100 hours of engineering and testing to meet spec. Everything has to be written out in some sort of design document beforehand, every requirement flowed down to lines of code that cover it, documented test cases that cover each requirement, total coverage of all possible inputs at every call boundary, etc.

I mean, yes, theoretically it would be great if all of this was done in every piece of software, but software's PURPOSE is to be flexible and quickly and efficiently implement functions in a way that can be modified without exorbitant cost. If you force things to the level of safety of flight critical software then you might as well literally build dedicated silicon for everything, because it will be cheaper.

The truth is software will probably never achieve this kind of level of reliability and security in general. It just isn't worth it. Even safety critical software needs to be cheaper than that. If we want the functionality and convenience of embedding software in cars, airplanes, etc then we better be willing to accept the consequences. The only alternative is likely automated software development performed entirely by AIs, but I doubt that will fix the problem either. There's always some guy that can make the smarter AI that can figure out the security hole in the software your dumber one wrote.

lol, how would a flow chart add to that effort? A DFD might, a sequence diagram perhaps, but flow charts just aren't that good at describing, well, anything really. If its complex stateful logic, then generally you end up with a massive and unreadable mess. If there is any parallel anything going on then its utterly useless. There's a very limited sweet spot for flow charts, but at this point structured/oo/functional language constructs have largely obviated the pressing need to describe limited chunks of control flow. Its really just easier to code it and see it.

I remember using fairly early UML modeling tools back in the early 2000's, but there were earlier incarnations of the concept. TBH I never found UML all that compelling. It has some uses, but truthfully a well-written description of some software and API documentation is far handier than any amount of UML.

Yeah, now I remember that Mindstorm programming thing. It was kind of interesting, but again you couldn't push it too far. You could write maybe a modest sized program that way, at best. For the intended purpose it was reasonably well-suited, but I'd note that people quickly outgrew it as well. The other thing to note with Mindstorm was that is was purely a single-threaded and very linear kind of a thing. That put some pretty heavy constraints on what you could actually do with it.