Bonam

And there was more than 100 years of research on physics before the 20th century. Nevertheless, much remained to be discovered. Social sciences are still in their infancy and more data is always helpful.

The less you know about a problem that may exist, the less you can create appropriate policies that may ameliorate the problem.

Nothing can happen forever, but things can happen for a long time. Is the ~10,000 years of the history of human civilization almost the full story, or is it only the beginning?

He3 doesn't really help. First, the easiest fusion reaction to achieve is the deuterium-tritium (DT) reaction. Deuterium is abundant on Earth, while tritium has a short half life and needs to be produced. It can be bred from lithium using neutron bombardment. He3 is not necessary for this process. But the DT reaction releases most of its energy in a high energy (14 MeV) neutron. The high energy neutron tends to penetrate right through everything and it is hard to use this energy for productive purposes. The high intensity neutron radiation from the DT reaction would also cause the reactor walls and structure to become radioactive over time, which is not ideal. The holy grail of fusion energy research is achieving the hydrogen(proton)-Boron (pB) reaction, because it is aneutronic (produces no neutrons). This reaction is much harder to achieve because of its much smaller reaction cross-section. The plasma would need to be orders of magnitude hotter (and so more difficult to contain) compared to a DT plasma. Nonetheless, it is the ultimate goal for some research groups in the field. It also does not require He3. The reaction that uses He3 (D-3He), is intermediate between the two above. It is still much harder to achieve than the DT reaction (though easier than pB) and still produces some neutrons due to side reactions (though much less than DT). The result is that first generation / demonstration fusion reactors will work on DT, which is the only thing even remotely in reach of current fusion energy research schemes. Meanwhile, as we learn more about how to contain HEDPs (high energy density plasmas), people will continue to try to achieve the pB reaction. Maybe someone will want to try out D-3He as an intermediate generation of fusion energy production, but it's not a critical path nor would it make fusion a reality sooner, nor cheaper. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_fusion#Criteria_and_candidates_for_terrestrial_reactions

Because I think it will be inherently too expensive. Even putting aside regulatory and political issues, conventional nuclear power plants are quite expensive compared to fossil fuel plants. And fusion will be even more so. The tokamak, currently the fusion topology undergoing the most intense level of research, inherently requires gigantic superconducting magnets, immense defect-free vacuum vessels, incredibly complex real time diagnostics and control, and vast quantities of exotic and expensive materials. Even once the science is proven and the designs for the technology are already made, the high costs will remain. Meanwhile, the cost of solar energy is declining steadily. There is certainly much additional progress that needs to be made in energy storage. Although, even today it would not be hard to achieve, as creating an artificial lake and a hydro dam with pumped storage, even where terrain is otherwise flat, is merely an engineering and construction undertaking and can be done economically. Anyway, batteries are a commercial product and enjoy economies of scale and major investment in further R&D by private companies, who know that if they can make a better battery they can generate more profit. Battery technology is advancing continuously and so is materials science. See the graph I posted on the previous page regarding battery cost and energy density. That trend is not stopping.

Well, it worked during the Cold War. I think it's fairly obvious that even with the changed strategic situation today, the US and Russia would do everything possible to avoid large scale direct confrontation with each other.

I think this article talks nicely about the fear that some professors now face in regards to discussing any issue that anyone might consider "sensitive": http://www.vox.com/2015/6/3/8706323/college-professor-afraid I think some of the most salient points made there are the growing focus on identity politics and emotional well-being to the detriment of a focus on objectively verifiable information, rational discussion, and the merit of the ideas being discussed.

Obviously. Nonetheless, I think focusing on growth rather than distribution is the correct approach, because as you've pointed out, society and the economy are healthiest (and thereby growing most quickly) at some intermediate level of inequality. Therefore, if you seek to optimize growth, you'll also optimize the level of inequality as a by-product. Note all the employers considerably increasing their entry-level wages in the US, for example, now that economic growth has finally picked up and unemployment has returned to low levels. That will do far more for the incomes of the bottom quintiles of the population than any government policy designed to reduce inequality ever could.

Inequality is an issue, but it's a much lesser issue when everyone's incomes are growing than if the bottom end of incomes are actually dropping. That is why inequality was such a powerful narrative during the financial crisis and the resulting economic decline/stagnation. Now that we're back to normal rates of economic growth, inequality is dropping off the radar again. To me, this suggests that while it's important to ensure that incomes are growing across the board, it's economic growth that is more important to ensure than equality. The economic system should be designed so as to generate the maximum possible rate of growth, and equality/inequality will take care of itself (this keeps in mind that the optimum rate of growth is achieved at some happy medium of inequality, not at either extreme).

Share of total income is not the relevant stat. Inflation-adjusted Individual/household income over time is.

Everyone's getting poorer relative to someone. I for one am happy as long as my own (inflation-adjusted) income is growing over time, even if someone else's might be growing faster.

Not to mention the chart is US data anyway in a thread about "Harper's tax credits". All the data I've ever seen shows that the rate of divergence in incomes between upper and lower income earners in Canada is significantly slower than it is in the US.

That's tangential to the issue at hand. I was commenting solely on the incorrectness of WIP's statement. He claimed the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer, and tried to support it with that chart. The chart in fact shows everyone getting richer, though at different rates. The poor may not be getting richer as fast as the rich are, but they are getting richer nonetheless.

The chart clearly shows that people in ALL quintiles got richer. Yes, the richer got richer by more, but the poor still also got richer. This is in direct contradiction to your claim of the "rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer".

Can't wait for the day of self-driving buses.

Despite me working in the field of fusion energy research, my personal thought is that fusion will never be relevant for terrestrial grid power production. The energy storage problem is a much easier problem to crack than fusion energy, and once it is cracked, solar can provide all the energy we need, likely much more cheaply than fusion ever could. We've got a giant free fusion reactor in the sky. Fusion will have its place: naval reactors, space power and propulsion, outposts/bases in the outer solar system. use as a high energy neutron source, production of exotic materials, etc, but I'd say the chance of it ever providing a substantial % of Earth's power needs is pretty low.

It is. Cost of solar panels: Battery energy density and cost:

Ok, well, my word of caution to you would be... a lot of people can get lucky and outperform the market for a few years... 5, maybe even 10, and let it get to their head and assume that they are that smart/skillful. But a few years later, reality always comes and bites them in the ass. As for listening to other people who can beat the market... anyone who could well and truly and consistently beat the market would keep their ideas to themselves and become a billionaire, rather than giving out their advice.

See here: https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#q=moore%27s%20law "Moore's law" is the observation that, over the history of computing hardware, the number of transistors in a dense integrated circuit has doubled approximately every two years.

Moore's Law says nothing about clock speeds though. It talks about the number of transistors that can fit within a certain area doubling every fixed time scale. That law has continued on through the last decade, despite clock speeds having stayed constant at 3-4 GHz for that decade. Furthermore, as Kurzweil argues in his writings regarding technological progress, Moore's Law is merely the last and current one of the paradigms of exponential progress in computation, which was preceded by other forms of computation. I would extend this into the future and predict (as Kurzweil does) that when the physics precludes further exponential progress in silicon integrated circuit density, a 6th paradigm will take over where the 5th left off. Furthermore, despite the lack of increase in clock speeds, we most certainly have been seeing the same exponential rate of progress in computing performance as we did before. It's just that that progress is in parallel computation rather than serial computation, which is just as valuable but requires software that can take full advantage of it. Supercomputers have followed the exponential progress line to the present day. You can also find charts showing exponential growth in the computational power of consumer-available graphics cards (which are now tapped by many programs for modeling/computation), as well as exponential growth in the number of computations per unit energy expenditure.

Well except that a 15 year wind down towards more reasonable real estate prices puts the end result too late for the current generation of people that would like to live (and buy their residence) in Vancouver. I'd like to see 5-10% real decline in real estate prices in Vancouver per year, for the next 5 years or so. Of course, it'll never happen, but one can dream...

Cite? I think we might see a little slowdown as manufacturers try to push to/past the 10 nm scale length due to the delays in the commercialization of EUV lithography machines, but it will resume when that is solved, and as we start to get more rapid development in alternative semiconductor materials, 3D circuits, and opto-electronics. We're still many many orders of magnitude away from fundamental physical limits of computational density as predicted by information theory and I don't think we'll see Moore's law really break until we start asymptoting towards those limits.

I'd love to see the Vancouver housing price bubble finally pop. Not holding my breath for it, though.

The US economy grew at a 3.7% annualized rate last quarter, while inflation remains close to zero. That's almost double the 2% long term rate you mention.

That may be, but Ontario's issues are largely inconsequential to the larger question you posed in this thread about whether "economic growth is slowing down permanently". Global economic growth is driven mostly by the US and China.