[thepasswordis]

HN, what the heck has happened to you?

What is with all of these cynical comments? Helion is an awesome company, their technology is real, and this is cool.

>oh no this might not work!

Do you guys not understand that you’re posting on the forum of a venture capital firm/startup accelerator?

[deweller]

8 years ago, HN was a place full of optimism and excitement. I've noticed a marked increase in cynicism in this place.

Like most of the world, it suffers from extreme tribalism and group think.

I miss the former positive HN. And the positive world. sigh

[matrix_overload]

Startups used to be a way to create your own solution to a non-trivial problem, and make money off selling it to people that will benefit from it and enjoy it. It was a highly rewarding experience for those who didn't want to play corporate politics (or at least, play it to a lesser extent).

But then it attracted too many people that would just emulate the KPI in order to get funded, and instead of letting it crash and rise from the ashes, we lowered the interest rates and bailed out a bunch of "too big to fail" banks in 2008, pretty much guaranteeing viability of shitty investments. Oh, and when people started calling it out in 2012 with Occupy Wall Street, they were redirected using the centuries-old divide-and-conquer techniques.

So now it's a shell of former self. Founders try to create something that looks like a great company. VCs pour money in, hoping to resell to the next fool. Founders are now more like figureheads than idea-driven people. Most big successes (Uber, AirBnb) could be attributed more to regulatory capture than a revolutional way of doing something.

Smart people understand it very well and it doesn't make you very optimistic. You can pretend well enough to convince an average layperson, but deep inside you know the game is fake, and it kinda builds up. Notably, game-changers that are appreciated by users (rather than speculative investors) now mostly come from China (e.g. TikTok), because the vibe there (with all the downsides) is now closer to the "good old SV" than the current SV.

[MichaelZuo]

To be fair to Uber and AirBnB, they did introduce some genuinely novel innovations. But the business model does heavily rely on the non-technological aspects for their competitive advantage.

[tokai]

Non-technological aspects is an interesting euphemism for breaking the law.

[MichaelZuo]

Not in all jurisdictions. But granted in quite a few there are violations of the spirit of the law.

[throw9away6]

Yes the innovation came from pooling enough money that you don’t have to follow the law

[soulbadguy]

+1

[piloto_ciego]

The cynicism is an op, or something - because I don’t have the evidence to say it’s definitively an “op” - as the kids say.

But legitimately, there is a strong cynical bubble in the zeitgeist now, and it’s dangerous.

There are a few things this cynicism says.

1. “People suck and are terrible.” 2. “People are stupid.” 3. “We can’t change anything.” 4. “Great calamity is going to happen and we are powerless to stop it.”

This is a lie. The world doesn’t suck, it’s much better than it used to be, people aren’t terrible - if people were more bad than good on average we’d still be hitting each other with clubs and going Conan on people. We aren’t stupid - it’s just that the stupid people are louder. And while the possibilities for great calamity exist, they are not guaranteed.

This may be more emergent than anything else, but trust your neighbors, treat people nicely, and you - yes individually each of you - need to start trying to make the world better.

Nobody is going to do it for us. I know what it’s like to feel bleak, trust me I do - but that’s just a call to action. It’s not “techno optimism” we need - it’s optimism, there are radical solutions that don’t use a single transistor.

[nescioquid]

In reading about the Weimar Republic, I encountered an observation (I think it was by Hannah Arendt) that cynicism emerges from a society that no longer believes in itself. In trying to confirm the quote, I found perhaps a better quote to explain (found on Arend't wiki article):

>> ...leaders based their propaganda on the correct psychological assumption that, under such conditions, one could make people believe the most fantastic statements one day, and trust that if the next day they were given irrefutable proof of their falsehood, they would take refuge in cynicism; instead of deserting the leaders who had lied to them, they would protest that they had known all along that the statement was a lie and would admire the leaders for their superior tactical cleverness

This all sounds rather familiar and feels like more a cultural question than one of personal virtue.

[piloto_ciego]

I also think that cynicism is the path of least resistance.

It’s dangerous to be optimistic. When you’re excited about stuff and it doesn’t work out culturally you look like a moron, when you’re a cynic if you’re wrong nobody cares because we’re all lucky that things didn’t turn out shittily. When things do turn out poorly you look like a genius because “you predicted the calamity.”

The “easy money” comes from being a pessimist because you don’t have to commit to anything.

[switchbak]

Thank you. I think we really do need a return to some form of optimism. Growing up I was told endlessly that by now we'd be out of fossil fuels and things would be terrible for a variety of other reasons. Some of that has come to pass, some not, some has reversed (ozone).

Sometimes the positive effects of sustained efforts have had a real impact over time. Having a cynical and defeatist attitude works against that. I don't know the roots of those attitudes exactly, but from the people I know they're not related to climate change, the country's leader, cultural issues, etc. It's more like those are a good reason for them to be more vocal about their underlying cynicism which has different roots (family life, general temperament, etc).

We have real problems. Very big ones. A defeatist attitude will ensure we end up in the worst of all outcomes. I wonder if we just have too much change too fast for our society to keep up and figure out ways to function better with the new constraints.

Edit: clarification

[hutzlibu]

"The world doesn’t suck, it’s much better than it used to be"

Better then when and by what meassure?

It is quite subjective I think.

One satirical person offered this quote:

We optimized for the minimum of individual luck, to get the maximum of people.

I am not fully behind this quote, it is satirical, but I think there is too much truth behind it. Ecologically things look bad. Geopolitical the same.

But yes, the sun is still shining and spring is nice and we do are progressing to new technological heights every day. It is just how this awesome tech is used overwhelmingly, that is a bummer.

[SeasonalEnnui]

"Factfulness: Ten Reasons We're Wrong About the World" is a book that makes an excellent attempt to answer this.

[hutzlibu]

Hm. From the description I am not really convinced. It starts with people think "rich gets richer, poor gets poorer" ... and then states this is all wrong.

Except, it is not, by all the data that I know.

E.g. "https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2021/12/global-income-inequal..."

[adampk]

Taleb makes the point that this is not as simple as it seems. It is not the same people staying rich.

https://medium.com/incerto/inequality-and-skin-in-the-game-d...

[moron4hire]

Isn't this book about the low-hanging fruit stuff like universal access to healthy drinking water? And isn't it about basically the course of history through the 20th century compared to the previous millennium? That's much more macro, world-wide kind of stuff than whether or not startups in developed countries nowadays feel almost exclusively exploitative versus how they felt innovative 15, 20 years ago.

[piloto_ciego]

They were just as exploitative 15 years ago (or 20, or 50).

We can still fix things. We can still change the world - and for the better. Largely we have to slough off the outdated and pernicious idea that “more money == better” first.

[skrebbel]

Fwiw to my memory, 8 years ago people complained about cynicism and negativism on HN just as much. Eg people never stopped quoting that famous top comment on Dropbox's HN launch (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8863#9224).

I strongly doubt this attitude ever changed. It's always been

    - first comments are dismissive gut reactions
    - a bit later some nuanced/positive comments arrive
    - depending on mood and luck, one or the other kind floats to the top

I mean how often have you read a super positive top comment that starts out complaining about all the negativism in the thread? It's super commonplace! HN is still full of optimism and excitement, and also middlebrow dismissal. Just give it a few hours for every topic.

[soco]

I can confirm this. If I happen to contradict some cynical comment, 5 minutes and I'm at minus-something. Then the positives start to build back up. Always. There could be some psychological explanation to this, why the quick reaction is negative and the better thought-of positive?

[creato]

I genuinely think HN has been overrun by influence operations designed to make people resigned to the world being terrible. It sounds stupid and paranoid, but I can’t explain the patterns I observe any other way. I think the way HN is operated makes it impossible to avoid: no real authentication other than an email address. It is (or at least was) a juicy target due to the concentration of influential people in an influential industry.

I’m specifically not going to post examples because that will invite the same old conversations to be rehashed, and any one example is useless anyways. People will claim confirmation bias and they may even be right.

[adampk]

I agree with you. A "everything is terrible" campaign. But who stands to gain?

[jackmott42]

The cynicism for me at least is a result of reality actually getting markedly worse (at least in the USA) over the last 10 years.

However, none of that has anything to do with fusion tech, so I remain hopeful about that!

[SeanAnderson]

It's admittedly a 12 year old YouTube, but I always liked watching this when I was feeling especially cynical about the overall trajectory of the world: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jbkSRLYSojo

[nindalf]

Before clicking that link I wondered what I would recommend to people who were feeling cynical about the world. It's a book by Hans Rosling - Factfulness, and it turns out that's the guy in your video.

[jackmott42]

Sadly he is no longer with us to let us know how things have gone the last 10 years :(

[haswell]

I think it’s worth examining what we believe to be “reality”.

If your reality is the Internet, the apocalypse is upon us.

I’ve spent the past year reducing Internet one and increasing immersion in my local community and the world looks like a very different (better) place.

[rf15]

Maybe we just grew up? There is still plenty we are enthusiastic and positive about here, but discussion sure has become more nuanced.

[piloto_ciego]

Getting older is no excuse for cynicism.

[sebzim4500]

Cynicism has nothing to do with nuance.

[DubiousPusher]

Nor does unbounded positivity and optimism.

[switchbak]

Honestly I think in this case the subject is so complex you'd have to be an expert to separate the wheat from the chaff.

The techno optimists really do a lot of grifting these days (especially on YouTube), and the knee-jerk cynics are predictably annoying as well. The fact that a knowledgeable fusion insider is criticizing this speaks volumes to me, and his criticisms seem on point.

I'm a lay person so my take on it is effectively of zero value. And I don't think I'm the only one in this thread in that position :)

[sebzim4500]

I agree. I have nothing against the people sharing actual technical critisisms of the approach.

[haarts]

Is that feeling of yours actually founded in reality?

You can have a look! https://hackermoods.com/

(I only did a quick search)

[deweller]

This is a very interesting site. I'd love to see the analysis extend beyond 2016.

[healthysurf]

I'll be updating this in the coming weeks, and one of the features is going to be a toggle switch to "Make HN Happy" where it detects negative sentiments and rewords the comment into something constructive:

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/healthy-surf/

[adamdennis]

There’s still time to turn this thread/site around! Let’s keep it positive! “I’m looking forward to having reached the bottom; only up from here!”

[casey2]

It's pretty easy to find comments of people complaining about cynicism 11+ years ago.

[throwaway81523]

Look for the article "Geeks, mops, and sociopaths" which has been posted here a few times. We are currently in the sociopath part of the cycle, and people recognize that.

[throwawaysleep]

> And the positive world. sigh

It turned out to be a lie and a scam, so now people are more skeptical.

[Gud]

No it didn’t. The world is an amazing place. I am thankful to be alive.

[throw9away6]

Must be nice to be a 1% er

[Gud]

I'm not rich, I'm broke af. Doesn't stop me from choosing happiness. What's the alternative? Spend my life in misery? I tried that for a decade, didn't work out well for me. Now I choose to be happy. I choose to be the best I can be. Moping around sure as shit didn't fix my problems

[ohgodplsno]

Because the world has gotten markedly more shit for the vast majority of people, and YC is directly one of the reasons. Most of us have seen our disposable income drop, seen bullshit companies making connected dog feeders get funded dozens of millions by money-centralizing VCs, and overall have seen the world get more and more unfair, unbalanced and unjust. Major climate disruption is underway, wars are hitting all over the globe and governments are all getting more and more undemocratic.

Needless to say, the world doesn't exactly lend itself to positivity about yet another fucking startup promising you fusion powered dog feeders.

[ramraj07]

You can be optimistic when you’re just making an app to rent your room out or to find a dog walker. You can hustle and sell useless SaaS services long enough to get acquired for no real reason except managerial power plays in large companies. In the world of software you can kinda make almost any idea work with sweat and political maneuvering. You can literally see that they’re trying to play the same games here.

However when it comes to startups dealing with biology or physics you’re literally battling the laws of nature. You can’t just hustle out of it. I’ve been laughing at the type of biotech companies that get funded by SV (nano diamonds for cancer detection? Gut Micro biome sequencing?) and it’s looking like similar story with fusion.

In this case if you want real reasons why Helion looks suspect check out this good summary of all the issues with their approach and promise: https://youtu.be/3vUPhsFoniw

I won’t get my life against someone figuring out fusion in the next two decades but I wouldn’t bet money towards it either.

[stevenhuang]

There are worse ways to destroy capital, and the VC capital destruction is going to happen anyways. Might as well put it towards fusion.

The criticisms raised in the video are fair, and also the first youtube comment has an interesting point:

> Why would he allow this reckless behavior? Why would he himself be standing right there with them next to the device while it was in operation? Then I watched the video more closely again - he never takes the grid potential higher than 6kV. There was no fusion and no x-rays that could penetrate the wall of the vessel or the glass window. It was a ruse. You need to have a potential difference on the grids of AT LEAST 30kV to even begin seeing any fusion reactions at all. He knows enough physics to be aware of all of this. He was therefore deliberately allowing them, and the credulous audience, to believe they were actually doing fusion reactions when nothing of the sort was happening at all - they were merely staring at a pretty glowing pink cool deuterium plasma in a bottle. I believe this to be very suspicious behavior from a CEO of a commercial nuclear fusion company.

[sfpotter]

A better way to destroy that capital: have it appropriated by the government and used to fund actual science.

[pinewurst]

Where "actual science" is defined (from a NSF/big granter perspective) by various science in-groups to benefit their respective communities. Having served my time in the grant-funded science world, this is hardly a panacea.

[sfpotter]

I'll take the lesser of two evils, thanks.

[Rnonymous]

But (academic) science doesn't usually develop commercial products.

Science would develop the concept underlying helion, for instance, but then a startup should bring it to market.

[ChatGTP]

Yes, and what about using it to actually feed hungry people and build shelter for those that have none.

I feel like the cynicism is coming from the bullshit we can all see before our eyes. We just don't know how to change it because we're all so entrenched in capitalism and corporations.

[s1artibartfast]

You say that but biological medicine and Technology continues to improve. The trajectory is positive.

Will every startup be successful? Of course not! But as a whole, technology continues to March forward and improve.

[ramraj07]

It doesn’t seem to be improving through Silicon Valley VC money though. Name one SV funded biotech startup. Ginkgo is cool though.

[s1artibartfast]

BioNTech's mRNA vaccine technology is a pretty great example of a VC funded startup success story that had huge impact and profit.

If you want to constrain your question to Silicon Valley specifically, which isnt the center of biotech VC, there are still lots to look at[1].

You can also just hook at the helthcare portfolios of the SV VCs themselves and find several sucessful exits.

Venrock [2], e.g Anacor, regenxbio

https://techcrunch.com/2018/07/28/home-run-exits-happen-stea...

https://www.venrock.com/companies

[ramraj07]

I did make the SV (especially YC) VC funding distinction. Biotech has long been funded by VC money and while not perfect it worked better than what is happening now. I was particularly a fan of 3rd Rock ventures, their investments all followed (in my opinion) the most scientifically sound ideas.

[throwawaymaths]

> You can’t just hustle out of it. I’ve been laughing at the type of biotech companies that get funded by SV

Yes, SV funds incredibly stupid biotechs. It also passes over really good biotechs. I think it's because honest founders are likely to do good work, and won't pitch with a $$ ask that doesn't make sense, and SV equity raises don't make sense for such capital intensive activities.

[sebzim4500]

That's almost exactly what they said to Elon Musk when he started SpaceX, and now they are on a streak of >100 successful missions in a row.

[ramraj07]

Yes but spacex didn’t promise anything physicists said is impossible. Engineers saying impossible is different from physicists saying it.

The equivalent would be if spacex said something that violated the rocket equation. They didn’t. And also while they promise the Mars, they can settle for the largest reusable rocket as a consolation prize. In fields like biotech and fusion there’s often no consolation prize. So spacex was well managed with the right level of optimism and practicality. Not so here.

[sebzim4500]

What has Helion promised that physicists say is impoossible?

[slaw]

SpaceX uses technology that started to work in 1961.

[sebzim4500]

And if you squint a lot then Helion is continuing a development process that started in the 1950s.

[slaw]

Yes, Helion is continuing what didn't work since 1950s.

[ricardobeat]

Cynism is not disencouraged in the HN guidelines, but the sneering at the community and meta complaint in your comment is. I don’t care for the tone in those comments buy they are expressing something real.

Helion can be a cool company with real tech, and this deal a marketing play, both possibly true.

[x-complexity]

> Cynism is not disencouraged in the HN guidelines, but the sneering at the community and meta complaint in your comment is. I don’t care for the tone in those comments buy they are expressing something real.

This guideline needs to be revised: It is extremely easy to be a cynic compared to being an optimist, and the rewards for being such a cynic are mismatched, as per piloto_ciego's outline on the advantages that being a pessimist/cynic has over being an optimist.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35892166

The ever-increasing levels of dread coming from HN is a deadly combination of Neo-Luddism & doomerism that I'm an avid crucifier of.

[random_cynic]

The "cynicism" is what happens when you have a bunch of armchair critics who've done nothing significant in their life except engage in pointless nitpicking and flame wars on internet, see that their fantasies are being brought to life by more determined and talented people than they can ever be.

[hoseja]

Or, maybe, seeing hustlers destroy last shreds of credibility of the incredible promise of fusion - which is what this is until they actually go energy positive in a sustainable manner. SpaceX also wasn't worth praise until they actually put payloads into orbit. Now they are worth extreme praise and people hate them instead. Everything is backwards.

[strictnein]

Maybe I'm imagining it, but I feel like there's been a marked decrease in the quality of comments here over the past couple of months. Lots of snark and vitriol. Maybe it's just the layoffs and people are venting here for some reason?

[aww_dang]

Why is the tech real this time? Why is it an awesome company?

Give us some substance. Dismissing critics as cynics doesn't tell me anything as a layman. A good exchange between a booster and a debunker adds something to the discussion.

[anonuser123456]

>Do you guys not understand that you’re posting on the forum of a venture capital firm/startup accelerator?

Sure, but people here realize there is a difference between hand waving away the complexity of a potential software implementation and hand waving away how you are going to overcome the strong nuclear force.

[PurpleRamen]

> Helion is an awesome company, their technology is real

How do you know? Have you seen it? The website itself is very sketchy, full of unrealistic claims and very vague explanations, it reads like a fanfic. Of course do people not buy this, it just smells too hard of scam.

[deepspace]

This whole comment section is bizarre. It looks like the fusion-promoting bots and shills are out in full force. It might even be a pump-and-dump scheme.

There is certainly nothing about what Helion is willing to say about the technology that inspires confidence, and many glaring problems with their approach.

A healthy dose of skepticism is absolutely warranted.

[p_j_w]

The cynicism may come from the fact that no one has been able to generate system level break even on a fusion plant in a lab setting after decades of work. How can one be anything but skeptical that it'll be commercially available five years from now?

[hoseja]

A lot of it is because nobody has actually really tried in a serious enough way. Nuclear technology would also be a pipe dream without the insane frenzy of mutually assured destruction.

[cowthulhu]

I think it’s a lot easier to be cynical and negative than to put yourself out there a bit and say something positive. Or - at least that’s something I’ve struggled with personally.

[ChatGTP]

This is what happened:

"Microsoft's CEO Says No Raises for Full-Time Employees This Year" and then in the article [1]:

Satya Nadella, whose salary ballooned to $55 million last year, wrote to employees: “As a senior leadership team, we don’t take this decision lightly."

More and more of this, ad infinitum.

It's really hard to be excited about tech when your told your job is soon to be replaced with little recourse, "CDC data shows U.S. teen girls ‘in crisis’ with unprecedented rise in suicidal behavior", AI might kill humanity within 5 years etc.

I'm keeping an open mind about it all and the future, but there is also a thing called toxic positivity and I think this is what's creating the cynicism. There's not enough actual healthy critical debate and skepticism about tech and where it's taking us and it's role in causing the issues mentioned above. It's just rich people getting richer at the moment. So I can't say I blame people for being cynical, even though it's not very healthy or constructive.

[1] https://gizmodo.com/microsoft-no-raises-full-time-ceo-satya-...

[powera]

This exact comment was made, repeatedly, about Theranos.

[userabchn]

What percentage of the negative comments come from chatbots that are part of foreign influence campaigns to spread negativity in this largely Western world (or even largely US) forum?

[speed_spread]

Don't forget fission industry shills. They are quite active here and are happy to remember everyone that "fission is our only way out" (TM).

[throw9away6]

Probably lower than you expect a lot of people have done basic research on fusion and understand it makes no economical sense.

[zackmorris]

I feel some guilt about this, in that the vast majority of my comments are critical in some way. Mostly because I'm trying to dig deeper into the truth and expand the discussion into a meta-analysis. That style of big-picture thinking often reveals conceptual flaws, which is the point!

Anyway, we have the math and experimental evidence now to show that fusion reactors work, and it's just a scaling problem. Sure, it may cost a billion dollars, but Elon Musk could pay that 100 times over. Not only that, but science has become distracted by expensive projects, to the point that it would pour another billion into a particle accelerator rather than fund 1000 research projects for $1 million each. So the main thing stopping us is that financial barrier between the status quo and scalable progress for everyone. And the power of choice in the hands of the wealthy to deny us the catalyst (money) to overcome that barrier.

I thought that life was a meritocracy until the Dot Bomb, Great Recession and concentration of wealth post-pandemic revealed that a few key players pull all of the strings. The amounts of money we're used to dealing with are largely meaningless. So our life's work at countless dead-end jobs is just a rounding error for the wealthy.

Cynical comments could be seen as the outward projection of the jealousy we feel having to go to a job every day instead of doing meaningful deep work on projects like this. And sure, fusion might deliver 1 cent/kWh electricity. But it only costs 10 cents now. So it will not trigger a material improvement in quality of life like we might expect. Meanwhile a fusion plant might make another billion dollars for its owner, which is a material improvement. This is how injustice works as the primary commodity throughout history, and why seemingly egalitarian tech like fusion could and should be looked at with healthy skepticism. Because the people pursuing it would do more for us by taking on the real challenges like ending subjugation and empowering others (through education, automation, UBI, etc), but for all their wealth, they're fixated on egocentric solutions which may never materialize.

[credit_guy]

It's 2023. Even if they had a reactor ready and functional today, the NRC would not give them the approval by 2028, and once they gave them the approval, it would take them a decade to build a reactor.

In a world where the NRC does not exists maybe this makes sense, but that's (thankfully) not the world we have.

[Apofis]

Considering less than 30% of startups are successfully by any measure, HN should be way more optimistic. I wonder where that sentiment is coming from.

[DubiousPusher]

Just maybe the trajectory of some of tech's most hyped companies has had some impact on this: WeWork, Palantir, Theranos, Uber, etc?

[corndoge]

Bear market, come back in a year

[ren_engineer]

one of the most famous posts on this site was shitting on Dropbox and dismissing it as a weekend project. HN has always been this way

[hoseja]

>their technology is real

Clearly not yet.

[jbverschoor]

See Dropbox’ first post on HN. Nothing new

[crmd]

The infamous Dropbox thread is a good example of old HN culture - shitting on a billion dollar business idea because the tech problem is “so easy to solve I could build it over a weekend”.

In this thread people are arguing that the problem is too hard.

It does lately feel to me like a culture shift.

[throwawaysleep]

Decades of tons of things turning out to be a pile of lies and fraud.

[thepasswordis]

Is that true? Seems like this summer I’m driving my Tesla to watch a Starship launch and using my starlink for internet access along the way.

Meanwhile I’m using GitHub copilot to help me write code to uses some of openAIs products in my existing SaaS offering.

There is a constant stream of waymos driving past my house (with nobody in them) and I’m playing Skyrim in VR.

What technology are you talking about that didn’t pan out?

[kredd]

The general attitude in my circles is none of those technologies have had any positive impact on our or our loved one’s lives. Don’t get me wrong, they’re all “cool and awesome”, but when you put it into perspective of “is life easier” or “has our happiness increased”, my answer would be a strong no.

This general skepticism leads to younger generation to be more cynical, especially when things that have been promised just don’t work out. I can’t really support it with any reliable data, as I mentioned, could just be my circles and nobody else.

Hopefully fusion will work out though! That I’m looking forward to.

[DennisP]

Here's one with an impact: one of my relatives was diagnosed seven years ago with stage 4 melanoma, which a couple decades ago was a one-year death sentence. She got three doses of immunotherapy, her tumors shrank, and last year her oncologist said don't even bother coming in for scans anymore, you're fine.

[radicaldreamer]

I'm reminded of a coworker who asked what has been more impactful of an invention to humanity than Steve Jobs and the iPhone and was speechless when I was like how about pasteurization, penicillin, or vaccination?

[relativ575]

Perhaps many of tomorrow pasteurizations, penicillins, or vaccinations may never materialized if their inventors wouldn't have accessed to information at their fingertips, via their smartphones

[nforgerit]

Well what's the fraction of success stories compared to the promises given? And: The success stories you're mentioning would have been there (even earlier in many cases) if they'd be consistently developed over time.

Tesla did not invent the e-car nor did SpaceX have the idea to go to space. Maybe it's just people being fed up with glossy techbro marketing whilst being fired because of "past overhiring"?

[nindalf]

Too often I've seen people inventing things in a lab being denigrated for not commercialising and scaling their invention. That's the top comment on any battery announcement by a research group.

> Tesla did not invent the e-car nor did SpaceX have the idea to go to space.

You're doing the opposite, taking credit away from people who've actually succeeded at scale. I don't like Twitter guy at all, but even I can give credit to Tesla and SpaceX for becoming commercially successful with fundamentally new ideas (electric cars, reusable rockets). That's a massive achievement.

Even Helion, the company this thread is about - they'd be nothing if they didn't actually operate a commercial power plant outputting 50MW at some point. If they fail despite trying everything and someone else does it years later are you going to be on that thread saying "yeah, commercialising fusion is no big deal, Helion had a prototype going years ago"? No you wouldn't, because it's actually a massive deal if someone could do that.

[nforgerit]

Credit given! This is not, what I was up to. I was more referring to the marketing stunts behind those startups. In case of Helion this looks definitely like a marketing gig because they don't nearly seem to be there in any way.

That together with things like this weird "fusion success story" at NIF (not nearly there, even further away than pretty much all fusion research before it but a proof of concept for alternative approaches to fusion) or this weird "we were able to beam particles through a wormhole" story some months ago, make me very skeptic about the current startup economy.

It all reminds me so much of the movie "Don't look up".

[DennisP]

Helion has built six reactors. Their sixth maintained a vacuum for 16 months while doing thousands of fusion shots, exceeding 100 million degrees. Now they're building their seventh reactor, which will attempt net electricity in 2024.

NIF's results were a scientific milestone that people have been working towards for half a century. Regarding overall energy balance, NIF uses lasers from the 1990s that are less than 1% efficient. Equivalent lasers today are over 20% efficient, so their results were not as bad as many articles made out. They're still off by a factor of five, but also they got a 230% jump in output by increasing the laser power only 8%.

[s1artibartfast]

I think you're on to something. A lot of it comes down to the expectation and what people feel they were promised.

I think people were sold/sold themselves on unrealistic expectations, but that doesn't mean that everything is shit. They're just jumping from one unrealistic extreme to another.

We don't live in some post scarcity Jetsons future, but that was never realistic. People are disappointed that they don't have what's the homes and Families they saw in the TV shows growing up, but those were always fiction and not an accurate depiction of how most people lived