From: mark@unicorn.com
Date: Mon Jul 12 1999 - 12:31:51 MDT
hal@finney.org wrote:
>Hofstadter's facetious Law says that everything takes longer than you
>expect, even when you take Hofstadter's Law into account. On this basis
>I should further increase my estimate to maybe 12 or 15 years.
This brings to mind one of Clarke's laws, where he said something along the
lines of 'everyone overestimates the short-term improvements in technology
and under-estimates the long-term'. That seems to be generally true, in my
experience.
I was being somewhat facetious with my original comment, but I still doubt
we'll have workable fusion in 20 years from now. As I said to someone in
private mail, I expect to be living off-the-grid in ten years, but I have
no doubt that I will have to sacrifice some convenience and deliberately
reduce energy consumption to make it work, and few people would accept that.
Mark
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