Fit For Purpose
Thoughts on the latest fusion excitement.
“If no one else is going to hype you up, you have to do it yourself.” – Mojo Rawley
The field of cybernetics involves the study of relationships in information—how it is processed, regulated, and used to achieve specific outcomes in complex systems, including living organisms, bureaucracies, and computer programs. As contributors to the broader science of nonlinear dynamics, cyberneticians play a formative role in the development of artificial intelligence and machine learning algorithms. Insights from the field are also widely deployed in corporate development programs for executive leaders, as managing large global teams is nothing if not an exercise in taming the forces of chaos.
Among the most famous practitioners of cybernetics was the British theorist and consultant Stafford Beer, author of the classic book Brain of the Firm. Beer popularized the concept of POSIWID (“the purpose of a system is what it does”), a profoundly clarifying insight that has formed the foundation of many a brainstorming session. As Beer correctly pointed out, if a system constantly fails to achieve its stated purpose, then its purpose is an unstated one, no matter how often politicians or business leaders insist otherwise.
Examples abound. The purpose of campaign donations is to buy politicians. The purpose of rebate application forms is to frustrate claimants. The purpose of forever wars is to enrich defense contractors. Cynical as these statements may sound, each is a superior fit to reality than altruistically supporting a cause, following through on promised rewards, or spreading democracy to far-flung places few citizens in the West care much about, respectively.
Once sufficiently trained in the POSIWID framework, reading the news becomes a rather more edifying experience of discovering the true purpose obfuscated behind specious façades. Consider this report from The New York Times, variants of which have been sent to us by numerous subscribers in the past week:
“Commonwealth Fusion Systems, a start-up founded by scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said on Tuesday that it planned to build its first fusion power plant in Virginia, with the aim of generating zero-emissions electricity there in the early 2030s.
The proposed facility is among the first to be announced that would harness nuclear fusion, the process that powers the sun, to produce power commercially, a long-elusive goal that scientists have pursued for the better part of a century.
In theory, a fusion reactor could generate abundant electricity without releasing planet-warming carbon dioxide, and with no risk of large-scale nuclear accidents. But moving the concept out of the lab and onto the power grid has proved immensely difficult.”
The clear implication of this current hype cycle is that fusion is nearly ready for commercial deployment—a historic milestone on humanity’s collective journey towards energy nirvana. Why else break ground and assemble ribbon-cutting politicians if it weren’t? The Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s educational standing and Virginia’s status as home to the Central Intelligence Agency add an assumed layer of reputational credibility to the news. What to make of it all? Is the world truly nearing “pencils down” on oil, gas, fission, and renewables? Let’s don a pair of Beer goggles and assess the potential purposes behind these headlines.