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Will Jack
@willwjack
happy sisyphus, cofounder @tryunusual
San Francisco, CA
Joined January 2012
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  • user avatar
    Will Jack
    @willwjack
    Jul 19, 2021
    Humanity is on the cusp of practically limitless energy via nuclear fusion and basically nobody is talking about it, which is nuts. I left working in fusion because I was skeptical of the field's ability to progress, but my mind has totally changed (1/n)
  • user avatar
    Will Jack
    @willwjack
    Jul 19, 2021
    Replying to @willwjack
    Of course it's still a *massive* effort to pull this off, but it's now more of an engineering + business problem than a science problem, and companies like @CFS_energy are well on their way to solving it. Fusion's no longer 'always 30 years away' (4/n)
  • user avatar
    Will Jack
    @willwjack
    Jul 19, 2021
    Replying to @willwjack
    And just imagine what possibilities it could unlock for humanity in the limit... fusion drives are practically a necessity for us to become an interstellar civilization. They run on stardust, and there's not much else other than that out in deep space. (8/n)
  • user avatar
    Will Jack
    @willwjack
    Jul 19, 2021
    Replying to @willwjack
    And as someone that's worked in both, limitless energy by fusion is WAY closer to being 'solved' than AGI is. More people should be excited. (6/n)
  • user avatar
    Will Jack
    @willwjack
    Jul 19, 2021
    Replying to @willwjack
    WELL, recent advances in mass manufacturing high temperature superconductors make WAY higher magnetic fields possible, and hence make Q >> 1 fusion possible! (3/n)
  • user avatar
    Will Jack
    @willwjack
    Jul 19, 2021
    Replying to @willwjack
    Humans have built >100 tokamak fusion devices, which use magnets to confine and heat fusion fuel. We've hit a peak energy out/energy in (Q) of ~.67 Empirically, it turns out that Q scales *kind of* with the magnetic field cubed. 2x the magnetic field, 8x the efficiency. (2/n)
  • user avatar
    Will Jack
    @willwjack
    Jul 19, 2021
    Replying to @willwjack
    Two of the biggest questions society faces are where to get energy and what to do with it. It's vogue to talk about how we may build AGI to revolutionize how we answer the latter, but few are excited that fusion is so close to making the former practically a non-issue (5/n)
  • user avatar
    Will Jack
    @willwjack
    Jul 19, 2021
    Replying to @willwjack
    Like the AI space, there's a fair amount of BS and noise in the commercial fusion space right now, but there's also way more clearly defined signal. Some teams with good theoretically + empirically informed approaches, and tractable plans to execute. (7/n)
  • user avatar
    Will Jack
    @willwjack
    Jul 19, 2021
    The world would be a happier place if people used anonymous accounts more often. Anon accounts teach you how great it feels to be yourself free of other's expectations. Once you feel that, you remove limits on yourself in non-anon settings, which boosts happiness and confidence.
  • user avatar
    Will Jack
    @willwjack
    Jul 18, 2021
    Going away for a long weekend with people makes you bond so much closer with them vs. something like hanging out from time to time/traditional friendmaking. Even if you sit around doing remote work or doing nothing most of the time. Seems like something people should do more of.
  • user avatar
    Will Jack
    @willwjack
    Jul 20, 2021
    A lot of the best and most effective people I know seem to have a view of the world that I'd describe as 'Rational Romanticism'. (1/n)
  • user avatar
    Will Jack
    @willwjack
    Jul 19, 2021
    Sadly, not that I know of, which is why I made this thread on Twitter!
  • user avatar
    Will Jack
    @willwjack
    Mar 7, 2021
    Was writing about AGI in google docs. When I typed 'the extreme extent of this is automation ', the AI autocomplete suggested the continuation 'of all human jobs'. Rebellious, I ignored it and wrote 'of all human jobs' myself. Screw you BERT, you don't have to rub it in.
  • user avatar
    Will Jack
    @willwjack
    Jul 22, 2021
    All I want in life is as much conviction and energy as the people who endlessly argue on a single Twitter thread for days on end.