Here is proof that shows 0.999… = 1. Write 0.9999…. as:

x = sum{1,inf} 9/10^n

(So sum 9/10^n from n=1, inf)

Now multiply by 10:

10 x = sum{1,inf} 9/10^{n-1}

Rearrange this as:

10 x = 9 + sum{1,inf} 9/10^n

(sorry, skipping a step as it is very inconvenient to type math here! If you are confused, replace n-1 by m and then you will get the above easily)

Which means that:

10 x = 9 + x.

So obviously, 9x = 9 or x = 1. Hence, 0.9999…. = 1, QED.

The FT headline is misleading and false. There is really no fusion experiment that has shown any net energy gain. Ever. Even this result from Livermore is not showing net energy gain. When fusion scientists talk about energy gain in such experiments, they mean the gain in fusion products compared to just the heating energy put into the plasma. This DOES NOT count the energy required to run the lasers and the systems needed to run the experiment. It also does not say how the fusion products can be used to produced power. This is a hard problem, and capturing fusion output and converting it to electricity will incur further losses.

Fusion is very far from being an “unlimited source of energy”. Very, very far. If it happens in our lifetime (say by 2050) it will be surprising. A better approach is to do nuclear fission. We know how fission works, we have working power-plants and the power is cheap and abundant. There are hurdles in nuclear waste disposal, but they are not as insurmountable as it appears.

I should say that this misunderstanding of fusion energy “gain” is very widespread in the media. I do not know if the scientists involved are doing this deliberately. They are not technically lying as the paper will describe everything accurately, but they are also not telling the full truth and perhaps let the media be fooled into thinking that they really produced net energy. I would not trust anything that comes out of the Energy Secretary’s mouth. She is not qualified to understand this level of technical details, and any case, Biden WH is hell-bent on politicizing science, and they are more than happy to let media do the misleading for them.

One of the assumptions built into modern sciences, specially the “soft” sciences and humanities, is that one needs a lot of data to come to valid, scientific conclusions. This is actually completely false. Consider the Pythagoras theorem: one does not need to cut out right-angled triangles and measure their sides to come to the conclusion that the sum of the square of the short sides is the same as the square of the longest side. A bit of thinking is all that is needed. Hence, Greek texts on physics almost have no experimental results but assume that any fool can measure but only the clever man can start from these simple postulates to build an extremely sophisticated mathematical edifice. See, for example, Archimedes’s work on hydrostatic equilibrium. Obviously, he had done some simple experiments but felt it was too embarrassing to report on them when he had far more complicated theorems to prove based on his “simple” observations.

In this sense, independent of the hiding of data, it is impossible to hide the simple fact that people are different and that there are group difference, often very profound. There is no way one can look at the ancient, deep and sophisticated civilizations of China and India, for example, and then at the primitive African “civilizations” to see that there must be some biological cause underlying this difference. The former civilizations had invented sophisticated literature, philosophy, medicine, science and mathematics (and religions) and the other was still living essentially in a primitive and per-written world. Genetic and race-based data is not needed to come to this conclusion. Just some thinking is enough.

Christianity, that came much later and that was a phase-change from the somewhat primitive & materialistic Judaic world-view, represented a great change in the inner life of Western man. The “Word” was central and through the Word the idea that concepts of literature, science and philosophy could be transmitted across long periods of time, and to anyone and not just one’s own ethnic group, took a hold in the Western mind. Hence the Western love of abstractions (for good and bad) and the deep fruits that emerged from it, including modern science and technology. I mean, what is an iPhone but a reification of the abstract notion of man’s control on the natural world?

Hence, I think this push to keep people ignorant is bound to fail and in fact is failing. As things become more abstract and complicated (consider that < 0.001% of people can tell how say a car or a rocket engine or a computer works, leave alone understand say abstract group theory) the biological differences become more acute. After a day at work on problems of physics and mathematics when one heads home and sees "youths" running around with pants around their knees, hoodies on their heads or racing around quiet neighborhoods creating nuisance, it is impossible not to come to the conclusion that these behaviors are biologically driven. In fact, technology and science, specially deep abstractions in physics, mathematics and philosophy, heighten the differences and not reduce them. We become even more biologically driven and not less. (Contra say Pinker who thinks we can overcome our biology, we really become more and more what our biology makes us to be).

Hence, I would not worry about any "man who wants you ignorant". The man may want anything he likes but this is like saying "this man wants to dam the ocean" or "this man wants to block the sun by his girth". Things are past that point now and it is impossible. Following Caear we can exclaim, "Hence! wilt thou lift up Mount Olympus?"

Here is a view from inside an Ivy League institution, from a rather hard-core theoretical physics field. The reality is that even core physics, engineering and mathematics departments are now captured by these “midwit gynocrats”. It is is essentially impossible to go without a single day and not hear from these about some DIE initiative or other.

Every proposal one submits to the Federal agencies now requires a statement on “inclusive and equitable” research. So imagine I am trying to understand some hairy physics problem, say in high-energy physics. Even the equations can’t be understood by 1 in 100,000 people. Well, it does not matter. I need to write a 3 page document on how I will ensure this research is done in an inclusive and equitable way. Now, this statement needs to be reviewed by some DIE Commissar who is likely a black woman. She will have much to say, wasting hours of my time in figuring out how I can involve some “minorities” in my research. Never mind that these mathematical fields require very specialized skills and have very few women, leave alone black or Hispanics in them.

But it does not end here! The midwit gynocrat will evaluate my annual appraisal to ensure I have a statement on diversity and how I plan to contribute to it over the next year. Of course, one midwit is not enough for a large department, so we need to hire many more to keep up with all the DIE crap constantly churned in the bowels of the said midwits. This is a exponential process: more midwits, more DIE crap and even more midwits need to be hired. At one point the whole university will become a giant DIE jobs programs and all actual scholarship will be considered a completely irrelevant thing. We are almost there: consider Claudine Gay. No need to say more.

The reality is that, as you concluded here, these institutions can’t be saved. The rot has spread everywhere, from top to bottom. The higher you go, the more mediocre, bland and boring the administrators get. They all sound the same: diversity drones that could be replaced by ChatGPT without much loss (and a lot to gain!). Sadly, there is very little that can be done. No one has the courage to take these institutions apart. They are now a part of US Empire and as long as that exists, these institutions will also exist, providing a steady stream of useful idiots for the warmongers in Washington.