He was asking for funding. For funding, you need to convince people that it's worthwhile. There are many ways to do that. One is to say "trust me", another is to persuade through education, a third is to use money which was promised for another purpose, and so on.
He used the first approach. Only, he did it in a way that's similar to what a lot of kooks do - throw graphs up on a screen, without the time to review them, and on a topic which few in the audience will understand. That is not a way to convince people to fund your project.
You say "That tends to be how geniuses talk." That is incorrect. Look at Fermi, Feynman, Gould, Sagan - all considered geniuses, and all renowned for their ability to explain things. Darwin's "The Origin of Species" was meant for a wide audience, and was not a technical monograph. Freeman Dyson has written some marvelous essays, including his "A New Newton" book review of Gleick's Newton biography. Just take a look at the Nobel Prize lectures and you'll see good evidence that Nobel Prize winners are also able to explain their work using something other than a blizzard of viewgraphs. Those people are ones I admire.
Instead, I think this sort of presentation tends to be the way that people who are convinced of their genius-ness talk. And again, it's the sort of way kooks talk.
I want to be clear here. I'm not saying that he's a kook. The polywell reactor may be the power source of the future. But that presentation detracted from his goal, I presume, of getting funding for the project. Really, if you didn't know it was Bussard, would you be convinced? If I had given the same talk, in the same style, would you be willing to contribute $10 million in funding?
He was asking for funding. For funding, you need to convince people that it's worthwhile. There are many ways to do that. One is to say "trust me", another is to persuade through education, a third is to use money which was promised for another purpose, and so on.
He used the first approach. Only, he did it in a way that's similar to what a lot of kooks do - throw graphs up on a screen, without the time to review them, and on a topic which few in the audience will understand. That is not a way to convince people to fund your project.
You say "That tends to be how geniuses talk." That is incorrect. Look at Fermi, Feynman, Gould, Sagan - all considered geniuses, and all renowned for their ability to explain things. Darwin's "The Origin of Species" was meant for a wide audience, and was not a technical monograph. Freeman Dyson has written some marvelous essays, including his "A New Newton" book review of Gleick's Newton biography. Just take a look at the Nobel Prize lectures and you'll see good evidence that Nobel Prize winners are also able to explain their work using something other than a blizzard of viewgraphs. Those people are ones I admire.
Instead, I think this sort of presentation tends to be the way that people who are convinced of their genius-ness talk. And again, it's the sort of way kooks talk.
I want to be clear here. I'm not saying that he's a kook. The polywell reactor may be the power source of the future. But that presentation detracted from his goal, I presume, of getting funding for the project. Really, if you didn't know it was Bussard, would you be convinced? If I had given the same talk, in the same style, would you be willing to contribute $10 million in funding?