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Please, don't build another Large Hadron Collider

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Re: Please, don't build another Large Hadron Collider

#251

Post by Woodi »

martin_a wrote: post #213
Georgelemental wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No, that could never happen here , are you crazy? We're a prosperous and civilized nation! - Every prosperous and civilized nation's last words

I think the EU as a group of states seems to work quite well. Furthermore it seems like anti-democratic behaviour is getting punished now, too, if you look over to Poland. I'm quite optimistic that this will further improve.

Dude, what is your definition of "democracy" ? Because your opinion about Poland state seems to be really, really brain-washed. At best.

Democracy as in free election ? Perfect democracy here - one party won twice, other parties lost. You call it a problem ?

Democracy as in free speech ? Dude ! Wake up ! In Poland is so much free speech that it's boarding with anarchy ! Eg. almost decade of opposition internally and internationally literally urges to harm their own country just to retake power - without any gov punishment or something. Mrs. Merkel ex-pet, Tusk, literally calls for purges, without any law procedures ! Freedom bordered with anarchy !

Maybe you are aware judges here act as caste and they do whatever they want. Law is twisted at will here. Do not saying all the time, just when they want it. And that judges are official* opposition of elected party ! Judges ! Acting politically ! You call that despotism ? Or too much freedom ?

Do we have military state like in France ? No. Do we have censorship like in Germany ? No. Do we have problems with making government like Italy ? No. Do our PM resigned because of corruption and next PM promised silence and no more leeks like in GB ? No.

You see ? It's oasis of peace and happiness here compared to rest of the EU ;)

But tell me pls, what you have in mind about that "anti-democracy" in Poland ?

Re: Please, don't build another Large Hadron Collider

#252

Post by yboris »

We are currently living in a very important time in humanity's history that the philosopher Toby Ord calls The Precipice. We likely have a 1 out of 6 chance over the next century to end humanity (all human life is destroyed), so this century we absolutely must decrease the chances of existential threats to humanity or perish. This should be humanity's #1 priority, yet at the moment we spend less on it than we do on ice cream.

https://theprecipice.com/

Please read this book, which is in my opinion the most important book written this century.

Re: Please, don't build another Large Hadron Collider

#253

Post by dylan604 »

chriswarbo wrote: post #245
matthewdgreen wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not a particle physicist, but I think the entire history of human scientific discovery is set again that proposition. Namely: (1) that we have a fundamental theory that describes the Universe; (2) that it is within our technical capability to experimentally verify the reality of that theory; and (3) we choose not to do so. It's easy to monday-morning quarterback a result that was successful and unexciting, but imagin…

Information is a measure of surprise: we should choose to verify our predictions; but it's disappointing when our predictions turn out to be correct. We want our best predictions to be proven wrong, since we would learn a lot.

I get where you're coming from, but at the same time, we have to KNOW things before we can continue to theorize about new things. If you keep theorizing on things that turn out to not be true, then it's just a waste of everyone's time. Find things that are true, theorize on the next step, test, prove/disprove, lather, rinse, repeat.

Just coming up with stuff and disproving it isn't always "learning a lot", it's just showing how bad we are at logically thinking about the next step.

Re: Please, don't build another Large Hadron Collider

#254

Post by leeter »

FairlyInvolved wrote: post #74
rvieira wrote: post #9

Driven by this post, out of curiosity I started looking at the price tag of some mega-projects around the world. Interestingly, the most expensive ones are almost always highway systems. Can someone briefly explain why? I'm my naive view it's mostly asphalt and terrain work.

Several people have answered this from the angle of why the cost is large, but missed the other (necessary) angle - the benefits are also massive and well understood. Plenty of potential projects have huge costs but they don't exist because the benefits aren't big enough, highways exhibit a sort of survivor bias in the mega project world. Highway systems create massive economic benefits that are relatively simple to…

It's reasons like this that I don't necessarily see LHC or whatever rev of it as a problem per se. If the technologies developed to get there pay back the cost of the collider then it could end up being a very expensive toy and I wouldn't care. To me it's about the journey and getting there, because for big science in many case the real science is not the tool produced at the end but the science and engineering that has to go into making that tool.

Thus the question I have to the scientists pushing for a new LHC is: "What would we get from the journey?" If they truly believe in the project they'll have a dozen technologies that need to be developed to make their project happen, all of which have practical applications beyond their experiment. If they don't they'll just be pushing for "same but larger" which is IMO a waste of resources. Because why shouldn't we be investing in the technology to do "Same but smaller" in that case so we can do more with less?

Re: Please, don't build another Large Hadron Collider

#256

Post by vixen99 »

concordDance wrote: post #234
Georgelemental wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Embryo selection"—is that a euphemism for "murdering any unborn child that doesn't have all the "right" genes? Because if so I think your definition of "people's lives" must be very different from mine.

Well yes, but anti-abortionists are a rapidly shrinking minority that I assumed were pretty much extinct on hacker news.

Definition? Do you mean no limits at all up to and immediately prior to birth? I'm not sure you'd get unanimity on that. That implies a few seconds separating legal permission to kill from infanticide.

Re: Please, don't build another Large Hadron Collider

#257

Post by jcranmer »

mhh__ wrote: post #242
pfortuny wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There can be lots of new alternatives. Why not fund those instead, by creating “moonshine physics departments”? (That is just a comment, not a suggestion). The problem with String Theory is it unfalsifiability and that it has not even grown to explain 3D phenomena AT ALL. 40 years later. Quantum Mechanics and Relativity (both special and general) gave results in a single decade.

What do you mean by 3D phenomena? String theory is as far as I have ever read the only thing even close to a working theory in this area. That doesn't mean it's correct but in my admittedly limited understanding of the literature many alternatives are either dead or are similar to string theory only without the underlying principles. People do work on alternatives. there are a lot of smart people unhappy with string…

Of all the post-Standard Model theories in existence, string theory has the best publicists and has (to a degree) sucked up all of the air out of competing theories, so that the lack of competing theories is less due to string theory being better and more due to being unable to get funding to work on competing theories.

As far as I understand it, string theory has yet to provide a working model of quantum gravity despite focused work on it for ~30 years. That's not exactly a ringing endorsement.

Re: Please, don't build another Large Hadron Collider

#258

Post by rkwasny »

The target never is to just "build" bigger LHC.

The important part is "building" which pumps billions into research programs for improving materials/electronics etc.

Sure we can defund all expensive science and maintain the status quo, last time we did this dark ages happened.

Re: Please, don't build another Large Hadron Collider

#259

Post by tsimionescu »

SiempreViernes wrote: post #241
japanuspus wrote: post #73

As a low-energy quantum physicist, I completely agree: Experimental high-energy physics has become primarily an industrial subsidy scheme[1], and if we want the highest chance of reaching a grand unified theory, it seems the money would be much better spent elsewhere (cosmology, space-based observatories, research positions for young physicists without publish-or-perish incentives to run for the latest fad). The shor…

> I find it much more likely that we would learn new physics by giving 10-year grants to 1000 young physicist of revolutionary spirit Not entirely sure how this "lets ignore the knowledge we've accumulated and start over afresh" idea is supposed to mesh with the notion that science is a product that builds on earlier results. Or are you seriously imagining that there is a cabbal of old researchers that have found a m…

It's also often said that science advances one funeral at a time. It's entirely possible for an entire field to be stuck in a local maximum and refuse to admit that they are not advancing, especially when huge money depends on it. A recent example is the amyloid hypothesis for Alzheimers, which has failed every single time it was tested in clinical trials, but is still being pushed again and again, mostly by a cabal of academics that refuse to accept that were wrong, and industry bureaucrats that are afraid to challenge the orthodoxy (no one was ever fired for approving research proposed by the foremost expert in their field!).

Re: Please, don't build another Large Hadron Collider

#260

Post by IshKebab »

virtue3 wrote: post #61
black_puppydog wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see the same argument (secondary innovations) being made for war-time/military research. But I don't buy it there, and I don't buy it here. Investing the same money in something that has a known and positive primary effect will produce the same amount of secondary benefits. So if you can think of something more fruitful to do with these 100B, do that; the secondary benefits will keep coming anyhow.

silicon valley is a DIRECT result of the secondary effect of radar systems. https://web.stanford.edu/group/ree/archives/archive08/usa/pr... shrug . It's always hard to guess?

Okay? He's not saying secondary effects don't exist. He's saying you don't get more secondary effects from projects whose primary purpose is highly speculative.
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