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Please, don't build another Large Hadron Collider

bigthink.com

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261–270 of 467 posts

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

#261

Post by Neil44 »

mehrdada wrote: post #11

Cannot disagree more. "Making a car is expensive, so let's not do that to explore 1000 miles out. Let's just have 1000 people walk one mile and explore." Simply ridiculous comparison. But sure, let's find a way to build/experiment LHC++ less expensively. What's concerning to me, however, is the attitude towards curiosity that this article exhibits. They should rename their domain to smallthink.com.

I agree, it reads like a variation of 'there's nothing left to discover so lets all go home and not bother'

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

#262

Post by qiskit »

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…

> Einstein and the quantum pioneers

Einstein wasn't a 'quantum pioneer'. Einstein was a proponent of classical physics and against quantum physics.

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

#263

Post by Quixotica1 »

willis936 wrote: post #188
morbia wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(Former PhD student in Particle Physics Pheno here, far from an expert) Of course it was a significant discovery, but honestly it would have been a far more interesting if we detected literally nothing. It's kind of weird because it was marketted as a success story to the public (and don't get me wrong, it was) but theorists were very confident that it was there by 2012. Thus far, it behaves exactly as expected accor…

In theory, theory and practice are the same. In practice, they are not.

Yogi Berra

I was thinking the same thing! Haha

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

#264

Post by larryett »

musha68k wrote: post #67
moonchrome wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your analogy is fundamentally flawed. More realistically : we can only build one car in the entire world, where a tiny minority of people can even understand the potential benefit, and anything they see will be completely useless for everyone else in day to day life because we need a civilisation level effort to even detect the implications of their theory. If their theory had some real world implications - you would…

Europe is so rich it can easily afford all of the great project ideas outlined in the article in addition to a new LHC (and then some). Let's think big indeed, the author unfortunately has a very reductive vision for the future. Instead how about: A renaissance of funding - BIG SCIENCE - education, jobs. That was basically the promise of the EU - peace through wealth - let's create some more. Let's bring back the exc…

The problem is western society doesn't really believe in science at this point to save us, it believes in technology.

All our problems are just the engineering problem of AGI. Why waste money on something like this when AI will be "smarter" than us by the time it is built?

We should just do nothing and wait for AI to build the instruments it wants.

Maybe there is the slightest hope in this "overpriced" and long delayed space telescope that is getting ready right now but even with that the narrative will end up being how "AI finds alien planet" or "AI sees first star in the universe".

To really build a new LHC it just needs to be marketed to the populace as a tool for AI research. Done. Everyone knows AI is the future and we are not so stupid to skimp on AI research funding.

Spend all that money on researching particle physics though? What a fucking waste of money.

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

#265

Post by BrandoElFollito »

As someone who did their PhD at CERN - I agree.

The place is fantastic, you get to meet great people and life is cool.

But what you are working on is completely useless for humanity. Knowing that there is a quantum foam is knowledge that brings us nowhere. If someone could answer to this "and so what?" in a meaningful way I would be glad to change my mind. For the time being, the energy scale we are making these discoveries is not useful.

"yes, but this is fundamental science..." → yes it is, but where does this fundamental science helps in everyday problems? Have we had a case where the Higgs boson changed anything in our life?

The quantum mechanics of the 1920's changed our everyday world. We could build a whole technology on it, and understand things that changes our everyday life. Is there a comparable impact on knowing that the Higgs boson is +/- 10^-9 (or whatever) aligned with the theoretical model?

We have so many problems where physics is needed (energy production to start with, and then exploring biology), the money should go there instead. Even if it means having less particle physicists the same way we have less philosophes.

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

#266

Post by orangesite »

BrandoElFollito wrote: post #265

As someone who did their PhD at CERN - I agree. The place is fantastic, you get to meet great people and life is cool. But what you are working on is completely useless for humanity. Knowing that there is a quantum foam is knowledge that brings us nowhere. If someone could answer to this "and so what?" in a meaningful way I would be glad to change my mind. For the time being, the energy scale we are making these disc…

There's a point at which theory needs to catch up to observations before it makes sense to gather more observations.

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

#267

Post by telotortium »

martin_a wrote: post #212
dane-pgp wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, we'd only kill the disabled and mediocre children standing in the way of our Utopia, nothing immoral like those awful Chinese people do.

We're talking about embryos here. I think you're well aware about the ongoing discussions on when those are to be considered humans and when not. That's not an easy topic, obviously, but I'm fairly confident that we won't throw babys in the garbage can if we don't like them but try to make those decisions as early as possible.

> I'm fairly confident that we won't throw babys in the garbage can if we don't like them

Why not? What exactly is the limiting criterion? Sentience is the main criterion that people who want to argue for animal rights and yet support abortion use, and it's a pretty squishy criterion. Already Peter Singer supports veganism and effective altruism (i.e., rebranded utilitarianism), and yet is perfectly okay with both abortion and infanticide, at least until the child gets "sentience".

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

#268

Post by tgsovlerkhgsel »

mehrdada wrote: post #11

Cannot disagree more. "Making a car is expensive, so let's not do that to explore 1000 miles out. Let's just have 1000 people walk one mile and explore." Simply ridiculous comparison. But sure, let's find a way to build/experiment LHC++ less expensively. What's concerning to me, however, is the attitude towards curiosity that this article exhibits. They should rename their domain to smallthink.com.

If there is plenty of unexplored space, and all the car helps you do is figure out what is 1000 miles out but you can only explore one direction with it and can't directly bring anything back... yeah, sending 1000 people out one mile is probably more beneficial.

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

#269

Post by kensai »

BrandoElFollito wrote: post #265

As someone who did their PhD at CERN - I agree. The place is fantastic, you get to meet great people and life is cool. But what you are working on is completely useless for humanity. Knowing that there is a quantum foam is knowledge that brings us nowhere. If someone could answer to this "and so what?" in a meaningful way I would be glad to change my mind. For the time being, the energy scale we are making these disc…

It's ironic that you write this comment on the World Wide Web. An invention made in the "useless for humanity" CERN... :-/

https://home.cern/science/computing/birth-web

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

#270

Post by gls2ro »

larryett wrote: post #264
musha68k wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Europe is so rich it can easily afford all of the great project ideas outlined in the article in addition to a new LHC (and then some). Let's think big indeed, the author unfortunately has a very reductive vision for the future. Instead how about: A renaissance of funding - BIG SCIENCE - education, jobs. That was basically the promise of the EU - peace through wealth - let's create some more. Let's bring back the exc…

The problem is western society doesn't really believe in science at this point to save us, it believes in technology. All our problems are just the engineering problem of AGI. Why waste money on something like this when AI will be "smarter" than us by the time it is built? We should just do nothing and wait for AI to build the instruments it wants. Maybe there is the slightest hope in this "overpriced" and long delay…

How do you know that AGI can be reached?

We dont know if we will ever reach AGI and if we want to theoretically demonstrate if we can reach it or not then we need to rely on science.

Engineering alone cannot answer theoretical questions.

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