Please, don't build another Large Hadron Collider • Hacker News Board

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

#361

Post by lthornberry » Tue, Jun 07, 2022, 6:36 PM UTC

namaria wrote: post #221

musha68k wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How about thinking about this on a grander scale / in the open - and just have more and even larger “industrial subsidy schemes”? Wouldn’t you like to work on another BIG SCIENCE project that tries to find answers to something that seems more worthwhile (to you)?

I'd much rather live on a planet with too many giant science projects than have top engineers and scientists with obscene budgets for blowing up whole countries into the middle ages for political gain.

Agree. The total US non-defense research budget has hovered below 2% of federal spending for the last four decades. The military budget has been around 15%. We need more research, not less.

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

#362

Post by Invictus0 » Tue, Jun 07, 2022, 6:38 PM UTC

BaseballPhysics wrote: post #333

LordDragonfang wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It had utility to the US government in demonstrating to the Russians our ability to accurately move payloads on the planetary scale. Actually landing on the moon was just a conveniently goal-aligned PR win. Beyond that though, being able to put things at that scale in orbit has shown major dividends at in every sector.

> It had utility to the US government in demonstrating to the Russians our ability to accurately move payloads on the planetary scale. Actually landing on the moon was just a conveniently goal-aligned PR win. Beyond that though, being able to put things at that scale in orbit has shown major dividends at in every sector. You don't need to put men on the surface of the moon to gain any of these benefits. The US govern…

But why are you talking out of your ass? The point of going to the moon was never to dimly increase utility to the public. JFK took us to the moon because "No single space project in this period will be more impressive to mankind, or more important for the long-range exploration of space".

https://www.jfklibrary.org/learn/about-jfk/historic-speeches...

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

#363

Post by dekhn » Tue, Jun 07, 2022, 6:40 PM UTC

kensai wrote: post #269

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

folks were already putting postscript papers on FTP servers. Discoverability (linking) was the big hard problem.

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

#364

Post by gralx » Tue, Jun 07, 2022, 6:41 PM UTC

BaseballPhysics wrote: post #356

whatshisface wrote: post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of people wanted to cancel the moon landing program while it was happening, and they eventually did.

And yet many ascribe a whole range of knock-on benefits as a consequence of the Apollo missions. Had those people had their way, one wonders what technologies we wouldn't have today because, in the moment, no one could find a clear utilitarian justification for the program.

Knock-on effects can just as well be ascribed to alternative targets for those Apollo funds. Those don't take much imagination to come up with, e.g. reducing the student-teacher ratios in schools.

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

#365

Post by RcouF1uZ4gsC » Tue, Jun 07, 2022, 6:46 PM UTC

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, and let them use the tools they could build themselves, than by handing that money to the old guard which has produced nothing of significance for the last two generations.

What is interesting, is that a lot of the fundamental physics theories were discovered by amateurs. Einstein was a patent clerk, for example.

Maybe we should work on democratizing data collection, and making more raw data available for people to work with. With the advent of cloud computing and on demand computing, maybe your hobby group could code up a an analysis and run it on AWS for a few hundred dollars and discover some new theory.

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

#366

Post by pessimizer » Tue, Jun 07, 2022, 6:54 PM UTC

pyb wrote: post #330

fennecfoxen wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it doesn't mean the money will go to 1000 experiments. It's more likely that nothing will be funded Perhaps it is reasonable to allow the money to remain unspent on topics related to physics! Spending has opportunity costs, after all; if these other experiments are not really the measure of the cost, then something else of value to society surely is.

The premise of this discussion is that those 1000 experiments would likely to be very scientifically vaaluable.

The premise of this subthread is that failing to fund another collider does not mean that those 1000 experiments will be funded. The person you're replying to is saying that even if money not thrown at a collider doesn't end up going to 1000 physics experiments, it will go to something. If that something is net-useful, it will be better than a new collider whose usefulness is questionable.

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

#367

Post by pessimizer » Tue, Jun 07, 2022, 7:00 PM UTC

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…

> That was basically the promise of the EU - peace through wealth - let's create some more.

Doing useless science is the destruction of wealth. The destruction of wealth is pleasurable, don't get me wrong, but that's all it is. They could build gargantuan statues to do the same thing, or accumulate huge stockpiles of weapons.

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

#368

Post by BaseballPhysics » Tue, Jun 07, 2022, 7:14 PM UTC

Invictus0 wrote: post #362

BaseballPhysics wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It had utility to the US government in demonstrating to the Russians our ability to accurately move payloads on the planetary scale. Actually landing on the moon was just a conveniently goal-aligned PR win. Beyond that though, being able to put things at that scale in orbit has shown major dividends at in every sector. You don't need to put men on the surface of the moon to gain any of these benefits. The US govern…

But why are you talking out of your ass? The point of going to the moon was never to dimly increase utility to the public. JFK took us to the moon because "No single space project in this period will be more impressive to mankind, or more important for the long-range exploration of space". https://www.jfklibrary.org/learn/about-jfk/historic-speeches...

> But why are you talking out of your ass?

Keep it civil, please.

> The point of going to the moon was never to dimly increase utility to the public.

I think maybe you've lost the thread of the conversation?

The original claim was that scientific research/projects should be funded based on evident utility.

My point is that if you fund such projects purely based on immediately evident utility, then projects like Apollo (among many others) don't happen.

My unspoken corollary is that that would represent a loss to humanity, and that pure utilitarianism is too narrow a frame to use when assessing the value of a given project.

Honestly, I think we're in agreement, here, and I'm not sure I understand your aggressive response.

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

#369

Post by geysersam » Tue, Jun 07, 2022, 7:20 PM UTC

fsloth wrote: post #175

dTal wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In a scientific sense - no. It was predicted, it was found. No theories needed rewriting. Significant would have been if they'd failed to find it.

I would claim finding it was equally significant. Theory is not reality but just a model until verified. I know there is a trend in physics where computing is supposed to suffice without actually verifying anything but that is just wrong - I presume this notion is driven by the incentives to focus on publishing more than tedious collaboration.

I agree. But isn't the issue that there is not really anything like Higgs for a new larger collider?

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

#370

Post by sandworm101 » Tue, Jun 07, 2022, 7:32 PM UTC

Ok, we don't want to another LHC as a physics experiment, but what about all the engineering coming out of such projects? From superconductors to data science, the LHS has done lots of new stuff. Whether the core science experiments succeeds or fails might be beside the point. There are other outcomes to such projects than pure science answers. One can argue that the ISS hasn't produced much science, but without that space station we probably wouldn't have seen nearly as much progress in lowering the costs of accessing space.

The link between CERN and the web is a great example of something that had nothing to do with the core science but was certainly worth more than the investment.