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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

#431

Post by guerrilla »

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…

> "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?

God, people like you are the worst. You never know when something could be useful in the future and I think the assumption that fundamentally understanding the universe will never be useful is just absurdly ridiculous. But that's the besides the point, because understanding these things has value in and of itself simply for the fact that people are curious! Is it worth $X billion? That's a different question. But to say it's worthless is just absolute nonsense.

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

#432

Post by guerrilla »

cookingmyserver wrote: post #279
BaseballPhysics wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> yes it is, but where does this fundamental science helps in everyday problems? PhD or not, this is an oddly utilitarian view of science. I suspect there would be countless discoveries that never would have been made had we only ever weighed an experiment based purely on its ability to "help in everyday problems". I mean, why, say, develop the theory of evolution? At the time that was irrelevant to "everyday problem…

I think it is important to remember the context of the discussion. I think I it is completely reasonable, and not odd at all, to have a utilitarian view of science, when you are talking about spending $100 Billion .

That's a different question though and they were not arguing that point at all. Their claim was that it had no value unless it was useful and that it's not useful, both parts of which are clearly false. Is its value worth $100 is another topic (the actual topic of this post I supposed.)

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

#433

Post by moonchrome »

alach11 wrote: post #421
moonchrome wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Money is just one small aspect of it - getting into that kind of research probably requires >2σ IQ, then there's the affinity and motivation - you are left with a small pool of people who can do this work. By funding toy projects and pipe dreams you are crowding out useful research - and there's plenty of fundamental work in material sciences, superconductivity, etc. that could actually improve the lives of everyone

It sounds like you're worried that creating high-paying fundamental science jobs would pull smart people away from engineering. But it would be more likely to pull smart people from zero-sum (or at least low-sum) fields like advertising and finance.

No - there's a lot of science to be done in these fields - it's just applied (ie. practical). When you fund "fundamental" research - you're not only diverting limited funds - you're diverting limited talent - so it's double crowding out.

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

#434

Post by edgyquant »

Beldin wrote: post #419
pessimizer wrote: post #366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Physics is (or should be) regarded enviably by other disciplines. They keep managing to get these crazily expensive multinational projects funded: LHC, ITER, various space telescopes... multi-billion projects. I honestly cannot recall an official scientific experiment or tool in another discipline funded for even only 100 million. Just imagine that level of funding for your favourite discipline. The direct scientific…

Computer Science? Biology (there are tons of multinational research labs.) I also wouldn’t consider telescopes physics. That’s astronomy.

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

#435

Post by sanxiyn »

XorNot wrote: post #304
pfortuny wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry but several of the most prominent string theorists have gone from “LHC will find this to be a fact” to “We need a bigger LHC” as time passed. Not very trustworthy.

Gonna have to ask you to show your work here: who specifically made an LHC prediction and is now asking for as bigger LHC?

Many did, but Gordon Kane is a standard example because he is kind of more brazen about it than most.

In 2011: "This is a profound turning point in the quest for a fundamental unified theory of the physical world. The properties and mass of the LHC's Higgs boson suggest that physicists will soon find superpartners for particles, and that we have begun to connect string theory to the real world." from https://www.nature.com/articles/480415a. We didn't find superpartners.

In 2019: "One important lesson from studying such models is that we should not have expected to find superpartners at the LHC with masses below about 1500 GeV." from https://physicstoday.scitation.org/do/10.1063/PT.6.3.2019031.... I mean, yes, you should not have expected that, but you totally did, so why should I believe when you say the next LHC will find superpartners?

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

#436

Post by hypertele-Xii »

BaseballPhysics wrote: post #408
hypertele-Xii wrote: post #380

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I mean, why, say, develop the theory of evolution? At the time that was irrelevant to "everyday problems". "Charles Darwin discussed how selective breeding had been successful in producing change over time in his 1859 book, On the Origin of Species. Its first chapter discusses selective breeding and domestication of such animals as pigeons, cats, cattle, and dogs." (Wikipedia) Darwin's theory of evolution was liter…

> Darwin's theory of evolution was literally developed to explain the most significant food growing technique since irrigation. Correct. The theory of evolution explained selective breeding. But it wasn't needed to practice selective breeding, given it had been going on for literally millenia prior.

What's your point? That we shouldn't research medicine because humans have been using plants with healing properties since forever? That we shouldn't study the world because we're already living in it? That it's useless to explain one's self since one already exists?

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

#437

Post by mhh__ »

cycomanic wrote: post #360
mhh__ wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given that they are physicists and no one has actually been able to properly find an alternative to string theory isn't that what they're supposed to be doing? Isn't the main alternative LQG which is apparently a dead end?

The issue is not that nobody found an alternative to string theory, the problem is that nobody found a use for string theory. Essentially vast amount of funding and talent has been pushed into string theory (via the tenure processes at universities which favored string theory for a long time, because it was considered the cutting edge of theoretical physics), and what did we get from it? Not one falsifiable predictio…

String theory does make falsifiable predictions they're just at very high energy, technically.

For example my understanding of string theory is that Lorentz covariance must be exact, if you find this is either inconsistent or not true in reality then you have cut ze string.

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

#438

Post by BaseballPhysics »

hypertele-Xii wrote: post #436
BaseballPhysics wrote: post #408

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Darwin's theory of evolution was literally developed to explain the most significant food growing technique since irrigation. Correct. The theory of evolution explained selective breeding. But it wasn't needed to practice selective breeding, given it had been going on for literally millenia prior.

What's your point? That we shouldn't research medicine because humans have been using plants with healing properties since forever? That we shouldn't study the world because we're already living in it? That it's useless to explain one's self since one already exists?

I thought my point was obvious.

As a reminder, the original commenter stated they felt that research shouldn't be funded if there isn't a clear benefit/application. I.e. a utilitarian argument regarding research funding.

I used the theory of evolution as an example of research that, at the time, had no utilitarian value, but ultimately ended up enormously important.

You then countered that Darwin was, in part, trying to explain how selective breeding worked, and therefore the research had utility at the time.

I countered that no, that's not practical utility because understanding the mechanisms underlying selective breeding isn't necessary to do it; that simply explaining the natural world does not represent practical utility (if it did, we wouldn't be debating whether high energy research, which simply seeks to explain the natural world, is worth funding).

Therefore your comment does not invalidate my example of evolution as research that had no practical value or utility at the time.

My point in all of this is we should engage in research even if it doesn't have immediate, practical value because we can't know what research will or won't be useful in the fullness of time.

And that's ignoring the fact that I, in fact, absolutely agree with you that we should engage in research simply because learning about the natural world is a worthwhile pursuit.

Meanwhile, I honestly don't know what point you're trying to make given the context of the discussion.

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

#439

Post by XorNot »

rhn_mk1 wrote: post #390
XorNot wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That $100 billion doesn't vanish into thin air. It principally goes into plant and equipment to build the machine, as well as research into high tech manufacturing for the same. The world wide web which we are currently using was invented at CERN. You can literally go look at the proposal manuscript.

Isn't that the economic theory of broken windows? Given the choice between alternatives, added value should be considered, not added cost.

The problem with the the broken window narrative is that while invalid, it's counter-argument is also too simplistic when dealing with issues on the level of nation states.

Suppose you have a city where windows never get broken. So there's no demand for glazing for a few years. So the glaziers all go out of business and move onto other things - they break down their machines and factories and repurpose them.

Then there's a minor earthquake and it breaks a lot of windows. But the cost to replace them is enormous - there's no glass making business anymore! What should have cost a few hundred dollars costs hundreds of thousands because the machines and people need to be built and retrained, and the quality for a few months is kind of bad as well.

What should the city have done? Well, one answer would be to break some windows regularly to keep at least one glazier operating. Or we could pay the glazier to make windows we don't use right now, or ask them to build better windows under government grant to keep them available and maybe come up with an improved window design...etc. etc. etc.

A machine on the scale of the LHC doesn't get made in a factory which makes LHCs. It gets made in literally tens of thousands of businesses, each of which services a big order for some type of precision part that's either within their capabilities or that they might believe can be accomplished if demanded. Once they can do that, that becomes the new thing that everyone else can now buy potentially.

So yes, sure - let's talk about added value, but when "choosing between alternatives" you need to have some actual, reasonable alternatives. The postulate here - build ITER instead for fusion power - is exactly the same sort of project. And the reality is we can and should do both.

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

#440

Post by XorNot »

tsimionescu wrote: post #379
XorNot wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes it's said a lot by non-scientist commentators on internet forums, frequently about 5 seconds before they push whatever bizzare conspiracy theory they've made their pet cause. And there it is right in this post.

It was said by Max Planck (well, not this exact quote, but the spirit is entirely there), not exactly a non-scientist commenting on an internet forum. Also, the controversy over the amyloid hypothesis is real. Here [0] is a paper showing arguments for and against with 268 citations. Here [1] is a more journalistic article in Nature. While this is still up in the air, it's nby no means a "conspiracy theory" to suggest…

A better qualified person saying something doesn't make you qualified to repeat it.
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