Earlier quoted context omitted.
Quoted post unavailable.
Quoted post unavailable.
Talking to yourself now?
Please, don't build another Large Hadron Collider
451–460 of 467 posts
Re: Please, don't build another Large Hadron Collider
#452Earlier quoted context omitted.
Human Genome Project was $3B. It is especially salient because in a sense it was in competition with Superconducting Super Collider, which it won. Big Science and Big Politics in the United States: Reflections on the Death of the SSC and the Life of the Human Genome Project (1997) is a classic in history of science analyzing this competition.
And there’s simply no argument that the Human Genome Project benefited humanity more than a collider. Think what $100 billion towards cancer could do.
Maybe not that much. They could 100x the sample size of all their experiments giving one decimal point more. They could research some more obscure cancers.
Research into virology seems a bigger thing to research. There is way more "parallelism" there meaning funding could be allocated more efficiently nin some given time frame.
Re: Please, don't build another Large Hadron Collider
#453I've often wondered if there was a point at which we know "enough". That is to say, any knowledge beyond that point, while perhaps "true" and legitimate, can in no way influence anything anyone possibly does, has access to, or can base any decision on. In other words, is there a level of knowledge that can't be used for literally anything?
Is this that?
Re: Please, don't build another Large Hadron Collider
#454The LHC's development produced a number of new technologies (e.g. radiation resistant microcontrollers, and gas electron multipliers). Could the next generation produce more, valuable tech? I also don't have the expertise to tell whether the article is being overly reductive with the project's goals: are there other questions (besides new particles) that can only be answered with a larger collider? The summary of the…
It seems to me as if the journalist had to write about something [outrageous] to fulfill their article quota? There are some good ideas buried in there but isn't it a reductive vision indeed? There probably is no reason to fund this and all the good ideas he also mentions. We also need BIG SCIENCE to solve global warming and many more issues. Let's not narrow our focus on some fiscal numbers that are basically incons…
all true, yet it's a fact that if we want stable prices (1-2% inflation) and doesn't want to pay more taxes then we run into the allocation problem.
at some point instead of more people crawling around in a tunnel around Geneva we need more people installing wind turbines on the sea.
of course real life is not some Sims game, the cost of switching from that to this is far from negligible (and of course ideally we would cut back on people digging up dead plankton, people wasting time in traffic while burning it, also military spending - but as the current real life example in Ukraine shows, sometimes shit does indeed hits the fan)
Re: Please, don't build another Large Hadron Collider
#455Yes and please build 10 of these instead:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S095965261...
Re: Please, don't build another Large Hadron Collider
#456Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 $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.
It was invented at CERN and had nothing to do with the accelerator. It would have been invented the same way in the home lab of T. Berners-Lee
Re: Please, don't build another Large Hadron Collider
#457As 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
Was that part of an accelerator? Or one of the detectors?
No, it was completely unrelated work of someone who happened to also be at CERN.
Re: Please, don't build another Large Hadron Collider
#458As 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…
Honest question: Did you feel this way when you were working on your PhD at CERN? Were you working toward solving everyday problems, or fundamental science problems? If the latter, what changed your views since then? I hope I don't come off as confrontational, it is not the least my intention. It just sounds like you have seen both sides of this issue and maybe you have a deeper understanding you could share.
My work at CERN was a tiny little screw in a huge machine. It meant nothing.
I have probably 100 or 1000 articles with my name as one of the 1000 collaborators of the project. I have no idea what they are about.
I loved my time in CERN because of the people and the insane possibilities you had there. I discovered Unix and this ultimately made me change my life, going to industry.
My friends who were working on solid state physics had much more impactful research, research that could potentially bring something to everyday life.
I was much happier working on biophysics research afterwards.
Physics today is dead in the practical sense, nothing is happening that sparks for in people's imagination. Compare this to biology where you hear about new discoveries everyday.
Re: Please, don't build another Large Hadron Collider
#459As 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 t…
When the energy you need to access these areas are orders of magnitude larger that what we have on earth (except for pinpointed single places such as the LHC) then it does not make sense. You simply cannot make use of them. Let's get back to them when we have the energy.
This is similar to astrophysics where you discover that a sun has planets. And do what. Are you going to go there anytime? Or use it to modify your own planet? You won't, and any dreaming won't change that.
Re: Please, don't build another Large Hadron Collider
#460Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
Thank you for walking me through it. Been having a bad flu and doped for the pain, maybe I added less to the conversation than I thought I did!
Looks like we agree on the core issue :)