4 ms·

I don't even think CERN, Higgs boson included, is worth the man hours or cash invested... HBP doesn't seem worth it. ITER is a huge failure that is scheduled t

by mjfl 9y ago

I don't even think CERN, Higgs boson included, is worth the man hours or cash invested... HBP doesn't seem worth it. ITER is a huge failure that is scheduled to receive billions more euros for more than 25 more years. I don't know... Europe seems to fall victim to these sort of things very readily.

stctgion 9y ago
Are you defining "worth it" as whether there is a profit to be made at some point? How much would you have paid for the higgs? Are some pieces of science best left in the dark because they cost too much?
- mjfl 9y ago
  YES. There is no limit to the cost of modern science, but resources are still scarce in the real world and we cannot afford to spend unlimited funds on projects that will not pay off in human flourishing in the near future. To answer your first question that is the profit to be made and it absolutely is necessary to consider when directing tax dollars which could otherwise be spent feeding starving people or curing dying people. I would have paid $80 for the Higgs.
  - ben_w 9y ago
    While you are correct to say that scarce resources means we can’t do everything, pure/fundamental research like the LHC tends to have extremely high payoffs several decades after it is completed. Nobody knows what exactly, if we did we could focus on that stuff in particular, but its one of the best things we can do to grow the economy. (Also, if everyone in the EU paid $80 for the Higgs, that’s about three LHCs depending on where in its history you take the exchange rate).
    - mjfl 9y ago
      Actually, good basic research has a much quicker payoff scale, like 10-20 years. Transistors, fiber optics, lasers, paid off almost immediately- and were invented ON PURPOSE by the way, in order to facilitate better communication for AT&T. And I would pay $80 because I'm personally interested, but I'm the 1%, and I don't think you should force people to pay for it, therefore you should revise your estimate to .03 LHCs.
      - ben_w 9y ago
        You’re taking a bunch of things deliberately invented to solve an existing problem as an example of fundamental research paying off quickly? Counterexamples: one of the early prime number researchers was proud that his work had no use at all, and now it’s the foundation of a major class of encryption. That was a century or two. Or, Maxwell published “A Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism” in 1873, and it took another 30 years to become voice radio. Of course, as the LHC only discovered the Higgs in 2012, even your 10 year lowball would be four years in the future.
      - mpfundstein 9y ago
        I think you have no idea how (fundamental) research works...
  - FridgeSeal 9y ago
    "Groundbreaking science is too expensive, we are only capable of investing in one thing at a time!!!" Like it on not, science and research is what powers humanity flourishing, if you want to get your pitchfork out about misused resources, go complain about corporate tax cuts or money invested in pointless ad-tech, not science.
    - mjfl 9y ago
      > Like it on not, science and research is what powers humanity flourishing Not all science and research though. That's the whole point of my argument - we should direct funds towards projects that actually have tangible benefit to humanity in the future. I will eat my shoe if any application of neutrinos comes about in the next 50 years. Transistors? Great - those weren't invented by accident, and John Bardeen certainly deserves his two Nobel Prizes.
      - GlennS 9y ago
        Isn't there already an application of neutrinos: to detect nuclear material (so weapons inspection and so on)?
      - ben_w 9y ago
        Remote monitoring nuclear reactors for signs of weapons development: http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1742-6596/593/1/012004/pdf http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1742-6596/593/1/01... Communication through any obstacles, including (in principle) the entire diameter of the planet: https://arxiv.org/abs/1203.2847 https://arxiv.org/abs/1203.2847
        mjfl 9y ago
        Considering we have already have cheap things to detect nuclear proliferation, such as seismic detectors that have proven effective w/ North Korea and how expensive a neutrino detection system would be to build, I don't see any marginal benefit to humanity there. Considering the fact that you would need to build a beamline for any transmission of a neutrino message and a 5 ton detector to receive it (unlikely to be reduced since it's so hard to stop neutrinos) I'll stick with my > 50 year timeline for neutrino message passing being used in any practical sense. Maybe they could put it in a nuclear sub, but the design process would take 50 years, thanks to similar incentives built into the military industrial complex.
riffraff 9y ago
ITER started as an equal partnership between EU, US, USSR (yep, not Russia) and Japan. It is insanely expensive, but I wouldn't consider it a Europe-specific madness.
randomsearch 9y ago
Not worth the WWW? (Amongst many other things)
- mjfl 9y ago
  If you had the power to view into parallel universes and told me TBL would not have invented the integration of hypertext and the TCP system without the support of CERN I would begrudgingly give CERN funding until 1995.
  - icebraining 9y ago
    But that's the thing: before 1995, you couldn't know that you had to keep funding the CERN to get the WWW. So you'd have cut it off before, and now you'd be arguing that you made the right call, because we wouldn't know that the WWW would have been a thing.
    - mjfl 9y ago
      But it is very unlikely that another parallel universe doesn't have TBL or someone else inventing WWW in another setting. I would argue that the invention of the web was dependent on TBL, not CERN.
      - icebraining 9y ago
        I'm not sure we would have computers at all if we followed your approach.
        mjfl 9y ago
        I think you're trying to paint me as someone who is anti-science, I'm the opposite. I have extreme confidence in what our scientists can do, especially when you stop giving them easy money. Note that CERN also employs thousands of very smart particle physics PHDs who's median contribution to humanity is roughly equivalent to a giant land sloth's. I want to demand much more from them, and I'm also extremely confident that they can deliver.
throwaway77384 9y ago
While everyone in these comments seems to try to defend these great European projects on their merit alone, I'll try a different approach. In my opinion, these projects are one of the last great human efforts to inspire generations with things that are not just about making more profit. But it's not about this project or that. It's about far more. You say this money should go to hungry people instead. Let's say it's not just starving children in Africa, but maybe even a project to feed the homeless or help under-privileged children get an education...even in that case, do you actually think that if all that money was freed up, this would actually happen? Of course it wouldn't. It would go to line even more pockets of some faceless international organisation / corporation / hedge fund / military investment buddies of some regime. There is no way in hell that any poor or under-privileged person would benefit from the abandonment of these projects. No chance whatsoever. What little money there is, is all concentrated in the hands of a few people who have absolutely no other mission in life other than accumulating more money and power. They have made most science happen for private sector profit-reaping already. This is some of the last stuff done for all mankind. We'd be making a huge mistake abandoning it. Again, the people in charge will not help the poor or homeless. If you wanted to do that, you should tax multinational corporations and get rid of tax havens. There is a kind of money hidden away in tax loopholes all over the globe that would make the LHC, HBP, heck, the ISS look like chump change. Look there first.

by mjfl 9y ago

stctgion 9y ago

Are you defining "worth it" as whether there is a profit to be made at some point? How much would you have paid for the higgs? Are some pieces of science best left in the dark because they cost too much?

mjfl 9y ago
YES. There is no limit to the cost of modern science, but resources are still scarce in the real world and we cannot afford to spend unlimited funds on projects that will not pay off in human flourishing in the near future. To answer your first question that is the profit to be made and it absolutely is necessary to consider when directing tax dollars which could otherwise be spent feeding starving people or curing dying people. I would have paid $80 for the Higgs.
- ben_w 9y ago
  While you are correct to say that scarce resources means we can’t do everything, pure/fundamental research like the LHC tends to have extremely high payoffs several decades after it is completed. Nobody knows what exactly, if we did we could focus on that stuff in particular, but its one of the best things we can do to grow the economy. (Also, if everyone in the EU paid $80 for the Higgs, that’s about three LHCs depending on where in its history you take the exchange rate).
  - mjfl 9y ago
    Actually, good basic research has a much quicker payoff scale, like 10-20 years. Transistors, fiber optics, lasers, paid off almost immediately- and were invented ON PURPOSE by the way, in order to facilitate better communication for AT&T. And I would pay $80 because I'm personally interested, but I'm the 1%, and I don't think you should force people to pay for it, therefore you should revise your estimate to .03 LHCs.
    - ben_w 9y ago
      You’re taking a bunch of things deliberately invented to solve an existing problem as an example of fundamental research paying off quickly? Counterexamples: one of the early prime number researchers was proud that his work had no use at all, and now it’s the foundation of a major class of encryption. That was a century or two. Or, Maxwell published “A Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism” in 1873, and it took another 30 years to become voice radio. Of course, as the LHC only discovered the Higgs in 2012, even your 10 year lowball would be four years in the future.
    - mpfundstein 9y ago
      I think you have no idea how (fundamental) research works...
- FridgeSeal 9y ago
  "Groundbreaking science is too expensive, we are only capable of investing in one thing at a time!!!" Like it on not, science and research is what powers humanity flourishing, if you want to get your pitchfork out about misused resources, go complain about corporate tax cuts or money invested in pointless ad-tech, not science.
  - mjfl 9y ago
    > Like it on not, science and research is what powers humanity flourishing Not all science and research though. That's the whole point of my argument - we should direct funds towards projects that actually have tangible benefit to humanity in the future. I will eat my shoe if any application of neutrinos comes about in the next 50 years. Transistors? Great - those weren't invented by accident, and John Bardeen certainly deserves his two Nobel Prizes.
    - GlennS 9y ago
      Isn't there already an application of neutrinos: to detect nuclear material (so weapons inspection and so on)?
    - ben_w 9y ago
      Remote monitoring nuclear reactors for signs of weapons development: http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1742-6596/593/1/012004/pdf http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1742-6596/593/1/01... Communication through any obstacles, including (in principle) the entire diameter of the planet: https://arxiv.org/abs/1203.2847 https://arxiv.org/abs/1203.2847
      - mjfl 9y ago
        Considering we have already have cheap things to detect nuclear proliferation, such as seismic detectors that have proven effective w/ North Korea and how expensive a neutrino detection system would be to build, I don't see any marginal benefit to humanity there. Considering the fact that you would need to build a beamline for any transmission of a neutrino message and a 5 ton detector to receive it (unlikely to be reduced since it's so hard to stop neutrinos) I'll stick with my > 50 year timeline for neutrino message passing being used in any practical sense. Maybe they could put it in a nuclear sub, but the design process would take 50 years, thanks to similar incentives built into the military industrial complex.

riffraff 9y ago

ITER started as an equal partnership between EU, US, USSR (yep, not Russia) and Japan. It is insanely expensive, but I wouldn't consider it a Europe-specific madness.

randomsearch 9y ago

Not worth the WWW? (Amongst many other things)

mjfl 9y ago
If you had the power to view into parallel universes and told me TBL would not have invented the integration of hypertext and the TCP system without the support of CERN I would begrudgingly give CERN funding until 1995.
- icebraining 9y ago
  But that's the thing: before 1995, you couldn't know that you had to keep funding the CERN to get the WWW. So you'd have cut it off before, and now you'd be arguing that you made the right call, because we wouldn't know that the WWW would have been a thing.
  - mjfl 9y ago
    But it is very unlikely that another parallel universe doesn't have TBL or someone else inventing WWW in another setting. I would argue that the invention of the web was dependent on TBL, not CERN.
    - icebraining 9y ago
      I'm not sure we would have computers at all if we followed your approach.
      - mjfl 9y ago
        I think you're trying to paint me as someone who is anti-science, I'm the opposite. I have extreme confidence in what our scientists can do, especially when you stop giving them easy money. Note that CERN also employs thousands of very smart particle physics PHDs who's median contribution to humanity is roughly equivalent to a giant land sloth's. I want to demand much more from them, and I'm also extremely confident that they can deliver.

throwaway77384 9y ago

While everyone in these comments seems to try to defend these great European projects on their merit alone, I'll try a different approach. In my opinion, these projects are one of the last great human efforts to inspire generations with things that are not just about making more profit. But it's not about this project or that. It's about far more. You say this money should go to hungry people instead. Let's say it's not just starving children in Africa, but maybe even a project to feed the homeless or help under-privileged children get an education...even in that case, do you actually think that if all that money was freed up, this would actually happen? Of course it wouldn't. It would go to line even more pockets of some faceless international organisation / corporation / hedge fund / military investment buddies of some regime. There is no way in hell that any poor or under-privileged person would benefit from the abandonment of these projects. No chance whatsoever. What little money there is, is all concentrated in the hands of a few people who have absolutely no other mission in life other than accumulating more money and power. They have made most science happen for private sector profit-reaping already. This is some of the last stuff done for all mankind. We'd be making a huge mistake abandoning it. Again, the people in charge will not help the poor or homeless. If you wanted to do that, you should tax multinational corporations and get rid of tax havens. There is a kind of money hidden away in tax loopholes all over the globe that would make the LHC, HBP, heck, the ISS look like chump change. Look there first.