3 ms·
Sure, but is this the best way to spend that money?
by reasonablemann 8y ago
Sure, but is this the best way to spend that money?
- peteradio 8y agoDoes it have to be the best?
- Barrin92 8y agoObviously not, but even many physicists are suggesting that the 20 billion could be spend better.
- Aeolun 8y agoGiven the alternatives it is likely to go to, pretty likely. There’s definitely better things it could be spent on. It’s just that that will never happen. So we pick the best of the worse things.
- danarmak 8y agoAs Scott Aaronson put it[0]: > I’m not making the much stronger claim that this is the best possible use of $20 billion for science. Plausibly a thousand $20-million projects could be found that would advance our understanding of reality by more than a new collider would. But it’s also important to realize that that’s not the question at stake here. When, for example, the US Congress cancelled the Superconducting Supercollider midway through construction—partly, it’s believed, on the basis of opposition from eminent physicists in other subfields, who argued that they could do equally important science for much cheaper—none of the SSC budget, as in 0% of it, ever did end up redirected to those other subfields. In practice, then, the question of “whether a new collider is worth it” is probably best considered in absolute terms, rather than relative to other science projects. [0] https://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=4122 https://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=4122