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So what? If we don't take steps forward we will never get anywhere. We can only operate with the best capabilities and knowledge available to us today. $20B is

So what? If we don't take steps forward we will never get anywhere. We can only operate with the best capabilities and knowledge available to us today. $20B is nothing compared to the world's GDP. If there aren't more compelling research projects of similar magnitude in fundamental physics, then we should build it. Of course, I'm not qualified to make that judgment, but I think we have good reason to trust that smart and reputable people are working hard to make the right call. We should always be investing a proportion of our accumulated wealth and resources into exploring the unknown and making scientific discovery.

armitron 8y ago
This a very simplified way to look at the original post, glossing over most of the details and missing nearly all the points. Nobody is arguing against spending (lots of) money for scientific experiments. The problems that arise are qualitative rather than quantitive. As the original post outlines, there are many experimental domains one could allocate that money towards. One of the issues is that of cutting your losses. When does one accept that enough is enough and starts doing something else? Smart and reputable people are not infallible or less prone to making terrible (self-centered, ego-driven, profit-seeking) decisions. One of the points that the original post is making is that high energy physics is dominated by these kinds of people. Predictions repeatedly invalidated yet still clinging to the same ideas. That is starting to look more like a religion or mania than science.