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A counter point by Sabine Hossenfelder: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/23/opinion/particle-physics-large-hadron-collider.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/2

A counter point by Sabine Hossenfelder: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/23/opinion/particle-physics-large-hadron-collider.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/23/opinion/particle-physics-...

Deukhoofd 6y ago
> I still believe that slamming particles into one another is the most promising route to understanding what matter is made of and how it holds together. But $10 billion is a hefty price tag. And I’m not sure it’s worth it. When is it worth it? They tested many theories, and many of them were proven wrong, and some were proven right. What price can you attach to having this knowledge? Is there a maximum price tag for potentially knowing more about the universe?
- adrianN 6y ago
  The question is, what kind of other interesting knowledge might we acquire with ten billion?
- kd5bjo 6y ago
  > Is there a maximum price tag for potentially knowing more about the universe? Yes. On the extreme end, there’s a finite amount of useful work that can be done before the heat death of the universe. An energy budget the size of the combined output of all power stations on the planet is much smaller than that, but also too much. At a more realistic scale, human knowledge is only valuable in so far as it improves the human condition in some way, now or in the future. Other research areas could be more important to progress right now and we only have so many scientists available to do the work. Allocating those scientists to research areas is an incredibly hard task, but it’s a necessary one. Even if we accept that pure physics knowledge is a worthy goal in itself, diving straight into another megaproject isn’t necessarily the best way forward. Maybe it’s more valuable right now to find uses for the great theoretical leaps we’ve already made, for instance. Or maybe we should be focussing on training theorists so that we can have a better idea of what the next piece of giant scientific equipment needs to be. Or maybe we need to raise the global literacy rate so that we have more scientists available.
  - beojan 6y ago
    > Other research areas could be more important to progress right now and we only have so many scientists available to do the work. Allocating those scientists to research areas is an incredibly hard task, but it’s a necessary one. That's not really how it works. People work on things they're interested in, not what they get assigned to.
    - thysultan 6y ago
      >People work on things they're interested in That's not how reality works out to be.
    - rubidium 6y ago
      That’s... a bit to simplistic of an understanding. As a researcher, there are many problems I could find interesting and get passionate about working on, either with the right colleagues, funding, world implications, etc... The scientist oblivious to the world and only interested in their little niche is not the majority. Give a problem funding at the early stage of careers (grad school, new tenure grants) and it gets worked on and some people get super passionate.
      - beojan 6y ago
        If you're talking about allocating existing scientists, it's a bit late for funding something at the point where someone is deciding what to do in grad school (or even undergrad, in the European system). kd5bjo seemed to be talking about allocating people to entirely different fields which they likely have no existing experience in.
        kd5bjo 6y ago
        We’re in a capitalist system, so I had assumed that allocation would happen via the free job market: people with money write job descriptions for scientists to work on particular things, and the scientists decide which of those offers to pursue. Central control of this sort of thing hasn’t historically worked out well (though I may be biased on this point from growing up in the US). As for switching fields, one of the key parts of scientific training is how to learn things, so scientists have a better chance of successfully changing felds than many other people. It also isn’t necessarily as big a leap as physics to biochem, like you suggested in another comment. Moving from theoretical particle physics to tokamak design seems like it should be doable, for instance.
- xondono 6y ago
  Would you sacrifice all humanity for that knowledge? Since I’m guessing your answer is “no”, then there’s obviously a maximum price (even if my bound is ridiculously off)
- paulpauper 6y ago
  That is only 1/300 the cost of the covid stimulus. it is only extensive because it has been deemed by the media and pundits as so.
- hpcjoe 6y ago
  The issue is, quite literally, what is the opportunity cost of this expenditure. If that money could help create a pandemic mitigation framework that would enable us to collectively respond faster and better to outbreaks, which is better to fund? If the money can help us build faster/more computers that enable us to better model many processes: weather, disease, materials, etc. is that a better expenditure? I don't see anyone arguing that science is not a good investment. I do see people asking the salient question of, is this the right science to fund right now, given all of societies needs. The answer to that question should be obvious, we have other priorities at the moment.
EastLondonCoder 6y ago
In the late 19th century people that went into science where actively discourage to study physics since many believed there was nothing left to find out. Without quantum mechanics we would not have the transistor, there would be no computers. The immense economic value delivered by fundamental research makes a 10 billion usd investment look like a microscopic peanut crumb compared to the potential value it can give. For comparison the combined world defense budget in 2018 was around 1.8 trillion usd.
- Koshkin 6y ago
  Difference is, the discovery of quantum mechanics did not require billion-dollar investment in equipment and manpower (not until work began on nuclear weapon, anyway). Besides, current research in high-energy physics, while being expensive, only brings scientific value and not much at all in the way of practical application (except, perhaps, as a side-effect of building more and more sophisticated equipment - but that would be like saying that wars are good for medicine, because obviously direct investment in medicine would be more efficient than investment in war).
  - whaaswijk 6y ago
    How can you be sure that the new science won't have any practical applications?
    - Koshkin 6y ago
      We haven’t seen any evidence of that in the many years that have passed. We have good science, the Higgs and all, but, frankly, there’s little hope that the energies comparable to those that existed at the beginning of the Universe would be of practical consequence to us (other than the destruction of the Earth).
    - ellofromoversea 6y ago
      If they do it’s nothing we’ll ever be able to harness Why should society at this day and time then plow millions of man hours and raw materials into proving it literally? Perhaps when nanotechnology or AI is able to be put to the task, those peoples can then build a very specific machine to prove very specific questions But this is throwing spaghetti at the wall for what to us will be a moment of excitement then having no clue how to make use of it and a big mess to clean up
Gatsky 6y ago
It will be impossible to get an extra 10 billion dollars invested into science without a project like this. In other words probably 10% or less of that money would end up going into other fields of research. Considering all the other things governments spend money on, that is a good enough reason to do it in my book.
- erikpukinskis 6y ago
  It’s interesting to see capitalism’s influence here. Like in many other areas of the economy, capitalism requires a concentration of control in science too, as a prerequisite for allocation of capital. Trapping us in a local minimum of narrow hierarchies.
- UweSchmidt 6y ago
  What do you mean with "the other things governments spend money on"? That's infrastructure, education, welfare. The 10 billion is not free money but taken from taxes, so please make a good case for spending it! Surely any intent of not being honest about the cost/benefit will backfire and discredit future scientific projects.
  - Gatsky 6y ago
    Military spending (eg USA, Russia, China), politically motivated public works (eg Japan), propping up failing industries for political reasons (eg car industry in Australia or USA), not to mention all the money that gets wasted on consultants, starting projects and not finishing them, poorly thought out stimulus packages... There is a huge double standard where some things undergo a stringent cost/benefit analysis and other things are not scrutinised at all. Also the upside or benefit of scientific investment can be astronomically and unpredictably high. How can you compare building more public housing to inventing the semiconductor industry?
djaque 6y ago
I post this every time someone links to Hossenfelder, but please take her opinions with a grain of salt. She seems more interested in attacking the "physics establishment" than in giving people a picture of the reality of our situation. Take a look at her articles on LIGO [1] for instance where she makes conspiracy theory level claims saying that the group is lying about their data and that "big physics" is in on it. My opinion happens to be similar to hers on building the next big collider, but I'm not a high energy physics expert. Given how dishonest she was on the subjects I am familiar with, there's no way that I trust her to give an accurate portrayal of the ones I'm not. [1] https://backreaction.blogspot.com/2019/09/whats-up-with-ligo.html https://backreaction.blogspot.com/2019/09/whats-up-with-ligo...
- RandomTisk 6y ago
  I like her videos because she's refreshingly honest about what is known versus not known. Most (tv)physicists are not.
- warranty 6y ago
  The lying of the group is well established in her book. Thanks to Hossenfelder we now know mainstream physics establishment is a front for thinksheparding humanity into confusion.
- canjobear 6y ago
  For what it's worth, I usually find Sabine Hossenfelder to be insufferably critical and self-promoting, but I found that LIGO article fairly disturbing. As someone who has worked with complex analyses of large datasets, I know how easy it can be to fool yourself.
  - djaque 6y ago
    Certainly, and the LIGO is one big complicated dataset. The problem is that Sabine Hossenfelder doesn't just make arguments about the data, but makes the researchers out to be villains. Not only that, but all of the problems she brings up have good community accepted resolutions that she selectively ignores. I think that once we had multi-messenger confirmation of merger events, any doubt about gravitational wave detection vanished outside of some fringe groups. All of that happened and played out long before Hossenfelder's article, but she doesn't really give a fair representation of it.
dasudasu 6y ago
If you can stand his idiosyncrasies, Lubos Motls offers many direct counter points to Sabine: https://motls.blogspot.com/2019/03/some-reasons-why-west-wont-stop.html https://motls.blogspot.com/2019/03/some-reasons-why-west-won... https://motls.blogspot.com/2018/11/new-veins-of-science-cant-be-found-by.html https://motls.blogspot.com/2018/11/new-veins-of-science-cant...

A counter point by Sabine Hossenfelder: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/23/opinion/particle-physics-large-hadron-collider.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/23/opinion/particle-physics-...

Deukhoofd 6y ago

> I still believe that slamming particles into one another is the most promising route to understanding what matter is made of and how it holds together. But $10 billion is a hefty price tag. And I’m not sure it’s worth it. When is it worth it? They tested many theories, and many of them were proven wrong, and some were proven right. What price can you attach to having this knowledge? Is there a maximum price tag for potentially knowing more about the universe?

adrianN 6y ago
The question is, what kind of other interesting knowledge might we acquire with ten billion?
kd5bjo 6y ago
> Is there a maximum price tag for potentially knowing more about the universe? Yes. On the extreme end, there’s a finite amount of useful work that can be done before the heat death of the universe. An energy budget the size of the combined output of all power stations on the planet is much smaller than that, but also too much. At a more realistic scale, human knowledge is only valuable in so far as it improves the human condition in some way, now or in the future. Other research areas could be more important to progress right now and we only have so many scientists available to do the work. Allocating those scientists to research areas is an incredibly hard task, but it’s a necessary one. Even if we accept that pure physics knowledge is a worthy goal in itself, diving straight into another megaproject isn’t necessarily the best way forward. Maybe it’s more valuable right now to find uses for the great theoretical leaps we’ve already made, for instance. Or maybe we should be focussing on training theorists so that we can have a better idea of what the next piece of giant scientific equipment needs to be. Or maybe we need to raise the global literacy rate so that we have more scientists available.
- beojan 6y ago
  > Other research areas could be more important to progress right now and we only have so many scientists available to do the work. Allocating those scientists to research areas is an incredibly hard task, but it’s a necessary one. That's not really how it works. People work on things they're interested in, not what they get assigned to.
  - thysultan 6y ago
    >People work on things they're interested in That's not how reality works out to be.
  - rubidium 6y ago
    That’s... a bit to simplistic of an understanding. As a researcher, there are many problems I could find interesting and get passionate about working on, either with the right colleagues, funding, world implications, etc... The scientist oblivious to the world and only interested in their little niche is not the majority. Give a problem funding at the early stage of careers (grad school, new tenure grants) and it gets worked on and some people get super passionate.
    - beojan 6y ago
      If you're talking about allocating existing scientists, it's a bit late for funding something at the point where someone is deciding what to do in grad school (or even undergrad, in the European system). kd5bjo seemed to be talking about allocating people to entirely different fields which they likely have no existing experience in.
      - kd5bjo 6y ago
        We’re in a capitalist system, so I had assumed that allocation would happen via the free job market: people with money write job descriptions for scientists to work on particular things, and the scientists decide which of those offers to pursue. Central control of this sort of thing hasn’t historically worked out well (though I may be biased on this point from growing up in the US). As for switching fields, one of the key parts of scientific training is how to learn things, so scientists have a better chance of successfully changing felds than many other people. It also isn’t necessarily as big a leap as physics to biochem, like you suggested in another comment. Moving from theoretical particle physics to tokamak design seems like it should be doable, for instance.
xondono 6y ago
Would you sacrifice all humanity for that knowledge? Since I’m guessing your answer is “no”, then there’s obviously a maximum price (even if my bound is ridiculously off)
paulpauper 6y ago
That is only 1/300 the cost of the covid stimulus. it is only extensive because it has been deemed by the media and pundits as so.
hpcjoe 6y ago
The issue is, quite literally, what is the opportunity cost of this expenditure. If that money could help create a pandemic mitigation framework that would enable us to collectively respond faster and better to outbreaks, which is better to fund? If the money can help us build faster/more computers that enable us to better model many processes: weather, disease, materials, etc. is that a better expenditure? I don't see anyone arguing that science is not a good investment. I do see people asking the salient question of, is this the right science to fund right now, given all of societies needs. The answer to that question should be obvious, we have other priorities at the moment.

EastLondonCoder 6y ago

In the late 19th century people that went into science where actively discourage to study physics since many believed there was nothing left to find out. Without quantum mechanics we would not have the transistor, there would be no computers. The immense economic value delivered by fundamental research makes a 10 billion usd investment look like a microscopic peanut crumb compared to the potential value it can give. For comparison the combined world defense budget in 2018 was around 1.8 trillion usd.

Koshkin 6y ago
Difference is, the discovery of quantum mechanics did not require billion-dollar investment in equipment and manpower (not until work began on nuclear weapon, anyway). Besides, current research in high-energy physics, while being expensive, only brings scientific value and not much at all in the way of practical application (except, perhaps, as a side-effect of building more and more sophisticated equipment - but that would be like saying that wars are good for medicine, because obviously direct investment in medicine would be more efficient than investment in war).
- whaaswijk 6y ago
  How can you be sure that the new science won't have any practical applications?
  - Koshkin 6y ago
    We haven’t seen any evidence of that in the many years that have passed. We have good science, the Higgs and all, but, frankly, there’s little hope that the energies comparable to those that existed at the beginning of the Universe would be of practical consequence to us (other than the destruction of the Earth).
  - ellofromoversea 6y ago
    If they do it’s nothing we’ll ever be able to harness Why should society at this day and time then plow millions of man hours and raw materials into proving it literally? Perhaps when nanotechnology or AI is able to be put to the task, those peoples can then build a very specific machine to prove very specific questions But this is throwing spaghetti at the wall for what to us will be a moment of excitement then having no clue how to make use of it and a big mess to clean up

Gatsky 6y ago

It will be impossible to get an extra 10 billion dollars invested into science without a project like this. In other words probably 10% or less of that money would end up going into other fields of research. Considering all the other things governments spend money on, that is a good enough reason to do it in my book.

erikpukinskis 6y ago
It’s interesting to see capitalism’s influence here. Like in many other areas of the economy, capitalism requires a concentration of control in science too, as a prerequisite for allocation of capital. Trapping us in a local minimum of narrow hierarchies.
UweSchmidt 6y ago
What do you mean with "the other things governments spend money on"? That's infrastructure, education, welfare. The 10 billion is not free money but taken from taxes, so please make a good case for spending it! Surely any intent of not being honest about the cost/benefit will backfire and discredit future scientific projects.
- Gatsky 6y ago
  Military spending (eg USA, Russia, China), politically motivated public works (eg Japan), propping up failing industries for political reasons (eg car industry in Australia or USA), not to mention all the money that gets wasted on consultants, starting projects and not finishing them, poorly thought out stimulus packages... There is a huge double standard where some things undergo a stringent cost/benefit analysis and other things are not scrutinised at all. Also the upside or benefit of scientific investment can be astronomically and unpredictably high. How can you compare building more public housing to inventing the semiconductor industry?

djaque 6y ago

I post this every time someone links to Hossenfelder, but please take her opinions with a grain of salt. She seems more interested in attacking the "physics establishment" than in giving people a picture of the reality of our situation. Take a look at her articles on LIGO [1] for instance where she makes conspiracy theory level claims saying that the group is lying about their data and that "big physics" is in on it. My opinion happens to be similar to hers on building the next big collider, but I'm not a high energy physics expert. Given how dishonest she was on the subjects I am familiar with, there's no way that I trust her to give an accurate portrayal of the ones I'm not. [1] https://backreaction.blogspot.com/2019/09/whats-up-with-ligo.html https://backreaction.blogspot.com/2019/09/whats-up-with-ligo...

RandomTisk 6y ago
I like her videos because she's refreshingly honest about what is known versus not known. Most (tv)physicists are not.
warranty 6y ago
The lying of the group is well established in her book. Thanks to Hossenfelder we now know mainstream physics establishment is a front for thinksheparding humanity into confusion.
canjobear 6y ago
For what it's worth, I usually find Sabine Hossenfelder to be insufferably critical and self-promoting, but I found that LIGO article fairly disturbing. As someone who has worked with complex analyses of large datasets, I know how easy it can be to fool yourself.
- djaque 6y ago
  Certainly, and the LIGO is one big complicated dataset. The problem is that Sabine Hossenfelder doesn't just make arguments about the data, but makes the researchers out to be villains. Not only that, but all of the problems she brings up have good community accepted resolutions that she selectively ignores. I think that once we had multi-messenger confirmation of merger events, any doubt about gravitational wave detection vanished outside of some fringe groups. All of that happened and played out long before Hossenfelder's article, but she doesn't really give a fair representation of it.

dasudasu 6y ago

If you can stand his idiosyncrasies, Lubos Motls offers many direct counter points to Sabine: https://motls.blogspot.com/2019/03/some-reasons-why-west-wont-stop.html https://motls.blogspot.com/2019/03/some-reasons-why-west-won... https://motls.blogspot.com/2018/11/new-veins-of-science-cant-be-found-by.html https://motls.blogspot.com/2018/11/new-veins-of-science-cant...