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> 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 d

by 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.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- effie 6y ago
  People are "interested" to work on things partially due to the fact there is money available to work on those things.
- wolfgke 6y ago
  > That's not really how it works. People work on things they're interested in, not what they get assigned to. You have no idea how management and funding of large-scale research projects works.
  - Koshkin 6y ago
    Indeed, government-funded national labs are highly bureaucratic institutions.
  - beojan 6y ago
    At the level of picking a field, people absolutely work on what they are interested in (and have expertise in). You're not going to get particle physicists working on organic chemistry just because you've "allocated" them there (and they wouldn't be trained in it anyway).
    - wolfgke 6y ago
      > You're not going to get particle physicists working on organic chemistry just because you've "allocated" them there If I consider what kinds of crappy jobs some excellent physicists who could not find a position in research had to take, I am not so sure. The truth in my opinion thus rather is: Because, as you wrote, "they wouldn't be trained in it anyway", they won't be allocated for "organic chemistry" in your example. On the other hand, if they were, I really believe that they would prefer this job over the one that they had to take.
- dtech 6y ago
  There's not really a million [1] lawyers because all million have a passion for corporate law, its also because it pays well [1] https://www.americanbar.org/content/dam/aba/administrative/market_research/total-national-lawyer-population-1878-2019.pdf https://www.americanbar.org/content/dam/aba/administrative/m...
guerrilla 6y ago
> human knowledge is only valuable in so far as it improves the human condition in some way, now or in the future. We have no idea how it will improve the human condition though. You could have said this to many scientists throughout history. Look at what the (much cheaper) fooling around at Bell Labs got us.
- kd5bjo 6y ago
  You’re absolutely right, and those projects were absolutely worth the cost to society in retrospect. It’s why I’m generally in favor of exploratory research. I don’t have much of an opinion one way or the other about building another particle accelerator: the costs are significant, but manageable, and I haven’t followed the science enough to get a good idea of the likely benefit. The question posed, however, was whether the cost could ever be too high. The only answer to that question is “yes,” regardless of the topic.
roenxi 6y ago
Something that really sunk in for me while arguing with people on HN is that the entire Nuclear power industry is ~60 years old and provides around ~10% of humanity's electricity [0]. Even after the effective moratorium from 1985. It seems very unlikely that we've really run up against the limits of what physics can do for us. That is an enormous change and it isn't even a lifetime ago. One more development like that would trivially justify investment values in the trillions of dollars range. Let alone all the other stuff that is likely to happen along the way. Theoretical limits are all very well, but I strongly suspect the rational amount to spend on it is "everything we can". If I really wanted to start a fight I'll argue that diverting all welfare spending to scientific research would probably result in a greater net good over two generations. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Nuclear_power_history.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Nuclear_power_history.svg.
- why_this12 6y ago
  "If I really wanted to start I [sic] fight I'll argue that diverting all welfare spending to scientific research would probably result in a greater net good over two generations." Bizarre comment is in the plus, critical comments are downvoted. Never criticize CERN or Microsoft on HN.
  - roenxi 6y ago
    Thanks, I fixed that typo.
- buzzkillington 6y ago
  You are talking about engineering there, not science. Science is using duct tape to explore the properties of graphene. Engineering is building a plant that can produce 500km2 of graphene a day.
- tsimionescu 6y ago
  > If I really wanted to start a fight I'll argue that diverting all welfare spending to scientific research would probably result in a greater net good over two generations. Why welfare spending? Why not corporate subsidies? Or just forcefully seize the entire assets of some number of non-scientists, chosen at random? Cutting out welfare as a whole seems to be the single spending cut most likely to kill the largest number of people.
buzzkillington 6y ago
>Or maybe we need to raise the global literacy rate so that we have more scientists available. Or maybe we start paying scientists living wages so anyone who can wipe their ass doesn't end up as a quant. Speaking as a quant with a physics phd working with another 400 phds in an hft firm.
- MiroF 6y ago
  The financial incentives are seriously so misaligned. Likewise as a physics undergrad who considered going into academia and is now doing tech.
- lokimedes 6y ago
  I don’t have a day go by without thinking about doing something worthwhile with my (particle) physics phd. But that ridiculous combination of publish or perish, lousy pay and teaching not to mention the competition to stay in the field. Nah, I’ll choose living instead. But oh how I dream of a real career in physics with a higher goal than second-order marketing revenue.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

by kd5bjo 6y ago

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.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
effie 6y ago
People are "interested" to work on things partially due to the fact there is money available to work on those things.
wolfgke 6y ago
> That's not really how it works. People work on things they're interested in, not what they get assigned to. You have no idea how management and funding of large-scale research projects works.
- Koshkin 6y ago
  Indeed, government-funded national labs are highly bureaucratic institutions.
- beojan 6y ago
  At the level of picking a field, people absolutely work on what they are interested in (and have expertise in). You're not going to get particle physicists working on organic chemistry just because you've "allocated" them there (and they wouldn't be trained in it anyway).
  - wolfgke 6y ago
    > You're not going to get particle physicists working on organic chemistry just because you've "allocated" them there If I consider what kinds of crappy jobs some excellent physicists who could not find a position in research had to take, I am not so sure. The truth in my opinion thus rather is: Because, as you wrote, "they wouldn't be trained in it anyway", they won't be allocated for "organic chemistry" in your example. On the other hand, if they were, I really believe that they would prefer this job over the one that they had to take.
dtech 6y ago
There's not really a million [1] lawyers because all million have a passion for corporate law, its also because it pays well [1] https://www.americanbar.org/content/dam/aba/administrative/market_research/total-national-lawyer-population-1878-2019.pdf https://www.americanbar.org/content/dam/aba/administrative/m...

guerrilla 6y ago

> human knowledge is only valuable in so far as it improves the human condition in some way, now or in the future. We have no idea how it will improve the human condition though. You could have said this to many scientists throughout history. Look at what the (much cheaper) fooling around at Bell Labs got us.

kd5bjo 6y ago
You’re absolutely right, and those projects were absolutely worth the cost to society in retrospect. It’s why I’m generally in favor of exploratory research. I don’t have much of an opinion one way or the other about building another particle accelerator: the costs are significant, but manageable, and I haven’t followed the science enough to get a good idea of the likely benefit. The question posed, however, was whether the cost could ever be too high. The only answer to that question is “yes,” regardless of the topic.

roenxi 6y ago

Something that really sunk in for me while arguing with people on HN is that the entire Nuclear power industry is ~60 years old and provides around ~10% of humanity's electricity [0]. Even after the effective moratorium from 1985. It seems very unlikely that we've really run up against the limits of what physics can do for us. That is an enormous change and it isn't even a lifetime ago. One more development like that would trivially justify investment values in the trillions of dollars range. Let alone all the other stuff that is likely to happen along the way. Theoretical limits are all very well, but I strongly suspect the rational amount to spend on it is "everything we can". If I really wanted to start a fight I'll argue that diverting all welfare spending to scientific research would probably result in a greater net good over two generations. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Nuclear_power_history.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Nuclear_power_history.svg.

why_this12 6y ago
"If I really wanted to start I [sic] fight I'll argue that diverting all welfare spending to scientific research would probably result in a greater net good over two generations." Bizarre comment is in the plus, critical comments are downvoted. Never criticize CERN or Microsoft on HN.
- roenxi 6y ago
  Thanks, I fixed that typo.
buzzkillington 6y ago
You are talking about engineering there, not science. Science is using duct tape to explore the properties of graphene. Engineering is building a plant that can produce 500km2 of graphene a day.
tsimionescu 6y ago
> If I really wanted to start a fight I'll argue that diverting all welfare spending to scientific research would probably result in a greater net good over two generations. Why welfare spending? Why not corporate subsidies? Or just forcefully seize the entire assets of some number of non-scientists, chosen at random? Cutting out welfare as a whole seems to be the single spending cut most likely to kill the largest number of people.

buzzkillington 6y ago

>Or maybe we need to raise the global literacy rate so that we have more scientists available. Or maybe we start paying scientists living wages so anyone who can wipe their ass doesn't end up as a quant. Speaking as a quant with a physics phd working with another 400 phds in an hft firm.

MiroF 6y ago
The financial incentives are seriously so misaligned. Likewise as a physics undergrad who considered going into academia and is now doing tech.
lokimedes 6y ago
I don’t have a day go by without thinking about doing something worthwhile with my (particle) physics phd. But that ridiculous combination of publish or perish, lousy pay and teaching not to mention the competition to stay in the field. Nah, I’ll choose living instead. But oh how I dream of a real career in physics with a higher goal than second-order marketing revenue.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]