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Appreciate you sharing the perspective of someone who was part of that field. I think to some extent anything that isn't a for-profit endeavor is subject to som
by Rebelgecko 7y ago
Appreciate you sharing the perspective of someone who was part of that field. I think to some extent anything that isn't a for-profit endeavor is subject to some measure of "feed the beast". Kinda like how bureaucracy has a tendency to expand in order to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy.
While I'm sure there's plenty of waste, I think that's just a fact of life. A positive way to think of it is that the 10th paper on white dwarf luminosity is just ensuring that previous work is reproducible :)
Even if someone takes the absolute most jaded view that it's all just a big federal jobs program, I think you could make the argument that it beats throwing more billions at the military industrial complex (of course there's plenty of synergies, like these 2 mirrors)
- supernova87a 7y agoI appreciate that perspective. And I will be the first to say that astronomy is far from the extreme end of any measure of a bad use of funds. I simply try to combat the intellectually lazy position that some people fall back on, that any questioning of scientific merit (or resource intensiveness) is an affront to the whole thing and cannot be done. It's usually stated by people who have never had to do it, or don't know how.