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Is this a symbol of the degradation of human intellectual capability in the 21st century?
by IronRanger 6y ago
Is this a symbol of the degradation of human intellectual capability in the 21st century?
- caeril 6y agoOur intellectual capability is not degraded; rather, it's funneled into adtech, porn, social media click optimization, and entertainment. Critical distinction.
- pmiller2 6y agoAh, yes, all those smart people making a Brave New World, while that world literally burns is totally not the same as degrading our intellectual capacity.
- WalterSear 6y agoSounds like degradation to me.
- marcinzm 6y agoNothing lasts forever and things require ever more upkeep costs as they get older.
- kitd 6y agoTbf China has one that's half a kilometer wide, so there's still hope for progress :) http://www.hexapolis.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/Worlds-Largest-Radio-Telescope-In-China-To-Look-For-Alien-Life-3.jpg http://www.hexapolis.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/Worlds-L...
- mlindner 6y agoThe China one doesn't have the ability to transmit, only receive.
- hindsightbias 6y agoThey take the Trisolarans seriously.
- gamegod 6y agoNo, it's a reflection of the state of US infrastructure.
- Stubb 6y agoWhich is also a symbol of the degradation of human intellectual capability in the 21st century. Certainly the ability to focus it toward advancing the understanding of the natural world.
- coliveira 6y agoNo, the Chinese just created the FAST telescope.
- Zafira 6y ago> Which is also a symbol of the degradation of human intellectual capability in the 21st century. I don't think the human thirst for knowledge is lacking, but the political will, regardless of a project's economic profit, to support it is always in short supply. Much of the Cold War era funding for scientific ventures without a clear economic payoff was driven by the desire to beat the Soviets or approved on the basis that they would contribute to our Cold War defense complex. The Arecibo Observatory itself was borne out of a need to understand the ionosphere for the purposes of tracking nuclear warheads. The Chinese are not approving these projects out of a love of science. They are doing what the US did 60 years ago: science as a means of national pride and prestige.
- jlmorton 6y agoIt's a reflection of the damage caused by a Category 5 hurricane, and subsequent tropical storm.
- mikepurvis 6y agoPart of "infrastructure" is the capability and willingness to deal with the aftermath of severe weather events.
- bsg75 6y agoIt’s yet another symbol that we waste resources. Military and pork spending far outweigh the costs of things that could instead improve out quality of life (health) and the understanding of our universe.
- xadhominemx 6y agoIt’s outdated technology. We are still spending hundreds of billions on basic science, including space science.
- xadhominemx 6y agoNot really since the installation has been mostly a tourist destination for years. This happens to be a piece of scientific infrastructure that a lot of people recognize from movies, video games, etc but it’s not actually very important.
- mhh__ 6y agoNo. You'd have to be very blinkered about progress elsewhere to think that, notice how there are multiple apparently good covid vaccines already?
- ardy42 6y ago> Is this a symbol of the degradation of human intellectual capability in the 21st century? No, it's a symbol of the degradation of US political capability in the 21st century. To be more explicit: why build a telescope like this if you axiomatically believe the free market will do everything worth doing and that the government projects are waste by definition? There was a time when those ideas weren't so dominant, and that's when the US built many of its nice things that we still celebrate today.
- mschuster91 6y agoIt turns out the free market is extremely good at innovation, but horrible for maintenance or long lived projects - as soon as something is not deemed "profitable" any more, it gets shut down. No matter how useful it is for literally millions of people (Google Reader comes to a mind).
- WWLink 6y agoThere's also demand for the things that shouldn't need to be profitable, to be profitable. I saw a news article like a week ago making a HUGE STINK about how a bridge was "losing tons of money" when they looked at the bridge toll vs the expenses. A.. publicly owned bridge, of course! And they made it sound scandalous. Like seriously. What? It's like people talking about how unprofitable public transit is..... That's not really the point, is it?
- notabee 6y agoIn a way, it's a mirror to the lowest common denominator of human nature. As should be expected if you think about it. A lot of our instincts don't scale well, e.g. eating too much sugar and fat when it's in abundance, because it used to be evolutionarily advantageous. So do we throw our hands up and say that's inevitable, or try to incentivize our better selves? “Another flaw in the human character is that everybody wants to build and nobody wants to do maintenance” — Kurt Vonnegut, Hocus Pocus
- ars 6y agoAs someone else wrote in this thread, US funding of these types of projects has gone up not down. This is simply a decision on which kind of projects to fund not a reduction in science as a whole.
- coliveira 6y agoNo, we already have the FAST telescope. It is more a degradation of US infrastructure.
- pfdietz 6y agoNo, nor is it a pigeon.