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> "Particle physics has degenerated into a paper production enterprise that is of virtually no relevance for societal progress [...] But the disciplines where t
by robonerd 5y ago
> "Particle physics has degenerated into a paper production enterprise that is of virtually no relevance for societal progress [...] But the disciplines where the foundations of physics currently make progress are cosmology and astrophysics [...]"
Can anybody explain the relevance of cosmology and astrophysics to societal progress? I'm sure these are very worthwhile fields of study in other respects.. but societal progress?
- photochemsyn 5y agoPale Blue Dot, the snapshot of Earth taken by Voyager I, comes to mind. https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/resources/536/voyager-1s-pale-blue-dot/ https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/resources/536/voyager-1s-pale-b... The effect is more psychological than technological, but it shows the foolishness of global warfare and resource exhaustion in the name of short-term profit, and encourages people to live together peacefully and work together to solve global-scale problems.
- FollowingTheDao 5y ago> and encourages people to live together peacefully and work together to solve global-scale problems. Hey, guess what? It didn't work. Have you read the news lately? Besides, I know a few sociopaths that would look at that Pale Blue Dot and think "I want it all".
- r3trohack3r 5y agoAccording to many metrics, it seems the world is indeed improving over time. The news is a poor source for evaluating the net sum of human suffering - the incentive model is all wrong. https://www.ted.com/talks/steven_pinker_is_the_world_getting_better_or_worse_a_look_at_the_numbers https://www.ted.com/talks/steven_pinker_is_the_world_getting...
- FollowingTheDao 5y agoAs the island of improvement grows, so grows the shores of suffering. But can a dataset really encapsulate human suffering? Is there a lower percent of people suffering but are they each suffering more individually? What is the quality of the suffering? Is it better to suffer 30 years with pain or to die after a month of it?
- tick_tock_tick 5y ago> But can a dataset really encapsulate human suffering? Yes > Is there a lower percent of people suffering but are they each suffering more individually? No > What is the quality of the suffering? Lower > Is it better to suffer 30 years with pain or to die after a month of it? Depends on quality of life.
- FollowingTheDao 5y ago>> But can a dataset really encapsulate human suffering? > Yes Suffering its subjective so it is impossible. And you proved it with: > Depends on quality of life. because quality of life depends on how much suffering you can live with.
- SiempreViernes 5y agoHave you heard how the military makes a lot of technology that benefits society? Well, it's the same principle for esoteric experimental science: unique requirements leads to new tech being developed and then you can turn around, and if you find some use for some bit of the new tech you can tout it as a "boon to society".
- robonerd 5y agoCouldn't the same be said for particle physics? The accelerators and detectors seem very high tech.
- nobodyandproud 5y agoNo, not if take her at face value. She’s saying particle physics has built a framework where the goalpost can keep moving. It’s become a bottomless trap of sorts. Given that resources—money and bright minds—aren’t infinite, she then proposes that there are other areas of research that received less attention and are ripe for discovery.
- spaetzleesser 5y agoThe LHC computing infrastructure is also quite impressive.
- jfengel 5y agoAnd CERN is literally the reason we're here on th Web right now.
- moonchrome 5y agoThat's a huge stretch. CERN might be a reason we have the web that looks like it looks today, but we would have something similar with or without CERN.
- davrosthedalek 5y ago
- colechristensen 5y agoEvery human society more or less has had a religion with a version of their cosmology, it seems universally relevant to human interests to have an actual set of answers. And what is “societal progress” anyway?
- FollowingTheDao 5y agoMy view of societal progress would look retrograde to almost everyone.
- dehrmann 5y agoHave you considered becoming Amish?
- FollowingTheDao 5y agoIf you met me and saw how I lived you would probably think I was close enough.
- jll29 5y agoModulo Internet access? Out of (off-topic) curiosity, what is the reason for that choice of life style? Just minimalism?
- FollowingTheDao 5y agoHomelessness. Not really much of a choice.
- couchand 5y agoWell, I'd argue that till now many of our most vibrant flowers of innovation ultimately grew out of basic research into how the universe works. A deeper understanding of the fabric of the universe seems enough to me to call it "societal progress" (with the OP saying particle physics no longer provides such new insight), but if you're looking for specific technologies that might come of it, perhaps consider the benefits that could accrue to human space travel.
- dEnigma 5y agoI don't think she was trying to say that those disciplines contribute to the progress of society in any meaningful way. The point, in my opinion, was that particle physics has neither relevance for societal progress, nor currently makes progress in the foundations of physics (as opposed to the other two disciplines).
- klyrs 5y agoI dunno about "progress" per se but when smart physicists and mathematicians leave their fields, they often end up in finance and tech. Mostly doing the opposite of "societal progress," they're pulling levers to maximize profit from the destruction of society. What I'm saying here is essentially "idle hands are the devil's playground." Keeping wonks fascinated by the minutae of the nature of the universe is, in my mind, better for society than many alternatives I see.
- tsimionescu 5y agoWell, Newton's laws of motion are a direct result of cosmology/astrophysics.
- 8note 5y agoThe black hole has become a culturally important concept, being the center of different media as well as a common metaphor, allowing us new descriptions of ideas
- nine_k 5y agoAn easy, direct link, for example: Careful observation of the orbit of Mercury —> Special Relativity —> General Relativity —> GPS satellites able to keep exact time —> the map app on your mobile phone.
- gizmo686 5y agoWas the orbit of Mercury (or any other astronomical observations) important for the discover of Relativity. My understanding was that experimental impetus for relativity was the Michelson–Morley experiment, which was an in-lab experiment, not an astronomical observation. General relativity was then developed on a purely theoretical basis. That it was able to explain Mercury's orbit was a nice bit of empirical confirmation after the theory was developed. Having such evidence probably helped get the theory accepted faster; but probably wasn't necessary. Almost by definition, a theory that is ultimately useful can be confirmed without need of astronomy. If the theory is useful to do X, then we can try doing X as an experiment and see if it works how the theory predicts. As a secondary point, we could probably get GPS to work even without relativity. The core idea makes just as much sense under any theory of a finite speed of light. When we actually launched a GPS constellation and try it, the engineers would notice that the clocks were drifting for some unknown reason. Some ad-hoc corrections later and the engineers could account for the drift based on empirical evidence, likely with regular re synchronization and recalibration of the fudge factors.
- onlyrealcuzzo 5y agoGood luck finding a $1Tr project without real world evidence - just theoretical models.
- noobermin 5y agoCosmology and astro fundamentally can be tested. The models therein have implications on things like the Cosmic Microwave Background, so it fits "societal progress" in the sense it pushes humanity's knowledge of the universe forward. I do think particle theory probably does push knowledge forward, the problem is it is quite a bit further from something that can be tested, it is more akin to mathematics these days where they're not really trying to describe reality because as she says, susy and friends could be morphed to fit anything. In fact, and this might be a stretch, but I feel like there is a motivation not to have predictions sometimes because then you could be proven wrong. Perhaps this is still "pushing knowledge in general forward" as opposed to knowledge that actually describes reality, similar to mathematics perhaps. Not really related to societal progress, but the difference between particle theory with mathematics is mathematicians are actually rigorous while particle physicists get by with the usual lack of rigor (relatively) of physics in general. The argument usually employed by theorists in other physics fields is that this lack of rigor is okay because physics is science and you could always do an experiment afterwards to validate theory. Particle physics less and less has that, so, where does it sit? I feel like may be a valid path forward is for particle physicists to embrace that they are no longer really doing science and are rather doing mathematics, and probably to even adopt some of the rigor of mathematics, then particle theory could really bloom into a really valuable field of study on the "pushing general knowledge forward" side of things.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- StanislavPetrov 5y ago>Can anybody explain the relevance of cosmology and astrophysics to societal progress? What is "societal progress" anyway? I'd argue that society is regressing, not progressing. I'd further argue that the worth of your pursuits and endeavors have no relation to the progression or regression of society at large.
- godelski 5y agoYeah I would say that there are two means in which it does. 1) Direct means: this is stuff like finding helium in the sun, and from there being able to see its signature and find it elsewhere (we can say this for other atoms and molecules too). Stopping nuclear war, due to tracking the proper origin (and providing an explanation) of the source of gamma bursts. Studying reactions in nature and then attempting to replicate them on earth (fusion is an obvious example but there are others). These tend to be kinda weak if we don't include things like justification to go to space, which is iffy either way. 2) Indirect means: These are probably providing the most value. This is pretty true for any advance science though. When you're pushing the extremes of our knowledge you have to invent new things to measure and test. You might say that these could be built by industry, but the thing is that these are often extremely expensive. So one can also think of science as a means for governments to inject innovation into their economies. You need to detect a star really far away? Well you're going to also be building cutting edge mirrors, radio instruments, and other things. Want to detect gravitational waves? You got to write code that is really good at detecting noise and differentiating a signal that is smaller than fp64 precision. These all have huge benefits. The science becomes public and as these things are being invented papers are being written and industry is able to learn from these challenges and transfer the lessons learned to their own applications, which dramatically reduces R&D costs. Additionally, a lot of mathematical frameworks and tools are build out of this (I was considering putting this under #1). These maths apply far beyond a specific problem. You might find things like how to do fast QR decomposition or signal analysis. I'll add a bit to #2 too. You might ask why not push that money into industries. Well there's a few reasons. First, science is exploratory by nature. You may have no idea about all the challenges you're going to face and all the things you need when undertaking big projects like these (that's why there's constant delays). I mean we got the internet out of a problem like this with CERN. Second off, scientists don't give a shit about industry (well not to the same degree). They say that happiness is worth 10 IQ points. If you've ever talked to scientists in a big lab they will nerd out on you. It is exciting just exploring what makes the universe and us. Maybe it is just my degree in physics, but I also think there's something poetic to trying to understand the environment around us. Does everything have to have a direct monetary value? What's wrong about learning for the sake of learning? Also, sometimes the return on investment on science is hundreds of years, but it does seem to always pay dividends.
- _s_a_m_ 5y agoIt is generally a weird attitude to required "societal progress" from scientists. Neither the term "progress" is clearly defined and does not need to be, nor does science at all work on such principle. It is like asking artists what the benefit on society is, it does not make sense to ask that question in that context, because it is not about exploiting something for a moment in time for some purpose which is supposedly "progress". I think Sabine is way overdoing her position for marketing purposes and everyone is biting..