3 ms·
I am all for spending money on scientific research but to justify large investments, it needs to yield something useful in practice. Otherwise it’s a form of ph
by cm2187 4y ago
I am all for spending money on scientific research but to justify large investments, it needs to yield something useful in practice. Otherwise it’s a form of philosophy, minus the societal impact.
XX century science has delivered plenty of practical applications. But is there any practical application to expect from another large Hadron collider? Wouldn’t that money be better used in bio science or something else?
- krageon 4y ago> to justify large investment it needs to yield something useful in practice The really important scientific work doesn't follow this rule and demanding it does is short-sighted. Perhaps worse, it's refusing to learn from plenty of historical examples where you can see the work yielded nothing of immediate use but was still very important (that is to say, society would look vastly different without it). In a sense, it's this kind of goal-oriented thinking that led society to the mess that it has become in the last 15 years.
- musha68k 4y agoExactly. “Agile”, efficiency-over-everything, etc won’t save this planet.
- Aerroon 4y agoHow many of those historical examples cost so much though? With $100 billion you could give $10000 to 10 million people. Or spend it on retraining or some other education. Most previous science discoveries weren't throwing around oodles of money.