5 ms·

Every time a new expensive instrument like this is proposed, someone asks: “what will it find?” We don’t know. That’s point of building it!

anigbrowl 4y ago
You need to bear in mind that some people do not care about knowledge for its own sake, only that which can be instrumentalized. So their response to the discovery of new cosmic facts is not that they're cool but 'what does that have to do with me?' To them, it's just nerds geeking out over stuff for its own sake instead of solving useful problems like ending hunger or making better consumer appliances or the like. You could think of it as a sort of techno-myopia.
- andrepd 4y ago
  Right, but even that argument is flawed, because real world applications often come out of unexpected theoretical research.
- tablespoon 4y ago
  > You could think of it as a sort of techno-myopia. Or, more accurately, you can think about it as a different set of priorities. For instance, someone might want to spend a ten billion dollars of tax money to survey all the ball pits across the world, and accurately count the number of balls in each at precisely the same moment, just to have that knowledge "for its own sake." Is it myopic not to care about that? A lot of people meet some of their needs for mysticism and meaning with astronomy, but it's also perfectly valid not to use it that way, and instead see it as blurry pictures of places that aren't even theoretically possible to interact with in any way.
  - rcme 4y ago
    This is a pretty techno-myopic view.
  - aintgonnatakeit 4y ago
    So basically unimaginative townies
    - tablespoon 4y ago
      Will you please support the ball-pit survey project? Anyone who doesn't is an "unimaginative townie."
      - smcnally 4y ago
        From anigbrowl’s root comment > techniques developed for the collection and analysis of such vast datasets find their way back into more quotidian applications. Which is different from knowledge "for its own sake." Townies with and without imagination will get behind aspects of the techniques, data, products and byproducts that resonate with them. NASA has plenty of examples.
  - Red_Leaves_Flyy 4y ago
    People who fail to articulate the value of projects like jwst have been neglected by educational institutions and this is but one of the consequences we bear for their failures.
    - tablespoon 4y ago
      > People who fail to articulate the value of projects like jwst have been neglected by educational institutions and this is but one of the consequences we bear for their failures. Not necessarily. For one, I'm not talking about being able to articulate some argument for its value, I'm talking about agreeing with that value. To put it bluntly, not sharing that value isn't some kind of personal failure, though a lot of people here seem to mistakenly treat it that way.
- stelliosk 4y ago
  There was a time not so long ago that people thought the Sun's heat came from burning a vast amout of coal and did not understand the concept of nuclear energy... today we know better. So by exploring the unknown we may unravel a mystery or discover something that improves the lives of mankind.
  - stelliosk 4y ago
    "Experts Doubt the Sun Is Actually Burning Coal Originally published in August 1863" https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/experts-doubt-the-sun-is-actually-burning-coal/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/experts-doubt-the...
    - xref 4y ago
      > is impossible that the sun should constantly be giving out heat, without either losing heat or being supplied with new fuel. Assuming that the heat of the sun has been kept up by meteoric bodies falling into it… Neat article, they were asking all the right questions. Calculating how long a coal body could burn, and a mechanism/quantity required to refuel it based on the mass of the solar system
  - anigbrowl 4y ago
    Well, you don't need to persuade me. I love science and hanging out at a science museum or curling up on the couch with some new papers is my idea of a good time. But there are people that just don't get it. A year or two back I was at a lecture about hummingbirds and the shockingly weird ways they fly and during the Q&A some lady kept asking 'but what's the point of this? Why does it matter?' leaving the lecturer (and everyone else) deeply confused.
dubcee349 4y ago
Wait so you are not supposed to come up with a fact you are trying to prove and then only create things that help prove it?

anigbrowl 4y ago

You need to bear in mind that some people do not care about knowledge for its own sake, only that which can be instrumentalized. So their response to the discovery of new cosmic facts is not that they're cool but 'what does that have to do with me?' To them, it's just nerds geeking out over stuff for its own sake instead of solving useful problems like ending hunger or making better consumer appliances or the like. You could think of it as a sort of techno-myopia.

andrepd 4y ago
Right, but even that argument is flawed, because real world applications often come out of unexpected theoretical research.
tablespoon 4y ago
> You could think of it as a sort of techno-myopia. Or, more accurately, you can think about it as a different set of priorities. For instance, someone might want to spend a ten billion dollars of tax money to survey all the ball pits across the world, and accurately count the number of balls in each at precisely the same moment, just to have that knowledge "for its own sake." Is it myopic not to care about that? A lot of people meet some of their needs for mysticism and meaning with astronomy, but it's also perfectly valid not to use it that way, and instead see it as blurry pictures of places that aren't even theoretically possible to interact with in any way.
- rcme 4y ago
  This is a pretty techno-myopic view.
- aintgonnatakeit 4y ago
  So basically unimaginative townies
  - tablespoon 4y ago
    Will you please support the ball-pit survey project? Anyone who doesn't is an "unimaginative townie."
    - smcnally 4y ago
      From anigbrowl’s root comment > techniques developed for the collection and analysis of such vast datasets find their way back into more quotidian applications. Which is different from knowledge "for its own sake." Townies with and without imagination will get behind aspects of the techniques, data, products and byproducts that resonate with them. NASA has plenty of examples.
- Red_Leaves_Flyy 4y ago
  People who fail to articulate the value of projects like jwst have been neglected by educational institutions and this is but one of the consequences we bear for their failures.
  - tablespoon 4y ago
    > People who fail to articulate the value of projects like jwst have been neglected by educational institutions and this is but one of the consequences we bear for their failures. Not necessarily. For one, I'm not talking about being able to articulate some argument for its value, I'm talking about agreeing with that value. To put it bluntly, not sharing that value isn't some kind of personal failure, though a lot of people here seem to mistakenly treat it that way.
stelliosk 4y ago
There was a time not so long ago that people thought the Sun's heat came from burning a vast amout of coal and did not understand the concept of nuclear energy... today we know better. So by exploring the unknown we may unravel a mystery or discover something that improves the lives of mankind.
- stelliosk 4y ago
  "Experts Doubt the Sun Is Actually Burning Coal Originally published in August 1863" https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/experts-doubt-the-sun-is-actually-burning-coal/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/experts-doubt-the...
  - xref 4y ago
    > is impossible that the sun should constantly be giving out heat, without either losing heat or being supplied with new fuel. Assuming that the heat of the sun has been kept up by meteoric bodies falling into it… Neat article, they were asking all the right questions. Calculating how long a coal body could burn, and a mechanism/quantity required to refuel it based on the mass of the solar system
- anigbrowl 4y ago
  Well, you don't need to persuade me. I love science and hanging out at a science museum or curling up on the couch with some new papers is my idea of a good time. But there are people that just don't get it. A year or two back I was at a lecture about hummingbirds and the shockingly weird ways they fly and during the Q&A some lady kept asking 'but what's the point of this? Why does it matter?' leaving the lecturer (and everyone else) deeply confused.

dubcee349 4y ago

Wait so you are not supposed to come up with a fact you are trying to prove and then only create things that help prove it?