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Fundamental research has a funny way of producing results in other areas. To name just one example, the World Wide Web was developed at CERN. The other thing i

by bradrn 3y ago

Fundamental research has a funny way of producing results in other areas. To name just one example, the World Wide Web was developed at CERN. The other thing is that you never know exactly what will and won’t have applications later on. General relativity seemed pretty useless until we had GPS; number theory had no practical use for thousands of years until asymmetric cryptography was invented. Even within particle physics, neutron scattering is now a fundamental part of material science, and I’m sure there are many more similar examples. I can’t tell you exactly what CERN’s current research will result in, but I wouldn’t be at all surprised if it eventually finds a use. (Or has already, in fact.)

efitz 3y ago
I hate the “web was invented at CERN” trope. Yes, it’s trivially true, but TBL was standing on the shoulders of giants. When HTTP came along, we already had gopher. We already had HyperCard. SGML was already a thing. We already had FTP. Lots of us already had shell internet accounts; many more had CompuServe or AOL. The web was inevitable at that point in time, and would have taken a similar shape and happened in very short order regardless of whether CERN ever existed.
- elashri 3y ago
  That can be said about almost every discovery or achievement in history of humanity. And exactly this is why humanity always in one form or another keep doing research. And people who do something get the credit. No one is saying that relativity was going to be formulated if Einstein did no do it (Actually people were close and of course he got some help). A couple of centuries ago, Newton summarize all this when we he said that he did all that because he was standing on the shoulders of giants. This is true today like it was in 17th century.
- aardvarkr 3y ago
  That’s like saying the Renaissance was nothing special because they were just building on the work of other people. Congratulations, you just described the entirety of human invention. Someone had to be first and there is a reason it was CERN. When you throw money at brilliant people sometimes they come up with brilliant solutions to mundane problems.
  - kortilla 3y ago
    The web wasn’t a significant jump though over HyperCard, gopher, etc. It was nothing like the leap forward that TCP/IP brought us. Put another way, the internet today is completely usable for transferring data across the globe in an instant without Tim’s contribution. The web is not what makes the internet good. If the web is used as a justification for cern, cern is a huge waste of money because that’s a trivial invention.
- zamfi 3y ago
  With the exception of HyperCard, all those other “giant” technologies were also developed at research institutions whose purpose has been questioned many times: UMN (Gopher), IBM Research (SGML), MIT (FTP). That the Web was “inevitable” doesn’t mean that it would have happened without public research support. The public, open web exists b/c of academics and industrial researchers hacking on a weird global network infrastructure funded primarily by governments. The same thing is happening now with AI: academic and industrial research labs have been incubating these ideas for decades, and you can paint OpenAI as irrelevant (Google invented the Transformer architecture!) but someone makes these things happen each time they happen. Sure, we could have had the web without CERN — but would we have had the web without any of these research institutions?
  - kortilla 3y ago
    You’re shifting the goal posts though. The question wasn’t about funding research, it was specifically about high energy physics.
    - zamfi 3y ago
      Am I, though? The grantparent post was about fundamental research producing results in other areas, and then the parent post complained that the invention of the Web would have happened with or without CERN. I don't think anyone is really arguing that we needed a high energy physics lab in order to invent the Web -- and I'm pointing out that those other inventions that didn't happen at CERN also happened in fundamental research labs of various types.

by bradrn 3y ago

efitz 3y ago

I hate the “web was invented at CERN” trope. Yes, it’s trivially true, but TBL was standing on the shoulders of giants. When HTTP came along, we already had gopher. We already had HyperCard. SGML was already a thing. We already had FTP. Lots of us already had shell internet accounts; many more had CompuServe or AOL. The web was inevitable at that point in time, and would have taken a similar shape and happened in very short order regardless of whether CERN ever existed.

elashri 3y ago
That can be said about almost every discovery or achievement in history of humanity. And exactly this is why humanity always in one form or another keep doing research. And people who do something get the credit. No one is saying that relativity was going to be formulated if Einstein did no do it (Actually people were close and of course he got some help). A couple of centuries ago, Newton summarize all this when we he said that he did all that because he was standing on the shoulders of giants. This is true today like it was in 17th century.
aardvarkr 3y ago
That’s like saying the Renaissance was nothing special because they were just building on the work of other people. Congratulations, you just described the entirety of human invention. Someone had to be first and there is a reason it was CERN. When you throw money at brilliant people sometimes they come up with brilliant solutions to mundane problems.
- kortilla 3y ago
  The web wasn’t a significant jump though over HyperCard, gopher, etc. It was nothing like the leap forward that TCP/IP brought us. Put another way, the internet today is completely usable for transferring data across the globe in an instant without Tim’s contribution. The web is not what makes the internet good. If the web is used as a justification for cern, cern is a huge waste of money because that’s a trivial invention.
zamfi 3y ago
With the exception of HyperCard, all those other “giant” technologies were also developed at research institutions whose purpose has been questioned many times: UMN (Gopher), IBM Research (SGML), MIT (FTP). That the Web was “inevitable” doesn’t mean that it would have happened without public research support. The public, open web exists b/c of academics and industrial researchers hacking on a weird global network infrastructure funded primarily by governments. The same thing is happening now with AI: academic and industrial research labs have been incubating these ideas for decades, and you can paint OpenAI as irrelevant (Google invented the Transformer architecture!) but someone makes these things happen each time they happen. Sure, we could have had the web without CERN — but would we have had the web without any of these research institutions?
- kortilla 3y ago
  You’re shifting the goal posts though. The question wasn’t about funding research, it was specifically about high energy physics.
  - zamfi 3y ago
    Am I, though? The grantparent post was about fundamental research producing results in other areas, and then the parent post complained that the invention of the Web would have happened with or without CERN. I don't think anyone is really arguing that we needed a high energy physics lab in order to invent the Web -- and I'm pointing out that those other inventions that didn't happen at CERN also happened in fundamental research labs of various types.