4 ms·

> Countless other mathematical curiosities were developed in the 1700s -- and forgotten. Calculus just happens to be the one that found practical applications l

by graemep 17d ago

> Countless other mathematical curiosities were developed in the 1700s -- and forgotten. Calculus just happens to be the one that found practical applications later, so that's the one that's well known today. 1. You may not agree, but some people will argue that knowledge is worth accumulating in itself. We fund astronomy well beyond the solar system despite there being no real prospect of practical applications. 2. The value of calculus justifies the cost of all the curiosities. The economic benefits of funding lots of "curiosities" was well worth the few that were useful.

xmprt 17d ago
> We fund astronomy well beyond the solar system despite there being no real prospect of practical applications There are a lot of immediate practical benefits to learning more about the physics and chemistry of the universe beyond our solar system.
- paimapi 17d ago
  in general, yes. but specifically studying exoplant A or exoplanet B? or understanding dark matter? or driving a little science robot on Mars? what's the immediate utility of that?
  - Bjartr 17d ago
    The same thing could have been asked of radio waves when they were first discovered. It was actually considered purely an academic curiosity with no practical application. You can't know ahead of time which discoveries will be the lynchpin for some as yet unimagined future advance. Much like VC you need to spread out your bets and expect that most won't make direct return, but that every now and then something with 10000x return will surface.
    - paimapi 17d ago
      right, which is all the more reason to continue studying them in spite of the lack of immediate returns. our capitalist mode of quarter-driven roadmaps means we no longer care about the long horizon, it's all 'results this, metrics that, now now now' - meanwhile any student of history who's ever looked at the history of computing, or data science, or virtually any of our modern marvels knows how much purely abstract stone had to first be cut to get us to the results we have today can you imagine chucking all of computer science away because Babbage's thinking machines and Lovelace's programming cards didn't really result in meaningful capital gains here in FY26Q3? or, a more realistic example - imagine biology and genetics today if Mendel's discoveries had been published in a more widely read journal, if he hadn't been outright dismissed for his mathematical approach. or Semmelweis' advocacy of antispetic procedures that flew in the face of the then humors-based understanding of medicine in the 1800s - how many lives would have been saved between then and when Germ Theory finally took off decades later? it's ironic to me that it's often the same people who'll adopt the logic of banning reproductive rights on the off chance that someone very unprepared to have a child might birth someone who can cure cancer in spite of the probabilistic evidence of SES being highly correlated with educational attainment (eg that graph of the income bracket that the parents of all Nobel Prize winners start with). and yet when it comes to the actual nascent research and development required to pave the way for larger discoveries, that's seen as totally pointless and not worthy of funding. it's truly flabbergasting
      - jamiejquinn 17d ago
        Agreed. For a long time it felt like most governments/funders accepted that pure research is a necessary part of feeding the applied research machine. And now the funders seem particularly short-sighted. In saying that, in the spirit of a good faith argument, is there value in temporarily deprioritising pure research in (current) times of funding drought?
MentalM 17d ago
> 2. The value of calculus justifies the cost of all the curiosities. The economic benefits of funding lots of "curiosities" was well worth the few that were useful. That is totally not true. I am sure you can hardly name even one of those "curiosities" that later turn out to be useful and not "free" (i.e. if not existed, wouldn't be invented on the spot as a tool for solving those particular problem that they end up solving).
eru 17d ago
> You may not agree, but some people will argue that knowledge is worth accumulating in itself. Granted for the sake of argument. But our AI overlords are really good at accumulating that knowledge, and very patient in explaining it to us.
rdbl27 15d ago
1. is debatable, but in any case that is not the argument that the GP post made -- the post specifically argued that it's worth developing knowledge with no immediate known application, because some application may be developed later. That's a different argument than "knowledge ought to be accumulated for its own sake." 2. is unclear; the economic funding model of the 18th century was very different. At that time, there were very few academics, and nearly all were independently wealthy and self-funding. That is, they chose to spend their own money on mathematical curiosities to amuse themselves. Now, in modern academia, we are discussing the case that public tax money ought to be appropriated and allocated to pure knowledge / curiosity discovery _at scale_, for work which -- by definition -- has no known application or use. This is a very different economic and ethical proposal. This is no longer the question of how one rich man chooses to spend his own money; we are discussing the social application of common resources -- compulsory tax payments for all. It's easy to imagine other ways to spend that tax money that have much less debatable social value -- how about free healthcare for all? Better roads, or high speed trains? No famines? Flood control? There are a million other ideas with immediate benefit. I appreciate the value of pure knowledge as much as anyone, but it's also hard to make the case that it should be pursued indefinitely, whereever possible, and without limit or boundary when so many competing priorities exist. It's a question of competition for very scarce resources, versus unlimited wants. How do we decide appropriate allocations?

by graemep 17d ago

xmprt 17d ago

> We fund astronomy well beyond the solar system despite there being no real prospect of practical applications There are a lot of immediate practical benefits to learning more about the physics and chemistry of the universe beyond our solar system.

paimapi 17d ago
in general, yes. but specifically studying exoplant A or exoplanet B? or understanding dark matter? or driving a little science robot on Mars? what's the immediate utility of that?
- Bjartr 17d ago
  The same thing could have been asked of radio waves when they were first discovered. It was actually considered purely an academic curiosity with no practical application. You can't know ahead of time which discoveries will be the lynchpin for some as yet unimagined future advance. Much like VC you need to spread out your bets and expect that most won't make direct return, but that every now and then something with 10000x return will surface.
  - paimapi 17d ago
    right, which is all the more reason to continue studying them in spite of the lack of immediate returns. our capitalist mode of quarter-driven roadmaps means we no longer care about the long horizon, it's all 'results this, metrics that, now now now' - meanwhile any student of history who's ever looked at the history of computing, or data science, or virtually any of our modern marvels knows how much purely abstract stone had to first be cut to get us to the results we have today can you imagine chucking all of computer science away because Babbage's thinking machines and Lovelace's programming cards didn't really result in meaningful capital gains here in FY26Q3? or, a more realistic example - imagine biology and genetics today if Mendel's discoveries had been published in a more widely read journal, if he hadn't been outright dismissed for his mathematical approach. or Semmelweis' advocacy of antispetic procedures that flew in the face of the then humors-based understanding of medicine in the 1800s - how many lives would have been saved between then and when Germ Theory finally took off decades later? it's ironic to me that it's often the same people who'll adopt the logic of banning reproductive rights on the off chance that someone very unprepared to have a child might birth someone who can cure cancer in spite of the probabilistic evidence of SES being highly correlated with educational attainment (eg that graph of the income bracket that the parents of all Nobel Prize winners start with). and yet when it comes to the actual nascent research and development required to pave the way for larger discoveries, that's seen as totally pointless and not worthy of funding. it's truly flabbergasting
    - jamiejquinn 17d ago
      Agreed. For a long time it felt like most governments/funders accepted that pure research is a necessary part of feeding the applied research machine. And now the funders seem particularly short-sighted. In saying that, in the spirit of a good faith argument, is there value in temporarily deprioritising pure research in (current) times of funding drought?

MentalM 17d ago

> 2. The value of calculus justifies the cost of all the curiosities. The economic benefits of funding lots of "curiosities" was well worth the few that were useful. That is totally not true. I am sure you can hardly name even one of those "curiosities" that later turn out to be useful and not "free" (i.e. if not existed, wouldn't be invented on the spot as a tool for solving those particular problem that they end up solving).

eru 17d ago

> You may not agree, but some people will argue that knowledge is worth accumulating in itself. Granted for the sake of argument. But our AI overlords are really good at accumulating that knowledge, and very patient in explaining it to us.

rdbl27 15d ago

1. is debatable, but in any case that is not the argument that the GP post made -- the post specifically argued that it's worth developing knowledge with no immediate known application, because some application may be developed later. That's a different argument than "knowledge ought to be accumulated for its own sake." 2. is unclear; the economic funding model of the 18th century was very different. At that time, there were very few academics, and nearly all were independently wealthy and self-funding. That is, they chose to spend their own money on mathematical curiosities to amuse themselves. Now, in modern academia, we are discussing the case that public tax money ought to be appropriated and allocated to pure knowledge / curiosity discovery _at scale_, for work which -- by definition -- has no known application or use. This is a very different economic and ethical proposal. This is no longer the question of how one rich man chooses to spend his own money; we are discussing the social application of common resources -- compulsory tax payments for all. It's easy to imagine other ways to spend that tax money that have much less debatable social value -- how about free healthcare for all? Better roads, or high speed trains? No famines? Flood control? There are a million other ideas with immediate benefit. I appreciate the value of pure knowledge as much as anyone, but it's also hard to make the case that it should be pursued indefinitely, whereever possible, and without limit or boundary when so many competing priorities exist. It's a question of competition for very scarce resources, versus unlimited wants. How do we decide appropriate allocations?