somebody wrote:
> "Darren New" <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote in message
> news:48da7aaf@news.povray.org...
>> somebody wrote:
> 
>>> * Moon program (or in general, manned space exploration programs)
> are/were
>>> huge wastes of funds as well. If there were any merits to it, we would
> have
>>> visited the moon in the last 40 years.
> 
>> We came, we saw, we conquered. Why go back?
> 
> Exactly. It wasn't science, it was show.

Well, no. We learned what we needed to learn. We're not doing 
Michelson-Morley experiments any more either, except in high school.

Once you have 600 pounds of lunar soil, how much more do you need to 
analyze?

>> The Higgs boson is what gives matter mass. A good understanding of that
>> may settle research into a number of questions that have practical
>> applications for things like faster-than-light travel, reduction of
>> inertia, and so on, I'd expect.
> 
> You really do? Please do explain.

Given that previous investigations of things like "the position of 
electrons within the atom" lead to things like Bose condensates and 
tunnel diodes, what makes you sure that investigations into particles 
that are supposed to be responsible for mass and inertia might not have 
results concerning technology to manipulate mass and inertia?

Note the word "may" there. I *expect* they *may*. Not "I expect they 
will". Not "they may". Understand the differences there.

> Extraordinary claims such as FTL require extraordinary evidence. 

And you are in favor of preventing such evidence from being collected. I 
see what you did there.

> I'm afraid, however, fantasy is not enough of a justification in this matter.

Then explain why we're spending 10 billion dollars on it. I'm afraid 
fantasy certainly seems to be enough of a justification, yes?

-- 
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)

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somebody wrote:
> Yet, you fail to provide even a *single* potential benefit. My challenge
> stands.

Yet, when we provide potential benefits, you say "no, those couldn't 
happen."

-- 
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)

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somebody <x### [at] ycom> wrote:
> No. Satellites falls into "unmanned" space exploration. I specifically made
> a distinction: Unamanned=good, manned=bad. The fringe benefits of manned
> exploration to unmanned is not worth carrying out manned exploration. Spend
> that money on unmanned, and you can launch 10 times more satellites.

  I assume you consider Hubble a completely useless experiment as well.
(Hubble wouldn't have been possible without manned spaceflights.)

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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somebody wrote:
> life. Sure, someone will comment how US wastes 100s of billions in Iraq, but
> what irresponsible polititicians do should not excuse what supposedly smart
> scientists do. 

	Consider me that someone.

	I never understand why people view science funding as a zero sum 
system. Why is the solution to something being underfunded always "Take 
money away from some other scientific discipline", when the waste of 
money elsewhere (not *just* military) is enormous. Why not simply 
suggest that cancer research get more funding, irrespective of how much 
NASA or the LHC gets?

	Instead of going after wasteful politicians, you'd rather go after 
scientists? Let's not take care of the more serious problem and just 
rant against those who are less wasteful? Isn't that counter to the 
whole point behind your message?

> Science without ethics and mismanagement of resources, to me,
> is just as much a crime against humanity. 

	I disagree. Choosing to study obscure particles in no way has any 
bearing on ethics, let alone be a crime against humanity. The only 
ethics in science is if you're actively hurting others.

	I also disagree with what seems to be an assumption in your message: 
That if you put enough money on studying something (e.g. aging), you'll 
get positive results. For all we know, putting those $10 billion in that 
research may yield absolutely nothing.

	That's what science is: An investigation of the unknown. You can't plan 
for results in it the way you plan for results in a company.

	Additionally, the money being spent on this comes from a variety of 
resources, over time. I don't know the details, but (from Wikipedia):

"It is funded by and built in collaboration with over eight thousand 
physicists from over eighty-five countries as well as hundreds of 
universities and laboratories."

	If "hundreds" of universities and laboratories decided to contribute 
parts of their research budget and get together and build this, where's 
the problem? If the cancer research folks can't do this, it's their 
failing.

	Also, comparing it with the amount of money the US spends on annually 
on some research is disingenuous. It's not as if we build an LHC every 
year.

	And of course, I don't know where you got the 1 billion dollar figure 
for cancer funding. The National Cancer Institute alone has a budget 
exceeding 4 Billion Dollars:

http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/factsheet/NCI/research-funding

	This doesn't even include funding from other agencies.

	At the end of the day, you are, however, welcome to petition 
politicians to reduce funding to those areas. Ultimately, they get to 
appropriate (if it's taxpayer money), not the scientists. Stop blaming 
them. If a physicist receives a boatload of money after applying for a 
grant where he was truthful, he has no need to worry about ethics. He 
didn't grab the money - it was given to him willingly. From his 
perspective, his work is kosher.

	You sound like you want scientists to become politicians...

-- 
For Sale: Parachute. Only used once, never opened, small.


                     /\  /\               /\  /
                    /  \/  \ u e e n     /  \/  a w a z
                        >>>>>>mue### [at] nawazorg<<<<<<
                                    anl

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somebody wrote:
> * Side effects and peripheral benefits does not justify an endavour of this
> magnitude. If you are going to suggest grid computing as a benefit, why not
> suggest pouring all 10 billion dollars into it? That would give much bigger
> and surer yields.

	Actually, 10 billion dollars is small if a few side effects end up 
being very profitable.

	As for pouring 10 billion dollars "directly into it", it's a case of 
necessity. I can't ask for 10 billion dollars to create a system for 
handling huge amounts of data if I can't give a reason to handle huge 
amounts of data to begin with. That, unfortunately, is how funding works.

> * Laymen are, unfortunately, impossibly confused about the depth and breadth
> of physics and media and publicists prey on this. HEP (high energy physics)
> is a deep, deep end, far removed from mostly applied branches of physcis
> such as quantum optics, quantum computing, condensed matter, solid state...

	Actually, some of your questions would be *quite* valid for some of 
those items listed above, just around the time they were being 
discovered. Go back to the late 19th century, and try to justify 
spending any money on the study of atoms - other than for chemistry's sake.

	It's easy to look back now and say research in those areas was worth 
it, but it wasn't obvious back then.

 > I would much welcome a 10 billion dollars investment in any or all of
 > those fields, that have proven or at least feasible returns on 
investment.

	Science is not compartmentalized that easily. You can't study things 
independently of one another. Progress in one field often gives insight 
on others. Are you suggesting the study of HEP thus far has not 
furthered areas like condensed matter physics and quantum computing?

 > Science without regard to the human factor is just stamp collecting.

	Actually, science *is* without regard to the human factor. Science, at 
least the physical sciences, is the study of nature. Not the study of 
nature to benefit humanity. All benefits are incidental. People seem to 
forget that.

	Which is why I say: Don't expect any real professional scientists to be 
concerned about issues of practicality. It's simply not their goal nor 
their job. Real science has no ordering where one discipline is more 
valuable than another. That has to be enforced from beyond, not from within.


-- 
For Sale: Parachute. Only used once, never opened, small.


                     /\  /\               /\  /
                    /  \/  \ u e e n     /  \/  a w a z
                        >>>>>>mue### [at] nawazorg<<<<<<
                                    anl

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I've already pointed out that I don't feel anyone need to. Once money 
is allocated to science, consider it money lost. Science gives no 
promises on returns. That's accepted when money is allocated for it. But 
I'll play along:

> Yet, you fail to provide even a *single* potential benefit. My challenge
> stands.


	A bunch of people on the Internet not answering questions to your 
satisfaction is not really an argument for anything.


-- 
For Sale: Parachute. Only used once, never opened, small.


                     /\  /\               /\  /
                    /  \/  \ u e e n     /  \/  a w a z
                        >>>>>>mue### [at] nawazorg<<<<<<
                                    anl

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somebody wrote:
> Extraordinary claims such as FTL require
> extraordinary evidence.

What if the evidence costs 10 billion to find?

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On 24-Sep-08 19:21, somebody wrote:
> "Doctor John" <joh### [at] homecom> wrote
>> somebody wrote:
> 
>> | Jokes aside, doesn't anybody else find it ridiculous that almost 10
>> billion
> 
>> Please don't feed the troll

why not?

> There have been many more responses than I expected and can individually
> answer, so I will follow up the most thoughtful of the responses above, and
> summarize my answers:
> 
> * I challenge anyone to provide a single practical application that the
> discovery of the top quark (mass) has enabled.

It more or less was found where it was predicted. Hence it proved we 
understood something. While some have honestly tried to answer this and 
similar questions I think it is time for you to answer this on: Assume 
that the top quark was not detected as predicted, explain how this would 
have changed our understanding of matter and give examples of practical 
applications that would have been either possible or impossible or 
different when that the top quark not exists. Alternatively proof that 
it would not have made a difference.

> * I challenge anyone to provide a single practical application that the
> discovery of the top quark (mass) may one day enable. Top quark was
> discovered more than a decade ago at Fermilab, an older generation collider
> than LHC.

Yet, the Higgs boson was not found, eventhough some theories expected it 
to be within range of the then current equipment.

> * Side effects and peripheral benefits does not justify an endavour of this
> magnitude. If you are going to suggest grid computing as a benefit, why not
> suggest pouring all 10 billion dollars into it? That would give much bigger
> and surer yields.

No, it wouldn't. Because this and other technology was developed to 
support scientific research at first and only then the potential for the 
general public was discovered. You could have poured money directly into 
grid computing, the internet and GPS (to name a few examples that came 
up), except nobody would have had the vision to do so.

> * Moon program (or in general, manned space exploration programs) are/were
> huge wastes of funds as well. If there were any merits to it, we would have
> visited the moon in the last 40 years. It was one-upmanship, clear and
> simple. Post-facto justifications, "space-age-technology" hype as a result
> is NASA trying to save face.

You totally missed the point of the moon program. It was not intended to 
go to the moon, it was intended for the process of going. The journey is 
far more important than the arrival. (somebody (not you) said that much 
better)

[snipped some more of the same]

Let me also observe this: I know a lot of research that could in 
hindsight have been skipped, some of the failures I had even predicted 
before the start. In fact I do now predict that one specific 
multimillion euro EU program that just started is going to fail. 
(Knowing that, I'll do my best to safe it, eventhough I am not part of 
it, but that is beside the point)
Some of the research I did previously can be classified as a failure 
too. Some of my best work on the other hand I could not have done 
without those failures. You grossly underestimate the importance of 
failures.

Observation two: many governments and organisations have tried to cut 
expenses by observing that about 1/3rd of the projects fail and not 
supporting the bottom halve. Guess what: the numbers are still the same, 
you can not predict which project will bring something and which will 
fail. The only thing we know for sure is that the bureaucracy needed to 
'identify the weaker plans' eats a very substantial part of the budget. 
We now spend much more on research because we tried to do it cheap.

I assume that this 'somebody' from north america has a brilliant idea 
how you can improve the practical use of research while cutting costs. I 
work in science, I have seen a lot of ideas to do just that and the one 
thing they have in common is that the have failed miserably and 
expensively. So, if you have a good idea, please don't tell me.

> * Hence my question, what possible practical expectation is there from this
> experiment? Feel free to ask around. No honest scientist will give you an
> answer.

Many will and did, but whatever they say will be disregarded by you as 
irrelevant. So why would you even ask such a question.

> * Finally, is anyone as naive to think that LHC will be the final experiment
> that explains everything? 

It might, but it will probably not. And I do hope it won't.

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On 24-Sep-08 22:29, Mueen Nawaz wrote:
> somebody wrote:
>> life. Sure, someone will comment how US wastes 100s of billions in 
>> Iraq, but
>> what irresponsible polititicians do should not excuse what supposedly 
>> smart
>> scientists do. 
> 
>     Consider me that someone.

Oh no, not another somebody.

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Nicolas Alvarez wrote:
> somebody wrote:
>> Extraordinary claims such as FTL require
>> extraordinary evidence.
> 
> What if the evidence costs 10 billion to find?

LOL!  I think you win. :-)

-- 
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)

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