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.

Post a reply to this message

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)

Post a reply to this message

"Darren New" <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote in message
news:48da8c38$1@news.povray.org...

> Who made the decision to spend 10 billion dollars? If it was the
> scientists, then what do you care? It's their 10 billion dollars.

I much doubt that LHC was built from pocket change donated by scientists,
nor do I think scientists there work for free. It is the other way;
taxpayers financially support scientists, scientists give us knowledge in
return. As such, taxpayers have a right to question decisions by scientists
and need to have a say in what kind of knowledge will benefit them most.

Post a reply to this message

somebody wrote:
> As such, taxpayers have a right to question decisions by scientists
> and need to have a say in what kind of knowledge will benefit them most.

Yep. And they do. Complaining that the scientists are spending money is 
the wrong way to do it.  The scientists didn't take the money from you. 
Your elected representatives did.  So the decisions have already been 
questioned by the taxpayers, and the taxpayers said it was a good use of 
money.

Welcome to politics, where you get one decision regardless of how many 
people it affects.

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

Post a reply to this message

"Mueen Nawaz" <m.n### [at] ieeeorg> wrote in message
news:48daa315@news.povray.org...
> 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.

When budgets are made, for better or worse, spending on science is often
taken as a unit. Yes, in that sense, if particle physics gets a
disproportionately large sum, you can bet condensed matter will get less.

> 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.

Yes we can. Conversely, if we cannot, gambling with such enourmous money on
LHC is even more silly, is not it?

If you want to be conservative, invest in areas of medical research that are
most promising. There are plenty of underfunded fields.

> 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.

It's humanity's failing, since as far as I can see from the responses from
this group, people don't know what's good for them. I'm sure many of you,
and possibly I, will develop a form of life threatening cancer at one point
in the near future, within a few years or a decade. It's a certainity given
a large enough population. Would you rather have all those universities
spend their research budgets on an academic endavour that will benefit not a
single human being, or one that could benefit many?

The very essence of existence goes through health. I cannot think of a
single reason why medical research should not top all lists when it comes to
resource allocations.

> 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.

We build one every decade or two.

> 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

I did not say "budget" in my OP, I said "annual spending". (Spending the
entire budget in one year would mean closing doors the next year). Even so,
LHC costing more than twice the budget of NCI is telling.

Post a reply to this message

"andrel" <a_l### [at] hotmailcom> wrote in message
news:48D### [at] hotmailcom...
> On 24-Sep-08 19:21, somebody wrote:

> > * 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.

When I say "practical application", I am not looking for a tautological
answer (ie "by discovering X, we learned X"). So we learned X. Fine. What's
the practical benefit? What's the application?

> > * 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.

What does high energy physics have anything to do with GPS?

> > * 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)

No, the goal was was exactly precisely 100% to *be* at the moon before
somebody (not me) else. Nobody cared about the journey. Why romanticize
something that was essentially a pissing contest?

> > * 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.

Nobody did, and I know nobody will. Knowledge for knowledge's sake is NOT a
_practical_ expectation.

Post a reply to this message

"Darren New" <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote in message
news:48da8db5@news.povray.org...
> 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."

No, guessing (or worse, fantasy) makes not a potential benefit. Saying FTL
is a potential benefit of LHC is like saying finding $1M is a potential
benefit of digging into my belly button. Is it possible there's $1M hidden
in there? Well, maybe, if one's willing to include fantasy. More
realistically, though, is that all I can hope to dig out is lint.

Post a reply to this message

"Nicolas Alvarez" <nic### [at] gmailcom> wrote
> somebody wrote:

> > Extraordinary claims such as FTL require
> > extraordinary evidence.

> What if the evidence costs 10 billion to find?

What if jumping from a bridge will cause you to fly?

You don't try random things and hope that you'll get fantastic results.
That's not how science or nature work. That's why I'm betting that no self
respecting scientist will make such ridiculous claims as suggesting that LHC
will give us FTL or levitation, perpetual motion machines or anything
similarly fanciful.

On the other hand, maybe it will cure cancer, grow hair on bald heads and
prevent toasts from falling buttered side down. Just as likely as FTL, I'd
wager.

Post a reply to this message

"Darren New" <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote in message
news:48da7aaf@news.povray.org...
> somebody wrote:

> > discovered more than a decade ago at Fermilab, an older generation
collider
> > than LHC.

> Ten years is a rather short time for practical applications from
> something like this.

As is 100 years.

But 10 years is a perfectly valid timeframe for many a medical research to
give fruits.

> How long between discovery of Maxwell's equations
> and practical applications thereof?

Maxwell wrote his equations as practicaly applications of electromagnetism
(or electricity and magnetism) were being developed.

> How long between the invention of  relativity and the launching of GPS
satellites?

Einstein did not get a $10 billion grant to follow a wild goose chase. He
explained an existing problem.

Not all science is wasteful, I make no such claim. Just the opposite, I
claim that the worthiness of scientific research needs to be examined on a
case by case basis. High energy physics research, amongst all branches of
science, is the least useful of sciences. In fact, it has zero application,
past, present or foreseeble future. Don't confuse the matters by comparing
it to electromagnetism. Even the ancients, when they rubbed materials
together or observed magnetic materials, had already discovered practical
applications of electromagnetism. The theory was developed in conjunction
with applications, or to explain applications and observations.

Post a reply to this message

"Darren New" <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote in message
news:48dadbef$1@news.povray.org...
> somebody wrote:

> > As such, taxpayers have a right to question decisions by scientists
> > and need to have a say in what kind of knowledge will benefit them most.

> Yep. And they do. Complaining that the scientists are spending money is
> the wrong way to do it.

You may see it as pointless complaining, but maybe if we have this
discussion now, we can ask more critical questions and affect better
decisions next time large amounts of money is considered on similar
projects.

Post a reply to this message