48dce28d$1@news.povray.org...
> I read your sig as " thinking about listening to "In the Hall of the 
> Mountain Grill" :-)
>
> To save everyone Googling the phrase, it's the title of a 1974 Hawkwind 
> album - arguably, their best.
>
> John
>
Mmmm there are paraphrases as  well : "In the court of the Crimson King" 
(1969) was not bad either.
Mellotron rules !

Marc

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"Brendan" <Bry### [at] comcastcom> wrote in message
news:pan### [at] comcastcom...
> On Wed, 24 Sep 2008 12:36:31 -0600, somebody wrote:

> > Going to the moon was bad science (well, not even science, just a
> > technological tour de force).
>
> There was plenty of science that resulted from the Apollo missions like
> the collection of lunar samples that could be radiometrically dated and
> used to calibrate the crater counting method of determining the age of
> cratered areas. Now we have estimates of the ages of cratered worlds
> much further away than the Moon without having sent sample collection
> mission to all of those worlds yet.

And the benefit to mankind of  "having the estimates of the ages of cratered
worlds much futher away from the Moon" is what exactly? :) In your eagerness
to counter my point, you are emphasizing it.

> We also shouldn't be shortsighted and not worry about how things will be
> 300 years from now because it'll be our descendants who will be around by
> then. I won't want them to figure out stuff that we could've easily
> figured out and then stereotype us as lazy bums who wasted those
> centuries by not doing that research to give them the results sooner, like
> how people today see Dark Ages Eurpoe.

They will have better technology than us. Let *them* lazy bums figure out
things if they *need to* at that time. They will be able to do it much more
efficiently. If knowing the "estimates of the ages of cratered worlds much
futher away from the Moon" is of no practical benefit to our generation, it
is crime to our contemporaries to waste present resources on such pursuits,
when we could make a dent with those resources in the suffering of *already
existing* people.

> We'd have to expand into space eventually if our kind or our descendants
> are around long enough because the Sun is heating up slowly during its
> main sequence lifetime, which has been predicted to make Earth
> inhospitable to modern types of ecosystems within a billion years, long
> before its red giant phrase. It'd be difficult through.

You hopless romantics are completely missing the trees for the forest. While
thinking about a future billion years from now (!??), you miss what we could
be doing for ourselves and for our fellow people. Africa is at most 10 hours
away, not a billion years. And I am sure there's suffering right at your
doorstep too.

Who needs to care about a billion years from now? Do you think Etruscans
worried about us? Even if they did, could they have anticipated anything at
all about our lives to have made useful decisions *for us*? And that was a
little over 1000 years. Isn't it presumptuous of you to propose to help a
species billion years your technological superior? Do you honestly think we
can anticipate, or even *help* descendants of humans (if they will exist and
if we can call them humans), billions of years down the road? And even if we
could help them, why should we, especially when we could be helping
ourselves instead? Do you realize you yourself will cease to exist in much,
much, much less than a billion years and it won't then matter at all, much
as it did not matter about Etruscans before you were born?

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"Darren New" <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote in message
news:48dc0501@news.povray.org...
> somebody wrote:
> >> Only after the fundamental work has been done by scientists.

> > I don't know what that means.

> I mean that (for example) research on genetic causes/cures for cancer
> wouldn't have been possible at all without high-energy physics research.
>
> (Figure out how the structure of DNA was determined, for example.)

I'm at this point guessing that you might be a little confused of the "high
energy" part in "high energy physics". Specifically, the energy scale of
"high energy" in modern times. So I'll try to help you and do the legwork -
I mean - fingerwork:

Google "benefits of high energy physics". On top, we find:

http://www.er.doe.gov/hep/benefits/index.shtml

Oh no! I was wrong all along. Look just how many benefits there are!

On closer inspection, besides the medicinal benefits that originated back
when energies were so low that the term "high energy physics" was not even
coined (*), can anyone see a direct benefit of the *actual research*?

Even on this propaganda page, there's nothing that lists the benefit of any
of the discoveries of the actual experiements. Wouldn't it be fun to have
something like "and the benefit of the top quark to humanity is..."?

The "benefits" listed boil down to things like:

""We use supeconducting magnets in our experiments, so that's a benefit of
the high energy experiments.""

Well, I like to eat popcorn when watching movies, so watching movies is good
science, it helps make inventions in genetics...

No, superconducting magnets is not a benefit of high energy physics
experiments. High energy physics experiments do not produce superconducting
magnets. High energy physics experiments, for that matter, do not produce
*anything* of practical value. This is my point.

Yes, HEP is one of the important consumers of superconducting magnets, and
like any good consumer, they do work in a tight loop with other physicists
and industry who manufacture the magnets. But those who design the magnets
do not benefit from high energy physics experiments, they sessentially
benefit from the money and opportunity being given to them by HEP
experiementers. Trickle down economics is not a good reason to give billions
to HEP.

""We use computers in our experiments, so faster computers and networks are
a benefit of the high energy experiments.""

No. We owe faster computers to John Carmack, and legions of Wolfenstein
players. And I'm only half joking. While consumers surely provide the
demand, and may even have feedback or make improvements, one cannot claim
that "faster computers are invented through playing games". The experiment
is to find the Higgs boson. Higgs boson won't make our computers faster, we
*need* faster computers *in order to* detect the Higgs boson. Causality is
reversed. There's no practical *result* of the experiments that will make
the computers faster. It's disingenuous to have a page with a title
"benefits of particle physics to society" and then list incidental
"benefits" of a generic *large consumer*, not HEP. Any large consumer of
superconducting magnets or computers can list the same "benefits". What is
the *real* benefit of the actual experiments, of high energy physics?

If the goal is to support building of faster computers through demand, give
each employee of LHC a copy of FarCry 2 and send them home. It would be much
cheaper than $10 billion.

WWW was invented at CERN:

No, it wasn't. Hypertext over the networks was invented by Tim Berners-Lee,
who happened to be working at CERN. Yes, it was a very important milestone,
but it was more evolutionary than revolutionary. Hypertext (Apple's
Hypercard, gopher... etc), as well as the Internet existed. But my point is
not to try to diminish the value of his invention. On the contrary, it's Tim
Berners-Lee who deserves the credit, not CERN. He was working at CERN when
he made the invention, but he could have very well have been working at IBM
or Apple or Walmart or Starbucks (well, he'd have better access to networks
at that time with the former two). There are thousands of pioneers that
contributed in large or small ways to the present state of the internet, and
they worked at one place or another at the time they made their
contributions. Of course it's no surprise that most of these contributions
came from institutions with large computer infrastructure. TCPIP was
invented at DARPA, for instance (and no, that doesn't justify building
bombs, or give credence to the claim that building bombs is a benefit to
mankind, since it enables invention of network protocols).

The important point is, CERN's high energy physics research did not give
rise to Tim Berners-Lee's invention. It's because they had a decent
computing infrastructure and Berners-Lee saw it fit to try out his ideas
there. So the connection of WWW with HEP is incidental, or random. Hypertext
over TCPIP might have been invented anywhere, colliding leptons did not play
any role. If a cashier at Starbucks invents a new type of cash register,
that doesn't mean coffee is to take credit. High Energy Physics research
similarly, cannot be credited with WWW. If we are going to do that, we might
as well spend billions to open new patent bureaus at every corner. After
all, we owe to a patent bureau that which arguably is one of the most
important discoveries of the last century, and it stands to reason that the
more patent bureaus we have, the more discoveries we will make in physics.

(*) Yes, atomic and subatomic particle physics at one point had practical
applications. But like I mentioned several times earlier, we long since have
crossed over that line where practical applications are possible. There's
always a law of diminishing returns as you get further away. Studying the
atmosphere of Earth has definite benefits. Studying the atmosphere of Venus
has little, if any. Studying the atmosphere of a planet 20 LY away (when
such time comes) is completely useless and wasteful. Similar scales exist in
any endavour. With particle physics, that scale of practicality correlates
more or less with energy.

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"Mueen Nawaz" <m.n### [at] ieeeorg> wrote in message
news:48dc20be$1@news.povray.org...
> somebody wrote:

> > Fine. But if you are intellectually honest, you will also be able to say
"I
> > have no reason to believe that finding the top quark will have *any*
> > practical applications, and thus won't take it as an assumption" (people
in

> I *am* being intellectually honest. I've already said earlier that I
> have no reason to believe throwing $100 billion at cancer research will
> bring us an iota closer to curing it.

That's an interesting position. How do you think then, if ever, will cancer
be cured?

Conversely, do you believe that the past advances in the field of cancer
treatment occured randomly, not as a result of directed research with
funding?

If you believe that past advances in cancer treatment were a result of
funded research, you *DO* have *some* evidence that "funded and directed
research" works and all is not random or comes out of thin air.

Or, of course, you might believe that while we spent so much already on
cancer research, we have made zero advances.

So what is it? Do we take past methodologies that yielded success as a
reasonable way to proceed in the future? Or do we try random, but zero cost
things since "you don't have a reason to believe money helps with cancer
research"?

> If I had good reason to think so,
> then it wouldn't be research.

You might have a very skewed understanding of research. Research isn't
random, planning is a big part of it, and you should expect results from it.
This seems to be the fundamental point on which we disagree.

> > There's a sharp diminishing of value towards the end of one's lifespan.
Even
> > 100 years is an overly generous period. Would you rather win $1 billion
in
> > the lottery 2 minutes before you die, or $1000 now?

> I already pointed out to you that I don't view (any) science as an
> investment that is supposed to give material returns. The return you get
> is knowledge. Everything else (technology, etc) is a side effect not
> related to the goal.
>
> Given that, your question makes little sense.

Regardless of your views on research, I'd much appreciate if you answered
the question. The question has nothing to do with research or LHC, cancer  -
it's a simple question about lottery (and I'm not going to make deductions
based on your answer, I'm simply curious): Would you rather win $1 billion
in the lottery 2 minutes before you die, or $1000 now?

Post a reply to this message

"Mueen Nawaz" <m.n### [at] ieeeorg> wrote in message
news:48dc2086$1@news.povray.org...

> I can see you did not bother answering how much you'd like to see
> medical research get before you're willing to be OK with spending $10
> billion for the LHC.

That's easy: $100,000 billion.

And that's a very low figure when you think about it. Even if it only saves
10 lives (gross, gross underestimate), I'm saying that the value of one
human's life to me is about the same as satisfying the curiousity of about
1000 or so physicists. If you were faced with such a dilemma and were given
a two buttons, which one would *you* push?

Post a reply to this message

And lo on Fri, 26 Sep 2008 15:26:08 +0100, somebody <x### [at] ycom> did spake,  
saying:

> "Brendan" <Bry### [at] comcastcom> wrote in message
> news:pan### [at] comcastcom...
>> On Wed, 24 Sep 2008 12:36:31 -0600, somebody wrote:
>
>> > Going to the moon was bad science (well, not even science, just a
>> > technological tour de force).
>>
>> Now we have estimates of the ages of cratered worlds
>> much further away than the Moon without having sent sample collection
>> mission to all of those worlds yet.
>
> And the benefit to mankind of  "having the estimates of the ages of  
> cratered worlds much futher away from the Moon" is what exactly? :) In  
> your eagerness to counter my point, you are emphasizing it.

I think ticking off creationists who think the universe is only 5000 years  
old can be classed as a benefit.

>> We also shouldn't be shortsighted and not worry about how things will be
>> 300 years from now because it'll be our descendants who will be around  
>> by then. I won't want them to figure out stuff that we could've easily
>> figured out and then stereotype us as lazy bums who wasted those
>> centuries by not doing that research to give them the results sooner,  
>> like how people today see Dark Ages Eurpoe.
>
> They will have better technology than us.

Um no they won't because they'd have spent the previous 100 years just  
developing the stuff we could have. Think of how much time was spent  
playing catch-up during the Dark Ages and think where'd we be now if we'd  
been able to continue building on those principles during that time.

>> We'd have to expand into space eventually if our kind or our descendants
>> are around long enough because the Sun is heating up slowly during its
>> main sequence lifetime, which has been predicted to make Earth
>> inhospitable to modern types of ecosystems within a billion years, long
>> before its red giant phrase. It'd be difficult through.
>
> You hopless romantics are completely missing the trees for the forest.  
> While thinking about a future billion years from now (!??), you miss  
> what we could be doing for ourselves and for our fellow people. Africa  
> is at most 10 hours away, not a billion years. And I am sure there's  
> suffering right at your
> doorstep too.

On this point I do agree with you. I will however be laughing my arse off  
if an LHC spin-off develops a super-cheap energy source which allows the  
nations of the world to stop fighting over oil and get on with raising the  
standard of living for the poorer nations.

The difficulty is you seem to be suggesting that we only do projects when  
we know exactly what the return is going to be and sadly the universe  
scoffs at such plans - have the government encourage banks to give  
mortgages to the poor, grow crops for biofuels, encourage capatialism in  
China. In each of these cases we thought we knew exactly what the return  
would be. Do you need me to list the results we got?

-- 
Phil Cook

--
I once tried to be apathetic, but I just couldn't be bothered
http://flipc.blogspot.com

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"Phil Cook" <phi### [at] nospamrocainfreeservecouk> wrote in message
news:op.uh3glnkgc3xi7v@news.povray.org...
> And lo on Fri, 26 Sep 2008 15:26:08 +0100, somebody <x### [at] ycom> did spake,

> > They will have better technology than us.

> Um no they won't because they'd have spent the previous 100 years just
> developing the stuff we could have. Think of how much time was spent
> playing catch-up during the Dark Ages and think where'd we be now if we'd
> been able to continue building on those principles during that time.

Nowhere did I mention stopping all development in its tracks. If anything,
we should develop technology that benefits us (I've been mentioning medical,
but computer, solid state, conndensed matter, robotics... etc too have
immediate benefits) at a much faster rate and minimize spending on
technologies or sciences with no foreseeable benefit, like cosmology, HEP,
manned space exploration.

> > You hopless romantics are completely missing the trees for the forest.
> > While thinking about a future billion years from now (!??), you miss
> > what we could be doing for ourselves and for our fellow people. Africa
> > is at most 10 hours away, not a billion years. And I am sure there's
> > suffering right at your
> > doorstep too.

> On this point I do agree with you. I will however be laughing my arse off
> if an LHC spin-off develops a super-cheap energy source which allows the
> nations of the world to stop fighting over oil and get on with raising the
> standard of living for the poorer nations.

So will I. But freak occurances can happen anytime. You can come upon that
source as you are cursing after stubbing your toe on the coffee table. I
won't count on either.

> The difficulty is you seem to be suggesting that we only do projects when
> we know exactly

Not exactly, but reasonably sure that it may have applications. And
prioritize with benefits to humans in mind.

> what the return is going to be and sadly the universe
> scoffs at such plans - have the government encourage banks to give
> mortgages to the poor,  grow crops for biofuels, encourage capatialism in
> China. In each of these cases we thought we knew exactly what the return
> would be. Do you need me to list the results we got?

True, but they were not totally unpredictable either. Even I had thought
ethanol from corn was a dumbass idea. In matters involving humans, though,
it's often the case that you see a train barreling down to a bridge that's
washed away, but cannot do anything. With China or mortgages, for instance,
it's a case of damned if you do, damned if you don't. Luckily, science is a
little more predictable in terms of RoI.

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On Fri, 26 Sep 2008 14:24:28 +0100, Doctor John <joh### [at] homecom> wrote:

>Stephen wrote:
>> 

>> 
>> --
>> 

>> 
>
>I read your sig as " thinking about listening to "In the Hall of the 
>Mountain Grill" :-)
>

LOL

I was thinking about when Peer Gynt's visit to daughter of the King under the
mountain's home.


>To save everyone Googling the phrase, it's the title of a 1974 Hawkwind 
>album - arguably, their best.
>

Michael Moorcock, What!
-- 

Regards
     Stephen

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"somebody" <x### [at] ycom> wrote in message news:48dcf516$1@news.povray.org...

> Google "benefits of high energy physics". On top, we find:
>
> http://www.er.doe.gov/hep/benefits/index.shtml
>
> Oh no! I was wrong all along. Look just how many benefits there are!

On the matter of incidental benefits, just one more thing I forgot to say in
my previous post: If you build a $10 billion medical research facility, you
can bet that they too will need superconductor magnets and state of the art
computers and networks, detectors, analysis equipment... etc. So you will
still get all the incidental benefits supporting the subsisidary industries
and research, but on top of that, you get the benefits from the main
research. For this reason, incidental benefits listed above are not really
benefits of HEP at all, they are benefits of any large and advanced
facility. The questions you have to ask, if you already decided to spend $10
billion, should relate to the main purpose of research to be conducted at
that facility.

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somebody wrote:
> Who needs to care about a billion years from now? Do you think Etruscans
> worried about us? 

Maybe not, but the Mayans did.

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

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