To fund or not to fund - Are some science projects worth pursuing?

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...I was for the supercollider itself.

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I was a graduate student in physics at the time this was happening, and I seem to recall that the physics community was pretty ambivalent about this project. In fact, even the people who were initially interested lost interest after their sites were not chosen.-

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I do agree the space station was not worth it....

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My actual research field at this time was planetary sciences, and I can definitely say that no one was really intersted in this, except for the defense contractors who were worried that their corporate welfare was going to end with the demise of the Soviet Union.

Heh. Pure mathematics is even worse, Michael. It would take a long time to just begin to expain to my Physics PhD friends what I was working on in graduate school, never mind my friends who just took Calculus in college, or less.But cavediver's comments were overblown. One thing I have noticed is that certain fields of physics attract people who have, er, a pretty high opinion of themselves compared to others.I suspect that you can learn as much about particle physics or general relativity as you want. You just have to put some time and effort into it. Especially since there just aren't materials available for the layman to do this; you would have to basically train yourself to read very technical literature on your own.I do agree, though, that if a significant portion of the public cannot understand the work in any field enough to truly appreciate, then the enterprise becomes essentially maturbatory. Don't get me wrong; as someone who loves pure mathematics, I am glad that the public is willing to pay for it. I just don't understand why they do it.

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"Religion is the best business to be in. It's the only one where the customers blame themselves for product failure."
-- Ellis Weiner (quoted on the NAiG message board)

My post was a response to certain comments made by Michael: The main point of my post was to comment on this comment. Namely, my points were:(1) Michael is, perhaps, too pessimistic, and it may very well be possible to learn a great deal about the subject, perhaps even enough to qualify as an "expert", depending what one considers to be an expert. In fact, knowing how much time and money people spend on hobbies to which they are devoted, he may not even have to wait until retirement.(2) If it were, indeed, impossible for non-researchers to understand a particular field deep enough to appreciate it, then I would agree that an argument could be made that it should not be publically funded.The second comment is the one that is relevant to this thread, which is about funding of scientific research. The other comments to which you seem to object were only introductory statements to get to this point.

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"Religion is the best business to be in. It's the only one where the customers blame themselves for product failure."
-- Ellis Weiner (quoted on the NAiG message board)

Shrug.I will respectfully suggest that if you don't like the way I interpreted your posts then you should take more care in phrasing your comments.Edited. It sounded like I was claiming to speak for another member.This message has been edited by Chiroptera, 01-Apr-2006 08:52 PM

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"Religion is the best business to be in. It's the only one where the customers blame themselves for product failure."
-- Ellis Weiner (quoted on the NAiG message board)

Hi, Michael.I don't have anything to add to what cavediver says. I will extend some of my previous comments, however.I said that if you are willing to spend the time and effort (and the investment might be considerable), you can understand GR and/or particle physics as much as you want.This might not be true. I am a mathematics instructor. I see a very large number of students who have only a limited capacity for abstract reasoning and thought of the type necessary to do well in mathematics. Comparing American students to students in other countries, I feel that this reflects prior preparation as well as a commitment to spend the time and effort to master the subject. I acknowledge that there are some who simply cannot, no matter what their efforts, ever really obtain a high level of mathematical skill. But I want to believe that these are a very small minority of people.But I have to acknowledge the possibility that, just as only a very small number of poeple are biologically capable of becoming Olympic athletes, only a small number of people have the innate capabilities to really be able of the sort of hyper-abstraction required for mathematics. I don't think this is the case, and I hope not, but the possibility exists. In that case, it is possible that it is not possible for most people to really be able to understand GR or particle physics beyond a certain very simplistic level.Also, there is the philosophical question of how much mathematical models really give us in terms of understanding reality. At one extreme would be the a more or less Platonic view in which the world is mathematics. In that case, according to GR the universe is a 4 dimensional manifold with a non-positive definite metric, and so if you can conceptualize this then you understand what the true universe is like.On the other hand, there is also the other extreme the universe is what it is, and the most mathematical models do for us is allow us to calculate very precise values for the results that we are supposed to measure without the mathematics really describing reality. In other words, modelling the universe as a 4 dimensional manifold in which time is just another coordinate just like the three spatial ones may allow us to very accurately predict gravitional lensing, and the existence of phenomena attributed to gravitational waves, but that is not the same thing as saying that time actually is a coordinate just like the three spatial ones.In the former case, understanding differential geometry and group theory and functional analysis and so forth does allow us to understand the universe. In the second case, understanding mathematics may give us some insight into how the universe works, but true reality will remain hidden behind the veil of maya. I don't know which view is correct, or if the correct view is between these extremes, or even how to determine which view is correct.Bah. Sorry for the philosophizing.

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"Religion is the best business to be in. It's the only one where the customers blame themselves for product failure."
-- Ellis Weiner (quoted on the NAiG message board)

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It may be interesting to probe the origins of the universe, but I see no benefit or promice of benefit to the general public coming out of it.

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Personally, I think a lot of people saying, "Gee, that is so cool!" is itself a benefit. And, in fact, my opinion is that for any science this is the only true benefit, regardless of what "practical" applications come out of it.

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"Religion is the best business to be in. It's the only one where the customers blame themselves for product failure."
-- Ellis Weiner (quoted on the NAiG message board)