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

And that explains why we put capable men like Bush in charge, and divert money to wholly faith-based programs?Heheheh.

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"Civilized men are more discourteous than savages because they know they can be impolite without having their skulls split, as a general thing." - Robert E. Howard

I have read through it, it is an interesting discussion. As someone who lives in a communist country, I can tell you that government spending is not always the great evil that many rabid capitalists want you to believe. If anything, its corporate gluttony that is much more abhorrent to me. The idea that anything is ok, as long as it is in the name of profits and increased stock prices is not a model of a great society in my opinion. So I am all for government sponsored projects, but I agree with Moose, if we are going to spend it, let's calculate the pluses, and make a better shopping list of priorities.How high is the search for invisible particles, created in the minds of scientists locked in a room and paid to create fantastic speculation? Pretty low on my list I would have to say. As cavediver has pointed out, there are very very few people on the planet who can even come close to understanding what is going on in the search for extra universes and strings created only by the evidence of imagination. I believe the further we go towards this type of far out theoretical pondering, we are by definition more likely to be wrong then right. How much should we spend on such short odds? We have to spend billions based on the fantasies of 5 people?And the pay-off if right? Unfortunately undefinable at this point, other than satisfying some curiosity.So again, if its my list, I am not saying it is not on there at all, but ok, renewable energy, better water management, removal of all plastics from the planet, an improved correctional system, a complete overhaul of our policing system with an emphasis on transparency and community co-operation as opposed to authoritarian muscle, more government funded medicine distribution...ok,ok particle physicists, sorry I will get to you, but I still have an awful lot of messes to clean up first.But yes, I would have voted for Hubble.

Government and corporations are the same entity these days, in your government as well. So it is all abhorrent.If anything, private business has some freedom to dictate it's own impact on society and judge for itself how to use their money.The LHC isn't just looking for particles, and it's potential may prove to be beneficial to future generations who may need to explore resources on other planets. Why are you placing limits to something that, in your own words, only a few people understand, so only a few people know the full potential of? Just because you don't see it doesn't mean highly experienced people don't.It always pays off in the long run to listen to the nerds.- Oni

The whole point of the proposed supercollider and the now operational LHC is to see if these theories are right or wrong. Like you said, imagination and math can only get us so far. At some point we have to test these ideas, and this is what the LHC is designed to do (or at least come as close as we pragmatically can). You also need to keep in mind that finding out that these theories are completely wrong is as important a find as discovering that they make accurate predictions. Finding the Higg's Boson would be amazing, but not seeing it when it should be seen could point to whole new avenues of research.As to Hubble, I suspect that many are biased in favor of the telescope because they like the pictures. I would suggest that the WMAP and COBE satellites were just as important, and maybe more important, and yet they get much less press and public support.IMHO, science projects like these are just as important as government endowments for the arts. They are things that we must do as humans because they are what define us. We are explorers. We are artists. Above all, we are curious. What if the answers to our questions are within our techonological grasp? Wouldn't it be a crime against our own humanity not to at least try?

Well, when 60-100 million children starve to death every decade, when another 800 million people annually are malnourished, when 20,000 square miles of ocean are clogged with plastic contamination, when we are 30 years away from no more oil, when 10% of all college age blacks are in prison in America, when 50 million Americans are without health insurance, when we have no long term strategy for storing spent nuclear material, when 250 million people contract malaria every year...and a whole host of other issues, I say the money spent to satisfy people's curiosity is the bigger crime.

And besides, creationists already know all the answers they need to know, right?No point in that science stuff, eh?

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Religious belief does not constitute scientific evidence, nor does it convey scientific knowledge.

The money spent on these science projects is dwarfed by the total amount of money that is out there. IIRC, the LHC cost around 7 or 8 billion to construct over several years. The US military budget is 700 to 800 billion per year, and it doesn't solve any of the problems you listed. I don't think the LHC (or other similar big projects) is the area you should be picking on.Edited by Taq, : No reason given.

There's a (probably apocryphal) story of the King asking Michael Faraday what use electricity was.There are two versions of his answer. In one version, he says: "What use is a new-born baby?"In the version that I prefer, he says: "I have no idea what use it will have, but I know that one day Your Majesty's government will put a tax on it".

First of all, I would say that if you live a life without any luxuries, then your moral standpoint is unassailable. Otherwise not so much.Secondly, I would say that scientific knowledge is one of the most economic of luxuries. We pay for it once, and then everyone has it forever.(An anecdote: some guy protested at the cost to the taxpayer of turning me into a mathematician. I did a quick sum in my head and gave him a penny as his refund.)Thirdly, I would point out that it is difficult to know in advance whether a piece of knowledge might have practical uses. SETI is now a classic example of a waste of money. Unless and until we contact aliens who share with us their advanced technological secrets, in which case it's the motherlode.There was a guy, I forget his name, who made such major practical advances in physics that they gave him a Nobel Prize for it. His research was instigated by his curiosity as to why the Mediterranean Sea was such a beautiful shade of blue.Obviously if we knew in advance what would be useful we'd all be doing that.

The one about napolion and a steam ship is better.Napoleon:"What, sir, would you make a ship sail against the wind and currents by lighting a bonfire under her deck? I pray you, excuse me, I have not the time to listen to such nonsense."

My favorite example of ignorant incredulity (apart from creationists, of course) is the New York Times sneering at Goddard: A rocket, of course, reacts against its own exhaust.

no no the best quote would have to be by Ken Olson, president, chairman and founder of Digital Equipment Corp"There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home."or"There is practically no chance communications space satellites will be used to provide better telephone, telegraph, television, or radio service inside the United States."-- T. Craven, FCC Commissioner,"To place a man in a multi-stage rocket and project him into the controlling gravitational field of the moon where the passengers can make scientific observations, perhaps land alive, and then return to earth--all that constitutes a wild dream worthy of Jules Verne. I am bold enough to say that such a man-made voyage will never occur regardless of all future advances."-- Lee deForest, American radio pioneer and inventor of the vacuum tube,I think there is a world market for maybe five computers."-- Thomas Watson, chairman of IBM, 1943"Atomic energy might be as good as our present-day explosives, but it is unlikely to produce anything very much more dangerous."-- Winston Churchill, British Prime Minister, 1939"The energy produced by the atom is a very poor kind of thing. Anyone who expects a source of power from the transformation of these atoms is talking moonshine."-- Ernst Rutherford, New Zealand physicist, 1933"Stock prices have reached what looks like a permanently high plateau."-- Irving Fisher, Yale University Professor of Economics, 1929
(two weeks later, the stock market crashed and the Great Depression started)"While theoretically and technically television may be feasible, commercially and financially I consider it an impossibility, a development of which we need waste little time dreaming."-- Lee DeForest, American radio pioneer and inventor of the vacuum tube, 1926"That the automobile has practically reached the limit of its development is suggested by the fact that during the past year no improvements of a radical nature have been introduced."-- Scientific American, Jan. 2 edition, 1909"I am tired of all this sort of thing called science here ... We have spent millions in that sort of thing for the last few years, and it is time it should be stopped."-- Simon Cameron, U.S. Senator, on the Smithsonian Institute, 1901"We are probably nearing the limit of all we can know about astronomy."-- Simon Newcomb, Canadian-born American astronomer, 1888"A man has been arrested in New York for attempting to extort funds from ignorant and superstitious people by exhibiting a device which he says will convey the human voice any distance over metallic wires so that it will be heard by the listener at the other end. He calls this instrument a telephone. Well-informed people know that it is impossible to transmit the human voice over wires."-- News item in a New York newspaper, 1868"Rail travel at high speeds is not possible because passengers, unable to breathe, would die of asphyxia."-- Dionysius Lardner, Professor of Natural Philosophy and Astronomy at University College, London, and author of The Steam Engine Explained and Illustrated, 1830sAnd ofcourse every creo argument ever presented

"640K ought to be enough for anybody." --- Bill Gates. I'm going to call BS on this one.

you can find it all over the net one of the sites that has this quote from the ny newspaperFailed predictionsThough i do not have acces to a us libery and the time to go trough all the newspapers from new york in that year to find the article, i do not doubt that the media invented some storry again. Edited by frako, : No reason given.

You can find a lot of things all over the internet.The thing which rang my skeptical bell was the detail that he called his invention a "telephone".My BS-sense is tingling.