James, you are trying to create an entirely a priori metaphysical account of the universe, one which you claim can account for all disciplines including physics, even though you can’t actually do any physics whatsoever, with or without your “Rational Metaphysics”. Could it be you who wants to become a modern soothsayer? Could it be that you are projecting your desire for ultimate control over scientists and that you don’t really understand what they do or their motivations?
Human beings are insane. We have thousands of nuclear weapons, an extinction machine of our own design, pointed down our own throats. In addition, we are destroying the environment we depend on, the only environment we have, as fast as we possibly can.
Science didn’t make us insane, but it is science which is giving us the power to do ever more damage with our insanity.
We’re like a 14 year old kid who is causing lots of trouble in the neighborhood, and science wants to hand us a car, a case of booze, and a gun.
Billions spent on the Higgs, with no actual practical benefit identified, other than dreamy wonderment for physics nerds. We have more important business to be attending to.
Although the reason they are willing to spend your money and efforts on such things (without asking you) is for the side benefits. As they invest into and investigate how to achieve the dream, they discover how to achieve control of the dreamers.
Wont there always be problems especially societal ones, even if we sorted them out more would follow.
Better to concentrate somewhat on permanent things rather than transient issues.
But how does this new data released on the 4th tell most physicists more about the higgs field than they already knew on July 4th 2011? Please tell me if I’m wrong but isn’t finding the boson more of an honorary milestone than an actionable cornerstone? From where I’m sitting it looks like a great marketing pitch, having the boson itself as a logo for the show-me mentality of a populace that doesn’t find science so sexy. It’s a logo for a product that was found years ago – the higgs field. I hope this hype of the boson will help science and get people more into science in general.
The more I delve into it, the more I feel let down, and that this was a technicality, and that the real exciting questions and answers about the higgs field are years away. is this the case for anyone else?
I’m happy for Peter Higgs, and for the duo of Bose-Einstein. Especially Bose, he got the better half of that deal. i hope this helps science funding for everyone, and helps the idea of science for the sake of knowledge, across all fields of scientific practice.
What does it matter if its been found? No pun inteded.
It cant beproved that atoms exist. You can’t see atoms
It cant be proved that protons exist.
It cant be proved that neutrons exist
It can’t be proved that yeserday existed
This last statement is true because the universe could have been created, say 5 seconds ago with all the memories that people have.
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You say we have more important things to attend to, and we certainly have a lot of things that need attention, but your comment has been made at every step of basic R&D scientific research effort. No one could figure out what to do with nylon when it was first whipped up by accident. The same thing for silicone. Half of the technological innovations we enjoy today came about because of that stupid program to put men on the moon. And what? Did they bring us back any green cheese? Worthless throwing money away.
Yeah, we had theories about the Higgs and what it could imply for future investigation, but we now have confirmation. That’s a bit different proposition. The CERN collider is barely at half it’s potential power. They’ll shut down for a year for maintainance and who knows what they’ll find after that? That there is no immediate practical application in the discovery is a given - just the same for every other major scientific discovery. Electricity was rubbing a piece of amber on cat fur for the amusement of the audience. Practical applications take a little longer than immediately upon discovery.
High energy particle physics is facinating and confusing at the same time. As a numbnuts, I follow along as best I can, but it’s like visiting a zoo on an alien planet. So many animals with so many different properties and many animals that may only come into a physical state for a millionth of a second before shape-shifting into a different critter.
What CERN is doing allows us to peer into the heart of stars where everything we are and have come from. The knowledge we gain may not have any immediate application, but if that knowledge allows us to explain and predict, it is enough in itself.
This is an aside, but… Are you familiar with 3D printing? The technology took advantage of lasers fusing plastic powder into a layered form controlled by computer formatting. Originally, it was an application designed to make quick prototypes for what had previously been slow laborious machining technology. About six months ago, a company in Britain was using the technology to make intricate chocolate candies. Last week, I read an article about some MIT people that have figured out a way to create ‘pathways’ for blood vessel growth that, when surrounded by liver cells, can grow living function liver tissue. It’s quite possible to kill your liver with alcohol and when it dies, just print out a new one. Obviously, there is a wee bit more to it than that, but the point is that in the beginning, no one thought of connecting lasers, computers, and a fusable material to produce body parts. What basic R&D ultimately creates can go into interesting places.
That kind of thing is the actual good. The problem is the cost it takes to merely inspire that kind of work, not to actually do it.
The Higgs thing is very much like watching high density clouds for a Higgs-rabbit to appear and then proclaiming that “we have proven that life stems from the clouds”.
Do you mean the money and time wasted in court challenges because the luddites were absolutely positive that CERN would create black holes and destroy the universe? Yeah, the costs of that sort of bullshit was enormous.
Very true, with the exception that we can say we know a little bit more about HOW life comes from the heart of a star. And we aren’t done yet. As a specie, we have managed to fuck up our support system so badly, that technology is the only alternative to a massive human die-back. I’m 50-50 on that proposition, but it doesn’t keep me from being fascinated with the potential being unlocked every day at the leading edge of scientific discovery.
Technology is how we managed to fucked up our support system.
That said, I support intelligent science that actually addresses the very real and very pressing problems we do have. Global warming research for example, all for it. Mind research, all for it. Population control research, all for it.
We face so many challenges, it’s nuts to be spending billions on research with no clearly defined benefit, and possible dangerous downsides.
Technology is what allows you to be here yammering like the rest of us. You would be hard pressed to name any technological advance that didn’t or doesn’t have a downside. Nobel invented dynamite, a much safer explosive for those in mining and construction. What was it’s first use? Weapons of destruction. It isn’t what technology produces, but how the apes choose to use it. The billions spent on research with no clearly defined benefit? Bell Labs made tons of money letting it’s people just mess around with stuff of no apparent benefit. The Bell Labs patents are probably worth trillions and very little of that was developed with clear benefits in mind. It takes both kinds of science. There should be the on-going search for answers to the unknown as well as applied science searching of what we do know. That, or start knapping spear points and make a nice custom loin cloth…
…it’s only nuts if your goal is a clearly defined, tangible, near-term benefit.
That’s not the goal. So the act is not nuts. It’s just a reflection of values.
Some people value exploration and following their curiosity about the universe OVER feeding every family or taking every possible precaution to reverse global warming. It’s possible that a bi-product of this exploration could wind up helping us do concrete things, but that’s not really why we do it – let’s at least admit it. We do it because we’re curious. More curious than we are loving. More curious than we are practical. More curious than we are content with our current knowledge. You can call this nuts if you want to. But it’s really just humans being humans.
If an astronomer’s house burns down, what does he rescue? His cat? His wallet? His family photos? Or his telescope? We pay them to be like that. You can hardly fault them.
Are you including everyone in this category? How do you account for the multitudes that seem to have no curiosity beyond getting laid or finding a cold beer? If curiosity is a common human trait, how is it that so many become un-curious?
There are NO problems that Man has, that he doesn’t already have the solution for (including research and even the problem of having no problems), except the timing as to when he will stop trying what doesn’t really work.
I am skeptical about the value of CERN research, but I think he is making a solid point about it not necessarily being bad if the specific applications of the knowledge are not known in advance. It is very hard to know in advance of a lot of research - unless it is a very specific - what the practical applications will be. Since we don’t know the results of the research. Sure, if we are testing if some chemical kills cancer or not, well we can predict the possible uses - though even here there have been surprises even here. I don’t think scientists - or really any kind of investigator, must as a rule know in advance what the applications of their investigations will be.
Partly this is just a given - we can’t always know. Partly it would limit research radically.
The whole Higgs-Boson thing is beyond my ability to judge. My gut feeling is I wish they went for other kinds of research, but I would find it very hard to demonstrate in some demonstrable long term cost benefit way that they have made the wrong choice.
I do think many people, if not most, have limited curiousity. They may be curious about variations in the things they know: who got laid, which team won, who is getting promoted. But in terms of new kinds of knowledge about the world or themselves, I think the curiousity seems rather low out there.
The cool thing about curiosity is that for every question answered, we generate ten new questions. That’s why technology explodes instead of plodding along. Technology isn’t the end-all be-all of existence, but it sure keeps things interesting.
You would be hard pressed to name any technological advance that didn’t or doesn’t have a downside. Nobel invented dynamite, a much safer explosive for those in mining and construction. What was it’s first use? Weapons of destruction. It isn’t what technology produces, but how the apes choose to use it. The billions spent on research with no clearly defined benefit? Bell Labs made tons of money letting it’s people just mess around with stuff of no apparent benefit. The Bell Labs patents are probably worth trillions and very little of that was developed with clear benefits in mind. It takes both kinds of science. There should be the on-going search for answers to the unknown as well as applied science searching of what we do know. That, or start knapping spear points and make a nice custom loin cloth…