alt Hacker News> The latest ones cost billions and have confirmed a few things we already thought to be true.
Yes, but we had hopes that it would lead to more. And had lead to more, something only known to be false in hindsight, who knows where that would have ended us up? What if it upended the standard model instead of reinforcing it?
> Absolutely not.
What are we supposed to do then? As humans, I mean. No one knows why we're here, what the universe really is like. We have some pretty good models that we know are wrong and we don't know what wonders the theoretical implications of any successor models might bring. That said, do we really need to motivate fundamental research into the nature of reality with a promise of technology?
I'm not arguing for mindlessly building bigger accelerators, and I don't think anyone is - there has to exist a solid line of reasoning to warrant the effort. And we might find that there are smarter ways of getting there for less effort - great! But if there isn't, discrediting the venue of particle accelerators due to their high upfront cost as well as historical results would be a mistake. We can afford it, and we don't know the future.
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>I'm not arguing for mindlessly building bigger accelerators, and I don't think anyone is
But you are and they are. Just by the comments here its clear that even suggesting not to use untold billions on maybe pushing theoretical physics a little forward is meet with scorn. The value proposition either, in knowledge or technology, is just not well argued anymore besides hand waving.
> Yes, but we had hopes that it would lead to more. And had lead to more, something only known to be false in hindsight, who knows where that would have ended us up? What if it upended the standard model instead of reinforcing it?
Sure, but it didn't. Which is knowledge that really should factor into the decision to build the next, bigger one.
> What are we supposed to do then? As humans, I mean.
Invest the money and effort elsewhere, for now. There are many other fields of scientific exploration that are very likely to yield greater return (in knowledge and utility) for less. You could fund a hundred smaller but still substantial intiatives instead of one big accelerator. And be virtually guaranteed to have an exciting breakthrough in a few of them.
And who knows, maybe a breakthrough in material science or high-voltage electrophysics will substantially reduce the costs for a bigger particle accelerator?
> I'm not arguing for mindlessly building bigger accelerators, and I don't think anyone is
You sure about that?
The GP whose position you’re defending wrote this:
> Let the physicists build the damn thing however they want and future society will be better off for sure.