- No profit motive
- No immediate application to weapons manufacturing
- Cutting edge state-of-the-art science
- Foster international collaboration
- Help us understand the true nature of our universe
- Creates both blue collar jobs (electrician, mechanical engineering) as well as train future experimental physicists
What’s the downside again?
Maybe they act like a particle when observed because you’re rudely staring at them. Ever think about that science pervert
Extraction of raw material from the global south, the dispossession of indigenous peoples in those areas and ecocide that it’s all premised on come to mind.
Also of course the unequal exchange between the global south and north to create the superprofits funding the blue collar job-haver’s salary and benefits.
Academic science (not all science; empirical investigation good) is bourgeois. Its goal is constant growth of its industry, with little to no regard for the consequences (which are always displaced as far away from the scientist as possible). All of this is justified with an unproven faith that it will eventually be beneficial for the people whose land is dug up for the metals for the neat machines scientists play with.
You are describing modern technology in general. The amount of nickel or other REE (rare earth element) used in smartphones, laptops, cars, trains, airplanes, wind turbines, infrastructure grid, etc. needed to sustain modern capitalism far outweigh the amount of REE used to build once in 25 years one-off machine with zero commercial value (but of high cultural and scientific value).
I take your point that academia is a bourgeois institution where a few people in cushy tenured position benefit from bulk of labor done by postdocs, adjuncts, and grad students who are severely underpaid relative to their skillset and contribution. But something like the LHC and other large scale experimental science (think of NOAA and NASA satellites) will not be maintained by academic professors in ivory towers who benefit from broken academia system, it’ll mostly maintained by highly capable technical staffs (PRAs - professional research assistant) who are required to make project ‘werks’ and compensated fairly relative to their technical skill.
Governmental research institutions like NASA, NOAA in the US, ANSTO and CSIRO in Australia, the national labs in Livermore, Los Alamos, and their equivalent EU institutions like CERN ran by professional research staffs on “normal” government worker salaries and contracts are way more equal, less stratified, and less exploitative to the academic workers than the “ivory tower” academic university system.
nasa trivia
- the shuttle was designed to dod rather than civilian requirements because funding was contingent on launching space assets for the us military
- nasa flew ten classified shuttle missions for the dod, including one where they waived safety rules and launched north to put a keyhole spy satellite in an unusually inclined orbit. the same contractor that (probably) made the mirror for that satellite also made the hubble backup mirror
- radar satellites for topographical and oceanographical research were funded in part with the promise of collaboration with the us military to improve ballistic missile targeting
- eight apollo service modules flew classified cameras on loan from dod
- nasa collaborated with dod to maintain a cover story that the u2 was a nasa test aircraft when actually it was being used to obtain military intelligence on the soviet union
ran by professional research staffs on “normal” government worker salaries and contracts are way more equal, less stratified, and less exploitative to the academic workers than the “ivory tower” academic university system
the only good PMC is a…well, you know!
You are describing modern technology in general
Yes, based on our resource consumption we need to radically restructure our entire society to be more ecological. Not sure what your point is; i would like extraction for all those other purposes reduced and minimized also because what we’re doing rn isn’t sustainable. Marx was fairly clear on this
it’ll mostly maintained by highly capable technical staffs
I addressed this in my original reply; “Also of course the unequal exchange between the global south and north to create the superprofits funding the blue collar job-haver’s salary and benefits.” I don’t think it’s inherently good that more technical jobs are opened up in the imperial core
Governmental research institutions
Friend you seem to have entirely missed the meaning of ‘academia is bourgeois’. I said: “Its goal is constant growth of its industry, with little to no regard for the consequences (which are always displaced as far away from the scientist as possible). All of this is justified with an unproven faith that it will eventually be beneficial for the people whose land is dug up for the metals for the neat machines scientists play with.”. I did not mention anything about the stratification of academic jobs, and governmental research institutions clearly fall into academic science as I defined it.
No profit motive
PMC careerism and grant applications are free!!! lol
No immediate application to weapons manufacturing
“immediate” lol, lmao
Creates both blue collar jobs
(Liz Warren Reaganite jerking off motion)
Everything has a non immediate application to weapons manufacturing. Should doctors not exist because they reduce imperialist deaths??
Yes and we should ban scientific research because they’re bourgeois nerds
hell if this one actually has the chance to finally create a black hole and destroys earth im all for it
(Un)fortunately, any theoretical black holes created by a particle accelerator will evaporate via Hawking radiation nigh-instantaneously and be functionally undetectable even if they did stick around. It could probably shoot straight through your heart and you’d be completely unaware and healthy afterwards.
A stable black hole to destroy the Earth
An instable black hole for the fraction of a second in the middle of europe
i don’t even care if they don’t find anything, I just want them to dig a big ring under switzerland
They’re both wrong.
Just make Austria longer, they’re already good at mountains, having an archaic gov’t, and not having coasts.
Every time you complain we make it 5% bigger
To be fair to the scientific community, one more collider is probably more valuable to society than the equivalent cost of bombs and military equipment
yeah biden is conjuring 5x this amount from the ether for some emergency bombs spending request. build ten of these things I don’t give a fuck. this has nothing to do with people being unhoused and us squandering limited resources on I Fucking Love Science bait, those people being unhoused is a policy decision and we shouldn’t wrangle over scraps for good things. honestly even if the particle collider finds nothing at least we will have paid for thousands of brilliant young people to do what they love for $30k/year for a decade, and that’s what civilization is all about baby
Yeah, people really focus on the fact that we don’t evidence for very exotic theories and completely ignore the LHC finally got experimental confirmation of the particle that gives mass to other particles within the standard model. (I guess Higgs mechanism technically wasn’t part of the standard model prior to experimental confirmation but styll)
disproving things is much more fundamental to the scientific process than actually confirming things. Confirming things is a bizarre byproduct, a happy accident. We must foster a culture that celebrates a killed hypothesis more than a confirmed one.
Have we? Have you seen one? I don’t know who these higgs and boson characters are but I find this “particle” of theirs extremely sus
Oh no, not fundamental science that cannot immediately be capitalised on!
Seriously, why do substantial parts of this forum immediately turn anprim the moment fundamental physics research is concerned?
This is literally chuds argument for defunding nasa.
“I dont understand it so it’s worthless to me”
I was going tonsay are we arguing this is a bad thing?
This seems like a better use of money than 95% of America’s budget.
We’re not actually against scientific research are we?
If it were up to me hard sciences could only get funding if soft sciences thought they deserved it. I want physicists to have to woo anthropologists.
Where are the raw materials (including energy!) for this project coming from? Are the miners in the global south or the indigenous peoples pushed off their lands not harmed by the constantly increasing demand for materials academics present? Will these people see any benefit, in their or their childrens’ lifetimes? Do the bourgeois, the mining and metalworking companies and all their friends, not make massive amounts of money selling these materials? Are the carbon emissions and environmental destruction not worth preventing?
As someone with a science background I think that this is exactly the type of project that humanity should engage in. Major public works like housing, healthcare, and food for all are critical to the body of a socialist future, but these big ambitious scientific endeavors are critical to the soul of a socialist future.
But, as someone with a making jokes background, this post is funny as shit and an A++ meme.
