Comment by pfdietz
18 days ago
At some point physics entitlement has to end -- why not here? We can't just keep scaling up the size and cost of fundamental physics experiments. Eventually the cost becomes so large that platitudinous arguments for them don't work.
How can you look at current and recent US science and call it 'entitlement'? Have there been larger cuts anywhere in modern history?
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It's not an entitlement if you're paying into the tax base.
I'm somehow entitled to others receiving corporate bailouts, entitled to massive military waste spending, and entitled to seeing the "victims" of Havana Syndrome receiving free healthcare for life.
Yet I am not entitled to this money going towards research for the greater good of humanity?
We absolutely can, and I reckon we will... this is like a fraction of a percent of science funding which is a fraction of a percent of GDP, we spend more on maintaining warheads we can't use
10% of the US military budget for one year could build a 100km collider, RHIC is 4km
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The point is that there's so much bad spending that by comparison this is practically nothing to shake a stick at, and it produces actual science.
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It's not a question of "can", it's a question of "should". No one knows what discoveries can happen and what the spillover from them could be in the future. In essence, it's a bet, a moonshot.