$100 billion is how much the US spends on national defense in just 2 months. In comparison, a $100 billion particle collider and an additional $100 billion to fund future research is the better choice. That’s just my opinion though.
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Usually, how this works is that the government fixes its overall budget and then gives Grants to various projects from this budget.
Its competition.
So, 100 billion dollars for a LHC would mean 100 billion dollars less fo other projects.
Based on a google search, understand the federal R&D budget for USA is 134 billion dollars.
Your argument can mean one of two things:
a) The particle collider is important enough to give major chunk of USA’s R&D budget to it.
b) USA should have a larger R&D budget.
Usually 1 is applicable as the overall budget is already fixed… and the main people to oppose such a distribution would be scientists.
I’m sensing a lot of pushback on the value of basic research from people ostensibly pro-science. I frankly wasn’t expecting that but given where it’s coming from it fits with my original critique.
I don’t see push back on basic science. @dga471, for the record, does basic science. Rather, we are thinking through how to justify it, which presumes we think basic science is important.
I can’t really see how you see this as pushing back on basic science.
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Exactly. The US could spend $620 billion on defense and $100 billion on a particle accelerator instead of $720 billion on just defense. That’s just one year’s budget.
I choose b). In fact, reversing the massive tax cuts from 2017 that mostly helped the rich would be more than enough to fund the project.
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Yeah, I also agree with @swamidass that this is not an attack on basic science at all. Instead, I’m trying to look for new justifications for why basic science is important and valuable, which is my own field of endeavor. I think you need to read more carefully on what has been said. Similar to what you said to me earlier, I think it’s overly defensive to characterize every critique as an “attack”.
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I called it pushback. Not an attack. What justification for basic science have you given outside the context of your personal religious beliefs?
I am not surprised you choose b… 
But that’s not how things work in the real world. Resources are limited and there will be more people who think their need is more important that of anyother…
Both within the scientific community as well as those in other fields like defence or infrastructure.
This resource crunch might get much worse in a post Covid world.
I’d also say it is unreasonable to expect society to pay $100 billion for a new collider without any justification. Even basic science physicists are questioning of this is the best use of funds.
Justification of some sort is required, both internally within science, an externally to funders. We all agree that basic science is important, but which basic science projects are most important? How do we judge?
I think understanding how to judge these questions and make this case is very central to our mission. I may be starting some new threads on articles like this:
I’m curious how the AAAS has justified basic science research funding over the years. Also, as a current or past NIH study section members, many of us (eg @sygarte and @swamidass) are navigating to this question every time we review a “significance” section of a grant.
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I believe there were plans to build a large particle accelerator in the US but those plans in the end were scraped and the US largely ceded it’s global leadership in science to the EU instead.
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That’s rather defeatist. Why not try to make the world a better place than it is now?
It’s not a matter of limited resources. It’s a matter of what we see as priorities. Apparently, building machines to kill other people is a higher priority than working on the most fundamental questions of how nature works.
That’s correct. A lot of money had already been spent on the SSC in Texas, but it was abandoned. It was going to be more powerful than the LHC. In fact, there are still open tunnels below Waxahachie, Texas.
The US could have been the leader in cutting edge particle physics, but it lost government support.
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You mean in this thread, or in general? If you’re talking about the latter, then when talking to non-Christians about the value of basic science, I’ve given arguments of the same type that you proposed. Examples:
First, in basic science, the technological demands are set by nature itself instead of consumer demand. This may motivate technological development beyond what industry or the private sector may think of. For example, particle physics and astronomy has immense needs for data acquisition, analysis, and processing. It’s unsurprising that the World Wide Web was invented at CERN, to fulfill the need for sharing information between scientists. The LHC-Grid similarly was conceived in the 1990s to process massive amounts of data from the LHC - something crazy back then, but now commonplace in all the large internet companies.
Second, I do also appeal to the “basic science is important intrinsically for humanity” aspect. It differs from person to person, but usually I’m relying on the fact that scientists like Einstein, Feynman, Hawking, etc. are culturally respected despite the lack of immediate applicability of their work. There’s some “cool factor” in talking about bizarre but true theories like special relativity and quantum mechanics that captivates some people. This kind of interest can be used to push more funding for basic science. It’s kind of interesting because here science is functioning as a form of entertainment or art. Most people aren’t that interested in the nitty-gritty technical details. (Which may not 100% be a good thing because it encourages fantastical press releases and speculations.)
That being said, I think this is somewhat physics-centric. As I understand it, physicists got a lot of “cred” post-WW II for their role in developing the atomic bomb, and I think the prestige of physics in America today is still coasting on that boost of fame. It may decline in favor of biological sciences, for example, if that field becomes more impactful in this century.
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Honestly, there are quite a few basic question to pursue in studying fusion reactors, and investments there would more likely merit $100 billion dollars. Because of the potential for clean energy here, this link might be a better justification for funding basic science here.
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Do you seriously think US defence spending is going to reduce over the next decade?
It’s kinda of obvious that it will stay the same and most likely increase over the next decade.
Yes… this is definitely true for any government. Even more true for the US because of its position in the global pecking order and the threat from a rising china.
I am not being “defeatist”… just acknowledging geopolitical reality.
Sadly, it’s not even easy to find people to use these tunnels.
Totally agree. A particle collider is just a stand in for any large scientific project.
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There’s that defeatist attitude again. All it takes is elected officials who think science should have a larger slice of the pie.
The US defense budget accounts for 37% of the world spending on defense. In the whole world, 1 out of every 3 dollars is spent by the US. I think the US can afford to cut back just a little.
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I would love to see numbers on how religious versus non-religious scientists value basic research. I have my instincts from personal experience as to which way it would go but it would be nice to see an actual survey.
A proxy measure perhaps would be the proportion of religious scientists that are in applied fields of science and working in medicine, engineering, and industry.
It depends how you define the groups. It seems undeniable that Christians are underrepresented in the basic sciences.