Quote:
Originally Posted by David Sklansky
I'm not sure what you are saying. What I am basically saying is that we should not have Ferraris or superconducting colliders until humans are not dying due to lack of money (as long as it is true, which I think it is, that no colliders and no Ferraris would save some lives.)
You will now want to ask me where I would draw the line. My answer is middle class comfortableness and scientific research that is apt to help people. Going further down than that is apt to cause more harm than good.
I actually think that I'm actually pretty close to microbet on these issues but he got kidnapped so I can't ask him.
I'm in agreement with your general point but a bit concerned about the specifics. Science and technology save huge numbers of lives and improve the lot of the poor dramatically. Those pushing the boundaries are doing the work that can have a beneficial effect orders of magnitude above what could be done with the money otherwise.
Ferrari is where I might well agree with you because they're also part of the wealth disparity problem but projects like Cern where great minds are pushing all the boundaries to better understand nature should only be stopped if there's better ways to achieve similar goals. (whether big projects are better than lots of smaller projects is a good question)
Logically there must be some cut off point where we are spending too much of present day wealth on future wealth (via science/the research) but nothing I've seen suggest that is remotely the case at the moment - the reverse is the case.