kitarist -> RE: Black Hole eats sun (Apr. 7 2019 16:55:38)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: Ruphus quote:
ORIGINAL: kitarist You don't know what you are talking about, and as a result conflate science, research and the places where these happen, including governmental entities like NASA, with political will of elected representatives. Global warming can be mitigated with the science, research, and even technologies we have today, so don't blame science and researchers and NASA and the like. Blame the politicians. Have I expressed dislike of science anywhere? Forgot about this one. I don't know - did I say anywhere that you dislike science? No? OK, next question - do I like puffins? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ However, here's what you HAVE expressed: "NASA, ESA and what have you should invest their capacities into very down to earth yet urgent matters." "NASA staff simply follows targets as long as allowed to benefit of generous salaries, job security, prestige and social privileges. " " ..the very people actually doing something about it" way too late and hesitant at that, even though it would had taken merely a fraction of their past, wasted enormous budgets." This tells me that you ALSO (a separate point from the previous one I made about you conflating scientific research and where it is done with political will when you say things like the quotes above and others) do not understand the link between research and practical benefits from it. When you look for a direct "down to earth" linkage and results you express the same thinking as that of chasing next quarter gains in value of a private publicly traded company. Applying this narrow and short-term thinking to basic/blue-sky scientific research would be detrimental - to all. Here is a good distillation of fundamental points: 1. Basic science is the foundation of all applied science. Because we cannot predict which basic science projects will turn into an application, we must cast a wide net. 2. The connection between basic and applied science is seldom a straight line; more often, it involves a network that connects novel ideas, methods and data in a new way, leading to innovations. 3. The government must fund basic science because its potential economic gains are unpredictable and generally long term. No private investing company can invest under those conditions. Is this above just "theory" without proof in practice? - not at all. It has worked extremely well, far beyond anyone could have expected. In fact, evidence of the benefits from that seemingly chaotic process is too overwhelming to list in full, but I'll give some examples and leave the rest as an exercise to the reader: NASA (speaking of) has a nice list of technologies that made it into everyday life at https://spinoff.nasa.gov/Spinoff2008/tech_benefits.html. There are a lot of papers estimating return of investment (which in itself is a very constricted lens), and they show that more than half and up to 80-90% of first-world GDPs today are due to basic science research from a generation ago. The average ROI on R&D investment, dollar per dollar, has been calculated to be as large as 20% PER YEAR, well beyond the best sustained performance by private companies indices. There are also fun lists of military (i.e. GOVERNMENT) research which made it into everyday life, and the scope is overwhelming. See well-presented lists at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_military_inventions or https://www.pocket-lint.com/gadgets/news/143526-27-military-technologies-that-changed-civilian-life, for example.
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