The LHC Might Have Actually Found What it's Been Looking For

[McMullen]

Science is cool and all, but imagine how we could have helped developing countries with 5.5 Billion frickin dollars. It's a little bit more important than satisfying our curiosity no? I'm a science fanboy, but come on.

Question: Just where do you think the ability of the developed countries to help others to the extent that we do came from? Hint: It did not come from putting off discovery and technological advancement until all the world's problems were solved with sticks, rocks, and fire.

Finding the Higgs Boson is different, how does it help poor people? It's only progress in the field of physics, in no way does it help people who are actually suffering. It helps us get better at travelling through space by understanding the universe better. Is that really a priority though? We should use the money to fix a few things on our own planet first. Think of all the children that could have been educated with that money. Instead, those children grew up to be poor farmers or lousy criminals.
What's done is done though, since they already built the thing, they should go on with it.

Leaving aside the unexpected technological benefits of discovery and the fact that space travel, and likely any other technology gained from the LHC, would be a massive engine of economic and cultural growth, it might be good to realize that some percentage of the population have always been poor, and likely always will be. Poverty is not a new thing, and the laws of economics and thermodynamics state that it most likely will never be gone completely. Halting research into the areas that show the most promise of allowing humanity as a whole reach its future doesn't do anyone any good, and only means that there will be more poor people.

Besides, 5.5 billion is nothing compared to the amount that we pay for war, which is an area of human endeavor that can be described as almost completely wasteful in terms of lives and resources, not to mention a huge driving factor in poverty. Want to make a dent in world hunger and poverty? Find a way to end war. True, your chances of making a significant positive difference are small, but those chances are still millions of times greater than if your method revolved around cutting funding to research.

 

[Ironic Pirate]

The LHC is now better then U2, as demonstrated by Science.

Everything is better than U2, as demonstrated by good taste.

Well yeah, but it's now mathematically proven.

 

[duchaked]

The future is bright, and there is no reason to fear it.

Unless, of course, the LHC opens a hole through time and space and the Combine come flooding through it, then the future is bleak and a great plot to a video-game.

um... come with me if you want to live? loll

 

[infohippie]

Science is cool and all, but imagine how we could have helped developing countries with 5.5 Billion frickin dollars. It's a little bit more important than satisfying our curiosity no? I'm a science fanboy, but come on.

We could help developing countries a whole lot more by:
A) Not bombing them any more.
B) Not supporting oppressive regimes any longer - that is, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Pakistan, various African countries, etc.
C) No longer paying developing countries to chop down their own forests and deplete their other natural resources at bargain basement prices to supply Western consumers with cheap goods.

5.5 billion would not achieve very much at all while all this is still going on, so it's much better put to use for science.