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Comment by aaron695 | Hacker News Reader

> Science shouldn’t be a zero sum game.

Poor people "shouldn’t" die from simple diseases. Is this the game, we are wishing away things we don't like?

Science 100% is zero sum. Especially talking the figures we are here.

How about we start with creating free science text books (that are not garbage) for the world then we'll let you blow multi-billions on your religion?

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Pretty simple neither Hossfelder, nor politicians, nor you get to tell people what they would like to do. At this point it becomes a power struggle and so far mainstream physics has won that power struggle, because we have good arguments on our side. Investment in particle physics has had large net positive effects on society at large. Why kill the golden goose just because you aren't interested in whatever these people are interested in. Science doesn't enter this argument at all, purely from a technology and human capital level this is close to optimal use of their talents. You have a bunch of high y motivated, talented people working towards a common goal. Even if you don't perfectly understand why they would do that, their results alone are convincing enough to let them continue.

Good arguments? It was won in the same manner that the first motorway built in GB happened to be between Oxford and London (in that order).

Right good arguments in the political sense. A highly organized, well connected, motivated group of people that write excellent funding proposals, with a track record of Nobel price worthy results and the ability to execute on >10 billion dollar projects on the time scale of decades. There aren’t that many people like that around and they happen to like to smash atoms.

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