LHC and it's implications for particle physics and astronomy.

[BoJangles]

<font face="Calibri"><p style="margin:0cm0cm10pt" class="MsoNormal"><font size="3">I find myself in the unenviable position of backing the other-sider of this debate, not because I think it&rsquo;s such a big deal, but to bring technology into perspective. Additionally, in regards to a previous post, I too am&nbsp;on a quest for knowledge, also a quest for money which will sound ironic considering what points I&rsquo;ll try to make next.</font></p><p style="margin:0cm0cm10pt" class="MsoNormal"><font size="3">Note: <span>&nbsp;</span>throughout this post I will refer to technology and science as one in the same (maybe wrongly so), but you&rsquo;ll get the point. </font></p><p style="margin:0cm0cm10pt" class="MsoNormal"><font size="3">---</font></p><p style="margin:0cm0cm10pt" class="MsoNormal"><font size="3">Firstly, there are 6 billion people in the world, only a small portion of the world really reaps the benefits of the most sophisticated technology we have. The rest of the world live under the imminent threat of it, in regards to militarisation, nuclear weapons, war machines, oppression combined with poverty.</font></p><p style="margin:0cm0cm10pt" class="MsoNormal"><font size="3">Secondly, are people really happier now than compared to 100, 500, 50,000 years ago, or more to the point does technology have any huge affect on happiness?</font></p><p style="margin:0cm0cm10pt" class="MsoNormal"><font size="3">Thirdly, we live in a world of nuclear weapons (derived from science and knowledge); all it will take is one mad man and humans won&rsquo;t exist in the industrialised world as we <span>&nbsp;</span>know it (I think that&rsquo;s unprecedented compared to any stage in human advancement). I&rsquo;ll elaborate this point in the fact we are putting so much effort into non nuclear proliferation. If a mad man has a knife, he can kill a few, if he has a gun, he can kill many, if he has access to WMD&rsquo;s, he can kill them all. Even Einstein himself regretted the role he played in nuclear weapons, it&rsquo;s simple, as he knew how dangerous some science and knowledge really are. </font></p><p style="margin:0cm0cm10pt" class="MsoNormal"><font size="3">Technology / computers, the information age, has not only sped up technological advances, it&rsquo;s actually sped up a lot of problems with the world; you could nearly make the point that maybe its humanities biggest Achilles heel. We now rely on technology so much, without a few very basic technologies we would cease to exist in any meaningful way (in our industrialised world). </font></p><p style="margin:0cm0cm10pt" class="MsoNormal"><font size="3">Some technology may have created one of human&rsquo;s biggest disease epidemics, Aids (controversially). Lets not delve too much into this, as it&rsquo;s a <span>&nbsp;</span>whole new thread, and highly unprovable either way.</font></p><p style="margin:0cm0cm10pt" class="MsoNormal"><font size="3">If we could graph technology over the last 100 years and compared it to the world&rsquo;s problems (such as global warming, military expansion, and the threat of nuclear warfare), you would probably find it&rsquo;s correlated to a certain degree. To expand on this and add a philosophical reasoning; evolution takes time, technology has let us bypass what nature has taken billions of years to naturally achieve, and this seems dangerous from word go.</font></p><p style="margin:0cm0cm10pt" class="MsoNormal"><font size="3">Let&rsquo;s look at some other products of the technological age, sexual desensitisation, mass disinformation, the propagation of anti-productive ideologies about terrorism and what not, just to name a few. The internet is teaming with disinformation, conspiracies, terrorist related ideologies, in fact, I&rsquo;d nearly call it a social meltdown.</font></p><p style="margin:0cm0cm10pt" class="MsoNormal"><font size="3">To get back on topic a little, how is the LHC really going to progress humanity? Better microwaves? Better weapons? Free energy? It all seems to fall by the way side as the world&rsquo;s problems are far from technological, they are sociological. </font></p><p style="margin:0cm0cm10pt" class="MsoNormal"><font size="3">Humans are so technologically advanced we have caused the latest mass extinction, we have the weapons to all but sterilise the earth. We are even so ignorant we burn past life (fossil fuels) to progress our technology and population further; we are surely living on borrowed time.</font></p><p style="margin:0cm0cm10pt" class="MsoNormal"><font size="3">To wrap this up, I love technology, I love science, I love learning, why else am I even on this forum? But knowledge has its down side. A lot of people don&rsquo;t even consider the ramifications, no matter how prevalent and obvious they are, and preaching this to a bunch of very well educated scientists I doubt will earn me any brownie points. </font></p><p style="margin:0cm0cm10pt" class="MsoNormal"><font size="3">---</font></p><p style="margin:0cm0cm10pt" class="MsoNormal"><font size="3">Anyway if you have read thus far, I thank you for your time and look forward to your abuse </font></p><p style="margin:0cm0cm10pt" class="MsoNormal"><font size="3">P.S. <span>&nbsp;</span>If someone asks me nice enough I&rsquo;ll consider moving it to a new thread as it&rsquo;s a little off topic, and more just defending my drunk banter with an even worse sober dribble.</font></p></font> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p align="center"><font color="#808080">-------------- </font></p><p align="center"><font size="1" color="#808080"><em>Let me start out with the standard disclaimer ... I am an idiot, I know almost nothing, I haven’t taken calculus, I don’t work for NASA, and I am one-quarter Bulgarian sheep dog.  With that out of the way, I have several stupid questions... </em></font></p><p align="center"><font size="1" color="#808080"><em>*** A few months blogging can save a few hours in research ***</em></font></p> </div>

 

[centsworth_II]

<p><font color="#333399"><BR/>Replying to:<BR/><DIV CLASS='Discussion_PostQuote'>...there are 6 billion people in the world, only a small portion of the world really reaps the benefits of the most sophisticated technology we have....<br /> Posted by Manwh0re</DIV></font></p><p>Rather than respond point by point, I'll just make a few observations of my own.&nbsp; </p><p>I don't know at what stage you would have technology arrested.&nbsp; We have had the capability of destroying the world for over fifty years.&nbsp; In the last fifty years, technology has done much to improve the world, I don't think it has brought the world any closer to destruction than it was fifty years ago.&nbsp; </p><p>We have been using fossil fuels for over a hundred years.&nbsp; If we were using them today with the same technologies being used a hundred years ago, our air would be unbreathable.&nbsp; Technology has already saved us from ecological disaster, we can only hope it continues to do so in the future.</p><p>You may think that billions of people have not profited from modern technology but that ignores the existence of vaccines which have eliminated smallpox and greatly reduced polio and other diseases.&nbsp; Every human on Earth has benefited from this.&nbsp; Also think of programs to combat malaria, river blindness, and other diseases around the world. Think of modern crop technologies to feed the world.</p><p>Push back humanity's technology five hundred years.&nbsp; Humanity would still be capable of over-populating the Earth, burning the forests until there were no more.&nbsp; Perhaps you could count on mass deaths through disease and war to prevent the overpopulation problem.&nbsp; I'd rather give technology a chance. &nbsp;</p><p>Face it,&nbsp; life has always been tough.&nbsp; I think that it is less tough today for a greater percent of the population than it ever has been in the history of human kind.&nbsp; Thanks to modern technology.</p><p>&nbsp;</p> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> </div>

 

[nimbus]

Let's go back to the dawn of mankind and tell those proto-men to please put the silex and femur down. &nbsp;It's all downhill from there <br /> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> </div>

 

[l3p3r]

Replying to:<BR/><DIV CLASS='Discussion_PostQuote'><font face="Calibri"><font size="3">But knowledge has its down side.</DIV>There is no downside to knowledge. To selective knowledge combined with terrible ignorance though, maybe.... </font></font> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> </div>

 

[michaelmozina]

<p><BR/>Replying to:<BR/><DIV CLASS='Discussion_PostQuote'>Firstly, there are 6 billion people in the world, only a small portion of the world really reaps the benefits of the most sophisticated technology we have. The rest of the world live under the imminent threat of it, in regards to militarisation, nuclear weapons, war machines, oppression combined with poverty.</DIV></p><p>Yet many less developed countries receive assistance from the US and other countries that is only possible because of this technology.&nbsp; I think you're overestimating the role of technology in man's desire to kill and oppress his fellow man.&nbsp; That's been going on since mankind has been on the planet.&nbsp; The war machines existed long before the modern era, and the oppression began a long time ago.&nbsp;&nbsp; I don't see that as a function of technology, just a function of human selfishness.</p><p>Replying to:<BR/><DIV CLASS='Discussion_PostQuote'>Secondly, are people really happier now than compared to 100, 500, 50,000 years ago, or more to the point does technology have any huge affect on happiness?</DIV></p><p>If your son or daughter is saved by modern medicine, or doesn't die from a lack of a simple antibiotic, then yes, I think that would tend to make you happier than if you had to watch them die for lack of a few dollars of medication.&nbsp; People live longer than in the past, so in terms of "happy moments in life", it's likely that this number has increased over the years.&nbsp; I've seen very rich people who were miserably unhappy, and dreadfully poor individuals that were increadibly optimistic and happy individuals.&nbsp; I don't think you can necessarily correlate happiness with technology per se, but modern life ceraintly offers more options and more opportunities for happiness for more individuals than would be possible without technology.</p><p>Replying to:<BR/><DIV CLASS='Discussion_PostQuote'>Thirdly, we live in a world of nuclear weapons (derived from science and knowledge); all it will take is one mad man and humans won&rsquo;t exist in the industrialised world as we &nbsp;know it (I think that&rsquo;s unprecedented compared to any stage in human advancement).</DIV></p><p>I think it would require more than one.&nbsp; A nuclear exchange between two nations would not necessarily wipe out the whole of human civilization however.&nbsp; For instance, a limited exchange between India and Pakistan might kill millions, but it would not be likely to wipe out all life on earth.&nbsp; Technology improves the efficiency of war, but it's not necessarily the cause of that process.</p><p>I think we'd all prefer that no nation have sophisticated weapons, but that has been true since the beginning of time.&nbsp; Someone has always had a strategic advantage in war.&nbsp; I don't think technology is necessarily making that any better or any worse, it just makes killing human beings more efficient. </p><p>I think if you look back at the number of individuals that died in the 20th century due to war prior to Hiroshima, and you looked at the number that have been killed since that time, the world is actually a bit more peaceful than it used to be.&nbsp; Perhaps that is because the effieciency of war is so great now that noone really wants to unleash these weapons for fear of mutual annihilation.&nbsp; You might be able to argue that the advent of these horrific weapons has actually created more stability in the world. </p> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> It seems to be a natural consequence of our points of view to assume that the whole of space is filled with electrons and flying electric ions of all kinds. - Kristian Birkeland </div>

 

[BoJangles]

<p>if you cant see the merits in what i was saying... i don't know where to start. is evolution way different from technology, lets look at evolution for a second... There a many situations where species out evolve themselfs, whether it be social or not, technoloy&nbsp;/ science could be ours.</p><p><edit></p><p>I'm drunk so lets not look so qualitatively into this</p> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p align="center"><font color="#808080">-------------- </font></p><p align="center"><font size="1" color="#808080"><em>Let me start out with the standard disclaimer ... I am an idiot, I know almost nothing, I haven’t taken calculus, I don’t work for NASA, and I am one-quarter Bulgarian sheep dog.  With that out of the way, I have several stupid questions... </em></font></p><p align="center"><font size="1" color="#808080"><em>*** A few months blogging can save a few hours in research ***</em></font></p> </div>

 

[michaelmozina]

<p><BR/>Replying to:<BR/><DIV CLASS='Discussion_PostQuote'>if you cant see the merits in what i was saying... i don't know where to start. is evolution way different from technology, lets look at evolution for a second... There a many situations where species out evolve themselfs, whether it be social or not, technoloy&nbsp;/ science could be ours.<edit>I'm drunk so lets not look so qualitatively into this <br /> Posted by Manwh0re</DIV></p><p>Well, I guess from my perspective, you seem to be blaming technology for the sins of humanity.&nbsp; Technology by itself is neither morally "good", nor morally "bad".&nbsp; It can be used by humans for peaceful, useful and productive purposes, or it can be used for oppressive and egotistical purposes. &nbsp; This really isn't a function of technology however, it's really a function of how the technology is being applied by less than perfect human beings. &nbsp; </p> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> It seems to be a natural consequence of our points of view to assume that the whole of space is filled with electrons and flying electric ions of all kinds. - Kristian Birkeland </div>

 

[BoJangles]

<p><BR/>Replying to:<BR/><DIV CLASS='Discussion_PostQuote'>Well, I guess from my perspective, you seem to be blaming technology for the sins of humanity.&nbsp; Technology by itself is neither morally "good", nor morally "bad".<br />Posted by michaelmozina</DIV></p><p>Neither is any evolutionary trait, some work some don't... some work for a while some don't work at all, some work for millions of years...</p> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p align="center"><font color="#808080">-------------- </font></p><p align="center"><font size="1" color="#808080"><em>Let me start out with the standard disclaimer ... I am an idiot, I know almost nothing, I haven’t taken calculus, I don’t work for NASA, and I am one-quarter Bulgarian sheep dog.  With that out of the way, I have several stupid questions... </em></font></p><p align="center"><font size="1" color="#808080"><em>*** A few months blogging can save a few hours in research ***</em></font></p> </div>

 

[derekmcd]

<p><BR/>Replying to:<BR/><DIV CLASS='Discussion_PostQuote'>if you cant see the merits in what i was saying... i don't know where to start. is evolution way different from technology, lets look at evolution for a second... There a many situations where species out evolve themselfs, whether it be social or not, technoloy&nbsp;/ science could be ours.<edit>I'm drunk so lets not look so qualitatively into this <br /> Posted by Manwh0re</DIV></p><p>Just think of all the technology involved to get the ingredients of your favorite beverage from the farmer's field to your stomach.&nbsp; Not to mention the relative proximity of the toilet that, when drunk, definitely increases your quality of life.</p> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <div> </div><br /><div><span style="color:#0000ff" class="Apple-style-span">"If something's hard to do, then it's not worth doing." - Homer Simpson</span></div> </div>

 

[michaelmozina]

<p><BR/>Replying to:<BR/><DIV CLASS='Discussion_PostQuote'>Just think of all the technology involved to get the ingredients of your favorite beverage from the farmer's field to your stomach.&nbsp; Not to mention the relative proximity of the toilet that, when drunk, definitely increases your quality of life. <br /> Posted by derekmcd</DIV></p><p>ROFLOL! </p> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> It seems to be a natural consequence of our points of view to assume that the whole of space is filled with electrons and flying electric ions of all kinds. - Kristian Birkeland </div>

 

[vastbluesky92]

I'd say I'm happy to live in an age where we know as much about the universe as we do. I'm very much in favor of searching for truth and in the past I couldn't have looked at the world around me and know that it actually was made up of tiny particles on a miniscule scale or looked at the sky and known what was up there. At best I would have been able to philosophize. As much as I'm used to thinking about all of what we know about the universe, whenever I take a moment to appreciate it, it amazes me, the world REALLY is made of quarks and leptons and so forth, there REALLY are billions and billions of galaxies each too massive to comprehend. I wouldn't give that up for some kind of elysian bliss of ignorance. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p>--____________________________________________--</p><p><font size="1"> Don't be too hard on me...I'm only in PHY 1010 </font></p><p> </p><p><font color="#339966">         The following goes without saying:</font> </p> </div>