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Comment by ur-whale | Hacker News Reader

The thing that really matters when breaking thing apart into ever smaller things is not really if we are accessing ever deeper level of reality.

What matters is: can we use this newly discovered sub-structure to do something we couldn't before.

The answer to this was a clear and resounding "yes" when we reached the level of molecules (chemistry, which allows us to do a great many useful things), still "yes" at the level of the atom (atomic energy, transistors, etc...).

It is however unclear that QCD, quarks and inner proton structure reality level have yet produced anything usable to implement our will upon the world.

It may yet happen, but to answer your questions: once the depth we dig at stops producing anything usable by an engineer (string theory, quarks both currently fall into that bucket I think), not entirely sure the digging is philosophically valuable in any way.

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I think you may have some hindsight bias here. I do not think that when chemical and atomic structures were discovered/understood that knowledge was immediately put to use. Nuclear physics dates back to the late 1800s, it wasn't until the 1940's where that knowledge was put to practical use. I wouldn't expect anything different with QCD. In fact, I would expect it to take significantly longer to develop practical applications of the theory given how much more complex it is.

Fair point, not knowing when something might come in handy.

I still believe looking for things we can use should be a guiding light.

I think your reply gets at the answer to my own question that I tend to lean towards. And that is that craving further concepts is an inherent problem that follows from being a thinking being. What you say seems like part of the answer, which is that one needs to make a conscious decision not to be bothered by the fundamental lack of a justification for reality. Just focus on what your knowledge enables you to do. But it still seems sad on some level that we're "condemned" to coast through this world that is so rich in detail but seemingly lacking in purpose.

LEDs and most modern microprocessors make no sense without quantum mechanics, for one.

Not sure why you would bring that up.

I never said quantum mechanics was useless.

That's actually specifically why I mentioned transistors.

However, I don't believe QCD has yet produced anything tangibly usable to do stuff in the world.

The proof is in the pudding: if QCD ever does produce something useful, I'll happily recant.

But my general point was that as we dig deeper and deeper, what we get is exponentially diminishing returns, up and until the point when we'll research stuff that's maybe logically coherent, intellectually satisfying but plainly useless, just like string theory currently seems to be.

Ah, I misunderstood and phrased it badly.

My point was that when quantum mechanics first was proposed early last century, I can’t imagine anyone would have even considered LEDs as a thing even in their wildest dreams, yet it was obvious once further progress occurred, and was key in understanding and developing them past the initial ‘that’s odd….’ stages.

We don’t know yet if something similar will come out of QCD (understandable and usable ‘high temperature’ superconductors? Quark matter computers? Super high strength materiel derived from some kind of degenerate matter?) but it definitely seems less likely by the day.

It does at least have falsifiable predictions, so it’s about a billion miles ahead of string theory!

It’s also possible we’ll need another 50 years of engineering or a world war (I hope not) to dig deep enough into areas to discover another, simpler, way to think about it that is more useful.

Neither do magnets.

Very limiting to couple the pursuit of knowledge to application, commercial exploitation, or laying our "will" on the world.

>commercial exploitation

Why would you bring that into the conversation?

Did I mention anything about money?

> Very limiting to couple the pursuit of knowledge to application

Didn't say that either.

I said "useful", and what I meant was "can the knowledge gained be used by us to implement change now or at some point in the future".

As pointed out by another poster, the interesting talking point is that it is hard to guess beforehand whether knowledge gained will ever be useful.

I nevertheless believe in the principle that research should be directed by the hope of discovering something useful, not by the mere pleasure of finding some sort of satisfying "explanation" to the way things work.

But hey, if mine does satisfy you, please let us know what criteria you would use to discover when you've squarely left the area of worthy research to enter that of intellectual onanism.

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