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Comment by nicboobees | Hacker News Reader

Is it worth millions of dollars to know that? Nope.

It's rich people playing with their toys.

What is millions of dollars for scientific research compared to millions blown on stadiums, or billions on new jet fighters?

Stadiums benefit millions of people. Jet fighters save lives. Finding out that there's water on mars, or some single cell organisms on pluto, does nothing apart from fill a few future text books.

With attitude like this we'd never have neither stadiums nor jet fighters.

And there would be much rejoicing.

Nailed it. That's why it matters - without a hunger for knowledge, our species would still be living in caves, pilfering scraps of flesh from carrion. Our desire to understand ourselves and the world we inhabit has lifted us out of the darkness.

I completely agree. But it's a pursuit individuals should pursue. If you want to go explore mars, go ahead! I'm sure it'd be great fun. But it should absolutely not be anything to do with public money, taxes, grants etc.

Leave it completely to rich people and companies to waste their money on.

Citizens of London would likely have felt the same way if they learned about Michael Faraday's experiments with electricity which were funded by the Royal Society, given that electricity was considered a party trick at the time. A government which spends public money on scientific exploration is doing its job to guard society against the cost of lost discoveries.

"the cost of lost discoveries"?

Things will get discovered eventually, by people who are passionate about them.

That's not necessarily true; some leaps are so obvious that it was only a matter of time before someone got to them, but there are critical jumps which are not so simple. If Newton hadn't invented Calculus, it's impossible to predict when another soul would have...so it's a damn good thing that he was supported by the Royal Society.

Since there IS water on Mars, then it's a lot more likely those future textbooks will be written there.

Edit: corrections.

There is water on Mars. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_on_Mars

It would make it that much harder to justify many religious beliefs, which I predict would be a positive outcome. It's harder to be arrogant and self-righteous when you find out you're not an only child. Sure, some people would find a way to stay stuck in their ways, but not everyone.

However, the much more important thing for me is that we'd know we aren't necessarily going to run into some Great Filter [0]. I'd fret a little less about dangerous new technologies if I knew at least one case where a civilization survived.

Lastly, maybe we'd learn something from the signal itself! A new communications protocol, new music, new technologies, insight into how languages work - who knows? Finding out what we have in common with the beings who sent the signal and what we don't would teach us a great deal about what is arbitrary on our world and what's fundamental. It's like growing up in a society with extremely rigid gender roles and then traveling to a country where that's not the case - you get that "Oh I didn't realize women could even have jobs" moment, but potentially with problems that aren't self-imposed.

0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Filter

I think it's worth trillions.

Just imagine what proof that we're not alone would mean for the world. I'm not positive it would galvanize everyone, but it would surely create new industry and untold number of jobs as we, as a world, decide to try to go and meet them.

It is definitely, indisputably worth millions of dollars to know that.

Well, agree to disagree. The average person doesn't really care if there is or isn't water on mars, or if someone spent millions of their dollars taking a photo of pluto.

Year after year the news reports another big experiement which cost millions to setup, and which claims to "give us answers as to how the universe was created". I just couldn't be less interested. It's rich people (Or taxpayer funded people) playing with their toys.

It must be great fun if space exploration is your hobby, like explorers of days gone by, but for most people it won't have any impact at all on their lives (Apart from wasting their taxes).

That's actually exactly my philosophy [1]. I agree with each of your examples (water on mars, photos of Pluto, early-universe cosmology). Nonetheless, the existence of extraterrestrial intelligence is in a completely different league. The random guys on the street will not only care about this tremendously, he will care for the same correct reasons that scientists care.

[1] Minus the part about it being a waste of taxes; just because people aren't interested doesn't mean it's not worthwhile, because people can be wrong.

So we find out there's some creatures on Pluto that are roughly the same as frogs. How does that impact anyones life? It'd be an interesting fact, and maybe fun if we could move some over here as pets, but beyond that, it's a colossal waste of energy and money.

Do you mean impacting their life materially? Why would it have to impact their life materially to be valuable? Sharing a joke with a friend at a bar doesn't have material benefit, but it's one of the valuable things in life.

If you're going to force people to pay money, through taxes, grants etc, to explore space, then it should have some material benefit.

That's a pretty unusual axiom that most people don't subscribe to, and it's orthogonal to disagreements over justifications for involuntary taxes.

Well, presumably any civilization advanced enough to communicate with us wouldn't be interested in being our pets. Civilization being sort of a prerequisite of communicating with us?

If you can't see how that would be one of the most impactful things in human history, I don't think there's any more to discuss.

Space travel and exploration have directly resulting in many commercial products, which themselves have generated billions in revenue and tens of thousands of jobs (if not more).

Not only is your statement disappointing to hear from anyone presuming to be technically literate, it is objectively wrong.

Actually, I think you're wrong here. Space travel is a very inefficient method of R&D. Almost any other basic research has more practical benefit.

As a fellow reply states, using "Space travel" as a means for general R&D is pretty damn inefficient.

You would have a similar result if you poured money into alchemy research - lots of side products etc.

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