Viewing last 25 versions of comment by Cirrus Light on image #1385850

Cirrus Light
Economist -
Condensed Milk - State-Approved Compensation
Friendship, Art, and Magic (2018) - Celebrated Derpibooru's six year anniversary with friends.
Helpful Owl - Drew someone's OC for the 2018 Community Collab
Birthday Cake - Celebrated MLP's 7th birthday
Best Artist - Providing quality, Derpibooru-exclusive artwork
Magical Inkwell - Wrote MLP fanfiction consisting of at least around 1.5k words, and has a verified link to the platform of their choice
Not a Llama - Happy April Fools Day!
Friendship, Art, and Magic (2017) - Celebrated Derpibooru's five year anniversary with friends.
An Artist Who Rocks - 100+ images under his artist tag

Sciencepone of Science!
"[@redweasel":](/1385850#comment_7283354
)  
Just because you _*think_* the modern era is as bad as the middle ages doesn't mean your attitude has to actually _*be_* medieval. Now excuse me while we get a mob to go burn a witch because our feudal Lord got mad and burned someone's crops because we couldn't offer enough tribute.


 
Less tongue-in-cheek, we literally owe the modern world to scientific innovation. Nuclear power, GPS, modern materials and even modern computing were all made possible because someone asked at some point, "why is it that when we shine a light on a piece of metal it induces an electric current _*in this particular way_* instead of in some other possible way?", and "why does light always seem to go the same speed?"


 
Esoteric, pointless questions that "hasn't led to anything and doesn't effect anyone's quality of life" ultimately turned out to be building blocks that led to the modern world as we know it, to which we owe modern computing, materials science - there's virtually nothing we _*don't_* owe to "pointless" questions like that, that often didn't pay off for many decades and never even directly - usually only by serving as the initial building blocks that later discoveries would build on even further, but being vital to the progress of science nonetheless.


 
Heck, even when _*radio_* was discovered there was no apparent real application of it for many decades, even though the applications seem so abundantly obvious now. Same can even be said of electricity. Why waste money learning about how you can make metal zap people? That's a stupid and pointless waste of time, it won't pull my cart, help me keep track of census data, write to my uncle by mail, or anything useful like that - it won't even help those artists _*waste money_* buying their stupid paints when they could be using that money on feeding the poor instead of paint and canvas! </sarcasm>


 
And good grief. The planet's big. Very big. You may think it's a long walk down the street to the chemist's but that's just peanuts to Earth. No, it's _*really freaking big_*. And there's many times more resources floating around in the solar system to boot, which people are already prospecting for valuable ores. So stripping the planet "dry" is really just a Captain Planet dystopian fantasy.

"

 
[
Have a decent source on the topic":](http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/explainer/2010/10/has_the_earth_run_out_of_any_natural_resources.html).


 
And it's because people spend tens of billions of dollars on scientific endeavors that we're now getting to the point where access to space is getting cheap enough that mining some very valuable metals can pay for the cost of launching the mining drones. It's ultimately this "consumerism" (aka, private enterprise via SpaceX, Blue Origin, and some public companies like Boeing) that's making it affordable and viable as a real option, too. So ironically enough it's this "consumerism" that's making it possible for us to look elsewhere to mine, if Earth really does run low enough on certain valuable ores that you can turn a profit mining from space instead of from Earth, and it seems with some ores we've reached that point - not because we've mined it to exhaustion, but because private enterprise has dramatically dropped the prices of access to space.




 

 
An example of this being a bit more modern - that is, some things that were new a few decades ago only now paying off - quantum computing is one such example. It's been known as a possibility for a long time, but only now are we starting to see some application. While the true "quantum computer" as it's said isn't available yet, some hybrid sort of designs that utilize quantum computing in some ways are coming about already - I'm afraid all I have to cite for that though is what I overheard in some theory group meetings at my university, but I take that as a rather credible source since those people actually work with supercomputers on a regular basis.


 
And another example is nuclear fusion - "[have a good video on why it's actually a lot closer than ever before, and why it's _*for real_* only 20 years off this time, unlike all the overhyped promises in decades past":](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KZm_mpbKX5c). Boils down mostly to many significant milestones being actually passed for the first time, computing technology, and incremental advances in the research that require rather extensive knowledge to really understand - but the insider scoop is that it _*really_* is just 20 years out now, certainly absolutely no more than 40, and I'll bet you a thousand bucks on that.




 

 
...I'm almost certainly overreacting to something not initially meant to be as scathing towards scientific endeavors as it seems, but whatever, I feel rather strongly about this - so I'll just leave this here. Don't you ever belittle scientific achievements like the discovery of the Higgs, endeavors like the LHC, or say there's little hope for the future. Especially at a time where deep learning is really taking off.


 
At least don't use a tone that makes it sound like the LHC was unjustified due to its _*cost_*. It's worth a lot more than a measly 50 billion, which is really just peanuts on the scale of world power's national budgets, *especially* when spread out over as much time as it was and by as many different countries as it was.
No reason given
Edited by Cirrus Light
Cirrus Light
Economist -
Condensed Milk - State-Approved Compensation
Friendship, Art, and Magic (2018) - Celebrated Derpibooru's six year anniversary with friends.
Helpful Owl - Drew someone's OC for the 2018 Community Collab
Birthday Cake - Celebrated MLP's 7th birthday
Best Artist - Providing quality, Derpibooru-exclusive artwork
Magical Inkwell - Wrote MLP fanfiction consisting of at least around 1.5k words, and has a verified link to the platform of their choice
Not a Llama - Happy April Fools Day!
Friendship, Art, and Magic (2017) - Celebrated Derpibooru's five year anniversary with friends.
An Artist Who Rocks - 100+ images under his artist tag

Sciencepone of Science!
"@redweasel":/1385850#comment_7283354
Just because you _think_ the modern era is as bad as the middle ages doesn't mean your attitude has to actually _be_ medieval. Now excuse me while we get a mob to go burn a witch because our feudal Lord got mad and burned someone's crops because we couldn't offer enough tribute.

Less tongue-in-cheek, we literally owe the modern world to scientific innovation. Nuclear power, GPS, modern materials and even modern computing were all made possible because someone asked at some point, "why is it that when we shine a light on a piece of metal it induces an electric current _in this particular way_ instead of in some other possible way?", and "why does light always seem to go the same speed?"

Esoteric, pointless questions that "hasn't led to anything and doesn't effect anyone's quality of life" ultimately turned out to be building blocks that led to the modern world as we know it, to which we owe modern computing, materials science - there's virtually nothing we _don't_ owe to "pointless" questions like that, that often didn't pay off for many decades and never even directly - usually only by serving as the initial building blocks that later discoveries would build on even further, but being vital to the progress of science nonetheless.

Heck, even when _radio_ was discovered there was no apparent real application of it for many decades, even though the applications seem so abundantly obvious now. Same can even be said of electricity. Why waste money learning about how you can make metal zap people? That's a stupid and pointless waste of time, it won't pull my cart, help me keep track of census data, write to my uncle by mail, or anything useful like that - it won't even help those artists _waste money_ buying their stupid paints when they could be using that money on feeding the poor instead of paint and canvas! </sarcasm>

And good grief. The planet's big. Very big. You may think it's a long walk down the street to the chemist's but that's just peanuts to Earth. No, it's _really freaking big_. And there's many times more resources floating around in the solar system to boot, which people are already prospecting for valuable ores. So stripping the planet "dry" is really just a Captain Planet dystopian fantasy.

"Have a decent source on the topic":http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/explainer/2010/10/has_the_earth_run_out_of_any_natural_resources.html.

And it's because people spend tens of billions of dollars on scientific endeavors that we're now getting to the point where access to space is getting cheap enough that mining some very valuable metals can pay for the cost of launching the mining drones. It's ultimately this "consumerism" (aka, private enterprise via SpaceX, Blue Origin, and some public companies like Boeing) that's making it affordable and viable as a real option, too. So ironically enough it's this "consumerism" that's making it possible for us to look elsewhere to mine, if Earth really does run low enough on certain valuable ores that you can turn a profit mining from space instead of from Earth, and it seems with some ores we've reached that point - not because we've mined it to exhaustion, but because private enterprise has dramatically dropped the prices of access to space.



An example of this being a bit more modern - that is, some things that were new a few decades ago only now paying off - quantum computing is one such example. It's been known as a possibility for a long time, but only now are we starting to see some application. While the true "quantum computer" as it's said isn't available yet, some hybrid sort of designs that utilize quantum computing in some ways are coming about already - I'm afraid all I have to cite for that though is what I overheard in some theory group meetings at my university, but I take that as a rather credible source since those people actually work with supercomputers on a regular basis.

And another example is nuclear fusion - "have a good video on why it's actually a lot closer than ever before, and why it's _for real_ only 20 years off this time, unlike all the overhyped promises in decades past":https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KZm_mpbKX5c. Boils down mostly to many significant milestones being actually passed for the first time, computing technology, and incremental advances in the research that require rather extensive knowledge to really understand - but the insider scoop is that it _really_ is just 20 years out now, certainly absolutely no more than 40, and I'll bet you a thousand bucks on that.



...I'm almost certainly overreacting to something not initially meant to be as scathing towards scientific endeavors as it seems, but whatever, I feel rather strongly about this - so I'll just leave this here. Don't you ever belittle scientific achievements like the discovery of the Higgs, endeavors like the LHC, or say there's little hope for the future. Especially at a time where deep learning is really taking off.

At least don't use a tone that makes it sound like the LHC was unjustified due to its _cost_. It's worth a lot more than a measly 50 billion, which is really just peanuts on the scale of world power's national budgets.
No reason given
Edited by Cirrus Light
Cirrus Light
Economist -
Condensed Milk - State-Approved Compensation
Friendship, Art, and Magic (2018) - Celebrated Derpibooru's six year anniversary with friends.
Helpful Owl - Drew someone's OC for the 2018 Community Collab
Birthday Cake - Celebrated MLP's 7th birthday
Best Artist - Providing quality, Derpibooru-exclusive artwork
Magical Inkwell - Wrote MLP fanfiction consisting of at least around 1.5k words, and has a verified link to the platform of their choice
Not a Llama - Happy April Fools Day!
Friendship, Art, and Magic (2017) - Celebrated Derpibooru's five year anniversary with friends.
An Artist Who Rocks - 100+ images under his artist tag

Sciencepone of Science!
"@redweasel":/1385850#comment_7283354
Just because you _think_ the modern era is as bad as the middle ages doesn't mean your attitude has to actually _be_ medieval. Now excuse me while we get a mob to go burn a witch because our feudal Lord got mad and burned someone's crops because we couldn't offer enough tribute.

Less tongue-in-cheek, we literally owe the modern world to scientific innovation. Nuclear power, GPS, modern materials and even modern computing were all made possible because someone asked at some point, "why is it that when we shine a light on a piece of metal it induces an electric current _in this particular way_ instead of in some other possible way?", and "why does light always seem to go the same speed?"

Esoteric, pointless questions that "hasn't led to anything and doesn't effect anyone's quality of life" ultimately turned out to be building blocks that led to the modern world as we know it, to which we owe modern computing, materials science - there's virtually nothing we _don't_ owe to "pointless" questions like that, that often didn't pay off for many decades and never even directly - usually only by serving as the initial building blocks that later discoveries would build on even further, but being vital to the progress of science nonetheless.

Heck, even when _radio_ was discovered there was no apparent real application of it for many decades, even though the applications seem so abundantly obvious now. Same can even be said of electricity. Why waste money learning about how you can make metal zap people? That's a stupid and pointless waste of time, it won't pull my cart, help me keep track of census data, write to my uncle by mail, or anything useful like that - it won't even help those artists _waste money_ buying their stupid paints when they could be using that money on feeding the poor instead of paint and canvas! </sarcasm>

And good grief. The planet's big. Very big. You may think it's a long walk down the street to the chemist's but that's just peanuts to Earth. No, it's _really freaking big_. And there's many times more resources floating around in the solar system to boot, which people are already prospecting for valuable ores. So stripping the planet "dry" is really just a Captain Planet dystopian fantasy.

"Have a decent source on the topic":http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/explainer/2010/10/has_the_earth_run_out_of_any_natural_resources.html.

And it's because people spend tens of billions of dollars on scientific endeavors that we're now getting to the point where access to space is getting cheap enough that mining some very valuable metals can pay for the cost of launching the mining drones. It's ultimately this "consumerism" (aka, private enterprise via SpaceX, Blue Origin, and some public companies like Boeing) that's making it affordable and viable as a real option, too. So ironically enough it's this "consumerism" that's making it possible for us to look elsewhere to mine, if Earth really does run low enough on certain valuable ores that you can turn a profit mining from space instead of from Earth, and it seems with some ores we've reached that point - not because we've mined it to exhaustion, but because private enterprise has dramatically dropped the prices of access to space.



An example of this being a bit more modern - that is, some things that were new a few decades ago only now paying off - quantum computing is one such example. It's been known as a possibility for a long time, but only now are we starting to see some application. While the true "quantum computer" as it's said isn't available yet, some hybrid sort of designs that utilize quantum computing in some ways are coming about already - I'm afraid all I have to cite for that though is what I overheard in some theory group meetings at my university, but I take that as a rather credible source since those people actually work with supercomputers on a regular basis.

And another example is nuclear fusion - "have a good video on why it's actually a lot closer than ever before, and why it's _for real_ only 20 years off this time, unlike all the overhyped promises in decades past":https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KZm_mpbKX5c. Boils down mostly to many significant milestones being actually passed for the first time, computing technology, and incremental advances in the research that require rather extensive knowledge to really understand - but the insider scoop is that it _really_ is just 20 years out now, certainly absolutely no more than 40, and I'll bet you a thousand bucks on that.
No reason given
Edited by Cirrus Light
Cirrus Light
Economist -
Condensed Milk - State-Approved Compensation
Friendship, Art, and Magic (2018) - Celebrated Derpibooru's six year anniversary with friends.
Helpful Owl - Drew someone's OC for the 2018 Community Collab
Birthday Cake - Celebrated MLP's 7th birthday
Best Artist - Providing quality, Derpibooru-exclusive artwork
Magical Inkwell - Wrote MLP fanfiction consisting of at least around 1.5k words, and has a verified link to the platform of their choice
Not a Llama - Happy April Fools Day!
Friendship, Art, and Magic (2017) - Celebrated Derpibooru's five year anniversary with friends.
An Artist Who Rocks - 100+ images under his artist tag

Sciencepone of Science!
"@redweasel":/1385850#comment_7283354
Just because you _think_ the modern era is as bad as the middle ages doesn't mean your attitude has to actually _be_ medieval. Now excuse me while we get a mob to go burn a witch because our feudal Lord got mad and burned someone's crops because we couldn't offer enough tribute.

Less tongue-in-cheek, we literally owe the modern world to scientific innovation. Nuclear power, GPS, modern materials and even modern computing were all made possible because someone asked at some point, "why is it that when we shine a light on a piece of metal it induces an electric current _in this particular way_ instead of in some other possible way?", and "why does light always seem to go the same speed?"

Esoteric, pointless questions that "hasn't led to anything and doesn't effect anyone's quality of life" ultimately turned out to be building blocks that led to the modern world as we know it, to which we owe modern computing, materials science - there's virtually nothing we _don't_ owe to "pointless" questions like that, that often didn't pay off for many decades and never even directly - usually only by serving as the initial building blocks that later discoveries would build on even further, but being vital to the progress of science nonetheless.

Heck, even when _radio_ was discovered there was no apparent real application of it for many decades, even though the applications seem so abundantly obvious now. Same can even be said of electricity. Why waste money learning about how you can make metal zap people? That's a stupid and pointless waste of time, it won't pull my cart, help me keep track of census data, write to my uncle by mail, or anything useful like that - it won't even help those artists _waste money_ buying their stupid paints when they could be using that money on feeding the poor instead of paint and canvas! </sarcasm>

And good grief. The planet's big. Very big. You may think it's a long walk down the street to the chemist's but that's just peanuts to Earth. No, it's _really freaking big_. And there's many times more resources floating around in the solar system to boot, which people are already prospecting for valuable ores. So stripping the planet "dry" is really just a Captain Planet dystopian fantasy.

"Have a decent source on the topic":http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/explainer/2010/10/has_the_earth_run_out_of_any_natural_resources.html.

And it's because people spend tens of billions of dollars on scientific endeavors that we're now getting to the point where access to space is getting cheap enough that mining some very valuable metals can pay for the cost of launching the mining drones. It's ultimately this "consumerism" (aka, private enterprise via SpaceX, Blue Origin, and some public companies like Boeing) that's making it affordable and viable as a real option, too. So ironically enough it's this "consumerism" that's making it possible for us to look elsewhere to mine, if Earth really does run low enough on certain valuable ores that you can turn a profit mining from space instead of from Earth, and it seems with some ores we've reached that point - not because we've mined it to exhaustion, but because private enterprise has dramatically dropped the prices of access to space.



An example of this being a bit more modern - that is, some things that were new a few decades ago only now paying off - quantum computing is one such example. It's been known as a possibility for a long time, but only now are we starting to see some application. While the true "quantum computer" as it's said isn't available yet, some hybrid sort of designs that utilize quantum computing in some ways are coming about already - I'm afraid all I have to cite for that though is what I overheard in some theory group meetings at my university, but I take that as a rather credible source since those people actually work with supercomputers on a regular basis.
No reason given
Edited by Cirrus Light
Cirrus Light
Economist -
Condensed Milk - State-Approved Compensation
Friendship, Art, and Magic (2018) - Celebrated Derpibooru's six year anniversary with friends.
Helpful Owl - Drew someone's OC for the 2018 Community Collab
Birthday Cake - Celebrated MLP's 7th birthday
Best Artist - Providing quality, Derpibooru-exclusive artwork
Magical Inkwell - Wrote MLP fanfiction consisting of at least around 1.5k words, and has a verified link to the platform of their choice
Not a Llama - Happy April Fools Day!
Friendship, Art, and Magic (2017) - Celebrated Derpibooru's five year anniversary with friends.
An Artist Who Rocks - 100+ images under his artist tag

Sciencepone of Science!
"@redweasel":/1385850#comment_7283354
Just because you _think_ the modern era is as bad as the middle ages doesn't mean your attitude has to actually _be_ medieval. Now excuse me while we get a mob to go burn a witch because our feudal Lord got mad and burned someone's crops because we couldn't offer enough tribute.

Less tongue-in-cheek, we literally owe the modern world to scientific innovation. Nuclear power, GPS, modern materials and even modern computing were all made possible because someone asked at some point, "why is it that when we shine a light on a piece of metal it induces an electric current _in this particular way_ instead of in some other possible way?", and "why does light always seem to go the same speed?"

Esoteric, pointless questions that "hasn't led to anything and doesn't effect anyone's quality of life" ultimately turned out to be building blocks that led to the modern world as we know it, to which we owe modern computing, materials science - there's virtually nothing we _don't_ owe to "pointless" questions like that, that often didn't pay off for many decades and never even directly - usually only by serving as the initial building blocks that later discoveries would build on even further, but being vital to the progress of science nonetheless.

Heck, even when _radio_ was discovered there was no apparent real application of it for many decades, even though the applications seem so abundantly obvious now. Same can even be said of electricity. Why waste money learning about how you can make metal zap people? That's a stupid and pointless waste of time, it won't pull my cart, help me keep track of census data, write to my uncle by mail, or anything useful like that - it won't even help those artists _waste money_ buying their stupid paints when they could be using that money on feeding the poor instead of paint and canvas! </sarcasm>

And good grief. The planet's big. Very big. You may think it's a long walk down the street to the chemist's but that's just peanuts to Earth. No, it's _really freaking big_. And there's many times more resources floating around in the solar system to boot, which people are already prospecting for valuable ores. So stripping the planet "dry" is really just a Captain Planet dystopian fantasy.

"Have a decent source on the topic":http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/explainer/2010/10/has_the_earth_run_out_of_any_natural_resources.html.

And it's because people spend tens of billions of dollars on scientific endeavors that we're now getting to the point where access to space is getting cheap enough that mining some very valuable metals can pay for the cost of launching the mining drones. It's ultimately this "consumerism" (aka, private enterprise via SpaceX, Blue Origin, and some public companies like Boeing) that's making it affordable and viable as a real option, too. So ironically enough it's this "consumerism" that's making it possible for us to look elsewhere to mine, if Earth really does run low enough on certain valuable ores that you can turn a profit mining from space instead of from Earth, and it seems with some ores we've reached that point - not because we've mined it to exhaustion, but because private enterprise has dramatically dropped the prices of access to space.
No reason given
Edited by Cirrus Light