[drekembe]

Why are we going nowhere as a species without advancements in fundamental physics? That's quite a loaded statement, and not something we can just agree is a given. I mean sure, physics advancements are good and important, but I would say what's holding us back as a species is climate change and human suffering and inequality.

[noch]

> I mean sure, physics advancements are good and important, but I would say what's holding us back as a species is climate change and human suffering and inequality.

It's unfortunate that most of the general public does not understand how important it is that fundamental physics continues to advance. Advancing fundamental physics is the most important thing humans can do. It is not difficult to argue that the basis for our civilisation, that is, technology, would be impossible without the advances in fundamental physics. Some products of physics:

- Electricity (our ability to generate, store, and transmit it)

- Lasers

- Electron microscope (arguably, the great leap forward in medical research)

- Nuclear energy (arguably the cleanest energy available)

- WiFi

- GPS

- The internet (developed by Berners-Lee while at CERN)

- The semiconductor (the camera on your phone would not exist without fundamental physics)

- X-ray and Magnetic Resonance imaging.

- Radiotherapy to treat cancers

There are many others that we take for granted every day.[0] Even our understanding of DNA, the most significant discovery in biology, would have been impossible without fundamental physics in the form of X-ray crystallography. (and Francis Crick was a physicist!)

(It can also be argued that climate change, human suffering, and inequality can be directly solved if significant advances in fundamental physics are made: new powerful sources of energy like fusion or something else yet unimagined could transform our economic landscape entirely by driving the cost and harms of energy production and use down by large percentages. The Standard Model has revealed the structure of the atom, yet the benefits of this knowledge have yet to be broadly realised and applied to control matter at the sub-atomic level. There might be no practical limit to our ability to control matter! It might be possible to make wars (economic and physical) over resources irrelevant.)

[0]: Physics for an advanced world: A look at the vital contribution that physics research has made to a number of major technological developments https://www.iop.org/publications/iop/2009/file_38209.pdf

[lurkmurk]

The question of spending money is the question of politics, and there is a finite budget. I would argue the reason for all of these inventions is the increasing number of educated people (not only physicists) in the world. So maybe investing this money into education is better. Also, of course the physics will birth all of these inventions, it would be useless otherwise.

[banads]

Carl Sagan, MLK, and many other such thought leaders often talked about the existential threat posed by the fact that our scientific progress has so greatly outpaced out moral progress.

[mobiledev2014]

That’s one of those things I’ve pondered but don’t think I’ve seen it discussed by the two you mention, both of whom I respect deeply- got any good links?