Greater understanding of quantum physics means greater understanding of chemistry and material science. Observing potentially habitable planets in other systems gives us more understanding of planets in general, which we may find handy sometime.
Our entire physics model is built upon cumulative mathematical progressions producing a lot of theoretical concepts that have never been confirmed with repeatable tests in the physical world.
Our entire physics model is built on experiments and observations. The theoretical concepts produce predictions that we verify. String theory isn't part of generally accepted physics since it doesn't make enough falsifiable predictions.
One of the potentially catastrophic set backs is the assumption that our current understanding of physics applies to any where in the known universe.
Which is why physicists (and astrophysicists) test these things as best they can. Physics isn't a bunch of arbitrary assumptions. So far, we don't have reason to believe fundamental physics varies, and the working assumption is that it doesn't.
What if our "universal gravitational constant" is not constant at all across the universe and all the mathematical models that rely on this value are tainted?
So far, anyway, we have no evidence that it varies.
We have even had to introduce and use concepts like "dark matter" to validate some of our observations.
We've introduced and used much weirder concepts than that. Dark matter solves several different problems. It's pretty well established by now.
But it has to be something because we need to use this totally theoretical object to make the math work.
Just like tons of other things in physics. Ever see a neutrino? The math works with some concerns. If there's matter that doesn't interact electromagnetically, at a certain density, it turns out to make the math work. There have been numerous attempts to change the math, and they haven't worked.
Making the math work is all fine and dandy if all you care about is balancing the equation but what if the math itself is flawed?
Making the equations balance is pointless when studying physics. Physicists use math to derive consequences of what they believe to be true, and they test those consequences. If the math is flawed, or the beliefs are, then eventually a physicist will derive something that turns out not to be true, and they'll change things. It's happened a lot.
There are things about the Universe that work because, due to uncertainty, we can't perceive them. Specifically, virtual particles transmit forces that we need. We can't detect them, but we know they're there. Not only is the Universe sticking its tongue out at us behind our back, we notice that we're being licked.
I can't believe in a God that doesn't have a sense of humor.
Think of the sequence in Babylon 5, "Deconstruction of Falling Stars", in which the characters wind up in a simulation rigged for propaganda effect, and Garibaldi manages to hack the system he's in and communicate with the outside world, with catastrophic results for the simulator.
If we're a simulation, we don't have laws of physics so much as we have a cosmic physics engine. Someone running the simulation can change things arbitrarily without running them through the physics engine. Someone might have a player character in the simulation and we're all NPCs. Said player character could be in some sort of God mode.
However, your typical monotheist thinks God is morally superior to people as well as infinitely powerful, and that's not a characteristic of a player. Some of my PCs act like real assholes.
If this is a simulation, it might be possible to take advantage of bugs. This could manifest as magic or psychic powers (there's little difference between them, really). Telepathy could be a matter of shared variables. If I can push some of my thoughts into the physics engine, I may have flight or telekinesis. Of course, there's no way to tell from that if the Universe is weird or the code is buggy.
That's something that can wait a long time. The place I work for believes in reinvestment to expand capabilities, not profit per se. Amazon spent a long time eschewing profit in order to grow.
Of course, if I don't see future profit potential, I'm not investing.
There's something to be said for making customers a top priority, on the principle that you can usually find some way to get money when you have customers. Expanding the customer base might be worth taking hits to revenue. Not that you can keep this up indefinitely.
Tesla looks to me like a likely success. It could easily be more valuable in every way than GM in the future. However, the question is whether it's worth buying the stock at current prices, and I'm not seeing it. It seems to me that it would be too much waiting for Tesla to become that big for too little profit when that happens.
People doing different things have different needs. What's good for general office work may not be good for software development. Your example of a metal company doesn't necessarily apply to software.
When a company doesn't care if you have the tools to do your job properly, they obviously aren't worried about how productive you're being. Given that, why should you sweat it?
There are good reasons for using MS Word in many situations. There are no good reasons to take 3-6 months getting a new computer set up, because IT staff that isn't all imbeciles is cheaper to hire than having workers' computers crippled for months at a time.
As the world becomes more and more populous and intertwined, voting with one's feet is getting less and less practical.
Taxation should be primarily local, and secondarily at the state level. That way, people can move away from dysfunctional government.
Lots of problems are national, and aren't well suited to being handled at lower levels. The world has changed since the heyday of classical liberalism, and not everyone like the changes.
American progressives are particularly bad that way because, unlike Europeans, they even effectively take away the option of leaving the country.
Why can't you leave the country? You can try to emigrate to any other country you like. They don't have to take you, but lots of people do move. The difference between Europe and the US here is that Europe is formed out of lots of smaller countries. Other than that, there's no difference.
In the main fascist states I know of, pre-takeover businessmen who didn't get political against the fascists remained in place and profited. Unless they positioned themselves as enemies of the Party (whichever one), they did just fine. Fascists were usually anti-labor, and the Nazis were happy to provide cooperative businesses with slave labor. The restrictions on the free market are primarily in favor of the industrialists. While Nazi Germany was theoretically and legally a totalitarian state, to a large extent it didn't function as one (partly because of Nazi inefficiency, of course). Churchill, during WWII, could be thrown out of office by one vote in the House of Commons, but he seems to have acted more freely, and with less concern for popular opinion, than Hitler did.
In a Communist state, a factory manager is one primarily because of politics. It isn't enough to not be an enemy of the Party; one must participate. One's position is much more dependent on politics than an industrialist under a fascist regime.
So, if you're opposed to the Party, or not a capitalist, life is going to suck under a Fascist or Communist regime. If you're a capitalist willing to go along, you're going to like a Fascist regime a lot better.
All governments are coercive. It's a matter of degree and emphasis. There is no tipping point at which increased concern for the disadvantaged automatically slides into totalitarianism.
"Dictatorship of the proletariat" is a strictly Marxist and Communist concept. There are plenty of varieties of socialism that don't involve that. (Also, Hitler wasn't a socialist. He was a capitalist.)
The "philosophy" of free market capitalism is based on the realization that the world is full of power-hungry, greedy sociopaths no matter what you do, and that, at a minimum, people should have the freedom not to associate with them and not to be forced to work for them.
This can work if there's enough ways out of society. Nowadays, you generally don't have good options to make a living outside the system. Therefore, it's a good thing if there's two distinct sides of sociopaths with different goals and some reason to appeal to the people. Governments and businesses can be oppressive, and without opposition there's no reason to care about the masses.
Furthermore, even imperfect capitalism eliminates absolute poverty, so that's simply not a problem.
Learn some history. We don't have much absolute poverty today because we have some socialist elements in the economy. Study earlier and purer forms of capitalism, and what happened to people. It's pretty bad. Perfect capitalism doesn't give a crap about anyone who's not useful to the capitalists. Imperfect capitalism has some facilities for making sure very few people are really destitute.
What you're probably referring to is the idea that markets become monopolized unless regulated. That just is Marxist and fascist humbug.
Any ideologically-driven statement on economics (or harder sciences) is probably wrong. There are such things as barriers to entry. In the absence of restrictions on anti-competitive behavior, established businesses can often wipe out upstarts. (Fascism is fine with this, by the way, since it's a very friendly philosophy to capitalists, and historically doesn't seem to care about the masses.)
Whether it's all that serious an issue is part of what studies are about. There's fewer traffic fatalities, true, but that could be due partly to old problems getting solved while new ones appear. It would be good to have even fewer traffic fatalities. (FWIW, some modern cars have features that will make it easier to avoid crashes. My new car has lane departure warnings and optional steering to avoid departure and collision detection, although I haven't actually tested these features much. This could lower fatalities more.)
In which case the driver spends some extra attention turning the feature off, since people who are going to misuse their phones while driving still will. I don't think this is a problem with a good technical solution.
You're talking about bad things happening. I'm talking about the reaction to bad things.
This is something the elites at least should be worrying about. If things get too bad, there will be Changes, and the elites won't like that. It looks to me like the majority don't want to live in third-world countries, and they definitely don't want to be first up against the wall when the Revolution comes. To a small extent, we're all in this together.
I can't be productive for an eight-hour day, most of the time. Adding two hours to the day won't get all that much more useful work out of me, while losing a workday will cut out 4-6 productive hours from my week.
I don't have much face-to-face time necessary in my job. I'm mostly valued for what I accomplish, not time in the office. Nursing isn't like that. As a patient, I had needs that couldn't wait a few hours for another nurse to come on duty. I didn't take up all that much nurse time, but I needed 24/7 coverage.
There was no theology or mysticism or significant philosophy in Avatar. Everything that looked like it was in reality jacking into another computer or the big server that runs the planet.
The world of Demolition Man was weird enough to be a plausible future. Also, note what happens in the car chase scene: there are no secondary accidents, because everyone else's self-driving cars cope nicely with the chaos around the main characters.
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Greater understanding of quantum physics means greater understanding of chemistry and material science. Observing potentially habitable planets in other systems gives us more understanding of planets in general, which we may find handy sometime.
Our entire physics model is built on experiments and observations. The theoretical concepts produce predictions that we verify. String theory isn't part of generally accepted physics since it doesn't make enough falsifiable predictions.
Which is why physicists (and astrophysicists) test these things as best they can. Physics isn't a bunch of arbitrary assumptions. So far, we don't have reason to believe fundamental physics varies, and the working assumption is that it doesn't.
So far, anyway, we have no evidence that it varies.
We've introduced and used much weirder concepts than that. Dark matter solves several different problems. It's pretty well established by now.
Just like tons of other things in physics. Ever see a neutrino? The math works with some concerns. If there's matter that doesn't interact electromagnetically, at a certain density, it turns out to make the math work. There have been numerous attempts to change the math, and they haven't worked.
Making the equations balance is pointless when studying physics. Physicists use math to derive consequences of what they believe to be true, and they test those consequences. If the math is flawed, or the beliefs are, then eventually a physicist will derive something that turns out not to be true, and they'll change things. It's happened a lot.
There are things about the Universe that work because, due to uncertainty, we can't perceive them. Specifically, virtual particles transmit forces that we need. We can't detect them, but we know they're there. Not only is the Universe sticking its tongue out at us behind our back, we notice that we're being licked.
I can't believe in a God that doesn't have a sense of humor.
Think of the sequence in Babylon 5, "Deconstruction of Falling Stars", in which the characters wind up in a simulation rigged for propaganda effect, and Garibaldi manages to hack the system he's in and communicate with the outside world, with catastrophic results for the simulator.
If we're a simulation, we don't have laws of physics so much as we have a cosmic physics engine. Someone running the simulation can change things arbitrarily without running them through the physics engine. Someone might have a player character in the simulation and we're all NPCs. Said player character could be in some sort of God mode.
However, your typical monotheist thinks God is morally superior to people as well as infinitely powerful, and that's not a characteristic of a player. Some of my PCs act like real assholes.
If this is a simulation, it might be possible to take advantage of bugs. This could manifest as magic or psychic powers (there's little difference between them, really). Telepathy could be a matter of shared variables. If I can push some of my thoughts into the physics engine, I may have flight or telekinesis. Of course, there's no way to tell from that if the Universe is weird or the code is buggy.
That's something that can wait a long time. The place I work for believes in reinvestment to expand capabilities, not profit per se. Amazon spent a long time eschewing profit in order to grow.
Of course, if I don't see future profit potential, I'm not investing.
There's something to be said for making customers a top priority, on the principle that you can usually find some way to get money when you have customers. Expanding the customer base might be worth taking hits to revenue. Not that you can keep this up indefinitely.
They can be greedy parasites and still be people you need to deal with. It's the best position for a greedy parasite to be in.
Tesla looks to me like a likely success. It could easily be more valuable in every way than GM in the future. However, the question is whether it's worth buying the stock at current prices, and I'm not seeing it. It seems to me that it would be too much waiting for Tesla to become that big for too little profit when that happens.
People doing different things have different needs. What's good for general office work may not be good for software development. Your example of a metal company doesn't necessarily apply to software.
So, still nothing that satisfies my requirements (must fit in my shirt pockets). Maybe I'll get an SE while the getting is good.
When a company doesn't care if you have the tools to do your job properly, they obviously aren't worried about how productive you're being. Given that, why should you sweat it?
There are good reasons for using MS Word in many situations. There are no good reasons to take 3-6 months getting a new computer set up, because IT staff that isn't all imbeciles is cheaper to hire than having workers' computers crippled for months at a time.
It's generally easier to get higher-end hardware than to make software vendors make their stuff more efficient.
As the world becomes more and more populous and intertwined, voting with one's feet is getting less and less practical.
Lots of problems are national, and aren't well suited to being handled at lower levels. The world has changed since the heyday of classical liberalism, and not everyone like the changes.
Why can't you leave the country? You can try to emigrate to any other country you like. They don't have to take you, but lots of people do move. The difference between Europe and the US here is that Europe is formed out of lots of smaller countries. Other than that, there's no difference.
In the main fascist states I know of, pre-takeover businessmen who didn't get political against the fascists remained in place and profited. Unless they positioned themselves as enemies of the Party (whichever one), they did just fine. Fascists were usually anti-labor, and the Nazis were happy to provide cooperative businesses with slave labor. The restrictions on the free market are primarily in favor of the industrialists. While Nazi Germany was theoretically and legally a totalitarian state, to a large extent it didn't function as one (partly because of Nazi inefficiency, of course). Churchill, during WWII, could be thrown out of office by one vote in the House of Commons, but he seems to have acted more freely, and with less concern for popular opinion, than Hitler did.
In a Communist state, a factory manager is one primarily because of politics. It isn't enough to not be an enemy of the Party; one must participate. One's position is much more dependent on politics than an industrialist under a fascist regime.
So, if you're opposed to the Party, or not a capitalist, life is going to suck under a Fascist or Communist regime. If you're a capitalist willing to go along, you're going to like a Fascist regime a lot better.
All governments are coercive. It's a matter of degree and emphasis. There is no tipping point at which increased concern for the disadvantaged automatically slides into totalitarianism.
"Dictatorship of the proletariat" is a strictly Marxist and Communist concept. There are plenty of varieties of socialism that don't involve that. (Also, Hitler wasn't a socialist. He was a capitalist.)
This can work if there's enough ways out of society. Nowadays, you generally don't have good options to make a living outside the system. Therefore, it's a good thing if there's two distinct sides of sociopaths with different goals and some reason to appeal to the people. Governments and businesses can be oppressive, and without opposition there's no reason to care about the masses.
Learn some history. We don't have much absolute poverty today because we have some socialist elements in the economy. Study earlier and purer forms of capitalism, and what happened to people. It's pretty bad. Perfect capitalism doesn't give a crap about anyone who's not useful to the capitalists. Imperfect capitalism has some facilities for making sure very few people are really destitute.
Any ideologically-driven statement on economics (or harder sciences) is probably wrong. There are such things as barriers to entry. In the absence of restrictions on anti-competitive behavior, established businesses can often wipe out upstarts. (Fascism is fine with this, by the way, since it's a very friendly philosophy to capitalists, and historically doesn't seem to care about the masses.)
Whether it's all that serious an issue is part of what studies are about. There's fewer traffic fatalities, true, but that could be due partly to old problems getting solved while new ones appear. It would be good to have even fewer traffic fatalities. (FWIW, some modern cars have features that will make it easier to avoid crashes. My new car has lane departure warnings and optional steering to avoid departure and collision detection, although I haven't actually tested these features much. This could lower fatalities more.)
In which case the driver spends some extra attention turning the feature off, since people who are going to misuse their phones while driving still will. I don't think this is a problem with a good technical solution.
You're talking about bad things happening. I'm talking about the reaction to bad things.
This is something the elites at least should be worrying about. If things get too bad, there will be Changes, and the elites won't like that. It looks to me like the majority don't want to live in third-world countries, and they definitely don't want to be first up against the wall when the Revolution comes. To a small extent, we're all in this together.
I can't be productive for an eight-hour day, most of the time. Adding two hours to the day won't get all that much more useful work out of me, while losing a workday will cut out 4-6 productive hours from my week.
I don't have much face-to-face time necessary in my job. I'm mostly valued for what I accomplish, not time in the office. Nursing isn't like that. As a patient, I had needs that couldn't wait a few hours for another nurse to come on duty. I didn't take up all that much nurse time, but I needed 24/7 coverage.
There was no theology or mysticism or significant philosophy in Avatar. Everything that looked like it was in reality jacking into another computer or the big server that runs the planet.
The world of Demolition Man was weird enough to be a plausible future. Also, note what happens in the car chase scene: there are no secondary accidents, because everyone else's self-driving cars cope nicely with the chaos around the main characters.