- #1
curiouscase
my friend is insufferable and thinks astro is "a waste of time"
As the title suggests, I have a friend who is insufferable, loves arguing and is convinced that astronomy/astrophysics is "a waste of time". I will admit that I am a journalist by trade, have barely a layperson understanding of physics myself and am usually left listening to his rants without being able to defend my own opinion that astrophysics seems Pretty Darn Awesome, so I have made this thread in an attempt to rile some far more intelligent folks to post some lengthy examples of why astro is both incredibly useful and important to the overall future of physics.
I get the feeling my friend has no idea what he's talking about. Basically his argument comes down to "students in school get mesmerized by the sheer scale of astrophysics, the black holes and galaxy clusters and cool graphics, when really the work going on at CERN is far more important, and the most interesting physics happens on a very small scale, and happened right after the big bang, and working on this primal stuff would explain the larger formations that followed." And he has some side-rants where he gets all Ray Kurzweil on me and talks about how really we all should just be focused on increasing computer processing power and how this is paramount because it would "likely lead to technologies/AI that could solve some of these astro problems much quicker than 21st century humans could" XD, and then ties this into how astro is indulgent science and not applicable to the engineering needs of the next 50 years, which I personally think is bull because obviously astronomers have helped develop some pretty amazing engineering in the last century, and I try to make a point of basically the sub disciplines of physics are interconnected and reliant on each other and particle physicists need astrophysicists and visa versa, and he's still basically like "no it's all about high energy physics, computer engineering and also chemistry is really important, but astro is a waste of time."
Please pretend you are talking to this individual and lay into them with unmitigated force.
As the title suggests, I have a friend who is insufferable, loves arguing and is convinced that astronomy/astrophysics is "a waste of time". I will admit that I am a journalist by trade, have barely a layperson understanding of physics myself and am usually left listening to his rants without being able to defend my own opinion that astrophysics seems Pretty Darn Awesome, so I have made this thread in an attempt to rile some far more intelligent folks to post some lengthy examples of why astro is both incredibly useful and important to the overall future of physics.
I get the feeling my friend has no idea what he's talking about. Basically his argument comes down to "students in school get mesmerized by the sheer scale of astrophysics, the black holes and galaxy clusters and cool graphics, when really the work going on at CERN is far more important, and the most interesting physics happens on a very small scale, and happened right after the big bang, and working on this primal stuff would explain the larger formations that followed." And he has some side-rants where he gets all Ray Kurzweil on me and talks about how really we all should just be focused on increasing computer processing power and how this is paramount because it would "likely lead to technologies/AI that could solve some of these astro problems much quicker than 21st century humans could" XD, and then ties this into how astro is indulgent science and not applicable to the engineering needs of the next 50 years, which I personally think is bull because obviously astronomers have helped develop some pretty amazing engineering in the last century, and I try to make a point of basically the sub disciplines of physics are interconnected and reliant on each other and particle physicists need astrophysicists and visa versa, and he's still basically like "no it's all about high energy physics, computer engineering and also chemistry is really important, but astro is a waste of time."
Please pretend you are talking to this individual and lay into them with unmitigated force.