I want to be clear that this is your claim before I spend any more time on it.

I even point out that the reality is likely if we fund particle accelerators, it will likely be diverted from places we don't want it to be diverted from, like other research spending.

>even if we get funding it'll likely be diverted from the areas we least want it diverted from

Note I even end by saying the poster is probably right, for as much as I don't like that they are (not meant as a negative to the poster, but to how humanity currently allocates our resources).

This is pushing forward research into theory, even with highly positive results it's completely unknown whether any of those results actually result in any progress for the human race other than knowledge, and at a base cost of €21 billion that knowledge comes with a huge opportunity cost.

We face so many tangible risks right now that €21 billion invested elsewhere into things that will likely produce meaningful advances to our problems that the question of 'is spending this much money disproving philosophical arguments justifiable right now?' should rightly be being asked.

>'is spending this much money disproving philosophical arguments justifiable right now?' should rightly be being asked.

In light of all the expenditures we are already making elsewhere, I don't see how many of those can be justified but this one not.

The problem here is we don't know what will be discovered and if it will be useful. Cheap Science Fiction FTL without all the time dilation - very valuable. Add half a decimal point to our models - probably can't be used for anything and so less valuable than a game. I have no idea, I just picked unlikely two extremes.

(https://www.ecb.europa.eu/mopo/implement/app/html/index.en.h...)

Just because you can name some other bad use of money that we do doesn't make some other one good.

Multiple gravity wave detectors

-Telescopes gives us lot of confirmations, but also they, especially largest, constantly feed us data about new, unknown things.