This reminded me of Robert Wilson's congressional testimony on Fermilab. [0]

From the link:

Despite the key role physicists played in ending World War II, some members of Congress were skeptical of paying a hefty price tag for a machine that did not seem to directly benefit the U.S. national interest.

During Wilson’s testimony, then-senator John Pastore bluntly asked, "Is there anything connected with the hopes of this accelerator that in any way involves the security of the country?"

"No, sir, I don’t believe so," Wilson replied.

"It has no value in that respect?"

"It has only to do with the respect with which we regard one another, the dignity of man, our love of culture. It has to do with: Are we good painters, good sculptors, great poets? I mean all the things we really venerate in our country and are patriotic about. It has nothing to do directly with defending our country except to make it worth defending."

[0] https://www.aps.org/publications/apsnews/201804/history.cfm

> "It has nothing to do directly with defending our country except to make it worth defending."

Thank you for sharing. This is one of the most thought provoking lines I have ever read. People and politicians often forget that making a country worth defending is as important as the act of defense.

I mean, it's obvious.

Or maybe it's a proof of the intelligence of a elected official?

These topics are incredibly important, and yet it's extremely difficult to make a living studying them, and people are routinely mocked for attempting to do so. One day we will realize that an entire society made up of engineers and managers is not a healthy one. How can we fix this when "stuff that people will pay for" is pretty much the only meaningful measure of value?

People get paid for engaging in them- i.e. doing them. Studying the arts will not, however, make you an artist.

It will make you, at best, a keen observer. Some people can make a living writing books about their observations and assertions formed from them. Most, however, will not.

How much extra value does one more person writing about Locke or Rawles really give society? It depends entirely on how many we already have.

The arts and the humanities are not identical.

The people doing history, for example, are the grad students and faculty who dig into archives and write books. They, largely, are shit on by society and are working in a field that pays virtually all of them like crap.

And they don't repeat themselves. The Nth person to write a book on Topic X isn't just saying what has already been said. They are in dialog with all of the other authors. They reinterpret and recast the history. They view it through different methods or they create new methods that others will use in the future.

There is a value that transcends money. Value to society as a whole. Sure people need to live and have basic needs met, but to transcend finance is perhaps a necessity. One can make do with a lot less when the soul is enriched, when we take solace from the learning of humanity.

And how much do you think artists get paid?

For independent artists, everywhere from "not at all" to "obscene amounts", with most on the lower end of the scale or nothing.

For commercial artists- designers and such for companies- it is usually a good living.

It’s weird that we don’t throw more money at the social sciences, in particular. People often laugh at the social sciences because of things like the reproducibility crisis. But if we’re finding it difficult to research fundamental questions about humans, why don’t we throw billions of dollars at the challenge, like we did with the Large Hadron Collider?

Humanities aren't science but still important in making rational decisions. "History repeats itself" at least partially, and history/politics/religion help explain human psychology, if you look into the motives behind them.

The Humanities are _essential_ to making rational decisions outside (and sometimes within) the sciences. Thomas Kuhn's work used to be viewed as a "bridge" between them (history + sociology of science). But in fact modern science owes its existence to the humanists of the Renaissance. Of course the really hard problems aren't scientific, or amenable to scientific solutions: war and peace, politics and crime, social movements, religion, economic exploitation and the ultimate questions of "why?" and "what's next?" Those require answers from history, literature, philosophy, art and culture. That's why Newton only spent the first part of his life studying the physical world, the latter part had him searching for meaning in the metaphysical.