
The Usefulness of Useless Knowledge (1939) [pdf] - wallflower
https://library.ias.edu/files/UsefulnessHarpers.pdf
======
pavel_lishin
Reminds me of a bit from Larry Niven's _Protector_ :

> _" We want access to Earth's records on the study of Mars. Hell, Garner, the
> Phobos cameras might already show where the Outsider came down! We want
> permission to search Mars from close orbit. We want permission to land."_

> _" What have you got so far?"_

> _Nick snorted. "There's only two things they can agree on. We can search all
> we want to - from space. For letting us examine their silly records they
> want to charge us a flat million marks!"_

> _" Pay it."_

> _" It's robbery."_

> _" A Belter says that? Why don't you have records on Mars?"_

> _" We were never interested. What for?"_

> _" What about abstract knowledge?"_

> _" Another word for useless."_

> _" Then what makes you want useless knowledge enough to pay a million marks
> for it?"_

> _Slowly Nick matched his grin. "It's still robbery. How in Finagle's name
> did Earth know they'd need to know about Mars?"_

> _" That's the secret of abstract knowledge. You get in the habit of finding
> out everything you can about everything. Most of it gets used sooner or
> later. We've spent billions exploring Mars."_

~~~
tsycho
Off topic, but I found it interesting that James Corey's Expanse series also
has "Belters"

~~~
douche
It's pretty much a standard term at this point in that category of sci-fi. For
example, Ben Bova also calls them belters.

~~~
pavel_lishin
Are there any works of fiction where people who live in the asteroid belt
aren't called belters?

I vaguely remember Lois McMaster Bujold writing a book about genetically
engineered humans named Quaddies, since they have four arms (in lieu of two
arms and two legs) who work in free-fall, but I think that was an interstellar
series, and they weren't just in an asteroid belt.

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icc97
> through-out the whole history of science most of the really great
> discoveries which had ultimately proved to be beneficial to mankind had been
> made by men and women who were driven not by the de-sire to be useful but
> merely the desire to satisfy their curiosity.

Came across this yesterday with the importance of curiosity in a video about
education. [0]

> "Curiosty is the of engine of achievment."

[0]:
[https://youtu.be/wX78iKhInsc?t=6m21s](https://youtu.be/wX78iKhInsc?t=6m21s)

~~~
babyrainbow
Have often wondered about this.

What does Internet do to curiosity? Or what happens when curiosity is quenched
withing seconds of being aroused? Is the instant access to knowledge cutting
short the thoughtful and deliberate pursuit of answers, a habit which might
have been the hidden source of our great discoveries of the past...

~~~
igk
>What does Internet do to curiosity? Or what happens when curiosity is
quenched withing seconds of being aroused?

For a substantial part of the population, this happens:

[http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=wiki-
hole](http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=wiki-hole)

If you have ready access to information, you hunger for more, because after
you understand one concept or fact, you NOTICE all the other things that
depend on that, be they new things building on top or inconsistencies in other
fields conflicting with your new knowledge

~~~
coldtea
> _For a substantial part of the population, this happens:_

For an even more substantial part of the population, the "I'll pretend like I
know things just because I can look them up in wikipedia or some such source"
happens.

~~~
TeMPOraL
Which is great! The brain becomes relegated to the role of a _cache_ instead
of working as the whole of an individual's knowledge.

~~~
RandomOpinion
> _The brain becomes relegated to the role of a cache instead of working as
> the whole of an individual 's knowledge._

I have a pile of physics textbooks sitting nearby but that doesn't make me a
qualified physicist. Availability of knowledge isn't worth a thing if it's
never been integrated into your mind.

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tomkat0789
Is there a more thorough study of the scientific and intellectual productivity
of people studying whatever they want and fooling around? This makes me wonder
about the culture I saw in graduate school where many professors seemed spend
more time getting funding and publications than research. Was there a time
when it was different?

~~~
privong
> This makes me wonder about the culture I saw in graduate school where many
> professors seemed spend more time getting funding and publications than
> research. Was there a time when it was different?

I don't have any objective data about how much time was spent on grants as a
function of time, but just from talking to faculty (in astronomy and physics)
the universal feeling is that they spend more of their time on grants and
proposals than they did in the past. I am not entirely sure what the dominant
cause is, but it is probably partly that grant overheads can contribute
significantly to a university/college operating budget. It also wouldn't
surprise me if the overall cost of doing research is increasing, owing to the
need to obtain cutting-edge equipment which is generally not yet able to take
advantage of economies of scale. Lastly, the size of academia has increased
while funding levels have not kept up (this is particularly true in the past
~decade) so the available funding per researcher has dropped, making grants
much more competitive. When grant acceptance rates drop below 10% (as is true
in some fields), you have to spend a lot more time on the proposal to stand a
chance of winning a grant, compared to how much time you might need to spend
if the acceptance rate was in the 25-40% range.

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ppvfy
I always think of number theory when the idea of uselessly abstract knowledge
comes up - it was the purest of pure math for centuries and it was absurd to
suggest that things like the nature of prime numbers and the divisibility of
integers would somehow be applied in industry. Then computers and cryptography
came around and now there's a 2 trillion dollar ecommerce industry that
depends on prime factorization being hard so people don't steal your bank
information.

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tryitnow
Considering that I am currently procrastinating on HN, this is probably the
last thing I need to read right now.

------
megamindbrian
I apply the "One man's trash is another man's treasure" to knowledge.

------
alexcnwy
My favourite source of useful useless knowledge:

[https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/](https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/)

