• Limeey@lemmy.world
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    6 months ago

    Research for the sake of research is how we make discoveries we never thought possible.

    • paddirn@lemmy.world
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      6 months ago

      The best discoveries are the ones that start with somebody going, “Huh, that’s weird…”

    • GloriousGouda@lemmy.myserv.one
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      6 months ago

      Absolutely! The mentality that it’s “wasted time and resources” is exactly how you extinguish progress, invention, and ultimately the ability to innovate existing tools.

    • xantoxis@lemmy.world
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      6 months ago

      This one’s not even that far out there. Understanding how ants think has direct applications! Ants must take many thousands of steps in a day; being able to count them precisely requires certain cognitive facilities we wouldn’t otherwise know existed. Next step: figure out how those things work with such simple cognition. Then apply that to self-organizing robots and use them to cure cancer or something.