According to CBS’s Sixty Minutes, the new Large Hadron Collider in Geneva, Switzerland cost $8 billion over twenty years. When asked why it was worth spending $8 billion, American physicist, Bob Stanek told Steve Kroft,  “It’s in humans’ interest to know everything, right? And why wouldn’t you want to know that?” He went on to say that the research could lead to our ability to tele-transport people.

That’s nice.

Given the resistance to funding science, I don’t want to suggest that we shouldn’t have a super collider. But it got me to thinking about what would happen if we invested a similar amount in behavioral science solutions to our most pressing problems. (more…)