[HN Gopher] ARIA, the UK's Bet to Build Scientific Revolutions
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ARIA, the UK's Bet to Build Scientific Revolutions
Author : almost-exactly
Score : 44 points
Date : 2025-06-21 16:39 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.asimov.press)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.asimov.press)
| v5v3 wrote:
| Moonshot funding with woke speak?
|
| https://www.aria.org.uk/opportunity-spaces/
|
| Current 'opportunity spaces' whatever that is...
|
| >Programmable Plants. - Plants enable human life and offer
| solutions to key challenges like food insecurity, climate change,
| and environmental degradation. Programmable plants can secure our
| future, ensuring food and a sustainable biosphere for future
| generations.
|
| >Nature Computes Better. - We can redefine the way computers
| process information by exploiting principles found ubiquitously
| in nature. In doing so, we can better understand how the natural
| world around us performs computation and build dramatically more
| efficient computers.
| bee_rider wrote:
| Is nature woke now, too? Why not, I guess.
| v5v3 wrote:
| The UK is broke and in debt.
|
| The Prime minister and Chancellor spend their time going cap
| in hand to BlackRock and others begging for money.
|
| One spends money on speculative projects when they have money
| to spare.
| tom_ wrote:
| Ahh, something approximating a substantive criticism! You
| should have put this in your first comment.
| tim333 wrote:
| It's not true apart from 'in debt' though.
| v5v3 wrote:
| External debt by country https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/
| List_of_countries_by_externa...
|
| BlackRock as one example
| https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/blackrock-urges-uks-
| starmer-...
|
| UK stock market has failed
| https://www.fxstreet.com/analysis/are-uk-stock-markets-
| facin...
|
| Now 10th in world for gdp https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki
| /List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PP...
|
| Prisons declared full, shoplifting pseudo-legalised. I
| could go on and on.
|
| 40% of the worlds dirty money goes through UK. It's USP
| is now mainly money laundering
|
| https://www.standard.co.uk/news/world/dirty-money-
| laundering...
| neepi wrote:
| As someone who works on money in the UK this is why I
| work on money in the UK.
| v5v3 wrote:
| A well known 'brain drain' occurs in London, where
| instead of doing other things like homegrown Startups,
| the finest minds are instead lured into banking.
|
| You could have created a unicorn company by now my
| friend, but instead you are writing python code in excel,
| or automating regulatory submissions and investor
| communications or something else similar.
| neepi wrote:
| I consider my job to be a form of moral good: using up
| their budget so they don't spend it on something
| nefarious. I don't think they even know what I do.
| foldr wrote:
| If you look at the debt as a percentage of GDP or
| percentage of total wealth (both columns in the table,
| but not the default sort order) then the UK isn't an
| outlier. Singapore has more external debt, for example.
| v5v3 wrote:
| Watch the CCP spokesman give China's view of the UK.
|
| It is brutal
|
| https://x.com/LBC/status/1701292018037825571?t=WMi0Hys_vn
| Yfj...
| sgt101 wrote:
| Well, a Marxist Leninist analyses the global scene and
| concludes that communism is inevitable.
|
| We've been here before.
| v5v3 wrote:
| He said that China and the world don't see the UK as a
| big player anymore. Which is true.
|
| UK has it's legacy advantages, UN permanent seat, nuclear
| weapons etc but the empire is long gone and it grows
| weaker by the year.
|
| After the war, Germany was at its lowest point and the UK
| squandered it's lead and fell below Germany.
|
| All of Europe + USA failed to bring Russia to it's knees
| no matter what they tried.
|
| The world is changing and in the new world order UK is
| slipping down the ladder.
| foldr wrote:
| What's the plan then? To compete with China on battery
| technology by spending _less_ money on scientific
| research? China at least gets the concept of a long term
| investment.
| v5v3 wrote:
| What's the probability of success that the UK could start
| a battery tech company today and compete?
|
| The Japanese, Koreans and China have been spending
| billions over last decade.
|
| The UKs second biggest industry is entertainment and
| thats because they lured Hollywood over via generous tax
| breaks.(Which Trump has sid he will be addressing).
|
| UK needs to pay down debt, invest in education and hope
| the next generation of talent choose to remain in the UK
| and not leave for another country.
| foldr wrote:
| Yes, the countries that have been making the most
| progress on research in a given area tend to be the ones
| that invest more money in it. I'm baffled that the lesson
| to be drawn from this is that the UK should invest less
| than its competitors.
| meroes wrote:
| And the way to claw back rank on the world scene surely
| takes investing, and investing in science is among the
| best options for long term returns.
| brokencode wrote:
| This ARIA program's budget is apparently only about 800
| million pounds, which is a tiny fraction of UK's overall
| budget of over a trillion pounds.
|
| These types of highly speculative projects are inherently
| risky, making them unappealing for profit-driven investors.
| That's why it's important for non-profit organizations and
| governments to fund them.
|
| Scientific breakthroughs don't happen in a vacuum. They are
| the product of dedicated research requiring years of
| consistent funding.
| v5v3 wrote:
| Cumulative interest is a b*tch though, put that 800m into
| the debt.
|
| You say the UK has a budget of a trillion, but around 70%
| comes from consumer spending. As consumers have been
| hooked on debt and hit with annual increases in every
| indirect tax they can think of.
| brokencode wrote:
| I am not familiar with UK's debt situation and am not
| disputing that they may need to balance the budget.
|
| But I don't think the 0.08% line item for scientific
| research is where I'd start.
|
| Science is already deeply underfunded despite a
| disproportionately large impact on society in my opinion.
| v5v3 wrote:
| It's not 0.08% in isolation, A further PS20 billion a
| year was announced recently.
|
| https://www.gov.uk/government/news/government-backs-uk-
| rd-wi...
| sealeck wrote:
| > Cumulative interest is a b*tch though, put that 800m
| into the debt.
|
| Do you think that the return on investment into science
| is really less than 4.5% (interest rate on guilts)
| peryear?
|
| > You say the UK has a budget of a trillion, but around
| 70% comes from consumer spending.
|
| 70% of government expenditure is consumer spending???
| This statement is nonsensical.
| beej71 wrote:
| Smart countries always spare money for speculative
| research.
| CraigJPerry wrote:
| >> The UK is broke and in debt.
|
| This is nonsensical. Public debt is nothing like private
| debt, you can't apply prudent financial advice from the
| context of an individual to that of a currency issuer. The
| difference being that they are a currency issuer. The Bank
| of England is a great starting point:
| https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/explainers/how-is-money-
| crea...
|
| Key points:
|
| You can't save in a currency you issue. If a state issues
| its own fiat currency, it does not need to save in that
| currency because: - It cannot run out of
| its own currency. - It can always credit accounts
| via fiscal or monetary operations. - "Saving" in
| the conventional sense implies a constraint that doesn't
| apply to sovereign issuers.
|
| Every single pound the UK gov spends, is a brand new pound
| that's never existed before - NB: it wasn't collected by
| tax. From the Bank of England: "The central bank can create
| money in the form of central bank reserves by lending to
| the banking sector... or by purchasing assets. This money
| is new--it did not exist before." https://www.bankofengland
| .co.uk/-/media/boe/files/quarterly-... - that is to say,
| government spending results in the creation of new money,
| rather than the recycling of pre-existing tax revenues.
|
| The limits to pay attention to are real resources in the
| economy, not money; you can have all the money in the world
| but if you can't procure steel then you simply can't build
| that bridge.
| v5v3 wrote:
| You clearly know zero about money.
|
| https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2025/05/28/britain-
| no-m...
| andrepd wrote:
| Why is it always "Blackrock" in these borderline economic-
| illiterate rants? My guess is just that people see
| "Blackrock 7.23%" or whatever on the stockholder list of
| every major company, and thus reduce that Blackrock =
| Elders of Sion or some shit.
| thrance wrote:
| How is that "woke"? I understand, you wouldn't want to engage
| in thoughtcrime. Better to label anything related to ecology as
| "woke" and not even engage with it.
| tomrod wrote:
| Right? This is brain rot taken to an extreme.
| AnotherGoodName wrote:
| Surprised there wasn't already something like this!
|
| I just assumed every nation has a government funded cutting edge
| research institute. Crazy not to. Australia has the over 100 year
| old csiro for example. Paid for itself many times over (eg.
| viruses that kill rabbits, high tech breakthroughs like wifi,
| selective crop and livestock breeding).
| v5v3 wrote:
| Innovate UK has been around for years
| https://www.ukri.org/opportunity/
|
| And lots of other grant services and loans.
|
| Most with very little in the way of measures of success... As
| will be the case with Aria I imagine.
|
| There were large COVID scandals with funding directed to
| government ministers mates, how many of these get awarded to
| their mates too.
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(page generated 2025-06-21 23:00 UTC)