[HN Gopher] Government-Funded Alchemy
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Government-Funded Alchemy
Author : surprisetalk
Score : 14 points
Date : 2025-07-24 14:59 UTC (3 days ago)
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| PaulHoule wrote:
| I recently picked up a copy of the Heinlein classic
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Door_into_Summer
|
| where in "the future" (our past) there is a technology to
| transmute elements affordably and gold is cheap. The protagonist
| gets screwed by his business partners and sent into the future
| via cold sleep, buys a few kg of cheap gold, sends himself back
| into the past with an experimental time machine, and funds his
| own start-up company.
|
| The book is an interesting answer to people who wonder what
| eudaimonia is for an engineer, what one should do with one's
| talents, and the consequences of automation. In that universe,
| machine learning was realized with a particular type of vacuum
| tube in the 1950s.
| dvh wrote:
| In Verne's Around the Moon the protagonist have to throw away
| dead dog out of the spaceship window, but he manages to do it
| quickly enough so that barely any air escaped.
|
| Writers are limited by the knowledge of their time.
| godelski wrote:
| Tbh, I'm okay with this. Linked in the article it says Marathon
| Fusion's total investments are just under $7M. That's really
| nothing for government projects. We have to remember that what is
| a lot of money for us as people is very different than what is a
| lot of money for a government.
|
| Author seems to be concerned with how risky of an investment it
| is, but honestly, I'd be happy for the gov to make more of these
| types of investments. I mean it really is a very small percentage
| of the US national budget. Frankly, a big benefit from these
| types of government funded projects is that the knowledge tends
| to become public. Meaning that even failures lead to benefits as
| the next person can learn from previous work. Just like with any
| project. So idk, I'm happy to 10x that budget and see them fail
| if we learn something useful out of it. That's still a win in my
| book. $70M for a good step towards fusion? Deal!
|
| What I'm not okay with is the hype machines that form around
| these things. It is a self-inflicted wound explicitly created by
| our risk aversion. We try really hard to pick the best projects
| based on how well fleshed out their ideas are and supporting
| proof. But as you can easily guess from that condition, it
| usually means we end up moving in very small steps. Which then
| has the problem of being less motivating for spending money on as
| what, we're going to spend money for someone to research things
| we already know the answers to? So what happens? Either people
| make claims with confidence that is unfounded or they exaggerate
| the importance of their work. There's certainly a bias as people
| don't want to work on already known stuff and grant readers are
| willing to let some exaggerations slide as "it's just the way
| things are." But this compounds and gets out of hand...
| tw04 wrote:
| You're glossing over the part where we've got an administration
| that's anti science dumping money into what is literally snake
| oil.
|
| We are so strapped for cash we need to cut off people's
| healthcare, slash NASA's budget, make massive cuts to
| university research and terminate vaccine programs. But we've
| somehow got $7m to piss away on pretending you can turn lead
| into gold like it's 600bc.
| godelski wrote:
| > what is literally snake oil.
|
| Well it is this part that I'm unconvinced. You can probably
| gather from my comment that I fully believe they are
| overselling, but that's different.
|
| As for the administration part, that's an orthogonal
| conversation. It is preying on the effects that I discussed,
| so they are related, but that doesn't mean they're the same
| thing. We can talk about the x-axis without the y-axis, even
| if we want to figure out where a point lies in a plane.
| > We are so strapped for cash
|
| I'll refer you to the first part of my comment.
|
| Personally, when you're strapped for cash I think it is best
| to go after the big ticket items that are costing you money
| rather than freaking out about losing a few pennies. You're
| not wrong that allocation is a problem, but allocation is a
| difference between lack of budget.
| tbrownaw wrote:
| Mercury is kinda nasty, nice to see a possible method to properly
| destroy it like this.
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