[mehrdada]

Cannot disagree more. "Making a car is expensive, so let's not do that to explore 1000 miles out. Let's just have 1000 people walk one mile and explore." Simply ridiculous comparison. But sure, let's find a way to build/experiment LHC++ less expensively.

What's concerning to me, however, is the attitude towards curiosity that this article exhibits. They should rename their domain to smallthink.com.

[moonchrome]

Your analogy is fundamentally flawed.

More realistically : we can only build one car in the entire world, where a tiny minority of people can even understand the potential benefit, and anything they see will be completely useless for everyone else in day to day life because we need a civilisation level effort to even detect the implications of their theory. If their theory had some real world implications - you wouldn't need this car.

And this is expected to be funded by everyone. It's the modern equivalent of building pyramids.

[musha68k]

Europe is so rich it can easily afford all of the great project ideas outlined in the article in addition to a new LHC (and then some).

Let's think big indeed, the author unfortunately has a very reductive vision for the future.

Instead how about:

A renaissance of funding - BIG SCIENCE - education, jobs.

That was basically the promise of the EU - peace through wealth - let's create some more.

Let's bring back the excitement and scientific wonder of the 1960s. This could be a unilateral vision across the democratic spectrum (everyone wants wealth).

And yes, global warming actually should dictate no less. Let's do it now.

Oh and let's just fix poverty while we are at it.

Again, Europe has the means and could do all of that by itself.

[pessimizer]

> That was basically the promise of the EU - peace through wealth - let's create some more.

Doing useless science is the destruction of wealth. The destruction of wealth is pleasurable, don't get me wrong, but that's all it is. They could build gargantuan statues to do the same thing, or accumulate huge stockpiles of weapons.

[deely3]

How did you know that this sciense is useless? What is the difference between building LHC+ and bringing people to the moon again?

[concordDance]

What's it currently doing with that money? I guess we could get rid of funding healthcare and trying to help people out of poverty so that a small number of people get to use a very expensive toy...

You know what would be an awesome big science project that would immeasurably improve future people's lives? Sequencing all genes and using that data provide free embryo selection services to everyone who wants to be a parent.

Would probably cost the same as that giant particle smasher and but unlike the giant ring it would pay for itself in a generation.

[PietdeVries]

Well... The US Defense budget for 2021 alone is 7 times the money needed to build a new LHC (705 billion [1] for the US defense in 2021). Germany will spend a similar 100 billion dollars on weapons in the coming years. So while 100 billion looks like an amazing amount of money, the military spends this in the blink of an eye and without the slightest promise of a RoI...

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_budget_of_the_United_...

[tomcatfish]

I like having something to scale 100B to, but this is a silly argument.

"Instead of cutting this program, just have every military cut funding at once" is not a very realistic path forwards, and we're not going to get the program funded on stuff like that.

In the hypothetical universe we're in here, where we have to convince people now.

[sinenomine]

Embryo selection[1] is criminally underrated. It is a method to permanently enhance the genetic potential of a child of any given couple. It is already live and there are living children, the only remaining issue is scaling[2].

1. https://www.gwern.net/Embryo-selection

2. https://www.geneticsandsociety.org/biopolitical-times/first-...

[otabdeveloper4]

IVF carries risks of damaging the child's genome and so is fundamentally dysgenic.

[rendall]

Terrifying but intriguing idea. China's one-child policy led to widespread female infanticide and a generation of missing girls. What would prevent some similar unintended consequence in Europe?

[martin_a]

> What would prevent some similar unintended consequence in Europe?

We're not some fucked up dictatorship state?!?

[Georgelemental]

> No, that could never happen here, are you crazy? We're a prosperous and civilized nation!

- Every prosperous and civilized nation's last words

[rendall]

I'm not sure what the form of government has to do with long-term, unintended consequences deriving from parents regularly choosing the characteristics of their unborn children. Would we have more or fewer: engineers, artists, short people, quirky people, homosexuals, religious people, etc?

[dane-pgp]

Yeah, we'd only kill the disabled and mediocre children standing in the way of our Utopia, nothing immoral like those awful Chinese people do.

[skirmish]

Yuval Noah Harari in "Homo Deus" [1], paraphrased: once all your neighbors are selecting their embryos, and you see their children healthier, higher IQ, excelling in school, how long do you think you will hold out?

[1] https://www.amazon.com/dp/0062464345

[Georgelemental]

"Embryo selection"—is that a euphemism for "murdering any unborn child that doesn't have all the "right" genes? Because if so I think your definition of "people's lives" must be very different from mine.

[concordDance]

Well yes, but anti-abortionists are a rapidly shrinking minority that I assumed were pretty much extinct on hacker news.

[vixen99]

Definition? Do you mean no limits at all up to and immediately prior to birth? I'm not sure you'd get unanimity on that. That implies a few seconds separating legal permission to kill from infanticide.

[esarbe]

No, it's just that; embryo selection. It's not an euphemism for what you wrote because an embryo is not a child and you cannot murder an embryo.

From Wikipedia: "A child (plural children) is a human being between the stages of birth and puberty [...]"

You are also conflating the abortion of an embryo with murder; only human persons can be murdered, embryos are not persons, therefore no murder.

I sincerely ask you to cut down the polemics here on HN. It does not lead to fruitful (no pun intended) discussions.

[Veen]

I agree with your position, but it is no less polemical and ideological than the comment you are responding to.

> an embryo is not a child and you cannot murder an embryo

It is not obviously and axiomatically true that embryos are not human (I'm assuming the previous comment meant human and not child). Many people think that they are, which is the source of the disagreement. It probably is fruitless to have this conversation on HN, but you shouldn't just assert the opposing position as if it were settled when it is anything but.

[zdragnar]

It's hardly a polemic when it is a question of existential importance- what does it mean to be human, when does a human begin to exist, and at what point does a human have rights?

[larryett]

The problem is western society doesn't really believe in science at this point to save us, it believes in technology.

All our problems are just the engineering problem of AGI. Why waste money on something like this when AI will be "smarter" than us by the time it is built?

We should just do nothing and wait for AI to build the instruments it wants.

Maybe there is the slightest hope in this "overpriced" and long delayed space telescope that is getting ready right now but even with that the narrative will end up being how "AI finds alien planet" or "AI sees first star in the universe".

To really build a new LHC it just needs to be marketed to the populace as a tool for AI research. Done. Everyone knows AI is the future and we are not so stupid to skimp on AI research funding.

Spend all that money on researching particle physics though? What a fucking waste of money.

[runarberg]

I’m not an expert on AI but I was under the impression that AI is just a fancy way to fit data with massive computative power. So if you wanted AI to do science for us it would basically just return the result we expected in a fancy and unexpected way, and even then we might be overfitting. If an AI would return new science we didn’t expect—I don’t see how but lets imagine—we would reject it as a miss.

Take the Event Horizon Telescope as an example here. It requires a massive amount of computational modeling to create those images from a huge dataset. Humans did their science to figure out how the supermassive black holes would look like and created their models (AI if you will) based on this knowledge. Even so they are not free from criticism that they might be overfitting onto a conformation bias and many scientists are waiting for an independent confirmatory observation before they believe the image. Now if you replace the humans in that equation with more models (AGI if you will) how do you even know what you are looking at is even sensical?

I’m not a fan of the LHC++ project either, but I think you might have too much faith in AI and AGI.

[gls2ro]

How do you know that AGI can be reached?

We dont know if we will ever reach AGI and if we want to theoretically demonstrate if we can reach it or not then we need to rely on science.

Engineering alone cannot answer theoretical questions.

[timeon]

> western society doesn't really believe in science at this point to save us, it believes in technology.

I'm afraid - not even in technology at this point.

[nradov]

Much of Europe is now cranking up defense spending in order to deter future Russian aggression, and comply with NATO treaties. That will take precedence over big science projects for the next few years.

[xcambar]

I thought I was an optimistic but you dwarfed me on this to the point of skepticism.

[musha68k]

No worries, check the numbers - this is all in reach - solely up to us :)

[moonchrome]

Money is just one small aspect of it - getting into that kind of research probably requires >2σ IQ, then there's the affinity and motivation - you are left with a small pool of people who can do this work.

By funding toy projects and pipe dreams you are crowding out useful research - and there's plenty of fundamental work in material sciences, superconductivity, etc. that could actually improve the lives of everyone

[alach11]

It sounds like you're worried that creating high-paying fundamental science jobs would pull smart people away from engineering. But it would be more likely to pull smart people from zero-sum (or at least low-sum) fields like advertising and finance.

[moonchrome]

No - there's a lot of science to be done in these fields - it's just applied (ie. practical). When you fund "fundamental" research - you're not only diverting limited funds - you're diverting limited talent - so it's double crowding out.

[JKCalhoun]

I feel like the last renaissance of funding (BIG SCIENCE) was the space race.

Let's do that again. It was at least a lot more multi-disciplinary than an atom-smasher.

[xiphias2]

The Human Genome Project was a huge success. Being able to read the DNA cheaply got us a revolution in biotech (cancer therapies, gene therapies, mRNA delivery, and my favourite: partial / full cell reprogramming)

[orbifold]

Europe has an aging population, which is obese, smokes and has heart problems. It is a dying continent whose boomer generation has decided to transfer large amounts of IP to China for a short term profit, while refusing to have children, protesting against the establishment and being generally useless in their youth.

The millennials and gen-z is royally screwed, the writing has been on the walls for years.

[pvaldes]

Fortunately we have a cure for this, an endless supply of young blood as immigrants. Europe has been a blender of races since the origin.

And about "obese population", Europe is not so bad in fact. Obese people die younger and most elders in Europe are slim.

[ahoka]

Baby boomers refusing to have children? What?!

[orbifold]

Birth rates of children born during the baby boom (the baby boomers) is 2/3 to 1/2 of their parents generation.

[spacemanmatt]

So? Infant survival and life expectancy rates are also way up since their parents generation. You can't just throw around generational statistics without any context at all and call it valid.

[l33tman]

And yet 15M people yearly are still visiting those "useless" pyramids 4600 years after they were built.

[Aerroon]

Sure, but the people 4600 years ago were the ones that paid the price for building the pyramids. How do 15M people visiting it today help them?

We're talking about using everybody's money for these science projects. And this is not money that's voluntarily given, it's taken.

[unsupp0rted]

If the Egyptians had built a literal money pit 4600 years ago, tourists would now be visiting that.

[moonchrome]

I don't really want to dispute that, just want to paint a more realistic of what these scientific projects actually are. They are not investments for sure.

[xcambar]

With this logic, I assume you'd call the ISS a useless project.

[ncmncm]

It is, really. At one time, it was the only place the shuttle could get to; and the shuttle was the only thing that could get people to it.

Literally the only thing they can do at ISS, not better done with robots, is study how human bodies are affected by exposure to high radiation and long-term weightlessness. Which we care about only because people would be so exposed in ISS-like cans.

Now they are pushing the "lunar gateway", that likewise has exactly one reason to exist: SLS could get there. And, it will be a place for SLS to get to. And, even more useless. A thing in high orbit around the moon is absolutely useless for any other purpose, whether you are heading for the moon or beyond it.

[inglor_cz]

Not the OP, but this is a good example.

ISS wasn't useless, but its successor should be much cheaper. We absolutely need to find ways how to do space research more efficiently, otherwise it will stay a luxury of the richest nations.

Fortunately, at the very least, launch costs to orbit are dropping and we may hope for further drops in the future - if Starship works as intended.

[concordDance]

In all seriousness, what use is it? How has it improved people's lives?

[dehrmann]

Would you rather have 1 ISS or 200 New Horizons?

[peoplefromibiza]

> It's the modern equivalent of building pyramids.

I wish it was true, it would be much easier to convince people to have ten of them.

[navane]

It's the social equivalent of rocket ships. We all payed for their space holidays too.

[rocqua]

Is the ratio of cost of car to cost of persons walking correct.

It seems like the car is a Bugatti Veyron and like there is a huge (exponentially growing) fronteir to explore. Exploring another 1000 miles in a very well studied direction seems less curious than pushing outward another mile over the entire frontier. Especially at the places that have gotten less attention.

'Doing more of the same but bigger' feels more like small thinking than 'lets try lots of things we haven't tried before'. To me the latter also feels a lot more curious.

[discreteevent]

I read it as: "Instead of building one really expensive car to continue to explore in one direction let's build lots of cars and explore in all directions". To me that shows an attitude full of curiosity.

[billoday]

I think that's crazy reductive though. It's not an either/or, and it's a gross oversimplification that big projects only show benefit within their major focus. LHC has produced benefit in particle physics, yes, but I am 100% sure it also introduced new methods of construction, semiconductors, material science, and other fields in the construction of the facility. I see this argument with space exploration as well, "why not feed the world instead of exploring space?"

Why is it zero sum to begin with? And more importantly, how less effective would be able to feed the world had we had no space race to begin with? If we were still at a 1950s technical level, our farming capacity would be exponentially lower, and most of the big leaps came as a direct result technologies originally developed for space.

It's naive to assume we can see all the benefits of daring to attempt hard things, but attempting hard things is what moves society forward. If all we did was lots of little cars in all directions when we have already figured out the challenges with little cars, mean the ONLY benefit is the direct one. If we've never built a car to explore REALLY far, well, there's a bunch of other problems we need to solve to get there. And honestly, it's those results that will likely move the needle.

[rbanffy]

As all car analogies, this is bad. It's more like "instead of building a space probe to explore the solar system, let's build a thousand cars to explore the grass patch in a thousand directions".

Big science projects such as the LHC go very far and very deep in the very fabric of reality. Instead of building a thousand cars, it'd be a good idea to still build the next space probe while, at the same time, use what we learned building the previous one to build a couple cars to explore in different directions.

[peoplefromibiza]

except there are terrains where a car won't do and you need a giant expensive off-road vehicle.

You wouldn't go to the north pole with a VW Beetle.

Same thing applies here, smaller cars that explore in all direction can probably find a local maxima and get stuck there.

[musha68k]

There also is no shortage in funds and we could actually do all of that and more.

[rbanffy]

Just say you can weaponize the black holes formed in the LHC and you'll never run out of funding again.

[musha68k]

I just spilled my coffee, thanks XD

[yieldcrv]

My immediate skepticism is whether there is a dollar limit to your perspective

$100,000,000,000 with afterthought of “sure lets see if we can do it less expensively *since its sooo annoying to some people”? Where is the line for you currently?

[_heimdall]

Curiousity can have many shapes. Being curious about 100,000 smaller questions is no better or worse than being curious about one big one. A lack of curiousity here would have been to sinply say all this money shouldnt be spent on research at all.

My read of the article was more a call for considering the practical uses of tge research. If we don't know what $100B worth of LHC will discover, why wouldnt we instead fund tens of thousands of smaller projects that often have very practical real world goals?

[tgsovlerkhgsel]

If there is plenty of unexplored space, and all the car helps you do is figure out what is 1000 miles out but you can only explore one direction with it and can't directly bring anything back... yeah, sending 1000 people out one mile is probably more beneficial.

[macspoofing]

> "Making a car is expensive, so let's not do that to explore 1000 miles out. Let's just have 1000 people walk one mile and explore."

"Making a car is expensive, so let's not do that to explore 1000 miles out. Let's instead build an airplane."

The problem with next-gen LHC is that there are no guarantees of any new or interesting physics for that $100 billion. And particle accelerators are not the only way to spend large sums of money, so there is an opportunity cost. Why not spend that $100 billion to build more space telescopes or more sensitive LIGOs to detect gravitational waves, etc.

[jvanderbot]

"Rather than building yet another city-sized internal combustion engine, but even bigger to carry more further, how about we fund a lot of blue-sky research to determine if there's a way to carry scientists forward without city-sized internal combustion engines?"

It appears we suspect there is a better way.

[Neil44]

I agree, it reads like a variation of 'there's nothing left to discover so lets all go home and not bother'

[macspoofing]

>I agree, it reads like a variation of 'there's nothing left to discover so lets all go home and not bother'

I don't think that's quite right. The big problem isn't that there is 'nothing left to discover' because we know there are interesting physics at higher energy scales. What we don't actually know if there is anything interesting at the energy scales that this particle accelerator could achieve. You could literally spend two decades building this, and in the end, all you would do is rule out a tiny energy-scale slice.

[onpensionsterm]

>let's find a way to build/experiment LHC++ less expensively.

From the people who brought you compost fueled cars?