Rapid increases of health problems we haven't dealt with for decades already that we need more information rapidly to figure out better solutions. Mast cell disorders are a good example here. Autoimmunity as well.
Ask HN: Problems for the next decade?
211–220 of 311 posts
Re: Ask HN: Problems for the next decade?
#212Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think it is inevitable. Why would anyone willingly give up their rights to tools of production? Correct me if this is a gross misunderstanding, but how can you get people to invent things in their garage when statesmen are trotting around looking for "unearned surplus"? And if the wealth will somehow end up being distributed to you anyway, and more work doesn't have any meaning, why try anything at all?
Well, productivity today is actually the biggest problem humanity is facing, if you think about it: productivity is directly linked to fossil fuels, which are not unlimited (that will soon be a problem) and also are the cause of climate change (that will soon be a problem too). So I could ask it differently: why would you want anyone to spend a lot of effort keeping us in the direction that will globally make our soc…
The only two choices aren't "status-quo vs mediocrity", that's just a false dichotomy. Why can't people invent clean bio-energy, low-powered computation, space travel, cure for all kinds of cancer, or free desalination? Does every invention need to burn society down?
Re: Ask HN: Problems for the next decade?
#213Earlier quoted context omitted.
I would love for capitalism to stop being treated like a child with all these monetary policies, interests rate massage, bank bailouts, etc. Ludwig Von Mises was right about the business cycle. Hands off the free market dammit!
Don't create an account just to specifically reply to one comment.
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Re: Ask HN: Problems for the next decade?
#214Earlier quoted context omitted.
Every existential problem is downstream from having dramatically more energy--carbon capture, desalination, food beyond remaining arable land and healthy soil.
Or the opposite: having dramatically less energy. Our ancestors were not destroying biodiversity, and were running on renewables :-). Our modern problems came with fossil fuels...
Our ancestors didn’t destroy biodiversity? I think the extinct mega-fauna of prehistory disagree with you. Ironically enough, their remains probably make up the gasoline in your car.
Re: Ask HN: Problems for the next decade?
#215Earlier quoted context omitted.
In the western democratic world billionaires are an inevitable side-effect of having a high standard of living for the general population. If you create a company that employs a million people and manages to remain profitable you'll be a billionaire even if you don't want to. The only way for you to not be a billionaire is to give up control of your company to someone else who will then be the billionaire. We have ye…
No. Billionaires are a result of avoidable taxation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tax_avoidance Have a look at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_inequality . There are lots of countries there with a very high standard of living AND a low economic inequality, mostly in Europe.
That makes no sense to me - you don't become a billionaire just by avoiding taxes, you have to actually create at least a billion dollars worth of surplus value first. And the only way to create a billion dollars worth of surplus value is to create many more billions of total value.
If you want Jeff Bezos to pay taxes on the value of Amazon (which is the measure by which he is a billionaire) you basically force him to sell Amazon. How else can he pay the taxes?
In such a system, where you will be forced to sell your success, Bezos (or anyone else) would never have created Amazon.
It's worth keeping in mind that Amazon generates several billions of dollars in taxes every year. Every one of the million plus employees of Amazon pays taxes, every transaction is taxed, every service Amazon buys from other companies is taxed and so on. If you kill Amazon by going after Bezos, you have caused society a net loss, even if you get all his money.
Economic equality is a different topic IMO. If a teacher makes 10% the money of a doctor you get problems in society since teachers can't buy houses priced for doctors and so on, but the difference in wages between workers has nothing to do with billionaires. Nobody became a billionaire from earning wages.
This has to be solved from the bottom up, not from the top down. Increase minimum wages, dictate working conditions and so on. You don't have to target billionaires to do that. Most countries in Europe has at least one billionaire, in fact lately the wealthiest person in the world is French.
Re: Ask HN: Problems for the next decade?
#216Here are a few that an organization would be able to work on right now according to the researchers at Charity Entrepeneurship. They might even take less than a decade to solve if things go well:
1. An organization that addresses antimicrobial resistance by advocating for better (pull) funding mechanisms to drive the development and responsible use of new antimicrobials.
2. An advocacy organization that promotes academic guidelines to restrict potentially harmful “dual-use” research.
3. A charity that rolls out dual HIV/syphilis rapid diagnostic tests, penicillin, and training to antenatal clinics, to effectively tackle congenital syphilis at scale in low-and middle-income countries.
4. An organization that distributes Oral Rehydration Solution and zinc co-packages to effectively treat life-threatening diarrhea in under five year olds in low-and middle-income countries.
5. A charity that builds healthcare capacity to provide “Kangaroo Care”, an exceptionally simple and cost-effective treatment, to avert hundreds of thousands of newborn deaths each year in low-and middle-income countries.
6. An organization that aims to reduce stock-outs of contraceptives and other essential medicines by improving the way they are delivered and managed within public health facilities.
Source: https://www.charityentrepreneurship.com/post/announcing-our-...
Re: Ask HN: Problems for the next decade?
#217Earlier quoted context omitted.
"meritocracy" also requires violence. Unless what you really mean is "might makes right", in which case the violence is kinda baked in.
How so?
Well... how do you enforce meritocracy? A pride of lions is meritocratic, in the "might makes right" sense. What definition of "merit" are you ordering your population by?
Re: Ask HN: Problems for the next decade?
#218Earlier quoted context omitted.
Or the opposite: having dramatically less energy. Our ancestors were not destroying biodiversity, and were running on renewables :-). Our modern problems came with fossil fuels...
Our ancestors didn’t destroy biodiversity? I think the extinct mega-fauna of prehistory disagree with you. Ironically enough, their remains probably make up the gasoline in your car.
You're right: as soon as we are able to do it, it seems like we over-exploit everything around us.
Still not exactly the same scale, I would think.
Re: Ask HN: Problems for the next decade?
#219Earlier quoted context omitted.
Don't forget that solar and wind today are still heavily relying on fossil fuels. So they get better in a world where we have abundant fossil fuels. And still their contribution today to our energy needs is marginal.
It's a tautological argument: The current energy mix is 90% fossil, it takes energy to make solar panels, therefore solar panels are made of 90% fossil.
> It's a tautological argument
It is not at all what I meant.
What I meant is that there is a need to go past that, and it is not clear that we are capable of doing it. It's great to say "wooooow, photovoltaic increased 1000% last year, McKinsey estimates (with the dumb uninformed extrapolations they love to do) that in 10 years it will have replaced all energy", but if you are serious, you should acknowledge that it is still the easy part.
I am not saying "it is not possible", just "think about it: it may be harder than expected".
Re: Ask HN: Problems for the next decade?
#220Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well, productivity today is actually the biggest problem humanity is facing, if you think about it: productivity is directly linked to fossil fuels, which are not unlimited (that will soon be a problem) and also are the cause of climate change (that will soon be a problem too). So I could ask it differently: why would you want anyone to spend a lot of effort keeping us in the direction that will globally make our soc…
The only two choices aren't "status-quo vs mediocrity", that's just a false dichotomy. Why can't people invent clean bio-energy, low-powered computation, space travel, cure for all kinds of cancer, or free desalination? Does every invention need to burn society down?
> Does every invention need to burn society down?
Apparently, yes. That's called "rebound effect". I don't know of an invention that did not suffer from it.
5G is more efficient than 4G for the same usage, but it allows us to use more, so we will use more. Reusable rockets are more efficient, but they will allow us to launch a lot more rockets, so we will.
We don't know how to constraint ourselves. That's probably also why we won't be able to voluntarily degrow, and therefore we will just continue until it all collapses.