Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: Problems for the next decade?

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 311 posts

Re: Ask HN: Problems for the next decade?

#31

Post by leksak »

ferociouskite56 wrote: post #22

Xanax/benzos are the most effective psych medicine, deserve to be over the counter, but can be fatally overdosed. All mental drugs and others such as chemotherapy need to be precisely targeted at limited part of an organ. 2030 4 high-NA EUV fabs will have 1.4 nano RiscV chips; rollable microLED; solid state battery. That's still not paper thin all day phones. 1 passenger, only autopilot drones should transport snakeb…

In my experience benzos are effective in the same sense alcohol can be. They don't really solve anything, not to mention are highly addicting.

I'm sincerely doubtful that being able to target their impact more tomorrow the brain alone makes a reasonable difference.

Getting at the mental health crisis might take a multipronged approach but I'm not sure this is an essential prong but I'm open to arguments to the contrary.

Re: Ask HN: Problems for the next decade?

#32

Post by defrost »

john_max_1 wrote: post #29

The world population is collapsing at a rapid pace. Our economic growth is based on a growing productive population. Our economic prosperity is based on a growing productive population. Different parts of the world are dealing with population collapse. Look at Japan, a xenophobic country facing population collapse. The total GDP has remain stagnant over the past 20 years. Look at UAE, a country facing population coll…

World population is still increasing.

It's climbed from 2.6 billion in 1950 to 7.8 billion in 2020.

If world poulation halved we'd still be at 1975 population levels .. a time when the world functioned.

> Our economic prosperity is based on a growing productive population.

We live on a finite planet with limited resources, the notion of unlimited growth being essential for continued status quo is flawed thinking.

Our greatest challenge as a species on this planet is to learn how to live well within our means.

Re: Ask HN: Problems for the next decade?

#33

Post by leksak »

rajanaccros wrote: post #27

Reports released by IPCC and other organizations [0] indicate that we have 15 years to take drastic action on the environment. This tracks with the extremely accurate prediction from The Limits to Growth [1] published in 1972. If we do not take action on climate _now_ then _nothing_ is going to matter. We will enter into an irreversible feedback loop that causes human extinction, yet it won't be apparent until it is…

Did you quit your job? And how are you working on climate change now?

> If you are not quitting your job and working to advance the existential threat of climate change and the main driver of the catastrophe (capitalism and perpetual growth) then you are wasting your (and your children's) time.

Or did you decide to waste your time (and possibly the time of your children?)

Re: Ask HN: Problems for the next decade?

#34

Post by pg_bot »

ferociouskite56 wrote: post #22

Xanax/benzos are the most effective psych medicine, deserve to be over the counter, but can be fatally overdosed. All mental drugs and others such as chemotherapy need to be precisely targeted at limited part of an organ. 2030 4 high-NA EUV fabs will have 1.4 nano RiscV chips; rollable microLED; solid state battery. That's still not paper thin all day phones. 1 passenger, only autopilot drones should transport snakeb…

There's absolutely no reason for benzos to be over the counter. They're extremely addictive, can have really bad side effects and contraindications, and can be fatal during withdrawal. You should be under the supervision of a physician if you're taking them.

Re: Ask HN: Problems for the next decade?

#35

Post by tomp »

ssss11 wrote: post #4
xerxesaa wrote: post #2

We have an aging population and many places have a flat birthrate. We need to solve how to deal with this consequences. Who will care for these people? How will we deal with the consequences of flat population growth? How will we deal with the stock market's expectations of perpetual growth when the underlying population itself is not growing (and especially since productivity has also been relatively flat)?

This aging topic is very important. Re: stock markets, economies need to shift from eternal $ growth to share holder wallets, to providing equitable outcomes for all people and the planet - that will be very interesting to watch, i can’t see it going well.

[flagged]

Re: Ask HN: Problems for the next decade?

#36

Post by haizhung »

kfrzcode wrote: post #23
eimrine wrote: post #12

A lot of a billionaires which: 1. Exist 2. Actively making us not noticing their existance by shitting us with some fake problems like gays, drugs, foreigners, terrorists, etc (different set of fake problems per country).

[flagged]

Your comment is very low on substance. Care to elaborate what kind of problems billionaires will solve, that are otherwise unsolvable?

The number of billionaire is growing and growing, and so are the fundamental problems that might be leading the world to collapse. How many more billionaires would you reckon do we need?

Re: Ask HN: Problems for the next decade?

#37

Post by gravypod »

Some things I'd love to work on if I could make it work.

1. Food: Current farming practices emit a lot of CO2, hurts local ecosystems (nitrogen runoff), and consumes a lot of water/fertilizer. Currently proven methods could fix many of these problems.

2. Housing: Bringing modern technology to the construction of homes/apartments could dramatically lower costs. Kit homes are an example where only focusing on the tech and not the zoning/social issues doesn't improve the issues. I think realistically we could build a lot of high efficient, safe (much safer than codes require), and comfortable housing and drive down rental prices substantially while turning a huge profit (if you can sort out zoning).

3. Programming: Working in a large monorepo is amazing. Many people who work at a big tech company which has one will tell you about the amazing stuff you can do in this environment. Open source does not have one and most developers only ever see the multi-repo approach to software development. Building a parallel SWE-tooling stack which was "the monorepo of $FAANG but open source" would allow OSS devs to collaborate and build really cool things.

4. Compute: Non-profit compute infra for common good. Right now everyone is focused on decentralized apps and it's possible these are just too complicated for end users (I certainly am confused but I don't know if I'm just too old). If there was a not-profit-focused compute infra which gave out free compute/bandwidth/storage to open source public commons software that might be a good thing.

Re: Ask HN: Problems for the next decade?

#38

Post by eimrine »

kfrzcode wrote: post #23
eimrine wrote: post #12

A lot of a billionaires which: 1. Exist 2. Actively making us not noticing their existance by shitting us with some fake problems like gays, drugs, foreigners, terrorists, etc (different set of fake problems per country).

[flagged]

Perhaps my naїvety lies in the fact that I put this problem in the topic of the problems of the next decade, when in fact it seems to be the topic of the next century, where their competitor will be AI. But this can be solved very quickly if at least one country establishes a tax formula whereby the richer a person is, the more taxes will be paid on every dollar earned, without any exceptions for the richest. Ukraine might be that country if it ends its war not very destroyed.

A definition of "problem" bond to some actor. Here is the definition from Google with my notices: a matter or situation regarded as unwelcome (for whom?) or harmful (for whom?) and needing (for whom?) to be dealt with and overcome.

So, what kind of society/environment problems are they solving right now? Except of Bill Gates and pre-Twitter version of Elon Musk.

Re: Ask HN: Problems for the next decade?

#39

Post by slushh »

A website or app that turns exactly this question into action.

This post will fade away in a day or two. However, there could be a place where the answers are condensed into targets to which all available information is added. Structures could form that provide education, information and resources which lead to answers and implementations.

Re: Ask HN: Problems for the next decade?

#40

Post by rajanaccros »

leksak wrote: post #33
rajanaccros wrote: post #27

Reports released by IPCC and other organizations [0] indicate that we have 15 years to take drastic action on the environment. This tracks with the extremely accurate prediction from The Limits to Growth [1] published in 1972. If we do not take action on climate _now_ then _nothing_ is going to matter. We will enter into an irreversible feedback loop that causes human extinction, yet it won't be apparent until it is…

Did you quit your job? And how are you working on climate change now? > If you are not quitting your job and working to advance the existential threat of climate change and the main driver of the catastrophe (capitalism and perpetual growth) then you are wasting your (and your children's) time. Or did you decide to waste your time (and possibly the time of your children?)

Yes. I did quit my job and am looking for climate careers actively through climatebase.org and climacareers.com (not associate with either but where I have been searching).

I have transitioned to veganism, raise the AC of my house to a very high level to where I am spending $7 per week, bought a bike to commute around the city, have stopped buying clothes and am now buying only through thrift stores, reading (and trying to educate) everyone I can on this subject.

Post reply on HN