Ask HN: What should we fund at YC Research?

Philosophers of technology. People whose mission is purely to facilitate a conversation about where we really are and what should be done next, and are given the backing and platform to work on and diffuse radical messages within a context different from existing organizations.

Everyone's chained to a reliance on borrowed ideologies of yesteryear, sometimes repackaged to fit the times. There are small whispers of other ideas, but they take so, so long to enter the public sphere.

Male birth control and non-hormonal female birth control.

> Why quantity over quality?

Reminds me of Seneca's De Brevitate Vitae[1], an essay about (as the title suggests) the shortness of life. He argues that what matters is not how long one lives, but what he accomplishes and/or how "well" he lives.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_Brevitate_Vitae_(Seneca) (english translation in External links, worth a read if you have some spare time)

I couldn't agree more about funding SENS related research.

I think focusing on extended lifespan misses the point though (although it's a nice side benefit).

The diseases of old age cause more suffering than everything else combined.

Seeing people I love deteriorate to a state of constant suffering is unbearable to watch. Seeing signs of ageing in myself hammers home just how helpless I am to do anything.

I don't understand why AI safety gets more attention. We're already facing our own personal dissolution from natural causes -- a real and tangible existential threat which is already claiming people in the most torturous ways possible. To be brutally honest, I'd rather die quickly in an AI takeover than suffer decades of chronic pain and dementia... and one of these scenarios seems a lot more likely than the other.

Let's get real, take responsibility, and do something about ageing.

If you understand evolution, then you know it requires variance and combination. If you standardize education, therefore reducing variance, regardless of your selection strategy, your pool of excellence to choose from is reduced. Therefore standardized education diminishes variance and therefore amplifiable excellence.

We need less jacks of all trades and more specialization. You must choose on their behalf, or give them the choice to choose what to not be good at. When is the last time you actually used historic precedent for a decision? How deep is your actual knowledge of history? And could not being excellent in knowledge and action towards today's problems be superior to overlearning about problems already solved?

No matter what suggestion is made in regards to optimizing the education "system" you will find the naysayers that are emotionally invested in learning "all the things" so i mentioned history and astronomy, i could have closed my eyes, pointed at a syllabus, been as likely to find at random yet another suboptimal topic, and i would have in the end only substituted your pro history comments, for pro whatever else comments.

Better and worse exist. Wasting time exists. If you measure what the average or median or whatever measurement you care to use human, and see what they have used and will use of what they've learned, you will find that what you're being forceably literally by law required to be taught isn't what you need to make a living, or be a good person, or have greatness in your life. Its often babysitting hidden under the guise of progress. How can one support a static educational structure in a progressing and more rapidly progressing real world?

Also, you didn't really think I meant to delete history? I hope. That would be the opposite of education would it not? So as to avoid confusion, lets ammend it to "replace rarely used trivial knowledge for commonly useful fits lots of places knowledge, and specialization." When have you last needed to make a left turn at mars and missed your turn? Perhaps you don't need to know the order of the planets from the sun after all?