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

Ask HN: What makes you optimistic about the future?

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 221 posts

Re: Ask HN: What makes you optimistic about the future?

#51

Post by onion2k »

trifit wrote: post #3

Flying cars, cures for incurable diseases like cancer, Augmented reality Goggles, sex robots to look like your favorite celebrity, universal basic income, life extension drugs or surgeries to name a few things I’m looking forward too.

sex robots to look like your favorite celebrity

On the face of it that sounds like "wahey, sexy fun!", but if you consider it for a second you're actually suggesting a life without a real relationship with another person which is beyond depressing. If that tech becomes mainstream humanity has a major problem.

Re: Ask HN: What makes you optimistic about the future?

#52

Post by schroeding »

I hope for:

- Cheap sustainable-ish abundant electricity for all humans, maybe from fusion (not so optimistic on that one), maybe from massive solar arrays, maybe from wind farms in the oceans, maybe from nuclear fission, if we find enough fuel. I don't care where it comes from, we just need massive amounts of it to replace other energy sources.

- Quantum annealers solving the traveling salesman problem and other optimization problems even for super complex problems, allowing us to get optimized solutions which use fewer ressources for equal effect.

- Machine learning allowing us to solve most problems of our time that are solvable by pattern recognition and optimization without causing the collaps of society due to sharply rising unemployment numbers.

- Humanoid androids and massive automation replacing manual labor without causing the collaps of society due to sharply rising unemployment numbers.

- Geoengineering to reverse climate change, praying that we use the right strategy that doesn't suprise us with some unforseen consequences years down the road.

Re: Ask HN: What makes you optimistic about the future?

#53

Post by martindbp »

I think the future will be great. Solar, wind and battery storage will provide so much energy we won't know what to do with it. Self driving cars will enable us to go anywhere door to door without the need for owning a car. Video conferencing and VR will reduce the need for international travel. Eventually VR will be so good that you can easily hang out with your friends or family across the country. Living fulfilling lives more and more in the digital realm could reduce our usage of physical resources. With the immense progress of machine learning in the past 10 years, real world robotics is finally becoming feasible. This will be key to help us deal with declining populations.

The crises that we're facing now are nothing new, every decade has had its own challanges. We've had immense progress in the last 50 years, or even 20 years, I don't see a reason for this progress to slow down. It's just that in the moment we don't feel the change because we're in the middle of it.

Re: Ask HN: What makes you optimistic about the future?

#55

Post by ALittleLight »

I'm really looking forward to playing with DALLE-2 when I get beta access. I also think 10-20 years out there will be a combination of large language models and the image generation stuff that will make video games absolutely amazing.

I have no idea how realistic it is but if fusion power becomes a reality in the next few decades I think that would have huge positive impacts. I expect energy to become insanely cheap and terraforming the Earth to realistic. I'm imaging carbon capture, water desalination, maybe indoor farms providing cheap local food worldwide.

Re: Ask HN: What makes you optimistic about the future?

#56

Post by umvi »

Kye wrote: post #30
kradeelav wrote: post #19

- We have the accumulated knowledge of the entire human history at our fingertips and can avoid a large chunk (not all, obviously) of the pitfalls that befell our ancestors. maladies that basic sanitation eradicates, old deadly diseases like leprosy, polio, being eaten by lions, mass starvation ... those are things that are not a Thing in developed countries, and a lot more developing countries than before. The amoun…

Where are the helpers?

Pay attention and you'll start noticing them more. And if not, become a helper yourself and you will certainly meet fellow helpers.

Re: Ask HN: What makes you optimistic about the future?

#57

Post by UncleOxidant »

gumby wrote: post #38

I was a kid in the 70s and people were far gloomier about the future than they are now, especially after I moved to the USA. Think of yourself as swimming in the open ocean: you can't feel the big waves (low frequency/long wavelength), just the chop you are trying to paddle through. I think there are a lot of good things happening. There's finally progress on climate repair (tiny, but nonzero) which means we may have…

> I was a kid in the 70s and people were far gloomier about the future than they are now

I was also a kid in the 70s and while it did seem pretty gloomy then, I think people are gloomier about the future now.

> And even the re-emergence of some of the worst people (let's just aggregate them into "the racist shitheads")

In the 70s there were racist shitheads, but they were pretty afraid to come out into the sunlight. Now they're just out in the open. I think I liked it better when they felt like they had to hide.

The other thing about the 70s compared to now: it felt like pretty much everyone was on the same page back then. There wasn't right-wing news and left-wing news, there was just news.

Re: Ask HN: What makes you optimistic about the future?

#58

Post by unity1001 »

Open Source has been a resounding success. It has become so ubiquitous that we don't note it anymore. Its the normal. Moreover, its general cultural practices, openness, collaboration etc have also become norms. Back 20 years ago, this was unimaginable. A great change has happened.

On top of that, user-generated content has become the king. Its not 6-figure columnists working for corporate outlets who are setting the trend on the net like early 2000s anymore. We, the people, who were once in small forums on the fringes of the internet, have become the motor of the internet.

Crowdfunding, citizen-initiatives etc have grown. Independent content creators, software developers, even journalists are funding their activities by the support of their audience, using crowdfunding or membership tools. Democratization of these sectors bear great changes.

All of these combine into a world in which a lot of things are being democratized, and given into the hands of the people. Reducing the power of the corporations.

This was unimaginable in 1990s. We would sit pretty, shut up, watch and listen to what we were told and consume. All that we could do would be to send back some feedback to our corporate overlords about some product if they ever stooped so low as to ask our opinion.

Compared to those times, things are MUCH better now. Which is the reason for the discomfort in a lot of the old establishment and the noise they make about various things. From attacking net neutrality to wanting 'content to be auto moderated'.

Re: Ask HN: What makes you optimistic about the future?

#59

Post by ransom1538 »

I would purchase a history book. Anything that goes back 100 years or more (US history, Chinese history, fucking anything). Read it. You are living in the easiest -- most cushy time ever.

"Culturally, we seem to be getting worse at getting along with each other." Are you insane? Just 75 years ago Germany was putting people into ovens. Toughen up.

Re: Ask HN: What makes you optimistic about the future?

#60

Post by libraryatnight »

burntoutfire wrote: post #31
uberman wrote: post #4

I'm not going to sugar coat it. From my perspective lots of stuff looks grim and increasingly people seem just resigned to it. Microtransactions required to activate heated seats in your car. The threat that companies will sell your period tracking information. Health providers "sharing" data with Google. Amazon products mapping and doing image recognition on the items in your home or providing video police without a…

> Microtransactions required to activate heated seats in your car. I'm sorry, but the fact that this is the first thing you list under "grim" is just comical to me. This isn't even a 1st world problem, this is a 0.1-world problem.

It's not that specific thing, it's that thing being a signal for what's to come. And it's not even the only signal.
Post reply on HN