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Ask HN: What should we fund at YC Research?
511–520 of 545 posts
Re: Ask HN: What should we fund at YC Research?
#512How about figuring out how to advance Open Education in some meaningful way ?
For example: Would it be possible to create a YC branded online University which confers honorary degrees ? Even if the degrees are not fully recognized would it even matter so long as the professors carry enough weight ? I know this might sound crass but basically it might look better on someone's LinkedIn profile than a "recognized" degree, and perhaps over the long term the University's stats would be impressive since you could be selective.
Perhaps it can be scoped to CS post-grad only as a way to make it less controversial. It's not a very pie in the sky vision either.. just onboard some of the world's top college professors, rotate in unique "star power" professors (examples: Paul Graham, Eric Ries, Brad Feld, David Heinemeier Hansson, Bruce Schneier whoever has the time for a professorship), then build out the curriculum, the web IDE / screen-sharing / webcam platform. If it were me I'd have an emphasis on pair-programming throughout the technical bits because it's an exciting way to learn.
You could think of it almost as another accelerator program but without all the messy bits. This would allow YC to have more of the "full stack". Maybe there could be some kind of a VC-backed scholarship program for it.
You might end up biting the hand that feeds you (Standford, etc) but maybe they wouldn't look at it this way, either way that is how it goes with tech innovation.
Think about all those programmers who applied to YC who were executing brilliantly but who YC dismissed simply because the market conditions were not ripe for their particular startup idea. Now you can capture them in a different part of your funnel and maybe by the time they graduate they'll have a more palatable idea. In my view education has always been YC's core competency, the venture stuff feels more like a monetization layer to me, it's kind of a hack isn't it ? j/k
p.s. All jokes aside, I am merely a programmer, so I don't know if there is actually a market for this, but if it existed I'd probably apply
Re: Ask HN: What should we fund at YC Research?
#513In no particular order: Nuclear fusion Hyperloop Hypersonic engines Cancer Antibiotics replacement Optimisation / simplification of tax code Crop yields, artificial meat Diplomatic solutions to ethnic/sectarian tensions
Optimization of tax code via machine learning. It should be possible to build an intelligent tax machine that uses enough features in order properly classify and tax corporations like GE or high frequency trading funds in the most obviously and proper way. Simple tax codes are vulnerable to lawyers who complicate them.
Re: Ask HN: What should we fund at YC Research?
#514Mind uploading. It's definitely far off. But it seems to me this could be an amazing shortcut/hack to achieve a lot of other things here: once we have mind uploading, we've basically conquered death. We can also probably figure out, at that stage, how to run the minds faster or with extra memory or something, increasing the standard human intelligence. This is also a way to achieve "superintelligence" via human-based…
Like a transporter on Star Trek, I'm afraid there would be no upload without a copy. Could we really then delete the original?
That's definitely one of the things the research group would need to research. I have no idea of how to solve the philosophical questions around this, and neither does anyone else yet.
Re: Ask HN: What should we fund at YC Research?
#515Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 und…
> I don't understand why AI safety gets more attention. Solving AI would allow us to fix ageing, but only if we get it right. Please watch Bostrom’s TED talk: https://www.ted.com/talks/nick_bostrom_what_happens_when_our...
AI is not a question with an answer, and so will never be solved.
AI safety is not relevant to exploiting technology to ameliorate senescence.
Absent immediate focussed direct efforts in ameliorating senescence, by the time there is a level of AI technology which can make a dent in medical progress, at least a billion, probably many billion, people will have suffered and died who might otherwise have avoided that fate. And the loss of their productivity will impoverish the survivors - and so cause AI progress to suffer.
Re: Ask HN: What should we fund at YC Research?
#516Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Or do we need more realistic perspective about death? We do: we need to realize how horrible it is that we treat it so casually, rather than as a tragedy. Perhaps then we'll do something about it. > [1] Notice that cancer, heart-disease, Alzheimer, etc research also falls into this category - allowing people to live with less suffering. All three of which (especially the first and last) have heavy ties to aging. It…
Wanting to live forever has to be the apex of egoism and arrogance and all that is wrong with the human mind. Death is good because it leaves room for new people with new ideas. Being against death reveals a profound misunderstanding about what life is about, which is: finiteness, urgency, novelty, creativity.
"Wanting to live forever has to be the apex of egoism and arrogance..."
I would gladly sacrifice my life to prevent the rest of the species suffering the physical agony, mental degeneration, poverty, frustration, and violence which result from pandemic senescence.
Your moralizing aesthetic judgements do not justify the misery of billions of people, or inaction in the face of its preventable imminence.
Re: Ask HN: What should we fund at YC Research?
#517Earlier quoted context omitted.
Wanting to live forever has to be the apex of egoism and arrogance and all that is wrong with the human mind. Death is good because it leaves room for new people with new ideas. Being against death reveals a profound misunderstanding about what life is about, which is: finiteness, urgency, novelty, creativity.
I suspect you're going to get hammered here but this is an incredibly important point. Aging and death forces the passing of the torch from the old generation to the new, and I think this is a crucial part of progress. A tragedy on par with death would be the rise of some oligarchical class of immortal technocrats, wielding power and influence for centuries on end.
Hypothetical bogey men of an imaginary dystopia should not concern you nearly so much as the loss of productive life, physical and mental decay, and the reckless violence of the hopeless which surrounds you today.
Re: Ask HN: What should we fund at YC Research?
#518Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Or do we need more realistic perspective about death? We do: we need to realize how horrible it is that we treat it so casually, rather than as a tragedy. Perhaps then we'll do something about it. > [1] Notice that cancer, heart-disease, Alzheimer, etc research also falls into this category - allowing people to live with less suffering. All three of which (especially the first and last) have heavy ties to aging. It…
Great, so our descendants can work 70 hour weeks for 120 years rather than just 30.
Nobody will have a job in 30 years, so I wouldn't worry about it.
Re: Ask HN: What should we fund at YC Research?
#519Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I think you've used an unconventional definition of "death" here, I mean the thing that everybody else means: ie "pushing up daisies", "feeding earthworms", "to dust", etc If I understand this differently, then it's this perspective I am offering :)
In that context, saying that change causes death sounds like complete nonsense. I change all the time, yet I am not dead.
Everything changes => inevitability of death.
If you 'survive' (say every cell is replaced) then what is "you"? I'd say it's more likely to be a set of linguistic & cultural norms than it is to be anything fundamental from the view point of physics.
So that raises the point: is 'you' conceptual or is there anything fundamental? It makes sense for evolution to have selected for organisms to believe there was, no matter what, something fundamental, existant & worth preserving about them, but really - we're this group of cells & the plants we ate for breakfast (and the efforts of the farmer of those plants and so on)
Of course, as a "manner of speaking" (that is, in common every day culturally contingent world), all this is bogus.
But from a fundamental, naturalistic point of view, I don't see anywhere else to go :) It's also a very parsimonious view as you get to explain a lot of stuff with less entities, etc :)
Re: Ask HN: What should we fund at YC Research?
#520Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Humans need more lifespan, badly. > Do we? Yes, we do. Categorically. If you would prefer to die, then speak for yourself. And of course, no one wants a longer life if they're miserable. We need to solve poverty as well.
Well, I think his issue was with the word "need". Wanting more lifespan is a different thing. The claim that most people want to live longer is not as controversial as the claim that most people need to live longer.
If you will certainly die for the lack of some thing, then you can truly say that you need that thing.
Senescence and death costs the species and the planet a horrible price in lost productivity, social conflict, medical costs, human desperation and suffering. Even if you don't want to live beyond some fixed span, if you want to impose suffering and death upon others...well, I don't even...