Globally open borders. Allowing people move freely (globally), following opportunity, seems like the best way to reduce global inequality. We allow everything else to move quite freely but if you've ever dated a foreigner or god forbid had to flee home you will understand the struggles people face when trying to move across restricted borders. It seems like a study into how globally open borders would affect inequality and the general well-being of global society would be a valuable endeavour.
Ask HN: What should we fund at YC Research?
161–170 of 545 posts
Re: Ask HN: What should we fund at YC Research?
#162Origin of life research: Understanding how life arose on Earth or can arise on other planets would be one of the biggest breakthroughs in all of science.
[Sociology/Psychology] How to effectively promote reason, rationality, and critical thinking among the masses.
Re: Ask HN: What should we fund at YC Research?
#163Robotic or automated environment clean up. Open source. Fish plastic out of the sea. Oil out of water. Things like that. Solar powered (or wind etc) little machines that communities can buy (e.g. the local surfing club) and we can let lose into the problem area.
I have been thinking robotic environmental cleaning a lot over the past years too. Along with raising awareness this is critical to implement in order to get back to a point where existing pollution is negligible.
Re: Ask HN: What should we fund at YC Research?
#164http://sens.org/ . Humans need more lifespan, badly. I’d have said AI safety, but it’s already on your list. Excellent. I’d also have said basic income. Good to know you’re on it. Meta-research. Academic publishing is obsolete, and knowledge should not be paywalled. How many researchers already make use of https://www.reddit.com/r/scholar or http://sci-hub.io/ ? Bacteriophages. Antibiotics are running out, while phag…
> Humans need more lifespan, badly.
Do we? Or do we need more realistic perspective about death? Why quantity over quality?
Seems there's a lot of quality improvements that could be made [1]. For instance, I read recently (can't recall source) that San Fransisco's homeless is the least happy in the world. Also that the top 1% in the world make over $35K a year, but there are far happier people than exist in middle America living in poverty [2]. Looking at populations that are happier - but in poverty - is perhaps an interesting study. Imagine a cross disciplinary study between (perhaps) techniques used in epidemiology/health informatics & anthropology / the humanities.
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[1] Notice that cancer, heart-disease, Alzheimer, etc research also falls into this category - allowing people to live with less suffering.
[2] Yeah, 3 assertions, no sources, sorry - just my word & unreliable memory of something someone said in a book once folks :)
Re: Ask HN: What should we fund at YC Research?
#165Wars, potentially including cyber wars.
I can see a lot of similarities with the basic income questions, e.g. what would people do if they couldn't worry about their lives?
Broader awareness could also be a side effect of the research.
Re: Ask HN: What should we fund at YC Research?
#166Autonomous Organizations
Blockchains are nice and all for automating paperwork, but they're only one component of a much broader set of technologies.
Building the infrastructure of an organization solely through programmed economic incentives makes it possible to seamlessly draw on talent from anywhere in the world without being subject to the limitations of personal bias.
AOs also present an existential risk given that once they're up and running as a distributed network, it can be effectively impossible to hold them legally accountable for anything they do. Imagine someone trying to sue the bitcoin network.
Current work surrounding Ethereum is one place where the field is developing quickly.
Re: Ask HN: What should we fund at YC Research?
#167You should build an experimental city that has zero laws and regulations.
Re: Ask HN: What should we fund at YC Research?
#168Research on organizations and possible improvements through software - An important aspect of organizational building is to structure it in a way that enables free flow of information, while at the same time, enable people to accomplish their productive best. Having a good understanding of what sort of organizational structures enable such goals, and what policies and procedures in such organizations can be automated…
Have you looked into autonomous organizations?
Re: Ask HN: What should we fund at YC Research?
#169Psychohistory. (Less than half-kidding.)
Re: Ask HN: What should we fund at YC Research?
#170Research into future programming languages, particularly into dependent types and future development environments. A relatively small amount of money can have tremendous positive impact on the world in this area.
Distributed Computing networks like 'MaidSafe' appear to have potential at disrupting how software projects have worked up until now.
Sadly there's an economy of scale to performing a Sybil attack on MaidSafe as well as any other autonomous organization based on resource sharing that uses a global reputation system (Safecoin in this case) instead of a localized one. Another knock is using something like IPFS with an incentive layer on top is a significantly more flexible approach to distributed and decentralized storage.
That said, I think there's a huge amount of promise in the field.