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Ask HN: What should we fund at YC Research?

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Re: Ask HN: What should we fund at YC Research?

#231

Post by JoshTriplett »

nicky0 wrote: post #221
JoshTriplett wrote: post #189

Earlier 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…

Interesting. Would you do it for animals too? It would suck to live for 400 years but your dog dies in only 10. How would people remember everything? How would you spend all that time? What would everyone do? Is this just for rich people or do poor people get to live for centuries too? Haven't done the math but if 8 billion people lived for say 500 years each, plus new arrivals constantly, wouldn't we accumulate rath…

> Is this just for rich people or do poor people get to live for centuries too?

"centuries" is far too short-term; "forever" is the goal, and "centuries" just buys enough time to get there. And of course that lifespan should be available to everyone. If the solution itself doesn't already imply a post-scarcity world, then it'll help that once you have a cure for aging, it's more economical to supply that to everyone than to treat the myriad complications that arise from aging. It's hard to get people to fund such a cure, but it seems far simpler to get funding for "we have a proven cure, let's get it to everyone".

> How would people remember everything?

In the short term, curing aging seems likely to help greatly with many degenerative mental disorders. In the long term, I expect people will find increasingly successful ways to augment their own capabilities. I doubt I'll have the same brain structure a hundred thousand years from now that I do today, if only because I expect we'll eventually run out of effective ways to debug biology in-place.

> How would you spend all that time? What would everyone do?

What wouldn't everyone do? I don't have a finite "bucket list"; my list contains everything positive I can possibly imagine, with a sort order applied, and it will always grow faster than it shrinks. Quite apart from the rest of the universe, other people provide an unbounded source of novelty.

Do you think people thousands of years ago would have asked such questions about a 120-year lifespan, and think it sounded too long?

If you lived for ten thousand years by default, would you think it too long and decide to die at 120? How about if you lived indefinitely?

Re: Ask HN: What should we fund at YC Research?

#232

Post by vijucat »

+1 for basic income +1 for the safety of AI

I came here to write "basic income" and was pleasantly surprised to find it already on the agenda.

Other suggestions:

- Desalination / easy clean water

- Related : Cleaning the oceans. This may sound noncommercial, but if the profit-motive needs to be addressed : a worldwide clean-the-oceans tax will become palatable if the situation with the world's oceans worsens.

Re: Ask HN: What should we fund at YC Research?

#233

Post by plinkplonk »

A way to teach people how to do research (without doing a multi year "apprenticeship" at a few limited locations). Research skills as one of the "R" taught as a fundamental skill.

Like you can learn programming without really apprenticing yourself to a specific master programmer, people should be able to learn do research without doing a PhD. If this problem is cracked, all kinds of non-traditional people will be able to contribute to progress.

Re: Ask HN: What should we fund at YC Research?

#234

Post by johan_larson »

Would modest funding for legal defence make a real difference for poor-to-middle-class people?

One of our nastier social problems is that the legal system assumes people have realistic means of defending themselves when prosecutors charge them with crimes. But for people without savings -- which is a lot of people -- that's not really true, so they end up taking all kinds of crappy plea-bargains rather than actually contesting the government's accusations in court.

There's legal aid, of course, but it tends to be funded at very low levels, and done by either wildly overworked staffers or contractors paid at such low levels they rarely deliver a spirited defence.

If the down-and-out were given enough money for a real defence, would the law deliver results that are more just? By what metric? And how much money would it take to make a real difference?

Re: Ask HN: What should we fund at YC Research?

#235

Post by kavalg »

rorykoehler wrote: post #161

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 inequali…

What are the positive effects that you expect? Saying "reducing global inequality", do you mean something like communism, where everybody shall be equal? Please, don't take my question negatively. I have myself lived in a communist country and I think it had both good and bad parts. Essentially it boils down to whether everybody becomes equally miserable or equally happy. Another problem that I could see with globally open borders, is that people may not actually want it. They tend to side with similar ones (race, language, religion,sexual orientation, income, mentality etc). This has been shown scientifically in 1971 in Thomas Schelling's segregation model. We are actually witnessing this on a very large scale all over the western world. Have a look at Germany for example. There are about 2-3 generations (~3 millions) of Turks that have not dissolved in the German culture and are actually quite compact from a social networking perspective. People have been like this for centuries and I don't think it is realistic or even fair to expect they will change (e.g. Kurds, Gipsies ...). Even in the US, which has a good reputation of being able to dissolve immigrants into the US culture, we see Chinese and black neighbourhoods. That said, I do think that it makes sense to do research on how such segregated groups may live together (in close proximity) peacefully and sustainably. I guess that to some extent these problems are a subject of the military science, although it is probably trying to solve the opposite problems as well (i.e. divide and conquer).

Re: Ask HN: What should we fund at YC Research?

#236

Post by asafira »

1) Quantum Technologies.

a) Quantum communication has some awesome communication privacy protocols, can make a huge impact on global privacy.

b) Quantum computing and simulation. similar to the startup rigetti that I know was funded, but from a research level. Quantum computation and simulation hardware can be a huge breakthrough for our understanding of physics, being able to perform computations never even close to possible with a classical computer in a decent amount of time.

2) Refreshing education research. How could we, for example, make high quality learning content (think coursera) something that's used by schools around the US, and would not be compromised by bad teachers?

3) Reinventing the current political system. Somehow we live in a time where political figures can honestly say anything and have little accountability --- both of their previous stances on the subject, and future actions taken. we need to do better here. America can't keep choosing political figures cause they are popular. That information needs to be made easily accessible and a rising cultural norm, like wikipedia.

Re: Ask HN: What should we fund at YC Research?

#237

Post by JoshTriplett »

derrida wrote: post #225
JoshTriplett wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You can live for a thousand years and you will still procrastinate and you will still not want to die. Of course not! Why should you ever want to die? Why should you ever "get over" that? It's a bug. We haven't fixed it yet. It should not be romanticized, and it should most certainly not be treated as inevitable. It's an abomination we have yet to eliminate.

> it should most certainly not be treated as inevitable. What life never dies? What non-living thing does not change?

Do you think of cancer as inevitable? Or do you think of it as something humans could cure someday?

Do you think of degenerative mental disorders as inevitable? Or do you think humans can cure them someday?

I don't think of death as inevitable. I think of it as something humans can cure someday. Thinking of it as inevitable means giving up on all possible solutions.

Re: Ask HN: What should we fund at YC Research?

#239

Post by jakeogh »

mietek wrote: post #201
untog wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. With overpopulation already a problem I'm not sure that living longer is a pressing need for the world. Better to help people make the most of the time they have allotted on this planet.

It’s not as bad as you think — “Don’t Panic”: http://www.gapminder.org/videos/dont-panic-the-facts-about-p... If you can’t spare an hour, please watch Rosling’s TED talk: https://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_shows_the_best_stats_...

and https://overpopulationisamyth.com
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