Ask HN: What should we fund at YC Research?

Thanks, Alex. I agree that such system should be global / non-profit & free. We have also studied privacy issues surround such system in detail. A large motivation is that regardless of the privacy preserving technique employed the system is a huge improvement over current practices which involve sending out entire data to each individual research group.

Today a physician suspecting novel association e.g. Adverse event particular to a co-morbid condition. Usually has to wait multiple weeks for Ordering data from US government, Developing SAS scripts and finally conducting the study. Wrth our stack the underlying question can be answered within seconds. With enough legal permissions we can modify it to deliver only the required data, for further statistical analysis. Sure such a system might not be completely public, but there is nothing that prevents us from giving access to say all board certified physicians globally.

I'm biased because of my work, but neural interfaces for general purpose tasking or entertainment. Alot of fMRI/EEG/MEG research is focused on medical applications, but the funding cycle is tied heavily into medical related grants, and current applications meditation tasks that are popular generally wont get people excited (I've ran a lot of novice/experienced mediators who have started to fall asleep or become disengaged from a research task and who need continues human engagement to keep them in the mood…), nor convince people that what they are buying is worthwhile, unlike say buying $500+ gaming system and games people play for hours on end without having to convince someone of it working when they just get the immediate benefit. This could also help get more people from software or other engineering backgrounds more exposed to the field now and help push things forward faster.

> > 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".

You do know that every culture, since the beginning of time, has thought that they would live to be immortal in their lifetime. What makes you think you're different? Sure, you might have a better chance, but it's still a slim chance. Pining for a cure to aging rather than living your life is a sad way to spend something as short and precious as your life.

> > 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.

I don't think so. Wanting to live forever is a childish thing, it's a fear of death mixed with a type of greed. Actually living forever would be a greater hell than anything I can imagine. After the first few hundred years, when you realise that it's never going to end, after you've read every book and done all you've wanted to do, what then?

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

No, because the maximum lifespan of a human hasn't fundamentally changed. The only difference is that more people are living to old age.

> Car-->fridge distance matters a hell of a lot to her.

That's interesting, is there a particular reason for this or is this a nice illustration of 'first world problems'?

To have both a car and a fridge, the money to stock the fridge and then to trip over the distance from the car to the fridge (which can easily be made light enough by using a luggage trolley or by asking the s.o. to assist) as a major stumbling block in the selection of housing is something I never considered possible. I see a lot of good reasons for wanting to live in an actual house rather than in an apartment building (I'm living in an apartment building at the moment for the first time in 40 years) but that one never occurred to me.