Ask HN: What should we fund at YC Research?

I have no doubt there are people who would rather just be paid, probably the majority of people. But that still leaves a lot of people to do this sort of thing.

Also, as the companies grow a bit larger and mature, they should be fine for the "just want to be paid" folk, as that is basically how it would work.

Also, I would hope that most of the mechanics would just be handled by the system. At least the tedious stuff. Stuff like voting on company/product direction, and rating your peers seems like something everyone would like to participate in, especially if it doesn't become political (in a bad way).

One of several rough estimates I've seen suggests that if you eliminated all biological causes of death, and left only accident and similar, that would bring the average lifespan to around a thousand years. Producing such an estimate seems straightforward enough, given statistics about causes of death.

As for how that might affect psychology: honestly, I'd love to see how the world might change if people adopted drastically different attitudes towards death, but I don't think it likely that this would produce far more risk aversion than we have today. Not least of which because I see no signs of tobacco companies going out of business.

For myself personally, I'm not going to stop leaving the house, but I certainly have no intention of taking up hobbies like hang gliding or motorcycle racing, any more than I plan to start smoking. (Side note: for an interesting measure of risk, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micromort) I don't think that level of risk aversion qualifies as "a pretty frightened bunch not leaving home much".

I wasn't familiar with assembly.com. I think that it would be a challenging thing to get right, so that such issues don't tend to occur, but it should be doable. One thing that is probably needed is people who join as project managers, to keep things on track and provide reports on each person's commitments, progress etc to other members (all of whom can rate the contributions of one another). When starting out that may not be necessary, but after it starts to gain momentum you may well need some additional help to keep the momentum going.

Life is quality x quantity. Quality is far into diminishing returns. Quantity can be 10x'd. The best in their fields die, right when they're most useful. What would Edison, Tesla, Franklin, Bell, Feynman, etc be producing currently if still alive?

Since quantity is literally the hardest problem we are aware of, how shall it be attacked? By charity? Let's be serious, look around yourself right now, point to the things charity created. Now cease the futile exercise.

Solution: 1. Marketing as gates does, however all lives are not worth the same, you, your kin, your friends, they are worth more. Fund the research that saves them, do not dream the silly dream that all lives are worth the same.

2. Profit not charity, i.e. take a look at osfund.co (human longevity, inc) sustain and grow, not charity and run out of runway.

3. LONGEVITY FUND. or "save your assssssssets fund" You can buy the S&P500 why not the biotech index minus the companies solving problems you won't have. Reduced malaria drug allocation, increased cancer and heart disease. Guess what. If you survive malaria, you are still going to die of cancer and heart disease, so lets work on those 40 and 40 percent killers.

I've got 220k words on paper. 1. 1st book, personal excellence, things you can do to Scivive. Get rich, be loved, live forever… *if selling ideas is good enough for Bill Gates, e.g. Gatesnotes.com, givingpledge.org, its good enough for me, and you. Spread the word. This genre seems easier to understand.

2nd book, things that are important, however are rarely actionable in your personal sphere of influence (politics, currency, voting, economics, geopolitics, environment, interesting yet un-actionable for the common man things.

3. Longevity fund. biotech index minus things unlikely to be useful in saving you and your loved ones lives.

4. Companies not a subset of Nasdaq biotech index, too small, or in a different jurisdiction.

5. Biotech/synbio startups.

6. Popularity improvement ala "The Martian" whereby science and tech becomes heroic as kicking aliens in the face has been historically. The world need not hero worship the leather ball throwing and kicking, steel lifting and lowering, non scaling great strategies of 2,000 years ago. Let's make heroic the things that actual work these days. How many humans can you heal? Can you save thyself and thy family?

If anyone wants to help edit these 200k+ words I have on the page regarding life and winning at it, hit me at Scivive on gmx.com

P.S. Spread great actionable ideas (sell SP500 buy biotech index.), fund excellence, build excellence, fund riskier excellence in that order.

agreed - which is why I think YC should spend on fitness/nutrition research.

I personally think this has the potential to be a moonshot - if an unbiased entity (with no ties to entrenched interests) would spend money on research.