Ask HN: What should we fund at YC Research? • Hacker News Board

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

#331

Post by ericb » Sat, Jan 30, 2016, 12:25 PM UTC

* Methods to Effectively Spread Rationality

A scientific approach to spreading rational thinking could be world-changing.

If rational thinking became more prevalent, you'd have more allies--more people asking questions like this about how to best direct their efforts toward the right problems. Rational thinking is a force-multiplier. At the same time, problems resulting from irrational thinking would be reduced.

In the early stages, the research could focus on how to teach rational thinking. From there, research could focus on how to pitch a rationality curriculum to school boards, or how to effectively convert adults to more rational ways of thinking.

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

#332

Post by danenania » Sat, Jan 30, 2016, 12:30 PM UTC

How to fix government. Not how to lobby and play political games effectively--I mean really fix it. Transform it with technology. Make it open, fair, consistent, and participatory.

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

#333

Post by thethinker1032 » Sat, Jan 30, 2016, 12:30 PM UTC

Education.

From my experience, just trying to combine technology and teaching isn't good enough. We need something better than what we have now.

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

#334

Post by bambax » Sat, Jan 30, 2016, 12:38 PM UTC

JoshTriplett wrote: post #189

derrida wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 Am…

> 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.

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

#335

Post by zo1 » Sat, Jan 30, 2016, 12:41 PM UTC

visualsearchsv wrote: post #58

Large Scale Medical Data Mining research, similar to OpenAI. Specifically Computational Healthcare a Search and Aggregation Engine for Medical Records & Claims. We believe that this is a classic Software eating the world situation and the time is perfect for it. Here is the link http://www.computationalhealthcare.com We have access to almost 130 Million de-identified medical records from approximately 36 Million pati…

>"We have access to almost 130 Million de-identified medical records from approximately 36 Million patients (~10% of US population) this includes all Inpatient, ED, Ambulatory Surgery records between 2006-2011 from California"

Not to put a spanner in your works, as I agree your goal is worthy of a lot of effort from the general public. But, how exactly did you get access to this data, and is it legal?

Additionally, from my point of view, even if my medical "records" were de-personalized and made anonymous, I still want to have full control over who/what get's access to it.

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

#336

Post by bambax » Sat, Jan 30, 2016, 12:42 PM UTC

Houshalter wrote: post #321

derrida wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 Am…

I remember when I first deconverted. I was horrified that there was no heaven, and that my loved ones weren't waiting for me. That they were just gone forever. They didn't exist. They weren't happy, and I would never see them again. I see many atheists carry on religious memes after they deconvert. Which is only natural, religion isn't just a single idea, it's deeply ingrained into our culture. One of those memes is…

> So I came to the idea that if Heaven didn't really exist, we should build it.

Heaven did exist, and our ancestors destroyed it; it was the Caribbean, and its inhabitants were all killed and/or enslaved to build... churches.

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

#337

Post by Houshalter » Sat, Jan 30, 2016, 12:48 PM UTC

aylmao wrote: post #188

dineshp2 wrote: post #152

Education. Everyone knows it's broken,not effective anymore and literally a waste of time and money. More so if you had the oppurtunity to experience what education means in third world countries.Spoiler alert : it's a joke that will make you cry. It needs to be fixed as quickly as possible and research needs to be done for alternatives to help people in the process of learning.Online education is a good start, but w…

Education isn't ideal now, but I don't think online education is a good start or even a viable model. Training more and better teachers is the way to go, especially in "third world countries". Not only is there big issues with motivation and the whole social/interactive/distant aspect to moocs; what do you do when you don't have internet, or your device breaks? Now your education depends on a machine that costs a cou…

>Now your education depends on a machine that costs a couple hundred bucks

How much do you think teachers cost?

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

#338

Post by zo1 » Sat, Jan 30, 2016, 12:49 PM UTC

jacquesm wrote: post #264

petke wrote: post #195

Automation of common medical lab tests. Not just for the sick but for the healthy. How cool would it be to every week send a drop of blood by mail and get to see a nice graph on a website how the different hormones and proteins etc in your blood has changed throughout the year. It could help you live a healthier life.

No, it would cause a lot of un-necessary procedures and visits to doctors.

People that advocate and complain-against "hypochondriacs" have probably caused just as much harm as good. I don't have a citation for that, but at least in my case it's made me weary to seek medical attention for small and/or embarrassing ailments/symptoms for fear of being seen/labelled as a hypochondriac. Same goes for psychiatric symptoms. So instead of being safe rather than sorry for going to the doctor, I feel like I have to justify each visit as being serious enough, even when I am paying for it.

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

#339

Post by effie » Sat, Jan 30, 2016, 12:54 PM UTC

populacesoho wrote: post #260

- SENS & Aubrey, definitely. Rejuve! - Somewhat counter intuitively, it works to fund soft subjects like politics, sociology and governance -- because humans have the capacity to create physical technologies we don't have the social technologies to be able to use without a loss of social harmony. This capacity gap is an important opportunity for vigorous research and invention of new social & governance technologies,…

"Military technology, because hope for the best, prepare for the worst, and protect what's valuable." Research and trade of military technology needs to be guarded and regulated much more than it is now. There is already an absurd amount of tax money redirected into feeding weapon business that is killing people and destroying countries. The current state of weapon business is very wrong and throwing more private funds at weapon research to spur creativity and innovation is likely to grow the problems rather than solve them.

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

#340

Post by rch » Sat, Jan 30, 2016, 12:57 PM UTC

ph0rque wrote: post #30

terramars wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

http://www.virginearth.com/finalists/

That's a great list, but I'd love to see a table of carbon sequestration tech, and how much it costs per ton of CO2 sequestered.

Coal bed CO2 sequestration can be profitable, depending on the price of natural gas.