Ask HN: What should we fund at YC Research?

STEAL IDEAS FROM OTHER LIFEFORMS BEFORE THEY DIE OFF Which organisms are we most likely to benefit from stealing ideas from? Can we prevent them from going extinct before we get to learn those ideas? Is there a way to capture the ideas pre-extinction? Even the tools that we now have to change the blueprints of life, we stole from life. Bateria and Viruses are the source of our most powerful DNA editing tools currently. We are meat. Animals are meat. The animals have all kinds of amazing tricks and tools their meat has developed. We could use some of their tools. If they become extinct, we can't learn well from them any longer. If you want to take advantage of the millions of years of building with the best tools we're aware of, real evolution over long time periods, and you don't want to wait for a couple million or hundred million years for the next go round of that thing maybe evolving again, then you should try to prevent extinction of the organisms most useful to learn from for our own benefit.

MINIMUM VIABLE EDUCATION What is the minimum effective dose of teachable knowledge/skill. Input, process, output. ala grammar, logic, rhetoric, trivium fame.

Success leaves clues. The most effective often have little mental tricks they apply when thinking, some are mnemonic, some are turning ideas into locations, some are pretending new ideas are just like old ideas, and applying the old learnings, etc. Find those powerful commonalities.

Stop making kids bad versions of google. We don't need more bad data storage in human minds, we need more of what the machines can't do yet, creativity, love.

If you must make kids bad versions of google and shove facts into them for lossy storage, then at least teach them mnemonic technique and logic first, google-fu, so as to amplify all their future efforts. Do not teach the amplifiers last, let them pay dividends over time. I was lucky enough to have logic tought to me first before any other maths at grade 6, because of an experimental advanced education system. After logic we learned scheme programming. I think those frameworks greatly helped me in this life, as nesting of ideas and good data processing is super powerful in all areas of life.

Better and worse exist, find better, choose better. Do not be a coward and pretend that worse doesn't exist.

summary: teach amplifiers first. Then teach minimum effective commonly useful data processing, then specialize and become great.

Specialization is why we have genders. Dimorphism lets us not over-allocate excellence in a single place at the cost of another place. Great things come from specialists. If the value of skill is in opposite proportion to supply of that skill, then everyone learning the same things, by definition means no one will pay for that skill or knowledge. There's some exclusions to that idea, such as language itself, however the theme of slapping knowledge/skill on a supply/demand curve is a good one. Much of this idea is hammer in Peter Thiels 0-1. less 1 to 1 horizontal iteration and more 0 to 1, no one else is working on this thing kind greatness.

What is minimum effective curriculum before specializing? What is the minimum viable education? What is the correct execution order of those skills?

For instance, how important is it to teach kids to write essays, when they actually don't have much useful to say? Maybe you should work on having useful things to say much harder before you learn how to beautifully say them. Imagine that you did the opposite, imagine that you taught effective rhetoric before logic, and now you've got better salesmen of bad ideas. That's worse, not better. Think of the places in the world where women aren't allowed to drive cars. How did that terrible situation arise? Great marketing of terrible ideas.

Small research grants for students/independent researchers.

I'd suggest something like 5k for a 3 months project. Applicant has to hand in a short proposal in the beginning and publish his code/data/results as open source. There are many great research ideas to work on independently today (e. g. in AI), but it's pretty much impossible to get money/recognition for that. For example, such a program would enable students to work on their own idea during the summer break (and in some cases produce something valuable for others), instead of doing some meaningless stuff at an internship.

Agreed.

Something I've been thinking about for a while is: what would it mean for peoples' willingness to save another person from a burning building, or swim to rescue someone drowning at sea, or donate a kidney, etc, if we all developed a sense of entitlement that we should be able to live forever?

When so many people at all levels of society are unable to enjoy the lives they have, I feel that life extension research is not something that should be a high priority for investment.

This is happening in CA

Vasalgel, a 100% effective, permanent but (hopefully) fully reversible non-surgical, non-hormonal male contraceptive. It's a variation of the Indian RISUG formulation, being pushed through the US testing gauntlet by a non-profit organisation. They're specifically looking for "social investors" at this time as they approach clinical trials:

> But now that Vasalgel has passed the “proof of concept” phase, it’s time to kick it up a notch — without selling out or losing the social mission of affordability and wide availability. We’re starting an all-out push to hire top medical device people and bring in social investors interested in both moving things forward quickly, and in keeping the end result affordable.

http://www.parsemusfoundation.org/contraceptives/clinical-tr...