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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?

#441

Post by theaustinseven »

mietek wrote: post #129

http://sens.org/ . Humans need more lifespan, badly. I’d have said AI safety, but it’s already on your list. Excellent. I’d also have said basic income. Good to know you’re on it. Meta-research. Academic publishing is obsolete, and knowledge should not be paywalled. How many researchers already make use of https://www.reddit.com/r/scholar or http://sci-hub.io/ ? Bacteriophages. Antibiotics are running out, while phag…

I would say along the lines of academic publishing, there is also a problem with people publishing misleading or plain wrong press releases. I think there needs to be a better way of evaluating the reliability of research, and a way to possibly improve the peer review process. This may mean that research has to be more open with the data that they collect. I think there is definitely some work to be done here.

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

#442

Post by ams6110 »

JoshTriplett wrote: post #231
nicky0 wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I doubt I'll have the same brain structure a hundred thousand years from now that I do today

LOL that is for sure. It'll be dirt within 1/1000 of that time.

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

#443

Post by [deleted] »

joeyspn wrote: post #270
nicky0 wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Would you do it for animals too? Why not? Veterinaries would love novel approaches. Plus the pre-research is always carried in animals. > How would people remember everything? You should ask Google's Director of Engineering (Ray Kurzweil) about that. Hint: within 25-30 years your brain could have x1000 capacity via cloud computing (mobile + brain-cloud interfaces). > Is this just for rich people or do poor people g…

[deleted]

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

#444

Post by ams6110 »

Houshalter wrote: post #391
gonehome wrote: post #383

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think death is probably a selective evolutionary advantage for a species. A species is basically self perpetuating genetic code stuck somewhere in an evolutionary local maxima. In our case there may be an advantage in adaptability by having individuals die and genetic code mix/change more frequently. This still sucks and if we could figure out how the brain actually worked to prevent it that would be cool, but we'd…

The evolution selects for death idea is a hypothesis, but I don't' think it's very strong. Evolution works at the level of genes. Genes that cause more copies of themselves to spread will spread. Even to the detriment of the group or the species. An organism that lives longer will have time to have more offspring, and those offspring will carry it's longer living genes. An organism that lives shorter will have fewer…

Evolution doesn't care about reaching old age. It cares about reaching the age of reproductive maturity.

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

#445

Post by vishalzone2002 »

There are a lot of Non Profits who are doing amazing work but are often faced with lack of funds. There are also a lot of people who did like to help but refrain from doing so for lack of motivation, empathy or trust on the organizations. Sometimes people feel a sudden urgency of doing good but because its not as quick as calling an uber, they end up not doing it. That lost dollar could have fed a kid somewhere.

I believe human race can be uplifted with numerous enablers and doers on the ground. But there needs to be work/research done on the best framework to make the whole process as seamless and rewarding as possible.

Companies like google have attempted this with OneToday App. More companies and startups should come together on this problem including YC.

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

#446

Post by jacquesm »

petke wrote: post #424
jacquesm wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Its kindof strange that we see doctors time as so valuable that we shouldn't bother them unless we are sick enough we cant function. Its like taking the car to the mechanic only when the engine has come off because we don't want to bother them with the small stuff. But waiting for small problems to turn big ... Is also a waste of medical resources. And it might be too late to fix them then.

The idea is to go see your doctor when you have symptoms. If you go see your doctor every time some parameter is out of what you consider to be your personal error bands you'd be spending all day in the doctors office. Tests are useful to rule out things you don't have and to close in on the things that you do have once you have something that doesn't function well enough to notice. Until then it is a waste of resources to spend a ton of money and capacity on testing people without symptoms. Eventually those will clog up the system to the point where those that do need medical attention will end up without it.

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

#447

Post by ams6110 »

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 was pretty well figured out 100 years ago. It's broken now because of all the effort to try to improve it.

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

#448

Post by harigov »

jbpetersen wrote: post #168
harigov wrote: post #35

Research on organizations and possible improvements through software - An important aspect of organizational building is to structure it in a way that enables free flow of information, while at the same time, enable people to accomplish their productive best. Having a good understanding of what sort of organizational structures enable such goals, and what policies and procedures in such organizations can be automated…

Have you looked into autonomous organizations?

No, I didn't. What is that?

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

#449

Post by abecedarius »

Tools for thought, along the lines of Engelbart and Bret Victor and the rest. Especially strategic: helping people think better in groups. This stuff seems to be getting funded some lately, like at CDG, and much of the work could be done as startups, but there's lots of room for more basic research. (I'm biased by wanting to work in this field.)

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

#450

Post by sospep »

yousifa wrote: post #303

Water is the most essential resource to our existence (secondary to oxygen), yet >8M people die annually because of water related illnesses. Local filtration/treatment is good, but we need more cost effective and easier to deploy methods to treat water at a mass scale. We're trying to protect the worlds water, but there is a lot more research that needs to be done to solve this problem. Research can include cheap sen…

> Water is the most essential resource to our existence

Michael Burry seems to think so as well and has made it the focus of his current work.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Burry

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