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

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

#491

Post by miguelrochefort » Sat, Jan 30, 2016, 9:18 PM UTC

Restart everything.

Society has accumulated enormous "societal debt" (think technical debt). Most things are inherently broken and inefficient. They haven't changed in centuries.

- Communication

- Education

- Emotions

- Jobs

- Housing

- Clothing

- Health

- Nutrition

- Politics

- Economy

We can't fix these things incrementally. The social codebase is worthless. We need to start over, from scratch.

Buy an issland or a big piece of land. Carefully select people based on a yet-to-determine algorithm (people with as little exposition to society, such as kids), and send them there. Closely observe what they do, and ensure they don't repeat and/or bring with them habits and ideas that we know to be wrong. This will take a while, but at some point we will be able measure how they perform as opposed to the rest of the world. These metrics could include happiness (although difficult to measure), ratio of time they spend doing things they agree with (willing to do, not coerced), energy consumed, etc.

Most jobs are utterly useless. Most people have no idea what the fuck is going on. People don't have a purpose or focus. We really have no clue. Logical fallacies make up MOST of our understanding of reality. We live in constant fear and anxiety, and dedicate a lot of resources to cope with it. We quickly become convinced that money is an end rather than a means. We miss the big picture, we lack empathy, we avoid introspection. We believe in lies, myths, bro-science. We don't have a clue about what habits or foods are healthy for us. Regulations and the monstrosity of the legal system make the simplest thing unachievable by mere mortals. We have technology that's thousands of time more efficient than what we had in the past, yet our lives have barely changed (i.e., the hours of work).

Like it or not, most of your active time is spent at work. We work 20-100 hours a week just to get by. Surely, getting rid of 80% of jobs (at least in countries like the US) while maintaining people's quality of life would a real breakthrough. Yet, I would argue that this is already possible, without the need of any additional technological breakthrough (i.e., AI). Look around, most jobs only fulfill habits and historically relevant needs that we can easily get rid today.

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

#492

Post by Houshalter » Sat, Jan 30, 2016, 9:28 PM UTC

aylmao wrote: post #478

Houshalter wrote: post #337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Now your education depends on a machine that costs a couple hundred bucks How much do you think teachers cost?

To the usual family sending their kids to school, nothing.

You can't just assume costs away. Teachers are very expensive and the main cost of education. I don't know if technology is cheaper yet, but it's worth considering.

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

#493

Post by Houshalter » Sat, Jan 30, 2016, 9:31 PM UTC

ams6110 wrote: post #444

Houshalter wrote: post #391

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Well obviously. And the longer the reproductive age lasts, the more it can reproduce.

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

#494

Post by ap22213 » Sat, Jan 30, 2016, 9:40 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…

Great, so our descendants can work 70 hour weeks for 120 years rather than just 30.

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

#495

Post by badlibertarian » Sat, Jan 30, 2016, 9:49 PM UTC

http://ultimateviralmeme.blogspot.com/2016/01/proposal-sybil...

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

#496

Post by badlibertarian » Sat, Jan 30, 2016, 9:50 PM UTC

This proposal outlines a social governance project meant to encourage more responsible collaboration and possibly bootstrap better autonomous decision-making based on human examples: http://ultimateviralmeme.blogspot.com/2016/01/proposal-sybil...

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

#497

Post by yummyfajitas » Sat, Jan 30, 2016, 9:51 PM UTC

aylmao wrote: post #483

yummyfajitas wrote: post #349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's teachers that are not remotely viable in the developing world. I read recently that the teacher failure rate in Maharashtra is about 15% - i.e., on a given day, 15% of Maharashtrian teachers just don't show up to work, and there is a famous case of an MP teacher who's been absent for 23 years. [1] Further, even if the teacher shows up, the student may not be able to. Consider the "town" in this pic: https://imgu…

Education is about much more than just a transmission of knowledge, however. IMHO efforts are better spent training better teachers, than making and buying more devices. A good teacher will inspire kids, will get them to work together, will be a person to go to. I do believe in the motivation of students, but sometimes you need someone to spark that motivation in the first place. There will always be bad teachers, an…

A good teacher will inspire kids, will get them to work together, will be a person to go to.

What evidence do you have that even a fraction of teachers do this? And what evidence do you have that teachers "worked for the developed world" (i.e., had some measurable beneficial effect)?

There will always be bad teachers, and outrageous stories about them making way around the internet.

The stats suggest lots of them are bad. Rather than more teachers, maybe what we really need is a device to ensure that teachers actually come to work and the political will to stop paying them if they don't.

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

#498

Post by zardo » Sat, Jan 30, 2016, 10:54 PM UTC

BorisVSchmid wrote: post #354

jspaulding wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Academic publishing is obsolete To expand upon this, it's not just publishing papers behind paywalls that is the problem. The entire system we use to advance humanities shared knowledge is broken. The Internet enables a dramatically more efficient model of scientific collaboration. The problem is academic science has been stuck with a reward system from the 17th century. And quite simply, it does not reward what we…

Can we add some nuance here? It is not like in the last few decades there has been no new knowledge generated. Just in my own field of biology, the amount of progress we have made in understanding how cells regulate themselves (20 year ago we were still teaching DNA->RNA->PROTEINS that do stuff), how immune systems function and can be used (stem cell therapy, cancer treatments, HIV drugs) and the flow of genetic info…

We are without a doubt making progress, the question is, how much more progress could we be making with a better system to organize the thoughts and efforts of scientists around the world.

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

#499

Post by zardo » Sat, Jan 30, 2016, 11:01 PM UTC

bpicolo wrote: post #458

Abraln wrote: post #437

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can see the job description now: "75+ years of relevant experience required." At the same time, allowing the Einsteins of society to continue their work indefinitely would provide a net increase in the rate of scientific advancement. Unfortunately climbing the corporate ladder would be nearly impossible as positions would almost never go vacant. It has both pros and cons, but allowing a larger fraction of the popul…

> would provide a net increase in the rate of scientific advancement And then we existentially argue "Does any of it matter?" :)

More time to think about that too.

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

#500

Post by geofft » Sat, Jan 30, 2016, 11:02 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…

> One of those memes is that death is natural and ok. Which, if you believe in religion, it absolutely is.

To be clear, this is pretty untrue of Christianity, the dominant religion in Western civilization, so I'm constantly puzzled about this claim. (HPMOR makes the same claim.) The central story of Christianity is that God takes human form, dies, and cannot stay dead. If it were just "Jesus died for our sins", there would be no need for a resurrection story; his followers would have had way more credibility saying merely that he was killed, which is far more objectively verifiable.

From 1 Corinthians: "The last enemy to be destroyed is death" (which, incidentally, comes up in canon HP), and, quoting the prophets: "When the perishable has been clothed with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality, then the saying that is written will come true: 'Death has been swallowed up in victory.' 'Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?'" From Revelation, also quoting Isaiah: "He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away." From a 1500-year-old hymn: "Christ is risen from the dead, trampling down death by death."

Death is an enemy; death is not good, and should not exist. Perhaps other religions disagree, but Christians and atheists should be able to agree on this basic fact.