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Ask HN: One thing you wish would happen in the next 10 years?

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Re: Ask HN: One thing you wish would happen in the next 10 years?

#71

Post by StavrosK »

corporateslave3 wrote: post #69
StavrosK wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only thing motivating you is the fact that you'll starve if you don't work? That's some poor motivation, let me tell you.

I am never in fear of starvation. Western civilization was built on the bedrock of contributing to society through labor. It's how the system works. That whole system will have to change if that axiom disappears. It is very naive to think that wont have a massive effect on mate selection, how people spend their time, morals, etc. This isnt purely about economics. There are other deeper issues at play when you say peo…

You're assuming that people won't want to work if they don't have to worry about starving, which I'm not sure is a valid assumption at all.

Re: Ask HN: One thing you wish would happen in the next 10 years?

#72

Post by corporateslave3 »

StavrosK wrote: post #71
corporateslave3 wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am never in fear of starvation. Western civilization was built on the bedrock of contributing to society through labor. It's how the system works. That whole system will have to change if that axiom disappears. It is very naive to think that wont have a massive effect on mate selection, how people spend their time, morals, etc. This isnt purely about economics. There are other deeper issues at play when you say peo…

You're assuming that people won't want to work if they don't have to worry about starving, which I'm not sure is a valid assumption at all.

Sure, everyone will keep being disciplined, waking up early to a work a shitty office job. They will keep doing data entry for 40k a year and cleaning up public toilets for 35k a year. They will put up with massive stress and the risk of being laid off at a large corporation

Re: Ask HN: One thing you wish would happen in the next 10 years?

#74

Post by 0xf8 »

lhnz wrote: post #38
night815 wrote: post #30

Civilized discussion on hard topics -- There seems to be a large amount of shouting matches going on right now. We need to be able to discuss things in a calm and respectful manner even when we strongly disagree with the other side. There are a lot of buzz words that get thrown out that to me have lost meaning (racist, sexist, etc.). These words do have meaning and there are absolutely people doing these things that…

This, but I also think we can't just do this in a pure "freedom of speech" way. In order to have a space where we can talk about things calmly and respectfully we will need to shut-out "bad faith" actors, supremacists and ideologues. Otherwise they will pervert the dialogue in order to win some political battle and we risk the wrong outcomes. We have to come at this very directly from the perspective of the outcomes…

I genuinely agree with this notion, almost holistically, and I feel comfortable asserting that if we unreservedly followed this line of thinking the world would be a better place. However, in the intent to further improve on the notion, while I do believe it is important to have to make difficult choices about "who" gets to have a voice in order to achieve more civilized discussion, I don't think that "shutting-out" should be limited to the "bad faith actors" or the extremist ideologues. I think a stronger adherence to a sense of dialectics could benefit by further reducing the voices allowed. There are plenty of soft, gentle and respectful "voices" that detract from getting to the core of important discussions by bringing forward very irrelevant, tangential or otherwise "missing the point" (factually incorrect) ideas. Just because they presented their opinion respectfully, does not mean it needs to be "allowed" into the debate. This becomes especially problematic or can have a serious negative impact when it comes from an exogenous source with a disproportionate amount of credibility. In short I believe some aspect of the "scientific method" for wont of a better expression deserves a role in "regulating" the process of public debate.

Re: Ask HN: One thing you wish would happen in the next 10 years?

#75

Post by 0xf8 »

patrickk wrote: post #19

Renewables to destroy the fossil fuels industry on price. A win for the environment, and some of the oil states will descend into utter irrelevance. Cheap, clean energy will be utterly transformative to the planet and will dramatically raise living standards globally.

Agreed with the notion, but will point out that many of the "oil states" are not oblivious to the writing on the wall and as a result have begun allocating significant portions of their "fossil fuel" profits into alternative channels, in many cases into energy as well. The sheer amount of deployable capital at their disposal leads me to believe they will not "descend into utter irrelevance" as you suggest. At the very least they will succeed in maintaining their relative prosperity, but envision there is a state of the world in which they successfully transition into being champions of Renewable energy going forward. It's not very difficult to build an new industrial energy empire when you have trillions of dollars to spend.

edit:spelling

Re: Ask HN: One thing you wish would happen in the next 10 years?

#76

Post by dragonwriter »

0xf8 wrote: post #75
patrickk wrote: post #19

Renewables to destroy the fossil fuels industry on price. A win for the environment, and some of the oil states will descend into utter irrelevance. Cheap, clean energy will be utterly transformative to the planet and will dramatically raise living standards globally.

Agreed with the notion, but will point out that many of the "oil states" are not oblivious to the writing on the wall and as a result have begun allocating significant portions of their "fossil fuel" profits into alternative channels, in many cases into energy as well. The sheer amount of deployable capital at their disposal leads me to believe they will not "descend into utter irrelevance" as you suggest. At the ver…

> many of the "oil states" are not oblivious to the writing on the wall and as a result have begun allocating significant portions of their "fossil fuel" profits into alternative channels, in many cases into energy as well.

And not just recently; it's been that way for decades. This (alongside the fact that certain other oil states had not done so) was a major contributing factor to the 1990-1991 Gulf War, for instance.

Re: Ask HN: One thing you wish would happen in the next 10 years?

#77

Post by pasbesoin »

Universal health care. Including dental.

The rest of people's lives, and their quality of life, is based on good health.

We may not all end up in the same place, nor even wanting the same things. But good health can help each person achieve their personal maximum.

And, if you don't believe human life is a zero sum game, as I don't, then that increases humanity's overall wealth -- cultural, not just material.

P.S. There is also the opportunity to leverage much greater advances. Putting money towards treatment instead of profit-taking including a significant amount of rent-seeking.

And I, for one, would be much more willing to share my medical data were I assured it would not be used against me, neither in denying me treatment nor in denying me work nor other participation in society. The types of research and advances such data mining might produce, could be both profound and readily at hand.

Re: Ask HN: One thing you wish would happen in the next 10 years?

#78

Post by cjbillington »

tedsanders wrote: post #41
cjbillington wrote: post #33

For income and wealth inequality to start trending back in the desirable direction once again.

Both of those are trending in a positive direction right now. https://ourworldindata.org/global-economic-inequality

Globally, yes. And sure, we should care about the global more more than the poor of the developed countries. But I don't see any reason to believe so far that developed countries have solved the problem of rising inequality within their populations, so I see the rising inequality of developed nations as the future of all nations once they have all "caught up". So I would rephrase to say I hope inequality starts decreasing again in developed countries.

Re: Ask HN: One thing you wish would happen in the next 10 years?

#79

Post by carleeto »

Law being described in very precise, verifiable terms, such that "in the spirit of the law" is an executable test and assumptions made are automatically verifiable. This means that irrelevant laws can be identified much faster and law can keep up with technology.

Re: Ask HN: One thing you wish would happen in the next 10 years?

#80

Post by juliansamarjiev »

newscracker wrote: post #32

Decentralized social media, decentralized chat platforms, decentralized almost everything that we depend on the Internet for. Users of the platform have more control over which provider to use, can freely move around and even start things on their own to connect into well defined interoperable systems and protocols. This is more of a pipe dream than a hope, but I would be ecstatic to see such a world. Like Peter Sund…

This could be something that blockchain technology might have an impact on. This article gives examples of how blockchain can be used to decentralize many aspects of our current dynamics.

- https://venturebeat.com/2017/04/23/companies-of-the-future-n...

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