71–80 of 118 posts
Make formal methods cheaper and easier to use.
That's the wrong way to frame that problem. Formal methods generally have a mindshare problem that underlies their cost problems. Make formal methods more accessible to the average programmer.
Of course it's pretty obvious why nobody has done this before: almost nobody wants to pay for high integrity software unless compelled by law.
And there's obvious problem number two: even if you find a philanthropist to pay you to write this software and give it away under the most liberal license, it'll take effort to switch away from existing libraries. You might be able to imitate the structure of e.g. LibTIFF but everyone who was handling TIFF with another library will find it hard to switch.
Hangover free booze.
- improve security and efficiency (which is also security :P )
e.g.: umbrellas prevent you from getting wet, the judicial system (intends..) to enable the public to trust one another, your skin is a firewall against pathogens, sleep cleanses the brain of metabolic byproducts, dreams (ostensibly) make it more likely that your awake mind will succeed more..
- address shortcomings of previous attempts, or otherwise explain that the problem was previously underrated (if it isn't a solution that just happens to have astonishing luck :P)
- punishes gamblers that speculate without paying the price and instead do it at the expense of nonparticipants
- even better if the solution to the problem enables mutually-beneficial interactions at the atomic level
- and 10x as better if it avoids growing into a benevolent dictatorship
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's really not. First, I said industrialized . I know that homelessness is high in some poorer countries. I'm talking about the wealthy countries such as most EU countries. Switzerland, for example, doesn't remotely have this problem.
Australia has the same issue. Unless you can argue Australia isn't a 1st world country.
Batteries. Batteries are the number one technical problem right now. A battery with energy density approaching crude oil would revolutionize the world beyond even what the Internet did. We really don't have an energy generation problem, we have an energy storage problem.
For grid scale storage, which would be needed to get to really high penetration levels of renewable electricity, energy density is even less important. A paltry 50 watt-hours/kg would be perfectly fine if the battery also offers low capacity fade per deep discharge cycle and low costs.
A battery with really high energy density, but per-kWh costs higher (or at least no lower) than today's batteries, would be revolutionary for aircraft and an extremely welcome improvement for mobile electronic devices. But I don't think that it would have the same breathtaking macro-impacts on world energy systems as making much cheaper batteries could.
1) Personal finance - Americans across the board lack basic financial competency. This effects the US across the board, people take on too much credit card debt, school debt, etc. This problem is across all classes (lower, middle, upper) - Americans do not understand basic things on how to budget, how much debt they can take on, how credit cards should work, how to invest, etc. We need financial education happening at the high school level so that the next generation of Americans don't make the same financial mistakes we have (taking on too much school debt, using credit card as loans, not taking advantage of employer 401k, buying houses you can afford, etc)
2) Diet / Eating - If you look at the list of the most common sources of death for Americans, almost every issue is linked to lifestyle (diet, smoking, alcohol, etc.). Our diets have spun out of control; Americans lack basic knowledge on what is healthy or not. I've had many friends who struggle with weight issues who lack even basic knowledge of how calories work, what their daily needs, what are necessary nutrients, etc.)
Batteries. Batteries are the number one technical problem right now. A battery with energy density approaching crude oil would revolutionize the world beyond even what the Internet did. We really don't have an energy generation problem, we have an energy storage problem.
"Batteries" is a pretty good answer, but I'd argue that getting cost down is more important at this point than raising energy density. Tesla proves that you can make long-range vehicles with today's battery energy density. The batteries are just too expensive at present to deliver an under-$20k-USD vehicle that can sustain 5 hours of freeway driving between charges. For grid scale storage, which would be needed to ge…
One strategy that I adopt is to think of industries that are highly manual labor and dream of ways to fix that. I forget the name of the company, but there's a startup in the Bay Area that builds drones for farmers. Right now, farmers wake up early in the morning and drive through small sections of their fields and spot check things to decide what needs water or fertilizer or what-have-you. They have to spot check, b…
Expanding on that from the opposite direction, what new industries can be created that can employee the previous workers disrupted by new technology? He who figures that out will never be for want. (This isn't an argument against the parent comment at all, as I agree with them too. Their comment just got me thinking.)
I sort of got into this discussion a few minutes ago with a friend of mine, but I think part of solving Epic Problems is revisiting the notion that one must work in order to survive, and particularly revisit the 40 hour work-week idea. If we can automate a farmer's job so that he spends 4 hours a day instead of 8 hours a day, does that change the value he provides to society? Of course not. His earnings shouldn't be dependent on hours worked, but rather productivity to society. If that farmer can employ 5 farmhands instead of 10, do the five that lost their jobs really need new jobs? Can we recognize that the economy doesn't need them anymore? Or can we cut the hours so that each farmhand works half-time?
Mind you, we're getting into UBI territory which is outside the scope of this thread, but... How many jobs can you think of that were created in order to maintain or grow a budget? How many middle managers aren't really necessary? Do we really need cashiers at Walmart or Target or the grocery store?
As automation accelerates, we're going to find ourselves more and more in a position of struggling to find new jobs for displaced workers... and I think we should challenge that premise from the start.
I am going to focus on US centric problems. Here are the two areas I think Americans could use the biggest help: 1) Personal finance - Americans across the board lack basic financial competency. This effects the US across the board, people take on too much credit card debt, school debt, etc. This problem is across all classes (lower, middle, upper) - Americans do not understand basic things on how to budget, how much…
I didn't realise how bad it was in Aus until I moved to Japan.
Edit: I was referring to your first point, sorry.