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In what areas are the massive fortunes of the future going to be made?

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61–70 of 102 posts

Re: In what areas are the massive fortunes of the future going to be made?

#62
post #50

There is an increasing interest in life extension, so I think we'll also see wide demand for an interim solution to the whole death thing. E.g. brain plastination, cryonics, sufficiently detailed brain scans... whoever makes one of these scalable and effective at preserving a person (information-theoretically) will rake in like $O(10^9).

Big O notation with a constant amount? If so, that's the same as O(1) or is that another notation I'm not familiar with?

Re: In what areas are the massive fortunes of the future going to be made?

#63
post #41

As a co-founder of Tiny Farms[1], we're betting on the growing need for alternative sources of protein. Humanity's current protein supply is inefficient, unsustainable and won't scale to feed the future world. Our particular domain is edible insects; we wrote this article about why entrepreneurs should get involved: http://www.xconomy.com/san-francisco/2013/09/10/5-reasons-dr... [1] http://www.tiny-farms.com

What is the best climate for raising crickets in the US? Or does it matter that much?

Re: In what areas are the massive fortunes of the future going to be made?

#64
post #34
post #24

Let's extrapolate from present trends. More robotics and automation means people will work fewer hours but still have disposable income. Medical advances mean people will live longer, healthier lives. Conclusion? There's going to be a lot of energetic, healthy people with time on their hands -- even more than at present. So there will be many future opportunities in the areas of entertainment, computer games and trav…

Clinical psychiatry and psychology are areas of neuroscience these days, so I don't quite understand the "historic meltdown" point, any references on that?

lutusp has a bit of a bee in his bonnet about psychology and psychiatry. His approximate view is that if a field can't be held to the same evidentiary standards as experimental physics, it's not a science. Because the two fields are imperfect, they are therefore of course completely and entirely wrong. But fear not! fMRI will save us!

Re: In what areas are the massive fortunes of the future going to be made?

#65
Online educational videos.

99.99% of online educational videos suck. For example, watching the video is so painful that all I can think about is "how do I get out of here?". (Possibly I am spoiled from watching too many popular vlogs on YouTube.)

The other 0.01% of online educational videos that don't suck prove that it is possible to make such videos. The best examples I can find are RailsCasts and "Math Antics" (the first is for grownups, the second is aimed more at children, but I would watch something like Math Antics that had more advanced content).

Re: In what areas are the massive fortunes of the future going to be made?

#67
post #41

As a co-founder of Tiny Farms[1], we're betting on the growing need for alternative sources of protein. Humanity's current protein supply is inefficient, unsustainable and won't scale to feed the future world. Our particular domain is edible insects; we wrote this article about why entrepreneurs should get involved: http://www.xconomy.com/san-francisco/2013/09/10/5-reasons-dr... [1] http://www.tiny-farms.com

What is the best climate for raising crickets in the US? Or does it matter that much?

Come to Texas, follow the grackles, bring a broom. you can get crickets by the truckload.

Re: In what areas are the massive fortunes of the future going to be made?

#68
Healthcare: Cancer treatments and cancer drugs for fixing cancer and improving the patient's life. Sometimes, Chemio can be devastating.

Self-treatments on demand: someday, you wont need to go in a doctor office for diagnoses, medical check-ups and treatments.

Re: In what areas are the massive fortunes of the future going to be made?

#69
post #50

There is an increasing interest in life extension, so I think we'll also see wide demand for an interim solution to the whole death thing. E.g. brain plastination, cryonics, sufficiently detailed brain scans... whoever makes one of these scalable and effective at preserving a person (information-theoretically) will rake in like $O(10^9).

Big O notation with a constant amount? If so, that's the same as O(1) or is that another notation I'm not familiar with?

Ah sorry... I was just being sloppy, what I wrote doesn't make sense. What I meant was "order of magnitude", but I'm not sure how to write that; Big Theta says two functions grow within a constant factor of each other, which is vaguely similar to the notion of order of magnitude. Maybe it should have been "$~10^9$" or just "$10^9$".

(By the way, my reasoning was 10^4 for current cryonics prices, times 10^7 or 10^8 people, times 10^-2 or 10^-3 assuming a fee of 1% to 0.1%.)

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