[HN Gopher] Ask HN: Problems for the next decade?
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Ask HN: Problems for the next decade?
Environment, people, technology are changing rapidly. What are some
worthwhile problems or ideas that you think would be important to
solve or work on by end of the decade.
Author : dmundhra
Score : 82 points
Date : 2023-07-09 04:27 UTC (18 hours ago)
| GirishSharma643 wrote:
| The biggest threat is health. The whole world have become
| helpless in front of Corona. World class medical institution,
| labs, scientist, colleges were weeping like an orphaned child.
| Don't think other than health. If we will remain, then we will
| think and work. For anything else human life needs.
| soultrees wrote:
| For inspiration what are some easy problems to solve and then
| what are some of the more difficult problems to solve on the
| same path?
| GirishSharma643 wrote:
| In my personal opinion there is no big issue other than human
| health. I will repeat - for anything else human life
| requires.
| rajanaccros wrote:
| Reports released by IPCC and other organizations [0] indicate
| that we have 15 years to take drastic action on the environment.
| This tracks with the extremely accurate prediction from The
| Limits to Growth [1] published in 1972.
|
| _If we do not take action on climate _now_ then _nothing_ is
| going to matter._
|
| We will enter into an irreversible feedback loop that causes
| human extinction, yet it won't be apparent until it is literally
| on the doorstep for people to realize.
|
| If you are not quitting your job and working to advance the
| existential threat of climate change and the main driver of the
| catastrophe (capitalism and perpetual growth) then you are
| wasting your (and your children's) time.
|
| An excellent book on what needs to be done is Less is More by
| Jason Hickel [2]. This is the _only_ problem that matters since
| literally existence depends on solving it. The time for deep
| concern is over. Action is needed and it is needed now.
| Education, degrowth, reuse, technology. So put everything else
| aside or you are laboring (and living) for nothing.
|
| [0]: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41893-023-01157-x
|
| [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Limits_to_Growth
|
| [2]: https://www.jasonhickel.org/less-is-more
| leksak wrote:
| Did you quit your job? And how are you working on climate
| change now?
|
| > If you are not quitting your job and working to advance the
| existential threat of climate change and the main driver of the
| catastrophe (capitalism and perpetual growth) then you are
| wasting your (and your children's) time.
|
| Or did you decide to waste your time (and possibly the time of
| your children?)
| rajanaccros wrote:
| Yes. I did quit my job and am looking for climate careers
| actively through climatebase.org and climacareers.com (not
| associate with either but where I have been searching).
|
| I have transitioned to veganism, raise the AC of my house to
| a very high level to where I am spending $7 per week, bought
| a bike to commute around the city, have stopped buying
| clothes and am now buying only through thrift stores, reading
| (and trying to educate) everyone I can on this subject.
| mynonameaccount wrote:
| You use AC? I just went through 107 last week without AC.
| How do you even call yourself an environmentalist? Only
| when if affects your comfort level right?
| rajanaccros wrote:
| Yes I use AC. And no, I live well outside my comfort
| level and well within the material consumption guidelines
| for being a person that is doing something about this the
| environmental issues on this planet.
|
| Your line of questioning is disingenuous and utterly
| lowbrow. Do better.
| tomp wrote:
| The world will not end, just change. Maybe for the better? E.g.
| Siberia becoming fertile. Maybe even Sahara becoming green
| again!
|
| We know what needs to be done. Build nuclear! But unfortunately
| anti-growth "green" parties and activists (like you I presume)
| have been pushing anti-nuclear propaganda for decades, stopping
| progress.
|
| Nothing can be done on an individual level, so quitting your
| job or not having kids is completely pointless. Only top-down
| action (less regulation) can solve the problem. So vote!
| jamilton wrote:
| How could less regulation possibly help? Negative
| externalities need to be captured, how else can that be done
| but with more regulation?
| omegabravo wrote:
| I'm confused how _only less regulation_ can solve the
| problem. Famously, companies love less regulation so they can
| do what they want without consequence.
|
| Good regulation, is quite effective. Just hard.
| rajanaccros wrote:
| I really don't agree with this. And I am not against nuclear.
| I am for any action that will restructure our society that is
| more reciprocal with the environment. The world will not
| change for the better with 60+% of species extinction, wet
| bulb temperatures and not enough power to cool will affect
| and kill millions of people N/S 30deg of the equator.
|
| My alarmist talking points it to actually engage people like
| you and who have similar thoughts that think they can't do
| anything. You absolutely can. And it is time to be alarmist.
| Not being so is not working.
|
| My point is to work to restructure society at any level you
| can, to educate, and to stop this myth of perpetual growth
| GDP as the only indicator of success. It is killing
| everything.
|
| > E.g. Siberia becoming fertile. Maybe even Sahara becoming
| green again!
|
| We have a perfectly good world as is, and you want to gamble
| everything on this?
| tomp wrote:
| Well if we built more nuclear, we'd have more power to run
| more A/C. Actually even with solar we can do that (it's
| night power that would remain a problem).
|
| No solution that requires degrowth, less energy, lower GDP
| or lower human quality of life, is acceptable to me.
| Degrowth means less food, less medicine, less power, less
| transport, more death.
|
| Alarmism and promoting degrowth and/or stupid policies
| (paper straws, anyone?) just further increase the public
| backlash against "green" movement, so I guess it's a good
| thing?!
| rajanaccros wrote:
| You actually could not be more wrong. Degrowth is the
| only thing that is going to solve our issue. That does
| not meaning cutting off food to populations, that means
| not maximizing profit as the only imperative to living.
| Your solution is technical, as many naive people believe,
| but will not solve the issue. We have planetary
| boundaries and "renewables" and nuclear will not solve
| those issues. More AC, means for CFCs that will still
| impact the environment. More growth means more extraction
| for wind/solar and other technologies that will impact
| the environment. These are not solutions to our issue.
|
| Nothing else is working. Alarmism is supposed to get
| people to actually act, because otherwise they take your
| (ignorant) positions on sitting back and keep growing.
| The next idea you have for a great startup, a way to make
| money, something for your individual advancement, please
| go back to imperative #1 -- _nothing_ is going to matter
| as we kill everything on this planet.
|
| People become really defensive when they hear they have
| to _change_ due to climate catastrophe. I get it. It 's
| not fair. But it is necessary. If people read the
| alarmist language (not just from posters like me, but
| alarmist language from scientists who tend to use neutral
| language in their reports), then they will have to deal
| with the fact that the have a direct causal link to our
| children's and the next generation's death due to their
| inaction. At that point, the person is not just ignorant,
| but sociopathic. If we continue on this path, it will be
| humanity's ruin.
| tomp wrote:
| Technology literally means getting more value from the
| same amount of inputs. Earth has essentially unlimited
| resources in its crust, and with better technology we'll
| have access to more and more of them. Not to mention
| offworld resources.
|
| Sure, there's a few things that we need to figure out -
| like stopping fossil C release into the atmosphere, and
| how to spread good agritech to poor, non-democratic
| countries (hint: Europe produces tons of food sustainably
| using minimal resources, and is actually regrowing
| forests!).
|
| But I'd bet on further technological development and
| economic growth any time, my own life and that of my
| child(ren), rather than embrace degrowth and the
| associated (19th century) poverty, hunger, child
| mortality, etc. that comes with it.
|
| Degrowth is literally murder.
| rajanaccros wrote:
| I think we are talking past each other on what is meant
| by degrowth. Degrowth means not tying the success of
| nations and people to that of GDP YoY. It is not
| sustainable. What I mean by degrowth is removing the
| growth imperative from economy and switching to a
| sustainable economy. The studies have shown (referenced
| in Hickel's book) that material consumption goes _up_
| with technological innovation. This means that the more
| efficient are technology becomes we don 't use it to
| sustatain, we us it to grow. More products, more material
| extraction, more profits, more reinvestment - all to
| grow. Degrowth means to move to a sustainable economy
| while _preventing_ the death of humans _and_ other
| biodiversity. But we have to rethink things that are
| "not to be questioned" (eg. capitalism, Platonic dualism,
| etc).
|
| So I am confused by the meaning of degrowth you are
| referencing because the definition I am using is the
| antithesis of murder. We want to save the planet, and
| hence all life that exists within it. So I hope that
| comes across, because degrowth does not mean collapse of
| materials needed to sustain life, but it does re-
| imagigening the profit above all mindset that is de facto
| in our economies.
| [deleted]
| tomp wrote:
| The problem is you swallowed the "capitalism is evil"
| pill and now you're confusing everything.
|
| But it's not complicated. GDP is literally _"the total
| sum of what humans value"_ (per year). GDP _growth_ is
| "creating more of what humans value", and _profit_ is
| "reward for those who create value". You can split _what
| humans value_ into _essentials_ (food, sex, medicine,
| security, ...) and _non-essentials_ (nice car, nice
| house, nice vacations, nice nature, ...). The basic
| premise of _Western civilisation_ (i.e. the most well-
| functioning society we've invented so far) is to satisfy
| the essentials of _almost everyone_ and allow many people
| to satisfy many of their non-essentials.
|
| _> More products, more material extraction, more
| profits, more reinvestment - all to grow._
|
| Sounds like a good thing! More people getting their needs
| met.
|
| As it turns out, people _do_ value nature etc but only
| after their basic needs are fulfilled. So the best way to
| protect nature is to create companies that make profit
| satisfying essential needs and higher-priority non-
| essential needs, so people start valuing nature etc.
|
| Which isn't to say capitalism is without problems - e.g.
| tragedy of the commons, principal-agent problem, negative
| externalities - but they should be solved within
| capitalism (maybe with better regulation or more aligned
| market incentives).
|
| But if you support "degrowth" you _literally_ support
| people living worse lives (less non-essentials) and dying
| (less essentials). And if you don't, well, your movement
| needs better marketing.
| gremlinsinc wrote:
| you could create degrowth libraries, or community sheds
| where you store items used irregularly that people can
| borrow like lawn mowers, drills, saws, 4 wheelers,
| cleaning supplies, etc, and even have a free Laundromat,
| and other tools and a free clothing swap. In this way you
| can buy less, do you really need a drill if you only use
| it twice a year? A lawn mower if you only use ur 20 times
| per year, etc? isn't it a waste to build and horde these
| things?
|
| Degrowth doesn't mean ending capitalism, it just means
| living a little bit more communal, you need to check out
| items from the local community garage which there'd be
| one every two blocks.
|
| With less material possessions also comes the need for
| less space in homes, so we can build homes just big
| enough, saving resources, etc. We can also use new
| building techniques life binishell homes that cost under
| 20k and are earthquake proof and very well insulated.
|
| Nothing I've said ends capitalism, it just tapers
| materialism a bit
| tomp wrote:
| This is actually something I 100% support. As long as
| degrowth or similar non-sensical ideologies ("luxury
| beliefs") are practices _within_ free-market capitalism.
|
| The obvious problem, of course, is that 99% of people
| won't _willingly_ choose _lower quality of life_ (as
| described in your post, and as most "green" solutions
| end up being) voluntarily. So ultimately degrowthers end
| up trying to coerce others.
| rajanaccros wrote:
| Capitalism is literally evil based on first principles
| [0]. The fact that you have swallowed the "capitalism is
| the only thing that is good in this world pill" is the
| result of 500 years of propaganda.
|
| > Sounds like a good thing! More people getting their
| needs met.
|
| And less of everything else getting their needs met. It
| seems like you have a very dualistic view that humans are
| somehow outside the realm of ecology. Infinite growth is
| literally impossible in a finite system. And is a core
| tenet of capitalism. I really don't know what else to
| tell you at this point.
|
| You are basing all of your arguments on capitalism being
| the solution to itself, which is the problem.
|
| > As it turns out, people do value nature etc but only
| after their basic needs are fulfilled.
|
| The problem with capitalism is that once basic needs are
| met, companies need won't be met - the growth imperative.
| Profit means taking more than what you give. It is the
| sole idea of what capitalism is built on. And it has
| appropriated nature as a means to this end. So what
| happens then? Artificial scarcity, more manipulation,
| more marketing all to sell people what they don't need.
|
| It seems to me that you have latched onto an idea, and
| you will argue anything to fit that narrative. I have no
| idea where these arguments are coming from that degrowth
| means that people are not getting their needs met. Do you
| have sources to back up any of what you are saying? It
| just seems so synthetic to me.
|
| Degrowth is removing the profit motive for the sole
| benefit of reinvestment and accumulation to continue
| growing. It does not mean that the market economy goes
| away. It does not mean that people do not have their
| needs met. It means that capitalism as a religion is
| finally put to an end. That we are able to subsist on
| finite resources instead of eliminating everything that
| we depend on for survival. And to use your beloved's
| terminology, a (positive) market externality would allow
| species to thrive without the material extraction of
| their habitat that you have placed a positive value on
| for some reason (eg. "Sounds like a good thing!").
|
| [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_capitalism#
| Enclosur...
| ryandrake wrote:
| Unfortunately, this argument is no longer convincing. I've been
| hearing for most of my life, at least the last 40 or so years,
| that "action is needed now" and "we're 10-15 years away from
| disaster," which never comes. The doom-predictors' credibility
| is unfortunately totally shot at this point. We've been "almost
| beyond the point of no return" for as long as I can remember--
| it's the Truck Almost Hitting The Pole GIF[1]
|
| 1: https://tenor.com/view/truck-crash-test-pole-doesnt-reach-
| gi...
| rajanaccros wrote:
| The study I linked on The Limits of Growth did not predict 15
| years. They predicted between 2030 and 2040. The original
| authors of that study have reasserted just last year that
| they still believe it to be true. IPCC and the nature study I
| linked have predicted collapse in the same time frame. So I
| am not sure the doomers that you are referencing were
| credible. However, I place my trust in science. The fact that
| scientists are literally screaming that we are headed towards
| extinction in the time frame I mentioned, the fact that we
| have lost 70% of species since 1970, and other data backing
| up the claims is enough for me to be convinced. I am not sure
| what it would take for you to be convinced.
| dakotasmith wrote:
| I've got a second grader and myself & other parents are wondering
| how useful a public school education will be in 10 years when
| they are graduating
| culopatin wrote:
| It never was useful, people differentiate based on the choices
| they make outside of school and the people they meet. Public
| education is there to level out the childhood trauma and
| normalize things. It's a big sander that levels down.
| ecks4ndr0s wrote:
| Survival. No /s intended.
| john_max_1 wrote:
| The world population is collapsing at a rapid pace.
|
| Our economic growth is based on a growing productive population.
|
| Our economic prosperity is based on a growing productive
| population.
|
| Different parts of the world are dealing with population
| collapse.
|
| Look at Japan, a xenophobic country facing population collapse.
| The total GDP has remain stagnant over the past 20 years.
|
| Look at UAE, a country facing population collapse and
| acknowledging reality by handing our long-term residency permits
| to affulent immigrants, mostly Indian Hindus. They are even
| building the first Hindu temple in Islamic middle-east in Dubai!
|
| Look at Africa, where the population growth combined with
| sectarian warfare is making for a troublesome living -
| https://pudding.cool/2018/07/airports/ South Africa is even
| regresssing. Rich businessman of Asian Indian origin who have
| lived for generations are already heading for UK/Canada. And with
| them tax base would collapse like Uganda (90% tax revenue came
| from Asian Indians in Uganda in 1972 -
| https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-36132151).
|
| Look at USA/Canada/Australia, all of them have low birth rate but
| compensate by being genuinely immigration friendly. They will
| grow while sucking even more productive population out of rest of
| the world.
|
| The Europe would keep importing cheap labour (by choice) and
| welfare-loving immigrants from middle-east & Africa (by virtue of
| proximity). And they would transform Europe, how they tranformed
| Lebanon - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WubIe3c5NGc, further
| imagine how the voting blocks would look like when whites are
| rich & old while non-whites are poor & young. Why would they not
| demand higher taxation and lower welfare policies?
|
| China would have same fate as Japan. Xenophobia with a collapsing
| population. China would appear a lot of more timid.
|
| 12,000 years ago, when sea levels rose, Tasmania lost connection
| to mainland Australia, and this lead to decline of knowledge and
| tools over time.
|
| We might see the same in our world.
|
| So, I believe population collapse is a huge problem.
| defrost wrote:
| World population is still increasing.
|
| It's climbed from 2.6 billion in 1950 to 7.8 billion in 2020.
|
| If world poulation halved we'd still be at 1975 population
| levels .. a time when the world functioned.
|
| > Our economic prosperity is based on a growing productive
| population.
|
| We live on a finite planet with limited resources, the notion
| of unlimited growth being essential for continued status quo is
| flawed thinking.
|
| Our greatest challenge as a species on this planet is to learn
| how to live well within our means.
| john_max_1 wrote:
| > If world poulation halved we'd still be at 1975 population
| levels .. a time when the world functioned.
|
| The prosperity was much lower than. The scientific
| advancement even lower.
| defrost wrote:
| We won't lose knowledge by returning to 1975 population
| numbers, nor will we lose the ability to expand our
| scientific understanding.
|
| The knowledge gains of recent decades did not ride on the
| back of population growth.
| Nesco wrote:
| Your reasoning is very flawed for a single reason. If by
| let's say 2075 the population was reduced to 1975 levels, the
| demographics would still differ widely.
|
| 1. Age distribution would look like an inverted pyramid
| instead of a pyramid
|
| 2. The geographical, racial/ethnical and cultural
| demographics would also look like the totally different. The
| share of global population of the global south, which is
| currently highly dysfunctional, would be drastically more
| important, especially in the younger age groups.
|
| Note that the increase of wealth of the "third world" is
| mainly due to China / India, followed a bit by Indonesia /
| Bangladesh / Vietnam. Nearly all of them have already a TFR <
| 2.1
|
| Other countries' economies even lost complexity and the share
| of their economies that are basically commodity exports
| increased
| culopatin wrote:
| You're missing the knowledge gained over time in your equation.
| You only need more people assuming that we don't have
| technology that increases productivity.
|
| I'm happy to see population numbers decrease and I'm ok with
| the stock market getting hit or having to make some sacrifices
| on lifestyle if that means a more sustainable way of living.
|
| We keep hearing of food production issues caused by climate
| change. Why would we need more people? To starve them? To give
| them busywork? To have to figure out welfare?
|
| I'm ok with going through shrinking pains, it should be a
| lesson that the fake reality we built for ourselves was not
| sustainable.
| cyber_kinetist wrote:
| A huge problem... for capitalism.
|
| I think the refusal to marry and have kids (regardless of it
| being necessary or by choice) is basically the ultimate
| worker's strike. So far capitalists have relied upon the fact
| that there will always be workers to exploit, since they
| consider any care work necessary to raise families (for the
| next batch of exploited workers) as simply just given. Now that
| this is going away (people can actually choose to _not_ bear
| the burden of reproduction!) first in Japan and South Korea but
| also in China and the rest of the developed world, the ultimate
| factor that has propelled economic growth so far is withering
| away...
| bequanna wrote:
| [flagged]
| nojvek wrote:
| There's difference between working and being able to afford
| to buy your own house so you could raise a family,
|
| And rent being so expensive even with dual income that
| having kids does not make financial sense.
|
| Everyone, especially women should have full control of
| when/if they want to have kids.
|
| Yes, population is collapsing. 50 years ago population was
| exploding, and we somehow figured out that problem. We'll
| figure out the collapse problem as well.
| samtho wrote:
| My wild-ass guesses of where the future is going and its
| associated problems:
|
| I think we are going to see additional polarization in online
| discussion and we will continue to see this spill into the
| physical world as violence. This level of division has not been
| seen at this level in modern western societies. More people have
| taken on their political sports team as the very thing they
| identify with and their opposing team(s) have been painted as
| conspiratorial psychopaths, preventing discussion across the
| aisle from even happening at a meaningful level. In the US, we
| will see a clear bifurcation of states where any remaining purple
| states will solidify their leaning during the 2024 election and
| we won't see this shift again in a meaningful way for at least a
| few election cycles.
|
| We are going to see massive, non-collateralized debt defaults and
| financial companies will attempt to claw back that money, with
| those who continued to borrow above their means and were hit with
| variable APR that doubled or tripled interest on their accounts,
| minimum payments go up, and it becomes unsustainable. We will see
| a 50% rise in bankruptcies over the next 18 months and a 100-200%
| increase over the next 5 years. Student loan default will be
| rampant as payment of these loans will become due again in
| October, destroying any hope of credit access in the near future
| to these people. Banks will foreclose but not be have the
| bandwidth to repossess all the property, leaving empty shells of
| neighborhoods. The labor market will sharply flip in favor of the
| employers and labor will lose a lot of bargaining power or other
| gains received over the last few years. Rent will go up, private
| equity will buy houses for cheap, mortgage rates will stay just
| under 10%.
|
| China's one child policy that began 40 years ago is starting to
| be felt, with only half as many people at their full earning
| potential (30s-40s) trying to support an aging population. The
| bottom has fallen out of their labor force, the CCP's grip on the
| people is becoming tighter, but one day they are going to flip
| the light switch in their home and will be without power. Their
| strong, centralized government will falter and diminish or
| outright just fail, the north China plateau will revert to its
| wasteland type state, formerly propped up by will of the
| government. Tianjin will be the only city to survive and will
| receive the majority of refugees from the northern areas.
| Tianjin, Shanghai and Hong Kong/Shenzhen will revert to city
| states and will self-govern. Fragmented China will become a huge
| consumer of global food as they will be incapable of growing
| their own, with the supply of nitrogen fertilizer and potash
| being clinched by the Russo-Ukraine war and reserves dwindling,
| global food shortages will be occur within the next two years.
|
| Russia will continue sending every able bodied man into the nato-
| powered meat grinder of Ukraine until a proper overthrow of Putin
| occurs or they run out of people. This will create an absence of
| men in this generation which will be worse than their losses
| sustained during WWII. The vacuum of power within the hollowed-
| out Russia will not last long and I worry to think who will rise
| up as the next leader. Ukraine east of the Dnieper river will be
| mostly leveled by then, further exacerbating the food shortages.
| Ukraine will eventually join NATO, Russia will attempt to create
| the USSR 2.0 from mainly the west Asian countries.
|
| We may be see a collapse of generalized globalization if the US
| Navy decides it's not in its best interest to keep peace on the
| high seas causing insurance rates to skyrocket and shipping via
| international waters becomes a dangerous prospect. A lot of our
| production will move to Mexico where there is an educated and
| motivated population that is already producing goods of higher
| quality than China. Trade between the US-Canada-Mexico will
| become increasingly important due to access to both resources and
| labor that all 3 bring proped up by agreed upon free trade. This
| transition will be long and will come with challenges.
|
| The EU will lose more membership and if Germany is unable to
| fully replace its energy needs, the EU as a whole will diminish.
| The Anglosphere may create its own free trade agreement, maybe
| even going so far to allow for free travel amongst the group (but
| this will be symbolic as very few counties share land boarders).
| This will create tensions with N. American free trade and Mexico,
| perhaps prompting Latin America counties into creating its own
| Schengen-type zone. America-Mexico relations will sour but the
| trade relations will be to solidified to do anything.
| elric wrote:
| I was going to make a reply to OP about how most problems are
| moot if we don't tackle polarization and (for want of a better
| term) political decline. But your comment is more comprehensive
| than mine would have been, so I'll just add my two cents here.
|
| > I think we are going to see additional polarization in online
| discussion and we will continue to see this spill into the
| physical world as violence
|
| I wonder whether online discussion is at the source of this,
| but I doubt it. Perhaps this is something for sociologists to
| ponder over. We have have access to more information than at
| any point in history, but it seems like our knowledge (and
| empathy) haven't grown by the same amount.
|
| > Russia will continue sending every able bodied man into the
| nato-powered meat grinder of Ukraine until a proper overthrow
| of Putin occurs or they run out of people.
|
| The idea of a Russia without Putin frightens me. Not because
| I'm a fan, but because it seems like every likely alternative
| is even worse. A politically unstable (nay, volatile!) country
| with a huge stockpile of nukes ought to worry everyone. I hope
| humanity can find a way out of this shitty situation.
|
| > The EU will lose more membership
|
| Probably. And this ties in nicely with your first paragraph,
| polarization is a big contributor to this. By and large, Europe
| has never been as safe or as prosperous as it is today, yet
| everywhere extremism is on the rise. The EU (or at least the
| Commission) has a reputation of being a busybody everywhere
| except for where it matters. Political reform seems needed, so
| that people at least feel represented, but that's unlikely to
| happen when so many Europeans are devolving into an "us vs
| them" mindset.
| samtho wrote:
| > I wonder whether online discussion is at the source of
| this, but I doubt it. Perhaps this is something for
| sociologists to ponder over. We have have access to more
| information than at any point in history, but it seems like
| our knowledge (and empathy) haven't grown by the same amount.
|
| I agree, there it likely a lot more here that I've
| overlooked. I certainly believe that online echo chambers are
| part of it, but I do acknowledge it's only part of the story.
|
| As for a Putin-free Russia, this terrifies me because of the
| fact that in a dictatorship-like regime, higher level people
| who push back or don't exclusively give good news and
| information to the ruling parties are often ousted or happen
| to fall out of windows at a most inconvenient time, which
| creates a class of yes-men/women who are either puppets or
| vultures that will swoop in and attempt taking control if
| their leader falls. Further, the brain-drain they have been
| experiencing over the years has now that had been accelerated
| by this war, leaving not a lot people left (proportionally)
| in the class of educated citizens. This hallowed out Russia
| will become a husk where the propaganda machine will continue
| to spew absolute garbage for years to come rotting whatever
| is left of its population's minds. A developing theory I have
| is that Lukashenko's diplomacy with Wagner and Russia is
| simply an attempt to position him to be able to take over
| Moscow when he senses its fractured enough but I also think
| he's lacks the stones to do so.
| version_five wrote:
| The rise of authoritarianism. We need computing, banking,
| communication and other solutions that are more robust to
| governments and people generally that want to control what people
| can do. Decentralized (I don't mean anything to do with crypto
| nonsense) and simplified methods are needed, e.g currently any
| nontrivial computer and internet use require relying on a bunch
| of parties that could quickly turn hostile.
| Rodeoclash wrote:
| You can't "software" your way out of authoritarianism.
| xerxesaa wrote:
| We have an aging population and many places have a flat
| birthrate. We need to solve how to deal with this consequences.
|
| Who will care for these people? How will we deal with the
| consequences of flat population growth? How will we deal with the
| stock market's expectations of perpetual growth when the
| underlying population itself is not growing (and especially since
| productivity has also been relatively flat)?
| yieldcrv wrote:
| > How will we
|
| By adjusting which price to earnings multiple we want to
| tolerate, just like we always do
|
| Or take a bearish position if it happens to match your risk
| tolerance at the time
|
| The stock market will be fine, people will trade shares, who
| cares if the market price is greater or less than today's
| ssss11 wrote:
| This aging topic is very important. Re: stock markets,
| economies need to shift from eternal $ growth to share holder
| wallets, to providing equitable outcomes for all people and the
| planet - that will be very interesting to watch, i can't see it
| going well.
| tomp wrote:
| Why would you want "equitable outcomes" and not fair,
| meritocratic outcomes (i.e. more productive people are
| rewarded more)?
|
| Communism has been tried many times, and failed exactly as
| often.
| kerkeslager wrote:
| Capitalism has been tried more times than communism and has
| failed to reward productive people more times.
|
| It's 2023. The absurd idea that, for example, the
| billionaires pushing the Metaverse or burning Twitter to
| the ground got there by being productive, is thoroughly
| disproven. Stop pushing this motivated ideology.
| satvikpendem wrote:
| Capitalism has lifted billions out of poverty. Even
| China, who is communist in name, only started
| experiencing high economic growth once Deng Xiao Ping
| started reforming the state to be more market oriented,
| ie capitalism-lite.
| alexvoda wrote:
| While communism does have it's flaws, i would argue it has
| in fact never been tried.
| llamaLord wrote:
| But don't worry guys... When it's ME given absolute power
| it will be different... Just trust me.
|
| Not even a single Gulag...
| kerkeslager wrote:
| What you're describing is authoritarianism, not
| communism. Authoritarian communists certainly exist, but
| there are plenty of anarcho-communists who directly
| oppose anyone having absolute power, including
| themselves.
| megalord wrote:
| Communism has never been tried? Could you explain a
| little bit more? I don't know if you are joking or
| lacking knowledge. Or maybe I lack some knowledge you
| know about
| kerkeslager wrote:
| I don't agree with the poster--I think communism _has_
| been tried, sometimes even successfully (i.e. kibbutzim).
|
| However, the examples of communism which capitalists like
| to point at as failures, such as Stalinism or Maoism,
| didn't ever actually distribute wealth, instead merely
| changing the concentration of wealth. This points to a
| failure to actually achieve communism, rather than a
| failure of communism to work.
|
| Unfortunately I don't think there are very good
| explanations of this out there. The best I can find is
| this[1] but that's pretty dense, assumes a lot of prior
| economic knowledge, and is (ironically) behind a paywall.
|
| [1] https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/08969205
| 0809085...
| lobf wrote:
| It's a "no true Scotsman" fallacy that communists trot
| out to defend their failed ideology.
| skulk wrote:
| When a measure becomes a target, it becomes useless as
| either. What is "productivity"? Does your definition
| accurately encapsulate all externalities? I'm going to tell
| you the answer: it doesn't. Stop using productivity as a
| proxy for that which is "good".
| ricktyler wrote:
| "Fair" is just an arbitrarily-applied constant in your
| sentence.
|
| Why is meritocratic more "fair" than equitable? Perhaps
| more precisely, why do you deem meritocratic to = fair?
| Someone could just as easily (and supportably) deem
| equitable to = fair.
|
| Hearts!
| tomp wrote:
| Because "equity" (communism) requires violence. Taking
| away from those who create more and giving to those who
| create less. Something that is non-consensual and
| requires violence is by definition unfair (unless you've
| a wicked moral compass).
| cyber_kinetist wrote:
| Communism (at least in an ideal Marxist form) has no
| relation to equity, it's more of a liberal concept than
| anything else.
|
| People use the term Communism (both upper-case and lower-
| case) in various ways nowadays, but Marx's original ideal
| form of society was "From each according to his ability,
| to each according to his needs" The ultimate goal is to
| create an affluent productive society that can provide
| all amenities for all people, so they can unleash their
| potentials as individuals without being enslaved by
| capitalists as wage workers just to survive. And
| socialism is only an intermediate step before realizing
| this ideal state, socialism wasn't intended to be ideal
| even for the leftists (In this sense _communism_ has
| never been tried anywhere yet).
| srackey wrote:
| Yes, and this will require violence to achieve (how else
| can you enforce the "from each" and "to each"?)
|
| Communism _has_ been tried. Again and again. The utopian
| endpoint it tires to get to is not possible. The
| consistent result is mass death and poverty.
| skulk wrote:
| The "this will require violence" argument makes no sense.
| If you live in the US, everything you have is the end
| result of some horrific violence. Inferring a need for
| violence to achieve some ideal is a completely useless
| analysis.
| The_Colonel wrote:
| OTOH systems not going as far as communism, but still
| with far more equitable outcomes than e.g. US system,
| have been tried as well and have been quite successful.
| okeuro49 wrote:
| > In this sense communism has never been tried anywhere
| yet
|
| From my knowledge of European history, this is not true.
|
| Marx also said that there should be a dictatorship of the
| proletariat, who should seize the means of production.
|
| The difficulty is, is that absolute power corrupts
| absolutely, to steal a phrase.
|
| The worker's union movement working inside a capitalist
| system has brought more benefits for workers, than
| communism, which proved to kill millions wherever it is
| attempted.
| flir wrote:
| "meritocracy" also requires violence. Unless what you
| really mean is "might makes right", in which case the
| violence is kinda baked in.
| tomp wrote:
| How so?
| [deleted]
| BaseballPhysics wrote:
| I dunno, in the real world, the kind of libertarian
| society you seem to be advocating for has descended into
| its own unique form of violence:
|
| https://newrepublic.com/article/159662/libertarian-walks-
| int...
| [deleted]
| atoav wrote:
| Given limited resources exponential growth will always hit
| saturation. It is time we structure out economic systems in a
| way that aknowledge this reality.
| bequanna wrote:
| > to providing equitable outcomes for all people and the
| planet
|
| The top 10% who hold essentially all the wealth in the world
| have very little interest in that goal.
| ssss11 wrote:
| Yep 100% agree. Unfortunately
| candiodari wrote:
| Problem is, if you're being fair, the 90% bottom that
| will actually have to do the work, also don't want to
| care for elderly.
|
| A decent fraction would need to become nurses, and
| frankly, with less pay/worse conditions than they
| currently get. A small fraction will need to study a
| _lot_ more so more treatments can be provided, which
| requires doctors and researchers. And we 'll all have to
| do with less (much less) because this will cost a lot
| even disregarding wages.
| dools wrote:
| You might be interested in the work of Steven Hail and
| Gabrielle Bond. There's an online course they run through
| Torrens University that covers a lot of this stuff:
|
| https://www.torrens.edu.au/courses/business/economics
| defrost wrote:
| _Small Is Beautiful: A Study of Economics As If People
| Mattered_ is a collection of essays
| published in 1973 by German-born British economist E. F.
| Schumacher. The title *Small Is Beautiful* came
| from a principle espoused by Schumacher's teacher Leopold
| Kohr (1909-1994) advancing small, appropriate technologies,
| policies, and polities as a superior alternative to the
| mainstream ethos of "bigger is better".
| Overlapping environmental, social, and economic forces such
| as the 1973 energy crisis and popularisation of the concept
| of globalisation helped bring Schumacher's *Small Is
| Beautiful* critiques of mainstream economics to a wider
| audience during the 1970s. In 1995 The Times
| Literary Supplement ranked *Small Is Beautiful* among the 100
| most influential books published since World War II.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Small_Is_Beautiful
| nine_k wrote:
| This seems somehow unrelated.
|
| It's not about scale, it's about balance. You can run a
| small an beautiful country with zero economy growth and
| zero decline, all in a perfect balance, and 70% of
| population younger than 65. Everything works out.
|
| But when 50% of the population is older than 60, the
| picture changes a lot; the percentage of economically
| productive population is much lower, and the need to care
| for people who can't sustain themselves any more grows.
| Take a look at how Japan fares today.
| ssss11 wrote:
| Technology: (1) getting off "free" platforms aka adtech. (2)
| Software quality aka actually providing good software that is
| intuitive to use and does what people need.
| abenga wrote:
| So what do we do with the billions who can't pay? They should
| stay offline until they can? I know I can pay now, but when I
| was starting out, I couldn't
| cwalv wrote:
| Maybe just give an option to pay/go ad-free. It may be
| difficult, but it seems like there has to be a revenue
| neutral way to do this.
| ssss11 wrote:
| The problem with free is the adtech surveillance system.
|
| "Can't pay" is a sliding scale - without going into a
| detailed discussion it's hard to say what a product is worth,
| but i get your point.
|
| There needs to be some cost to cover operations of the
| business.
| p1esk wrote:
| How to survive as a human race when AI takes over the world?
| gmuslera wrote:
| Climate and the reason that nothing significant have been done
| regarding that in 40+ years.
|
| Problems will not stop to appear while that is not solved. The
| whole system becomes fragile, and minor disturbances will become
| major ones.
| bequanna wrote:
| > The whole system becomes fragile, and minor disturbances will
| become major ones.
|
| Why would this be the likely outcome?
| jamilton wrote:
| Summary by NPR:
| https://www.npr.org/2023/01/09/1147805696/climate-change-
| mak...
|
| Report they're summarizing: https://www.ametsoc.org/index.cfm
| /ams/publications/bulletin-...
|
| It appears to be the case that heatwaves and extreme storms
| are becoming more likely.
| pabe wrote:
| Creating an open source graph of health symptoms, illnesses,
| medications etc. so that there can be statistical models / AIs
| that do a valuable pre-assessment to inform clients and support
| doctors. If we had something like this, maybe risk factors for
| critical immune reactions on COVID vaccination would've been
| known earlier and that could've prevented unnecessary deaths.
| gravypod wrote:
| Some things I'd love to work on if I could make it work.
|
| 1. Food: Current farming practices emit a lot of CO2, hurts local
| ecosystems (nitrogen runoff), and consumes a lot of
| water/fertilizer. Currently proven methods could fix many of
| these problems.
|
| 2. Housing: Bringing modern technology to the construction of
| homes/apartments could dramatically lower costs. Kit homes are an
| example where only focusing on the tech and not the zoning/social
| issues doesn't improve the issues. I think realistically we could
| build a lot of high efficient, safe (much safer than codes
| require), and comfortable housing and drive down rental prices
| substantially while turning a huge profit (if you can sort out
| zoning).
|
| 3. Programming: Working in a large monorepo is amazing. Many
| people who work at a big tech company which has one will tell you
| about the amazing stuff you can do in this environment. Open
| source does not have one and most developers only ever see the
| multi-repo approach to software development. Building a parallel
| SWE-tooling stack which was "the monorepo of $FAANG but open
| source" would allow OSS devs to collaborate and build really cool
| things.
|
| 4. Compute: Non-profit compute infra for common good. Right now
| everyone is focused on decentralized apps and it's possible these
| are just too complicated for end users (I certainly am confused
| but I don't know if I'm just too old). If there was a not-profit-
| focused compute infra which gave out free
| compute/bandwidth/storage to open source public commons software
| that might be a good thing.
| erik_seaberg wrote:
| Monorepos put us in the blast radius of a lot of premature
| commits we could have avoided. I'd rather have a git submodule
| UI that isn't meant for aliens to operate, and use known-good
| dependencies.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Climate change, environmental remediation, therapeutics solving
| for cancer and similar maladies.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Also biotech.
|
| https://youtu.be/9FppammO1zk
| peter-m80 wrote:
| Fake news and mass media control. And their effect destroying
| democracy
| iamjk wrote:
| Privacy, longevity, nutrition science, trust, deep space
| exploration.
| nosmokewhereiam wrote:
| Soil. It's more of a "how do we get along of people on board to
| take 5-20 years to rebuild what they have or are near".
|
| Soil scouts, with patches for an acre that sequestors x amount
| units of carbon, or another that rewards those that have y ppms
| of living microbes.
|
| If someone could recruit, deploy messaging, and enable long term
| action, at a minimum it'd be symbolic. In tandem it could be
| hopeful, and with success could be valuable.
|
| Part biology, part humint.
|
| See: JADAM and Korean natural farming.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| High interest rates
| balder1991 wrote:
| The animals and ecosystems wide scale extinction seems to be a
| major threat I think. It's something people don't seem to notice
| much as it isn't in the news constantly, but 60% of wild life
| disappearing in the last 70 years seems like a disaster snowball
| that is growing fast.
|
| I think this is the threat that will be largely ignored, and
| because it is purposely ignored it will keep growing in the
| background until it takes us all down as a storm of natural
| disasters.
| [deleted]
| slushh wrote:
| Could preserving animals be turned into a market?
|
| If companies can own the genetic code of the animals they
| protect, as long as those animals are alive, will the companies
| create the necessary structures to protect their animals?
| UncleEntity wrote:
| You know they'll turn the genetic code "ownership" into NFTs
| so some cryptobro can brag they own the Greater Borobudur
| Howling Monkey after they're long gone...
| rlupi wrote:
| The UN has identified 17 sustainable development goals
| (https://sdgs.un.org/goals) and the AI for good Global Summit
| https://aiforgood.itu.int/ (which was held last week) focused on
| exactly that.
|
| If you check the recordings, some sessions were directly focused
| on connecting problem experts, data access, computing resources
| and people with skills or idea or passion. The opportunities span
| from students or researchers, up to what will take innovative
| companies or bigtech to solve, or government and international
| organizations.
|
| It was also the place were a lot of discussions about AI
| regulation took place. The discussions and the decisions that
| will follow from that meeting will shape the world to come IMHO.
| willmeyers wrote:
| The SDGs are really the defining issues of this century that
| need to be solved. I think if a company truly wants to make the
| world a better place(tm) then they should start at looking at
| them.
| nojvek wrote:
| Neat. Although there seem a to be overlap in the goals.
|
| Do they have measurement in the goals over time?
| willmeyers wrote:
| I believe the World Bank keeps some metrics on tracking SDGs
| (sustainable development goals). Googling "world bank sdgs"
| yields results.
| slushh wrote:
| A website or app that turns exactly this question into action.
|
| This post will fade away in a day or two. However, there could be
| a place where the answers are condensed into targets to which all
| available information is added. Structures could form that
| provide education, information and resources which lead to
| answers and implementations.
| Teever wrote:
| In vitro gametogenesis (IVG) and artificial wombs.
| flir wrote:
| I can definitely see an authoritarian regime "solving"
| population decline with that one, so I kinda hope we never get
| there.
| eimrine wrote:
| A lot of a billionaires which:
|
| 1. Exist
|
| 2. Actively making us not noticing their existance by shitting us
| with some fake problems like gays, drugs, foreigners, terrorists,
| etc (different set of fake problems per country).
| camdenlock wrote:
| So having >= 1,000,000,000 USD is somehow bad?
|
| How about 999,999,999? Still bad?
|
| How about 900,000,000? No?
|
| Hm. How much is too much, and why?
| eimrine wrote:
| I appreciate your mathematical approach but what I consider
| bad is not having $1e9 or $9e8 but ability to pay less taxes
| per dollar than poorer folks. Bad thing is that kingpins of:
| mining, slavery and proprietary software are so rich while
| providing so little value to society/environment.
|
| Examples: mining materials from Earth is important, but the
| revenues should belong to all who live on the planet being
| mined. Slavery situation (I mean Nestle corporation and most
| of Cobalt production) is a pure shame. Proprietary software
| is a shame as well because it effectively converts users into
| digital slaves, effectively this is a branch of Mathematics
| which is forbidden (and obfuscated) to learn.
| camdenlock wrote:
| The only thing of value business owners produce is tax
| revenue?
| jamilton wrote:
| There's also the value of whatever labor they do! But
| that labor probably isn't worth 100x someone else's work.
| ywain wrote:
| By that line of reasoning, we may as well eliminate tax
| brackets entirely. Or any sort of arbitrary limit, really.
| What makes an 18 year old mature enough to vote, but not a 17
| year and 364 days old?
| [deleted]
| batshibstein wrote:
| You play your cards right, you could be in the three-comma
| club, too. But probably not. But you could be. Probably not.
| DoingIsLearning wrote:
| "The greatest trick the ultra-rich ever pulled was pitting poor
| people against each other instead of against them."
|
| https://v.redd.it/6wourzysxuma1/DASH_720.mp4
| Kon5ole wrote:
| In the western democratic world billionaires are an inevitable
| side-effect of having a high standard of living for the general
| population. If you create a company that employs a million
| people and manages to remain profitable you'll be a billionaire
| even if you don't want to. The only way for you to not be a
| billionaire is to give up control of your company to someone
| else who will then be the billionaire.
|
| We have yet to discover a system of government that both allows
| for a generally high standard of living yet at the same time
| prevents billionaires. Every variant that has been tried so far
| has inevitably led to total misery for the entire population.
|
| I think the solution is not to prevent billionaires, but to
| prevent their ability to affect politicians, being very strict
| about anti-trust and so on.
|
| By no means easy but I think preventing billionaires from even
| existing is a dystopian nightmare in any scenario.
| kfrzcode wrote:
| [flagged]
| mynonameaccount wrote:
| +1
| haizhung wrote:
| Your comment is very low on substance. Care to elaborate what
| kind of problems billionaires will solve, that are otherwise
| unsolvable?
|
| The number of billionaire is growing and growing, and so are
| the fundamental problems that might be leading the world to
| collapse. How many more billionaires would you reckon do we
| need?
| eimrine wrote:
| Perhaps my nayivety lies in the fact that I put this problem
| in the topic of the problems of the next decade, when in fact
| it seems to be the topic of the next century, where their
| competitor will be AI. But this can be solved very quickly if
| at least one country establishes a tax formula whereby the
| richer a person is, the more taxes will be paid on every
| dollar earned, without any exceptions for the richest.
| Ukraine might be that country if it ends its war not very
| destroyed.
|
| A definition of "problem" bond to some actor. Here is the
| definition from Google with my notices: _a matter or
| situation regarded as unwelcome (for whom?) or harmful (for
| whom?) and needing (for whom?) to be dealt with and
| overcome._
|
| So, what kind of society/environment problems are they
| solving right now? Except of Bill Gates and pre-Twitter
| version of Elon Musk.
| JohnFen wrote:
| It seems doubtful. Extremely wealthy people have a very poor
| track record for solving societal problems, and a very good
| track record of perpetuating problems that lead to them
| increasing their power.
| kabr wrote:
| Plastic pollution
| pieter_mj wrote:
| Storing excess renewable energy, which means solving the hydrogen
| problem.
|
| Emphasizing metabolic (mitochondrial) holistic health approaches
| in medicine.
| slavapestov wrote:
| The Riemann hypothesis.
| whobre wrote:
| As someone who grew up in the 1980s, I find very amusing how no
| one seems to be worried about the nuclear war. Even though NATO
| is de facto in a war against Russia and could face China as well
| soon.
| nojvek wrote:
| Grand problems for any decade until there are figured out.
|
| - General artificial intelligence - being able to effectively
| model how the world works, and search for solutions in that
| model.
|
| - Energy - nuclear fusion, cheap artificial photosynthesis, cheap
| solar such that we can have solar on almost every surface facing
| the sun.
|
| - Molecular assembly - figure out how to custom program DNA from
| scratch to build what we need. Imagine building more efficient
| trees where it captures CO2 and sunlight into gasoline, or strong
| timber directly.
|
| Each of these can go quite wrong if not developed with safety in
| mind.
|
| I call it the Mind (intelligence), Body (molecular assembly),
| Energy (putting energy to work) problems.
| thelastgallon wrote:
| Renewable power production is wasted due to curtailment.[1] All
| this free power is being wasted, which could be used to charge
| cars. The US has 2 billion parking lots, 290 million cars and
| cars are idle 23+ hours every day. All we need is a cable from
| nearest building to parking lot to charge electric cars. The
| technology exists.
|
| This is a win-win opportunity, accelerate renewables and wean off
| of fossil fuels. I'm working with middle/high school kids on
| improving charging: HOA managed parks (a LOT of them), parks,
| schools, utility poles, apartment garages, all new construction
| ready for EVs (residential, retail and commercial).
|
| curtailment is the deliberate reduction in output below what
| could have been produced in order to balance energy supply:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curtailment_(electricity)
| cratermoon wrote:
| Water and water rights.
| t312227 wrote:
| imho. with the perspective of 2023, there are only 2 major
| problems;
|
| * (real) war
|
| eg. "large" ones between superpowers ... not decimating goat-
| herders equipped with not much more than ak47 & towels around
| their heads somewhere in the lesser developed areas of the
| planet.
|
| * climate-change
|
| eg. taming the resource-hunger of capitalism.
| PraetorianGourd wrote:
| "Towels around their heads" is derogatory and offensive
| phrasing. Please refrain from that language.
| revskill wrote:
| Javascript of course.
| flir wrote:
| I thought there was nothing left to port it to?
| mikewarot wrote:
| Unpopular opinion: One of the biggest challenges facing humanity
| in the next 2 decades is avoiding a catastrophic "Great
| Simplification" as we run out of oil. If this were allowed to
| happen, we'd suddenly be unable to practice industrial scale
| agriculture, and I'd estimate 90% of humanity would starve to
| death.
|
| The US produces large amounts of oil via fracking, which requires
| more resources to drill and produce than previous methods. At the
| same time, the wells tend to decline at 40% per year. These wells
| are making up a larger percentage of our fossil fuel production
| as time goes by. At some point the energy and resources required
| to drill a well will match the possible production, and new wells
| won't make sense, leading to collapse.
|
| Without fossil fuels for transportation, and especially as
| chemical feedstock to creating fertilizers, food shortages would
| quickly appear world-wide.
|
| We need to transition away from fossil fuels to avoid this fate.
| In doing so, we'll also help reduce, and perhaps eliminate the
| addition of greenhouse gases to the atmosphere, which is a far
| more immediate concern in the minds of many.
| dools wrote:
| Fundamentally we have only 1 problem worth solving: how to
| support 11bn people sustainably and equitably by 2050 (that's
| when the population peaks and levels out).
|
| you can do a Wardley map that shows the needs of those people,
| then you can move down the chain of needs, until you find
| something you're apt to solve.
|
| Personally I'm working on reducing eWaste by providing a global
| solution to carrying multiple mobile phones as many people do
| this for work.
| poisonborz wrote:
| It reads like this was both asked and answered by AIs.
| TheAceOfHearts wrote:
| The biggest problem domain worth pursuing is figuring out fusion.
| If we can unlock what is effectively limitless power a lot of
| problems become far more tractable. Everything else is a
| distraction. We need cheaper and more available power.
|
| Every physicist and engineer in the world should probably try
| dedicating at least one or two month of their life to figuring
| out fusion.
|
| If humanity could pay a trillion dollars to instantly unlock
| fusion it would still be considered a bargain. And yet we don't
| treat research into that field as something with such a
| potentially massive impact.
| jacknews wrote:
| It's never going to be useful.
|
| D-T fusion is not as clean as is touted, and the economics just
| aren't ever going to make it viable compared to ever-cheaper
| solar, wind, batteries/energy storage, etc.
|
| Better fission designs OTOH are worth pursuing, and also deep
| geothermal, and maybe one or two of the CCS options though they
| seem a bit greenwashy.
| sdwr wrote:
| 15 years ago, solar and wind looked stupid expensive compared
| to fossil fuels.
| t312227 wrote:
| yeah ... fusion - the technology, which is always just 20 years
| away(tm) from commercial application ... since the early
| 1980ties / 40+ years :/
| supportengineer wrote:
| If we truly are living inside of a simulation, it makes sense
| that there would be a lootbox
| mynonameaccount wrote:
| "We need cheaper and more available power."
|
| Based on your requirements, this is already solved. Pull more
| oil out of the ground. Burn more trees.
|
| AND, throwing money at a problem will definitely solve fusion.
|
| Give people cheap energy and people will use it up. Just look
| at cryptomining. Then you are back to needing more energy.
| People will do just fine with expensive energy. They will
| adapt.
| erik_seaberg wrote:
| Every existential problem is downstream from having
| dramatically more energy--carbon capture, desalination, food
| beyond remaining arable land and healthy soil.
| fullstackchris wrote:
| learned about the Wendelstein X-7 this weekend (and
| stellarators in general) and they've accomplished some pretty
| impressive acheivements... i think there are many breakthroughs
| and things to be done in this space
| palata wrote:
| We are living a mass extinction right now (that's not a
| prediction for a future risk, that's a fact that we can observe
| now). The reason of this mass extinction is cheap, abundant
| energy: habitat loss comes from there.
|
| Fusion would be great to finish making life on Earth look like
| surviving on Mars. Is that what you want?
|
| What we need (and will most likely face anyway) is to do less
| with less. Organise society to live the forced degrowth that is
| coming, and survive the climate changes that we started and
| cannot possibly change anymore.
| damascus wrote:
| I'm not sure I follow. The mass extinction event is mostly
| due to habitat destruction AFAIK right? The reason for that
| is seeking new resources aka energy. You don't need to cut
| down the rainforest to plant low yield crops if you can more
| profitably grow higher yield crops vertically with grow lamps
| and powered watering systems.. no? 'Cheap energy' is very
| different from 'basically free energy' in terms of what you
| can do.
| palata wrote:
| I get what you are saying, but... yeah I guess I need to
| elaborate on why I believe fusion is not a solution (and
| get more downvotes from techno-solutionists, yay \o/).
|
| First, let me say that I usually start by mentioning the
| mass extinction, because technical people (myself included)
| have a tendency to believe that "the problem is CO2
| emissions, and we can find new technology to reduce that".
| So I find it important to note that we humans are _already_
| responsible for the loss of essentially 2 /3 of trees, 2/3
| of animals and 2/3 of insects on Earth, and this is _before
| the consequences of climate change_. It is easy to say "if
| we had more energy, we would grow crop vertically and leave
| biodiversity alone", but sadly I don't think it works like
| this. Crops are not the only factor (population raises
| because of cheap energy, so we transform more wild spaces,
| also for tourism, and I am not even talking about hunting
| and industrial fishing, etc). But even for crops, we
| already know a simple way to use them more efficiently: eat
| crops, not meat. But we don't do that, because with cheap
| energy (and ignoring the fact that we are killing the
| planet) we don't need to. If you think about it, we used to
| eat the crops (and not the meat) in the past, when we did
| not have access to cheap energy :-). Why would we suddenly
| avoid rebound effects with fusion, when history shows that
| it has never happened for any technology before?
|
| Then, if we put the biodiversity problem aside, there is
| the energy problem. Modern society _fundamentally_ relies
| on fossil energy, which is limited _by definition_ (this is
| very important to realize!). We passed the production peak
| for conventional oil in ~2008 (Europe has been feeling it
| since then), the global peak is predicted to be around now
| (I remember the predictions for the peak of conventional
| oil from when I was studying in 2004, and retrospectively
| they were very accurate, so I could imagine that the new
| ones may be reasonable as well), and for natural gas it may
| be in the next decade. So fossil energy will become a
| problem in the next few decades. Building a nuclear plant
| _today, with technology we know_ (i.e. fission) takes
| what... 15 years? Fusion is most likely already too late
| for the party (and anyway it is not clear to me that it
| fundamentally solves the problem better than fission,
| except that people are afraid of fission for some reason).
| But nuclear plants make electricity, and that 's only part
| of our society. Planes don't fly with electricity, plastic
| is not made of electricity, and we can't store electricity
| in big jars like we do with oil. So we are facing an energy
| problem, and we don't know technology today that could
| remotely solve it (I know, it's hard to accept for
| engineers, but please try to seriously think about it and
| don't stop at "many VCs put a ton of money on startups that
| try to find solutions, it will work out in the end").
|
| Finally, and on top of all that, climate change is coming
| (again in Europe we have been feeling it strongly every
| summer in the last few years, and it won't go back to
| "normal" ever again). From what we can observe, it seems
| like the IPCC predictions are systematically optimistic; in
| other words, it seems like climate change is going faster
| than predicted. So it's not that we can count on 60-80
| years to solve the energy problem anymore: now it seems
| like we may be playing the "survivability" (if that is a
| word in English? :-)) on many places on Earth in the next
| 10-20 years (maybe less). As a reminder, 10-20 years is the
| time we need to build a nuclear plant. If we continue in
| the next two decades the way we have in the last two
| decades (which we are clearly doing, if not worse), it is
| very likely that we will have screwed up many places on
| Earth for the next centuries. That means mass immigration,
| famines, wars, general world instability... not very good
| conditions to develop new non-military tech to solve a
| problem we haven't solved in decades of peace (globally).
|
| Those are all problems with huge inertia (i.e. once you
| realize it is very bad, then there is no coming back), each
| with major consequences if they were taken individually,
| but they all happen together. Essentially for the same
| reason: our society based on abundant energy. So the
| solution is not to "make a small step in one of those
| problems with a major technological change (like fusion)",
| because (and ignoring rebound effects on new technologies)
| even if we solve one of them, the other two problems will
| screw us big time.
|
| All that _not to say that we are screwed in any case_ :
| maybe it's too late already (that's possible), but maybe
| not. But in case it is not, the highest chances of
| survivals IMO come from degrowth. Degrowth is a huge
| technological challenge. It's harder than throwing Python
| scripts using ChatGPT in piles of docker containers running
| on hundreds of machines on the cloud, but it is not less
| challenging: how do we do less with less, while keeping our
| society from collapsing?
| leptoniscool wrote:
| Is fusion really that great? Decades of research and billions
| of dollars later it's still not commercially feasible.
|
| Whereas solar power is cheaper than coal now. Also on the
| horizon is thorium reactors.
| azan_ wrote:
| The funding is really not that great, we are on the funding
| level described as "fusion never"
| (https://benjaminreinhardt.com/fusion-never/)
| PartiallyTyped wrote:
| Fusion really is that great, but we could also use more
| efficient processes that recycle the byproducts of fusion.
| ntfAX wrote:
| [dead]
| Toast_ wrote:
| Reducing propaganda and breaking-up banking.
| ferociouskite56 wrote:
| Xanax/benzos are the most effective psych medicine, deserve to be
| over the counter, but can be fatally overdosed. All mental drugs
| and others such as chemotherapy need to be precisely targeted at
| limited part of an organ.
|
| 2030 4 high-NA EUV fabs will have 1.4 nano RiscV chips; rollable
| microLED; solid state battery. That's still not paper thin all
| day phones.
|
| 1 passenger, only autopilot drones should transport snakebite
| victims in dangerous countries.
| leksak wrote:
| In my experience benzos are effective in the same sense alcohol
| can be. They don't really solve anything, not to mention are
| highly addicting.
|
| I'm sincerely doubtful that being able to target their impact
| more tomorrow the brain alone makes a reasonable difference.
|
| Getting at the mental health crisis might take a multipronged
| approach but I'm not sure this is an essential prong but I'm
| open to arguments to the contrary.
| jacknews wrote:
| They also have a debilitating effect on IQ and coherence
| (just temporary I believe), which is maybe in evidence here.
| pg_bot wrote:
| There's absolutely no reason for benzos to be over the counter.
| They're extremely addictive, can have really bad side effects
| and contraindications, and can be fatal during withdrawal. You
| should be under the supervision of a physician if you're taking
| them.
| samuellevy wrote:
| How big of a problem are "snake bite victims"? I live in
| Australia, one of those countries that people would class as
| "dangerous" with regards to snakes, and... There's only been
| about 40 deaths in the past 20 years...
|
| It's just a really strange thing to ping as a "big problem to
| solve", and such a bizarrely expensive solution to the problem,
| too. I think that a much better solution would be improving
| development and access to antivenin
| ferociouskite56 wrote:
| "130,000 deaths and over 300,000 paralyzing injuries and
| amputations last year." https://www.dw.com/en/snakebites-
| kill-at-least-80000-people-...
|
| Dangerous in terms of crime rate, false arrests that human
| pilots won't accept hazard pay for. Rural people have either
| no clinic or poorly trained nurse with limited supplies.
| Urgently going to nearest hospital, refrigerated pharmacy.
| Also other medical emergencies such as heart attack or moving
| into a city lacking roads.
|
| I've been prescribed Xanax since 2004 and at worst used low
| dose 3 times a day when around negative strangers, the rest
| of the time none. Certainly alcohol's worse.
| defrost wrote:
| The 130K per annum figure is a global death count.
|
| This is serious, other causes of death more so, e.g:
| The Global status report on road safety 2018, launched by
| WHO in December 2018, highlights that the number of annual
| road traffic deaths has reached 1.35 million. Road traffic
| injuries are now the leading killer of people aged 5-29
| years.
|
| That's 10 motor vehicle deaths for every snake bite death.
|
| It's certainly possible for both to be addressed and it's
| certain there are parts of the world with more snake caused
| deaths than road fatalities.
| fb03 wrote:
| You must be joking. Xanax/Benzos are highly addictive and all
| they do is shove whatever problem you have for "the next day",
| just like alcohol. They don't treat shit.
| atmosx wrote:
| No.
|
| These are harmful drugs if not taken with care. In the long run
| they can very easily have the opposite effect, like cause or
| accelerate depression.
| dndn1 wrote:
| Climate change is a problem.
|
| Bret Victor did a good subdivision into sub-problems for a
| technologist here - which probably suits this audience:
|
| http://worrydream.com/ClimateChange
| 1attice wrote:
| - Figuring out how to build resilient, long-lasting kinship
| structures capable of surviving reduced state and market
| capacity. This means comms platforms that are encrypted, easy to
| set up and use, decentralized, and safe.
|
| - Novel food sources (we just had the four hottest days on
| record, in succession)
|
| - Adversarial health care (e.g. getting an abortion in a
| dominionist state)
| samantp wrote:
| Universal basic services. Food, clothing, shelter, education,
| safety, healthcare.
| mikewarot wrote:
| Unpopular opinion: Secure general purpose computing isn't
| available for the masses. In fact, most people here on HN don't
| have access to it either. Our current crop of widely used
| operating systems all share the same flaw, the ambient authority
| granted to any program that is run to access anything that the
| user account is permitted to access.
|
| This causes a host of problems, and almost nobody is aware of
| them, or incorrectly assigns them to other causes. This results
| in a patchwork of "solutions" like virus scanners, signatures on
| executables, and a need for users to be exceedingly cautious
| about what they do with their computers. Because of this need for
| caution, users don't feel free to experiment with novel programs
| or web sites, lest their computer be infected with malware, etc.
|
| Imagine your house without circuit breakers, or fuses. Imagine
| that there were no widespread use of them. The first shorted cord
| could potentially take down the power grid, and plunge millions
| into darkness. We can generally agree that circuit protection is
| a good idea.
|
| When you run a program, you could explicitly specify the
| resources it is to have access to, instead of giving access to
| all of your files and folders. In fact, it doesn't even have to
| work differently in many cases, just replace the calls to file
| selection dialogs with equivalent calls to "power boxes" which
| return file access capabilities for the calling program. This
| allows the user to quickly and easily work in the manner to which
| they are accustomed, while simultaneously preventing malicious or
| just buggy code from accessing anything outside of the wishes of
| the user, no matter how evil the code is.
|
| Spreading awareness of such systems, incorporating capability
| based security, is a worthy pursuit over the next decade.
| s1gsegv wrote:
| Yes, there's much more work to be done here in the open source
| community, and I think it might have to be done there due to
| lack of aligned incentives otherwise.
|
| For instance, on platforms such as Android that are meant to be
| secure in this way, I can't block an app from accessing the
| internet anytime it wants. Of course, the reason for that is
| that blocking internet access would also allow blocking ads,
| which Google has a negative incentive for.
|
| Large corporations always take advantage of the sandboxing for
| anti-user features as well. In many apps I can download videos
| on desktop whether they want me to or not using inspect element
| etc, but this is often tricky or impossible on Android. Again,
| corporate incentives are aligned against the user.
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