Ask HN: What should we fund at YC Research?
So far we've supported OpenAI and we will soon start the basic income project. We have a few ideas about what to do next, but we'd love to hear from the community about what we should be considering. Thanks!
544 comments
[ 3.6 ms ] story [ 297 ms ] threadIn the interest of reducing noise, are moonshots what you are looking for, or is it anything-goes?
A rigorous survey of what the current possible carbon sequestration tech and methods would be really helpful. Another organization might already have this survey done, but I haven't seen anything online (in my admittedly trivial search efforts).
On this topic it would be great if someone could take my idea for solving GHG emissions via some simple financial engineering and flesh out the concept [1]. Glory awaits :)
1. https://www.tillett.info/2015/12/13/preventing-global-climat...
The CDC is forbidden from conducting research on this, allegedly, so it seems like a ripe opportunity for a private option.
For example, how do social networks, targeted advertising, etc. impact social dynamics and sense of self? Are these impacts positive or negative, and could technology improve them?
Frankly, and somewhat sadly I might add, I think even if you somehow proved - proved - to a nation's voting population that they would be better off economically (in aggregate) by opening their borders, the perceived cultural and political effects of such a policy would prevent it from ever passing into law through any democratic process. Culture and politics are intertwined in a feedback loop, and it will take many more generations to have grown up in the globalised, internet and cheap-air-travel connected world, where almost every person interacts with, makes friends with, works and does business with people all over the world, for this default to finally go away - only when it does can we ever hope for an open borders policy to even be a remote possibility politically.
With that said, I think aiming directly for an open borders policy might be missing the wood for the trees slightly. Might I instead suggest that we pile research resources and efforts into things like better remote working technology, practices and protocol that might eliminate many of the problems (certainly not all - and mostly economic - but many) that an open border policy should aim to solve in the first place?
In my view the world would be a much better place if we did simply have an open-borders policy throughout much of it, but we can get a very long way towards that goal by allowing people to work from anywhere, for anyone, in a completely effective manner. Not only will this actually solve some of the problems that you talk about a lot more quickly and easily, it should have the effect of flattening out the global distribution of wealth somewhat, such that open borders actually do become more palatable politically, simply because the figurative pressure on the borders of the wealthiest nations would be reduced significantly.
In other words, open borders is not something that can ever happen all at once as a result of a policy change. No matter how much research we do into those policies, they just won't succeed politically as a step change. Rather, it's a positive feedback loop of gradual cultural and political change that has to start somewhere. In many ways of course it's already begun, because of the internet, and I believe the next stage to chase is better, really effective, remote working. I think that's where research effort towards the solving the problems you talk about would be most effectively invested.
Open borders is the classic pre-cursor to a worldwide Tragedy of the Commons. Currently, we have problems keeping public parks clean. Imagine if all of the earth was a shared commons, and no group of people could restrict access to any plot of land. It would be chaos. I can think of no better way to destroy the world than open borders.
Look into tragedy of the commons, and see why this idea will never be feasible due to human nature.
1)Can racial balance in business, education, military be achieved without policies that promote Affirmative Action?
2)Placement by age vs. placement by academic ability
3)Are children smarter (or more socialized) because of the Internet?
4)How has United States censorship changed over the decades?
5)How did gunpowder change warfare?
6)What is “normal,” and to what extent is psychology reliant on culture to define this?
No, because Affirmative Action is simply a term of art (originating in a set of executive orders mandating such action) positive action taken with the aim of achieving such balance. If you take active steps targeting that balance you are by definition engaging in affirmative action.
An open source driver for any particular piece of hardware is only useful for that exact piece of hardware, and maybe a few generations after it. But it's usefulness dies with the usage of the hardware. Contrast with basic research, which stays around forever and can be meaningfully built on for much longer.
Research is more about underlying concepts than about actually building concrete implementations (be they software or whatnot) (though that may be part of the research process - but only as the means to an end).
There are many areas that third-world citizen can tap into and work remotely: Programming, Community Management, Writing, Design, Translation...
Most of third-world workers do cheap work (less than $10/hour), with unfavourable terms and unstable revenue. This kill the potential for growth and savings.
I think the challenge can be summarized to the following point:
- Helping them get opportunities to start.
- Embracing a growth and continued learning mindset.
- Helping them grow their skills.
- Helping them open doors for more opportunities.
- Helping them setup simple and safe structures to save, invest and grow their capital.
I think preventive care in general is a great area to dive into, and this seems like a good place to start.
If I ever have enough money to dabble in my own research, it'll be there. How great would it be to be able to distribute nutritional advice to the world that was actually true, rather than whatever fad diets are being dreamt up or common-sense "wisdom" is being passed down.
I personally think this has the potential to be a moonshot - if an unbiased entity (with no ties to entrenched interests) would spend money on research.
- As another poster mentioned, how do we suck the carbon from 150 years of burning fossil fuels out of our atmosphere?
- Cognitive enhancement
- Re-wilding - rebuilding devastated ecosystems in the Anthropocene with engineered biodiversity
https://edge.org/response-detail/26701
http://www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/41850/...
We still don't know what long-term exposure to highly condensed, highly customized information does to our brains and social systems as a whole.
For example, there are signs that social network users are actually unhappy - in other words - are experiencing all kinds of mental health issues.
It is well known that programmers experience "burn outs", which, from personal experience, is a terrible and debilitating state sometimes even leading to suicide.
There is addiction to gaming, chat, porn, social networks.
Mobile phones have exposed everyone to the infinite stream of information/communication and I think this will lead to many more mental health issues.
I think we are not yet prepared for the kind of impact that current and future tech will have on our minds, so this would be a worthy field to invest in now.
If YC or anyone else wants to fund me, I'd be fine with that.
The idea of people spending 10+ hours in VR per week scares me, but it's probably pretty similar to video game and smartphone usage. Maybe that would be a good place to start research.
A little over a month ago I started working on forming new habits, severely limiting use of network tools. I now only check email/sms/etc twice per day. At 6pm I put all technology away. I'm asleep by 9:30pm, awake at 5:30am, and try not to look at any network tools again until 10am. I'm considerably happier and more productive now. It's a tough habit to maintain and I'm pretty sure a few of my friends think I'm nuts.
A couple good, related reads: http://www.amazon.com/Deep-Work-Focused-Success-Distracted/d... http://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/the-useless-agony...
http://spectrum.ieee.org/semiconductors/design/the-death-of-...
Until cellphones, most of the world didn't have reliable communications, because nobody could build the necessary infrastructure. Wireless changed that. We need the equivalent breakthrough for water treatment.
Dean Kamen is doing interesting stuff in this area (a stirling-engine based system for water distillation [1]), but his approach is still limited by costs and distribution.
Solving this problem would literally change the world, and unlike many of the suggestions here, it's an area where there's hope that a small research team could make a dent (for example, Kamen wanted to raise $1M for Slingshot.)
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slingshot_(water_vapor_distill...
Every advanced society faces an aging population. This population will put massive strains on healthcare expenses. It could also strain the economy as the elder population collects public sector pensions and slowly depletes its savings (i.e. retirement funds). The latter effect could be mitigated by automation.
Paradoxically our success in treating diseases that kill us now will merely make us victims of potentially more terrible diseases in the future. Look at the experiences of centenarians in the last decade:
http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/databriefs/db233.htm
Alzheimer's will become increasingly common as will cognitive decline in general. What happens to all those people who don't die of cancer or heart disease? They will often succumb to slower acting chronic diseases involving long-term states of suffering and mental anguish.
The way out of this mess is to treat aging itself, not just the diseases that currently kill us. SENS targets the underlying mechanisms of aging.
Research into negligible senescence can also lay the foundation for potentially profitable therapeutics. Unlike the disease-centric model the total addressable market is nearly everyone.
Derek Lowe (who knows drug development better than any of us) made a very interesting comment recently on the cancer research "moonshot" funding presented in the State of the Union speech:
""" Trying to cure cancer in this way would be like trying to go to the moon without really knowing how rocket engines actually work, without being quite sure if Newton’s laws of motion would hold up, and with some real uncertainty in the position of the moon. """
The disparity between what we know today, and what we would have to know to "cure" cancer, is quite unfathomable to us computer hackers.
Since those other researchers are definitely advocating progress towards the use of telomerase therapies in humans, and it is inarguably the case that telomerase gene therapy extends life modestly in mice, probably by stimulating stem cell activity, your point still seems incoherent. See for example this position piece by Maria Blasco: http://dx.doi.org/10.12688/f1000research.7020.1
From my position telomere length looks a lot a measure of aging rather than a cause, and telomerase therapies are something I'd consider risky at this point in humans - our telomere dynamics and telomerase setup is very different from that of mice, and I don't think it is safe to assume that slowing of aging and induced regeneration in mice without cancer risk is necessarily going to happen in humans. You don't know until you try, of course, and there is a contingent that will be trying. Note that at least one human has already disagreed with that assessment and had telomerase gene therapy, the CEO of BioViva.
From the SENS perspective, telomere length is something that will take care of itself if you create rejuvenation by repairing the causes of aging. Average telomere length in tissues is a product of stem cell activity and cell turnover rate, and aging diminishes the former, and that is a reaction to rising levels of damage. Get rid of the damage and stem cells should get back to work because the signaling environment will revert back to how it is in youth.
Sure, so they need to just keep in mind that the goal is not to lengthen (or protect) telomeres for their own sake. But telomeres could at least help serve as a metric or proxy for therapies that do slow or arrest aging overall.
Meanwhile, Metformin is crazy cheap.
I think this is the next big thing after basic income (especially when the question of how to pay for basic income comes up).
The land value tax is universally seen by economists as the most fair tax, yet for whatever reason we continue to ignore it in favor of income, sales, and property taxes - all of which distort markets (unlike the land value tax).
The lack of research and real life case studies on this topic is a huge obstacle to this entering the mainstream.