Ask HN: What would you do with your life if you solved the money problem?
Related questions have been asked on YC, but I don't think this one has, and I'm quite curious to find out what people will say.
Here are some things I might do:
1) create a series of educational games to teach math and science, based on the idea that math is actually additively fun to learn if you do it right ( example: sudoku).
2) Do another startup ( not sure exactly what the field would be, probably something software or web related )
3) Do research work in robotics, computer vision or AI.
4) Start a political party based on the idea that instead of changing specific politicians we need to alter the constitution to change the incentives by which our leaders make decisions.
5) Write books about history and/or economics
6) Start a city
How about you?
91 comments
[ 3.7 ms ] story [ 115 ms ] threadIf I, say, "solved the money problem" in the sense that Paul usually uses the term, i.e. had a few million piled up, I'd probably get a small team together to rethink the way that music composition on computers is done. Start with a lot of research and interviews about how composers actually build up a piece and just build the best system for expressing musical ideas. I'd like to get around to that someday. It'd be cool being able to ignore the fact that it's a small, poor customer base. ;-)
The fact that computer interfaces are still designed to mimic tape recorders or wire cabling is a embarrassing.
;)
I dunno. I think I'd like it, though.
I'd still work on things, but I feel like the pressure would be released, so I could work on indie adventure games and not have a nagging conscience telling me to do something that will make money. I do want to write my novel. And create a board game. And a stop-motion animated film. And take up painting and drawing. And travel a lot.
Wow. In the meantime, I'll pack up here at the cube and head home. Then I'll come back Monday and do it again. Yayyyyy.
- knowing our neighbors
- usable mass transit
- energy efficiency
- interaction with government
It's the sort of area that I think has a lot of opportunity in it, but that opportunity isn't clearly something that could make you rich. So as a general area of focus, I think it'd be well worth a hacker's attention.
P.S. If you think cities, architecture, and the community shaped by those things are interesting, you should definitely read "A Pattern Language" by Christopher Alexander et al. It illuminates a lot of what goes on in cities and buildings in a very concise way, and will probably give you ideas to improve your home and environment.
Maybe the problem is history. Maybe, if we were given the chance to start over and plan a brand new city from the ground up, we could eliminate a lot of unnecessary elements that currently occupy a lot of our time and energy.
Would it be possible -- with our current technology -- to build a giant, self-sustaining field of photovoltaic modules? Thousands of automated machines and robots could maintain and repair this system. Massive amounts of free power could effectively fuel a developing city.
And if our basic needs were taken care of, we could each start to focus on what matters to us, instead of what merely ensures our survival. I think it's about time for us humans, collectively, to move past worrying about having enough money for food and a place to live.
Even with car companies, I think I read somewhere that Toyota uses much less robotics than GM, and that's a reason why Toyota is more successful. GM bought to much into the robotics, over invested, and it ended up costing more and hurting quality. As for solar, it's still very expensive in terms of resources to build panels.
I share the opinion that a lot of things that should be automated are not. For instance - fast food. If fast food places are going to exist, I do not think that they should be part of what some people have to do to keep a roof over their (and their kids) heads, and food in their stomachs. They are repetitive, soul-sucking jobs that don't require a human.
The reasons for why our society is how it is are complex. I'd say that the reasons that we still have people working fast food jobs for a living are mainly the economic and power structures that we have in place right now.
I mean, on the idealistic side of things, if everyone suddenly realized just how silly our organizational / economics / power structures are, and what we can currently accomplish with technology - and what we'd be able to accomplish if we were devoting most of our resources to making the world a better place for humans (and hopefully all its other residents) and not on economic pissing matches.
We could colonize space - probably within my lifetime - if we wanted to, etc.
My brother in law is an executive in fast food: it's amazing how much they try to reduce the in-store labor. I should really talk to him about business opportunities in that field.
Right, that would be part of what I view as a larger problem with society (at least in the US) at the moment. People should no longer have to generate money for food and roofs, or if they do, they should not have to resort to doing repetitive, boring, brainless work all the time.
Unfortunately, there is no simple solution to this, and most feasible solutions require an overhaul of most of our economic structures, not to mention the education system, and a whole bunch of other stuff.
Edit: I somehow missed the "still cheaper than full automation" part. I can see that - but certainly having one or two humans at the resturant, with almost full automation would be cheaper?
If you believe this, why don't you raise some money and start a company to out compete traditional restaurants? If it's really so easy to automate as you think it is, you'll be raking in the dough.
EDIT: Clarification.
Really expanding on this stuff takes a lot of writing, I'm not quite up for it yet (but I'm working on it).
Question. Why did we (human beings) spend so many resources and so much effort developing the LHC when it seems obvious that a comparable amount of effort and resources could have dramatically improved our way of life?
I mean, if people didn't have to work for a living, wouldn't we see like a ten-fold increase in people pursuing the arts and sciences?
Btw, I've thought the same thing about fast food chains for a while.
One of my dreams is to create a completely automated restaurant. Touchscreen menus embedded into each table. Food is prepared in the basement and rises up through the center of each table. The only thing actual humans would have to is feed the machines unprepared food :)
It's slogan could be:
Reliably tasty food
or
The same exact food made my the same machines every day
That's a complicated question, the stuff of long-winded conversation. I'd say that it boils down to (very overgeneralized here) we didn't, a certain set of people did - who happened to be able to get the funding needed to undertake a pretty amazing thing.
Sometimes I think I just read too much Asimov as a kid, I think that there's a pretty big under-use of technology for the purposes of making everyone's life better. When I think about the reasons for that, my head starts to boggle after a while. I do think that another large reason for the state of things right now is that our ability to do really, really awesome things for humankind has only recently become very apparent.
If you ever open your resturant, I'd recommend using both slogans. "The exact food made by the same machines every day" in fine-print, or something.
For an old school baby step towards this idea, see this thread: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=317028 where people are wondering why the hell I thought to submit the article. :)
I find that flaw with myself: come up with reasons why I'm not doing what I really want to be doing. I'm trying to overcome the friction of day dreaming and start actually doing something.
These thought exercises are cute, but in the end, counter-productive.
You may need a degree to address a particular social issue, like not being able to be promoted in a particular organization, but presumably you would not have that need if you "solved the money problem".
What if you picked a particular topic and set out to self-study it, but instead of the usual "buy a text book, read one chapter, and never follow up" fail method, you found a small group of similarly interested people who agreed to meet regularly to discuss and provide mutual encouragement, pursued it that way ?
Well, thought about that. Unfortunately, where I live it's not easy to find like-minded people who are willing to meet regularly and provide mutual encouragement. Moreover, one thing that I really miss about school is the social life. I almost don't have any friends I can count on. I mean I've friends but number is relatively lower than someone who went to school for four years. Besides, for some reason I really miss the energy and atmosphere of a school. But your point is taken, and for most of my life I've self-studied and it worked well.
I would suspect it is easier to find a group of like-minded people than you think. If you do this right, you will start with some subject and 5 or 6 interested people, maybe half of whom make it to the weekly meeting in a coffee shop or somewhere. You will pick up a few more interested people who happen to listen in to the group's discussions. Keep careful track of eveyone's emails, and at some point pick a new subject and send an email around to everyone, and see who shows up. This is can be done even in small, out of the way, non-college towns.
It's kind of like running a "salon" in ancient Greece or 1700s Paris, or a coffee shop in 1600s/1700s London. Someone has to keep track of the social network, so that people who drift out of the meeting group are eventually brought back in when a more interesting topic comes up.
You might occasionally pick a topic just to bring in more people. I think I good one would be to read a chapter of Stephenson's The Baroque Cycle every week, google / wikipedia every character so you know all the inside historical jokes, and then meet and discuss.
On campus, the students are too busy to do the type of social interaction that supposedly makes college valuable -- we think of getting tossed at random into a roommate situation with someone from a different culture and social class, meeting life long friends at random in the library and future business partners in lab groups, etc. But a lot of the college social scene seems to be devoted to making sure you don't accidently meet up with anyone of a different social class, or at least assuring the parents that the student won't; clubs are strongly tied to a student affairs bureaucracy and create positions like secretary and treasurer for people to put on their resumes, as much as do stuff; and the students are busier than those of us that work full time, and have even fewer independent activities and hobbies.
-Be a high school teacher for math and computer science (a la lockhart's lament)
-Start some form of programmers without borders to see how tech can help those in 3rd world nations
-Write as much free medical software as possible (I.E. PACS servers and dicom viewers for MRI's. OsiriX already does this for mac, but nobody has even come close for windows or linux)
Eccentric Causes:
-Put a paintball turret on a golf cart, have a mad max style race with buddies
-Build a rocket with an autonomous guiding system. Seriously, fricken rockets with computer vision on their heads.
-Write stock picking software based on my own random math theories like Ed Thorpe did (Which was very well recounted in "Fortune's Formula)
-Surf more. I already get about a day a week, but I'd like to up it to 4.
-Related to surfing, tap into publicly available weather data to write software to predict swell sizes. FFT here I come!
-Build a poker server with an API for bots. Pit humans against AI.
A billion more things to put here...
[Edit for weird markdown formatting]
I'd read a LOT more (classics and non-fiction mainly), get back into Muay Thai (planning on starting again this fall anyhow, money permitting), donate some volunteer time instead of just money, and travel. I'm interested in studying chess too.
After all that, I'd most likely start another company. What else could I do? ;) In reality, I love the challenge of starting companies, and there's nothing like going from zero to success to prove to yourself you can (even if I had a safety net next time!).
- I'd more than likely hack/work on projects that I thought would contribute to society in a meaningful way rather than trying to do something for profit.
- Spend more time doing the things I enjoy, perhaps take on a significant hobby project that wasn't work related
- I'd probably also help my mother out a little more too.
- Maybe contribute a little of my time directly to community related projects, like volunteer work in something I found meaningful.
Sounds kind of strange, but I guess overall I'd like to be able to give more of myself to others and make much more of a positive impact in other's lives; sounds kind of tree-huggerish I know.
2) I'd put more time into promoting awareness of Humanism and showing people that morality isn't restricted to the belief that an omniscient police agent is judging your every move.
3) I'd try to get NATO to play nice with Russia and after that get China on board as well. A USA/Russian/EU/Chinese block should be strong enough to stop nuclear threats and have the added bonus of getting us to Mars faster.
4) Having brokered world-peace and ensured continuity for all mankind, I'd chill out, read Ceasar's De Bello Gallico in Latin, master Bach's violin pieces at solist concert level, learn Russian and Mandarin Chinese, polish my French and grow awesome grapes for delicious wine.