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Ask HN: What Are the Big Problems?

14 points| dredmorbius | 10 years ago | reply

I'm leaving this open-ended, there's no specific criteria for responses.

I'm interested in both your list and the reasons why. Submitting your list before reading other's contributions would be preferred.

Optionally: who is (or isn't) successfully addressing them. Individuals, organizations, companies, governments, other. How and/or why not?

39 comments

order
[+] ajdecon|10 years ago|reply
What would be necessary to make living in space a real and sustainable possibility?

Heck -- what would be necessary to make our current, planet-bound society sustainable in the long term?

How can we address the massive inequality in the world without massive loss of life? Counting both the possibility of violent confrontation and the possibility of millions of lives being cut short or degraded by poverty.

How can the problems of global warming be corrected or at least coped with? Again -- without massive loss of life in the process.

Is it possible to reliably extend an individual human life beyond the span of a century or so?

How can we build institutions, or at least ideals, which can effect positive change over a period of hundreds or thousands of years?

Various groups are working on these problems, including governments, corporations and NGOs. I don't really think any of them are doing a great job.

[+] dredmorbius|10 years ago|reply
What are your specific goals, opportunities, or risk mitigations for living in spacer?

(I'm aware of common, and uncommon, arguments pro and con. I'm asking for your specific views.)

[+] cl42|10 years ago|reply
Here are the ones I'm thinking about quite a bit when I think about the long-term viability of our species or society-as-we-know-it.

(1) Food security. Not many people talk about the fragile system that supports our ability to stay nourished. At the same time, "nourishment" is relative -- we're getting fatter, it's unclear whether industrial agriculture is sustainable, etc.

(2) Social inequality, lack of social mobility, etc. This is something that will have a major impact on our way of life in the coming decades if it continues. Look at Europe and the US to see how fragile and unstable our societies are (and how much worse it's getting).

(3) AI. OK, everyone is talking about it, but I don't worry about it in the context of AI destroying the world, but rather how problem #2 above and #3 mean fewer jobs, more inequality, etc. At this rate, we will not become a society where our subservient AI-robot-slaves do our work for us while every human is enlightened and self-actualized. Instead, automation will drive the cost of labour down and thus cause more inequality in the decades to come. Of course people will continue working -- this defines them, and whatever meagre salary they make is necessary to survive.

(4) Our inability as a species to accept that galactic space exploration will probably be painful, slow, and require generations of space travlers to sacrifice their egos and lives to enable their ancestors to arrive at the destination they set out for. Maybe I'm pessimistic but there won't be "warp speed" and if that's the case, then space travel and galactic colonization will require re-defining what it means to be a human race -- it'll be more akin (and more extreme) to the way colonists visited the Americas -- they gave up their families, communication with the "Old World", etc. to start a new life. Now imagine these same colonists would set off but accept that they would die on the journey, as would their children, and their grandchildren, and only their grand-children would arrive at the destination to maybe prosper, or maybe die... We need to accept that this might be what galactic colonization looks like. I don't think we're ready for this as a race/species/society.

[+] tmuir|10 years ago|reply
(4) - The driving force behind space exploration is the idea that Earth will eventually be made uninhabitable by climate change. However, for any planet or moon in our solar system to be a viable alternative, we're going to have to induce "climate change" there as well, but on a far larger scale that what Earth is experiencing. No other body in our solar system experiences the same range of surface temperatures as Earth, has breathable air, fertile soil, fresh water, comparable gravity, a food chain, weather patterns, or countless other things necessary for large scale sustainable human life.

Doesn't it stand to reason that in the course of developing those technologies, we'd be able to fix the Earth's comparatively minor problems long before we could transform a planet or moon. One could even argue that the advancement required would probably first arrive at asteroid defense, scalable food solutions and small scale climate control to provide more habitable land on earth for future population growth.

Perhaps exploring space is an appropriate vehicle to spur those developments, but it just doesn't seem like a plausible endgoal.

[+] dredmorbius|10 years ago|reply
A good set.

On social inequality and mobility: this has been suggested by quite a few respondants (I'm inquiring in multiple forums). I'd like to ask you, and others:

Why do you feel this is a problem? What are the consequences?

Actually, a "5 Whys" approach is strongly encouraged.

(That applies generally to _all_ of what are considered problems.)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5_Whys

Also, as a "space pessimist": what do you see as the benefits of interplanetary or interstellar space colonization?

[+] fsk|10 years ago|reply
Why was Bernard Madoff able to run his Ponzi scheme for so long?

Why are the "best" leaders people with evil tendencies? Is that a universal law, or a symptom of a deeper problem?

[+] dredmorbius|10 years ago|reply
Interesting -- psychology and trust / defection issues are really interesting areas, ones I didn't think I'd be as concerned with when I started asking questions but they've rapidly climbed up my own priority scale.

On the Madoff story: I'd also be curious about the question of when it was that he turned: went from being an honest operator to intentionally running a scam. I'm assuming that there was a point at which his intentions were good. One possibility being that he "got stuck" and couldn't find a way out.

[+] mrcold|10 years ago|reply
- Greed

- Lack of empathy

- Short-sighted thinking

- Organized religion

- War on drugs

- Lack of quality in education

- Death and sickness

Or, you know, social apps and internet of things. Whatever floats your boat.

[+] dredmorbius|10 years ago|reply
Interesting list.

On "lack of quality in education:" do you see that as a new / increasing problem, or an extant one amplified by growing needs?

What would you consider to be an increase in quality of education? Achievement? Specific areas of focus? Increased universality / literacy / "bringing up the floor"?

How about intersections of this with the issue of cognitive development and theories of distribution of cognitive skills (e.g., Jean Piaget), or of impacts of early childhood development and environments (nutrition, pollution, nurturing, exposure and acculturation) to intellectual development?

Are you suggesting that social apps and the Internet of Things are a mis-placed priority? How or why?

If they are: then why do they seem to be such compelling objectives for business and technical interests? Are there any benefits resulting regardless?

[+] rndn|10 years ago|reply
There was a similar thread on LessWrong a couple of days ago (though not just on Big Problems but on existential risks): http://lesswrong.com/r/discussion/lw/ma8/roadmap_plan_of_act...

Are you going to summarize the result of the crowdsourcing somewhere?

[+] dredmorbius|10 years ago|reply
Expanding my earlier response.

I've got a few goals here, at varying levels of meta.

One is to simply get inputs from people on what their perceptions (and rationales) for "big problems" are. I'll try to summarize those.

One is to provide a reference check for my own views and models of the space. I've had a few suggestions which expand, or possibly challenge, the framework I've been using, though generally modestly.

I'm curious as to the expressed and implied views of what makes for challenges, and the dynamics driving them. Again, I've been forming my own framework for this, though I'm trying to leave that out of this process to the extent I can.

At a meta level, finding the most productive forum(s) in which I can ask questions and receive responses is another element. Though that itself suggests another Big Problem: Where can people intelligently discuss Big Problems....

To be further expanded at the subreddit mentioned previously.

[+] phantom_oracle|10 years ago|reply
The other guys have addressed quite a few interesting ones.

I have just 1 then: fresh water

over 8/9 billion creatures do get thirsty, 365 days of the year (can't forget animals).

I'd like to learn more about how fragile this system is, from unbiased reports (no climate-change promoters/deniers).

Or as the doomsdayers say, the next WW will be over fresh-water as a resource.

[+] Animats|10 years ago|reply
We have so much productive capacity in the developed world that we don't need that many people to make all the stuff. We have no idea how to build an economic and social system that deals with this.
[+] tolas|10 years ago|reply
“the internet; sustainable energy; space exploration, in particular the permanent extension of life beyond Earth; artificial intelligence; and reprogramming the human genetic code.” - Elon Musk
[+] dredmorbius|10 years ago|reply
Are those risks, opportunities, or both?
[+] mjklin|10 years ago|reply
Take a look for yourself:

http://www.uia.be/sites/uia.be/db/db/x.php

[+] DyingAdonis|10 years ago|reply
Is consciousness a real thing or an illusory experience of continuity of self in what is actually the deterministic mechanizations of brain activity.
[+] mari_says|10 years ago|reply
The difficult here is to separate the 'problematic' from the 'symptomatic'. I'd say inequality is the problem.
[+] ccarter84|10 years ago|reply
Water footprint of everything is hidden 99% of the time.(like carbon.... But more pressing for us in Cali ATM)
[+] brudgers|10 years ago|reply
To get us started, what do you think they are?
[+] dredmorbius|10 years ago|reply
I've written fairly extensively on that, and the essays aren't hard to find, but I'd prefer not colouring the discussion myself.