
Ask HN: What Are the Big Problems? - dredmorbius
I&#x27;m leaving this open-ended, there&#x27;s no specific criteria for responses.<p>I&#x27;m interested in <i>both</i> your list <i>and</i> the reasons why. Submitting your list <i>before</i> reading other&#x27;s contributions would be preferred.<p>Optionally: who is (or isn&#x27;t) successfully addressing them. Individuals, organizations, companies, governments, other. How and&#x2F;or why not?
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giantg2
They're all interconnected and in no specific order.

1\. Water - Access to clean, safe water is an increasing concern in some
highly populated areas. We will see a serious water issue in the US plains in
30 years, jeopardizing agriculture in that area.

2\. Food - Currently we produce enough food but it's not evenly distributed.
We also have some concerns over sustainability and environmental impact.
Estimates say we can feed 8-12 billion people depending on advances in
technology.

3\. Waste Management - Feces and trash are a major concern. Gates is
sponsoring research on toilets that don't require much water and don't require
expensive treatment plants. Composting toilets could save a lot of water and
possibly allow for cheaper, more water efficient greywater systems. This tech
can also allow you to build in areas that skeptics were not traditionally
possible. Compostable materials like cellophane, mycelium, or plastic
substitute made from cassava or corn would help with the trash issue.

4\. Housing/Land Management - I'm too dumb to explain this. Maybe Mark Twain
said it best with his statement about buying land since they don't make it
anymore. This especially plays into agricultural with the shrinking amount of
land suitable for agriculture.

5\. Education - No, I'm not talking about college. Basic logic/philosophy,
personal finance, and civics need to be prioritized in school. To overcome the
other issues we need a cohesive effort to make a meaningful impact.

~~~
fiftyacorn
I watched the bill gates documentary on Netflix about his investing in waste
management. Very interesting but makes you realise that even in the first
world or waste management is so inefficient and wasteful.

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s1t5
Managing the resources on the planet in a way that every human being has good
quality of life and doing this in a way that's sustainable in the long term
and without resorting to oppression, dictatorships or active population
reduction.

~~~
giantg2
Do you have an example of state-wide passive population reduction that doesn't
involve oppression?

Also, this is perhaps the more eloquent version of my answer.

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rawgabbit
Solid state batteries potentially can make electric cars more affordable with
longer range and fast charging times.

Nuclear waste has been piling up since the first reactors went online and are
stored onsite. The US designated Yucca mountain in Nevada as the long term
storage site but due to NIMBY it has been in limbo meanwhile nuclear waste
keeps growing.

Rising sea levels are estimated to displace many millions of people which will
lead to refugee exodus with many eyeing Europe and the USA.

Increasing bitterness and division in US politics make it easier for
demagogues who promise quick fixes to gain power. These charlatans may lead us
to a path of self destruction.

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apsec112
Wikipedia has lists of big unsolved problems in different fields:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lists_of_unsolved_problems](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lists_of_unsolved_problems)

~~~
dredmorbius
Just to clarify, "unsolved" and "hard" does not necessarily correspond with
"big".

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tmaly
Education - how can we innovate so that kids get the best education tailored
to their learning style and interests?

~~~
dredmorbius
Do you have any particular suggestions or concerns in this space?

~~~
tmaly
There was an interview on one of the Knowledge Project podcast episodes last
year. I was driving home from work, and it was raining, so I do not recall the
exact episode. But the person mentioned that they were trying to learn drums.
They found a video on YouTube that taught some specific thing they were
looking for. The only issue was that there was 5 minutes of film in the
beginning that had nothing to do with teaching the drums.

He made the point if you had a Hollywood production team and a subject matter
expert, you could make amazing online educational videos that people would
actually like to watch.

The closest thing I could find now is a high school history teacher making
animations on YouTube called MrBettsClass.

There is so much potential here to expand this.

Then there is the other angle. Are there best practices we could do as a
nation? Not common standards that lump everyone into one category, but actual
things tailored for different types of children that could maximize their
learning?

I adopted this notion that every child has the potential for genius after
reading the book How to Teach your Baby to Read. Its been around since the
60s. I think it comes down to a lot of one on one time with the child. You try
teaching something and adapt to how they respond. Technology can only help so
much in this regard. You have to be a parent that is invested in helping your
child.

------
AnimalMuppet
People hate other people. This causes huge amounts of damage, both to the
hater and the hated.

Going a bit farther, people dehumanize other people, and then feel all right
about treating them inhumanely. They do so based on race, gender, cis/trans
status, politics, religion, sometimes even sports teams.

------
2rsf
Overpopulation is the mother of many big problems, the resources needed to
support the ever growing population are destroying this planet

~~~
dredmorbius
How would you answer those arguing, variously:

1\. It's wealth inequality / extreme weath / the wealthy nations (say: OECD,
G-8, G-20) which are the bulk of the impact problem.

2\. Technology will transcend any inherent global limits.

3\. Limits may exist, but Earth could sustain far more people, possibly
trillions.

4\. Attempts to limit reproduction are authoritarian, eugenicist, and/or
nationalistic.

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pedro1976
One is to get out of ad-revenue driven business models for news and websites
in general.

~~~
dredmorbius
Any suggested path(s) forward on that?

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ipi
Quality Software : Yes, this is becoming more and more important and is
overlooked at many levels. With more of our infrastructure, lives and the
future of humanity in the hands of a bunch of software & hardware. We need to
take things a tad bit more seriously. I believe this is not yet a big problem
but it is becoming one.

[https://youtu.be/pW-SOdj4Kkk](https://youtu.be/pW-SOdj4Kkk)

[https://xkcd.com](https://xkcd.com)

~~~
dredmorbius
I'm presuming you meant [https://xkcd.com/2347/](https://xkcd.com/2347/)

------
quickthrower2
I would say how do we help the poorest people in the world? How do we help
homeless people in a holistic way and prevent homelessness. How do we
counterbalance the power corporations have to sway governments to do things in
their interest and against the public interest. All these things are probably
connected. At the core how do we make society attitude more humanistic include
myself.

The reason is well human decency for a start. And it is hypocritical to look
down on people that harm other people if we are doing it systematically.

------
Trias11
US Fed printing money, igniting inflation and letting US economy going down
the drain.

~~~
AnimalMuppet
So far, inflation appears to be un-ignited. I'm not sure we can keep doing
this forever. But so far, evidence for your fears is missing.

~~~
eaandkw
From the year 2000 to now there is 50.5% inflation. That is pretty good
evidence to me. But hey...at least the stock market is up.

[https://www.usinflationcalculator.com/](https://www.usinflationcalculator.com/)

~~~
AnimalMuppet
That works out to 2.06% a year. That's not "igniting".

I'm old enough to have seen 14% per year inflation in the 1970s, so 2% doesn't
impress me as inflation igniting. More to the point... where's the inflation
from QE in 2008? It, um, never really showed up. We continued creeping along
at 2% a year, sometimes less. So I'd regard that as experimental refutation of
the "Fed printing money, so inflation is going to ignite" thesis.

More precisely, I think the Fed printing money _can_ ignite inflation, if they
print more than the economy grows. In 2008, they didn't do that with QE. They
created $4 trillion, which almost exactly offset the $4 trillion that
vaporized in the crash, and the result was that we avoided another Great
Depression without igniting inflation. The Covid crisis... well, it's too
early to tell, but they might pull off the same feat.

2% inflation per year since 2000 is evidence of great stability, not of out-
of-control Fed money printing.

