

Ask HN: What are the BIG ideas or tasks the humanity is working on? - Evgeny

Inspired by a random discussion on a completely irrelevant site.<p>The topic starter mentioned some obvious achievements of the past, such as man on the Moon, computers, nuclear energy, supersonic aircrafts etc.<p>And asked the question - what is the next BIG thing the humanity is trying to achieve?<p>So, I thought a bit and came up with a couple of things like cure for cancer, energy source not related to hydrocarbons and a Mars mission. But I'm not a very educated person on that subject.<p>So, what is in the works now? What are the major breakthroughs that we are not only hoping for, but are seriously expecting to happen?
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inetsee
In order to solve really big problems you need leverage. Solving the problem
of really powerful AI would give you the leverage to solve a lot of other
really big problems. Really!

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sz
Grand unified theory, AI, sustained extraterrestrial presence, human
longevity, energy, education reform, ...

Big things tend to really be bunches of little things.

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dcaldwell
I would say water transportation. Even in places where well are dug and clean
water is provided, many of the societal problems still exist because
transportation in still rudimentary. For instance, in many Haitian slums the
water source is at the bottom of large hills. What this means is that water
must be carried in 5 gallon buckets to the top of the hills to provide water
for the family. The way they accomplish this is by using restaveks, or child
slaves. I'm not saying the restavek system would completely dissapear if there
was proper water transportation, but the need for it would be severely limited
and there would be significantly less child slaves.

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kingsidharth
Trying to find the dark matter. Remember LHC particle accelerator?

How to be Happy

Alien Life (nothing life intelligent beings)

Cure to AIDS (& cancer, as you mentioned)

Those are the few things I know humans are trying to find.

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manicbovine
In my field of mathematics, there is a massive effort to
unify/classify/generalize some of the mathematical structures discovered over
the last 30-40 years. (for example, non-commutative geometry as presented by
Alain Connes: <http://www.alainconnes.org/en/>).

The goal is to understand the non-trivial connections between the areas of
algebra, analysis, geometry, number theory, physics, and topology. This effort
is creating an entirely new branch of mathematics - one which comprises
certain parts from each of these areas.

I'm biased, but operator algebras
(<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operator_algebra>) are (IMO) the backbone of
this effort. These are a type of topological algebra that serve as useful
generalizations for a great-many things (such as topological and measure
spaces).

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sdrinf
<http://www.sens.org/rc> (Short version:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategies_for_Engineered_Negli...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategies_for_Engineered_Negligible_Senescence)
)

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epo
The big impact on humanity will come from the seemingly small things. E.g.
clean water for all and better health education. These are not 'sexy' and so
don't seem like BIG ideas but most of humanity doesn't give a toss about a
Mars mission and never will.

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intended
Hmmm, I haven't really heard of anything that really made me sit up and take
notice, come to think of it.

What would really be cool would be - 1) Space travel (to mars at least)

2) Colonizing another planet

I wonder what everyone elses list is?

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salemh
<http://www.gov2summit.com/gov2010> [http://radar.oreilly.com/2010/05/the-
three-phases-of-governm...](http://radar.oreilly.com/2010/05/the-three-phases-
of-government.html)

I hope to see 1) government transparency 2) improvement of government
operations (finances, efficiency) 3) more participation by the citizens of the
government whom representatives are supposed too...represent.

Gov 2.0 is a good step in the right direction with much potential.

While not on the scale of "solve cancer, Mars" I think this would be a major
generational achievement.

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joshrule
I wasn't alive during the time most of the achievements you mention really hit
their stride. But, I wonder, was the national focus turned on those things, or
did they become important only in retrospect?

I'm sure everyone watched coverage of the moon landing, but was the entire
nation or world focused on that achievement for any significant period of time
leading up to it?

I guess my question is, should we be looking for big things that grab
everyone's attention, or should we just be working to solve important
problems? They are lots of important problems, but most of them won't hold the
public's attention for very long.

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skowmunk
There are a lot of areas which need critical breakthroughs to solve the
increasingly critical circumstances casued by increasing population,
increasing buying power and limited resourcs. The list would be a very very
long.

But the single area that can accelerate developments in almost all areas is
easy availability of massive, cheap computation and probably automated -
impying AI, and the ability to use that.

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yuvadam
I think it's safe to say the fight to stop global warming is the top priority
of the human race in this age.

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awk
On a related note, here is an interesting documentary on geo-engineering and
global warming that I saw not too long ago:

[http://www.cbc.ca/documentaries/doczone/video.html?ID=166495...](http://www.cbc.ca/documentaries/doczone/video.html?ID=1664956266)

