

Ask HN: What would you do with a Billion dollars? - dzink

I love this question. For several years now I&#x27;ve been asking strangers what would they do with a Billion dollars if they had it. I keep asking it because I&#x27;ve discovered several instant friends along the way. It turns brief interactions where you get little time to get to know the other person into high-quality conversations that surface interests and passions you might have never known about. Some of my favorite ones:<p>- &quot;If it was a million, I&#x27;d have fun with it, but a Billion is a job - a responsibility.&quot;
- &quot;I&#x27;d build a way for researchers to store negative outcome experiments and make those public and easily searchable - it would save tremendous time for the scientific community.&quot;<p>What would you do?
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ericb
Wow, last thing I figured is my answer would be given by someone else. I love
the negative results answer.

I'd also:

Endow a non-partisan original-reporting only, no-pr, news site with no
sponsors to bias results, ever. Now that all news is corporate sponsored in
various ways, we need alternatives.

Use part to endow a rationalist organization dedicated entirely to the
spreading of rationality as determined by the results of research on how to
most effectively spread rationality.

Create a cost-effective ethically acceptable platform for testing drugs and
theories on a human-ish system. Basically this would be an attempt to strap a
rocket to modern day testing and drug discovery by making it as effortless as
it would be if you could put humans in various conditions without ethics or
harm considerations.

See if there's a way to use my money to undo the corrupting supreme court
Citizens United decisions and decisions about Super PACs.

~~~
syncerr
Unfortunately, if you wanted your new "liberal" news network to affect a
larger audience you'd need a think-tank to help "propagandize", else you'd be
discredited by other motivated interests.

~~~
gregcohn
I'm extremely curious to know exactly what about the comment you're replying
to sparked the "liberal" label. I don't want to create a political discussion
here, but it seemed like the reply was taking pains to suggest it would be
neutral.

~~~
syncerr
1\. What is the political leaning of the national news network who stands to
lose the most viewers if you were to take a percentage of everyone's audience?
Fox [1]. Will they call your network neutral?

2\. There seems to be an inordinate amount of money pouring into campaigns to
discredit the sort of thing you might focus on (e.g., climate change[2], which
is seen as a liberal idea[3]).

3\. Less seriously, it was sub-text'd from Colbert's "Reality has a well-known
liberal bias." [4]

_______

[1] [http://stateofthemedia.org/2013/cable-a-growing-medium-
reach...](http://stateofthemedia.org/2013/cable-a-growing-medium-reaching-its-
ceiling/4_cable_only_msnbc_grows_in_prime_time/) (2012)

[2]
[http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/feb/14/funding-c...](http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/feb/14/funding-
climate-change-denial-thinktanks-network)

[3]
[http://www.conservapedia.com/Global_warming](http://www.conservapedia.com/Global_warming)

[4]
[http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Liberal_bias](http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Liberal_bias)

------
dzink
I can't edit the question anymore, but if I could, I'd add a sub-question for
the founders who have already created things worth a Billion: "Did your answer
to this question change between the time you were starting and the time you
had the money?"

------
Xcelerate
I would create a scientific research group composed of the best physicists to
work on 1) a functional quantum computer and 2) practical room temperature
superconductivity. Both of these would have a huge impact on the world.
Solving (1) would also increase the chances of solving (2) since a quantum
computer would allow polynomial time quantum simulations that would assist in
ascertaining which kind of materials might be superconducting at room
temperature.

3) I would found a cancer research group. I think everyone is immensely sick
of this disease and the fact that it hasn't been cured yet. It wouldn't hurt
to direct even more research toward it.

4) I would buy 10 boxes of raspberries from the grocery store and eat them all
in one sitting. Those things are freaking expensive, but they're delicious.

~~~
waps
How about sponsoring some alternative fusion research ? Aside from ITER,
nothing seems to have even basic sponsorship, and ITER makes no business sense
(price/reward). Same thing with battery research. Or try to find a better
Fisher-Tropsch process (that would solve global warming, energy storage and
energy transport without requiring us to change cars or power plants. It would
literally make a 30-year old beater green, so it wouldn't require punishing
all the poor by either taking their cars away like all other green initiatives
do)

If you're going to do high-risk high-reward research, you should probably be
prepared to spend tens of millions on it though.

~~~
letstryagain
> Or try to find a better Fisher-Tropsch process

One major use of the Fischer-Tropsch process is converting coal (via
gasification) into hydrocarbons and eventually fuel/petrol. This is a disaster
for global warming because we have very large amounts of easily accessible
coal available to turn into petrol. If you make FT easier you'll do more harm
than good.

~~~
waps
FT would also enable CO2 + H2O => Fuel. That would be the perfect solution to
global warming. Instead of getting fuel in Saudi Arabia, a tanker just goes
out to sea, and with solar power and ocean top layer co2 just slowly fills
itself with fuel.

~~~
letstryagain
Currently FT is only used (see SASOL for example) with coal. Why? Because it's
more profitable than CO2 to fuel. Making FT cheaper won't change that. It will
just mean more companies will turn coal into fuel. Yes you CAN use CO2 but in
practice every for-profit company out there will choose coal instead and
maximise their $$$.

~~~
waps
Given the current energy situation, I'm of the opinion that attempting to
prevent most coal from being used for energy is a fight that cannot be won.

We are on the terminal decline of the oil production, since 2005, and it's
about to drop off a cliff (for most of the world, prices will rise by the end
of this year or so, for the US, end of 2015, maybe mid 2016 if we're lucky).
What do you expect to happen ? That people are just going to abandon places
where you really need heating ?

~~~
letstryagain
I agree, coal will be used for heating and electricity and we can't stop that.
But if you improve FT we'll also use coal for our cars which just makes things
worse!

------
malandrew
Found an international organization that should be doing the work the NSA
should be doing: making the world more secure by actively helping secure all
hardware and software regardless of origin. Basically help close all the holes
the NSA is actively exploiting. Once it is humming along nicely and being
productive, I would solicit donations from all the nations that see value in
the work being done.

Found another international organization that incubates decentralized
technologies that put users in control of their data with the goal of
competing with all the centralized walled gardens out there. The world needs
more technologies like bittorrent.

With both organizations, I don't think it would make sense to have just one
location, I would probably found two larger offices in San Francisco and
Berlin first, but then open up additional small offices in other regions where
there are a dozen or so capable hackers that want to work together on this
kind of stuff full-time.

Next, I would put money into open-source hardware for those areas which are
still closed-source threats - CPUs, GPUs and the networking stack. By now the
world really should have an entire stack from GUI all the way to every piece
of hardware that is open-source and auditable.

Lastly, I would secretly buy up all the parking lots in San Francisco. Once I
control most of the market for parking lots in the city, I would shut them all
down simultaneously and turn half into public parks and convert the rest into
whatever type of development that they are zoned for. It wouldn't be an anti-
trust issue because I'd be liquidating my market share. i.e. if I owned 90% of
the market and shut down 100% of my stock, I now own 0% of the market. My goal
would be to decimate the convenience of driving in the city overnight so that
people are forced to consider alternative means of transportation like buses
and bicycling.

In fact, with the exception of turning some of the land into public parks, I
reckon this last idea could form a very decent investment strategy with some
smart hedging, such as buying stock in the companies likely to benefit the
most from increased spending on public transportation (city bus manufacturers,
subway car manufacturers, etc.). I'm certain there is some investment thesis
out there that works when you shut down all the private infrastructure that
supports selfish city drivers.

------
dhughes
It's hard to say it would be a battle between immediate versus long-term. And
by that of course I mean I would have to share it with poor around the word I
think most people would.

Water, food, vaccines, education all important but water is probably the most
needed.

But if invested smartly a smaller amount over a longer time but time is the
enemy, do I help more people right now and fewer later or a few people over a
longer time period?

I don't think I want a billion dollars it's too much responsibility and I'm
not even very good at managing my own life.

------
anywherenotes
I think Ocean research should be boosted significantly, and some very rich and
smart people are already dedicating themselves to space. I'd probably donate
some money to Ocean research, and open a museum of dinosaurs (and others from
that time period) in a new place somewhere, or perhaps few smaller museums and
keep interchanging exhibits between them.

------
stevekemp
Build and manage large sets of apartments, flats, or condos (depending on
location) for students. Rented very cheaply, but available only to people who
didn't drop out, or fail their courses.

Student accommodation in the UK is frequently nasty, expensive, and hard to
find.

Beyond that a new camera, and probably a new house for myself. But nothing too
insane.

------
dkural
I would create a semantic wiki with domain specific ways of easily inputting
information, spend enough cash to incentivize folks, to store all biological
knowledge in a way machines can reason about. We're all studying a giant
elephant. No one is putting it all together in a crowd-generated, semantic,
computable way.

------
sirdogealot
Put 100% of it into education in the most economical way possible.

I believe that all problems in this world are caused by a simple lack of
education.

------
stephenboyd
I'd start a foundation that gives grants to journalists, especially
investigative and explanatory journalists. I like to know more about what's
going on in the world than what's included in press releases.

------
gesman
Promote advanced personal development and cancer treatment approaches based on
helping people to eliminate fear from their body/mind systems.

------
a3voices
I'd buy lots of land near Boston and build a giant pyramid out of granite.

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krapp
Pay off my debts, give some to my family, then basically whatever I wanted.

------
billconan
fund research. like space tech, cancer treatment, digital brain preservation
after death.

------
iterationx
I'd give it to the Dimond Brothers.

------
jeffclark
I'll tell you what I'd do, man: two chicks at the same time, man.

