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Ask HN: What Are the Big Problems?
14 points by dredmorbius on June 6, 2015 | hide | past | favorite | 39 comments
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?



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.


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.)


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.


(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.


It's the only end goal that supports human life after the death of the earth.


The earth is not likely to die for billions of years. Its ability to sustain human life on a large scale is certainly at risk. What I'm saying is that the technological advances required to make even the best candidate planet a superior alternative to earth, in terms of human habitability, are an enormous superset of the those required to fix every one of the earths problems that drove us to consider a replacement planet in the first place.


This assumes we won't find a viable alternative. I really like Interstellar for this reason -- I can see us sending x ships to x planetary systems with the understanding that all but one of those ships will likely perish for a greater good.

I think the other reason we want to be on multiple planets is less about climate change, but cataclysmic shocks (asteroid impact, nuclear war, etc.) -- if we're on multiple planets, we have a greater chance of surviving a cataclysmic shock to one planet.

Your point on climate change is great, though -- you're right that if we can terraform Mars or the Moon, we have the technology to fix whatever climate issues are happening on Earth! Funny that this doesn't come up more.


The chances of finding a preexisting viable alternative actually make the prospect of developing all that technology seem trivial.

Life has evolved over hundreds of millions of years, influenced by the earths environment, which itself has been influenced by its size/gravity, proximity to the sun, axial tilt, air composition, our atmosphere, and countless other macro scale variables, many of which are random and independent of each other. Most of these quantities have exceedingly small windows that can support human life. Furthermore, the particular sequence of these variables changing over millions of years has shaped evolution.

Think of it like this: there are 68 teams in the NCAA men's basketball tournament. This makes for 9.2 quintillion possible outcomes. There are certainly many orders of magnitude more variables that have shaped the evolution of life on earth. I'm not saying only one of those permutations results in a planet suitable for humans, just that the sheer scale of how large of a cosmic accident we are makes me think we'll run out of time before we ever find another earth suitable for normal human life.


I was going to rebuff about not necessarily needing a second earth, but after re-reading your earlier comment and considering sustainability issues like oxygen and food production, you may have convinced me.

I guess I should spend more time being productive and less time considering how I could survive the heat death of the universe.


Hmm... You're just getting me thinking now: if we get sophisticated enough to travel hundreds/thousands of light years, etc... Then wouldn't it also stand to reason that we wouldn't even need to find planets, but rather can build our own artificial "microplanet"?

Curious what you think.


That's a far more difficult prediction: what technology will be developed in the next several hundred years. What sticks out as some problems with building a planet are where do you get all of the material, and how would you manage its rotational and revolutional speeds as it grew larger? Propelling a space ship seems fairly simple compared with propelling a planet.

Douglas Adams had some things to say about designing planets.


While I'd prefer avoiding a longer discussion of this myself here, my own view is that interplanatery and/or interstellar travel by lifeforms is far more likely to happen at the bacterial level than primate / mammalian.

As a mode to ensuring life proceeds, possibly. Humans: less likely.

Given the nature of a few past evolutionary bottlenecks (cyanobacteria ⇒ anaerobes, mitochondrial symbioticism, single-cell ⇒ multi-cell, this might represent a significant evolutionary acceleration on other worlds.


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?


Regarding the interstellar space colonization question -- ultimately it's a question of whether we want our species to survive. In a billion years, the Earth will be swallowed up by the Sun's expanding size, and certainly will be obliterated when the Sun goes Super Nova. It's nice to think this won't obliterate the human species!

However, you ask a good question -- and one related to the 5 Whys: why do we want the human species to survive permanently? And are we just extending the timeline of an inevitable demise? This leads me to think about the heat death of the universe and then I get depressed. :)

In terms of social inequality and immobility, here we go:

Why #1: extreme social immobility and inequality often destabilizes a society. This is why I'd consider it a problem/threat. At the very least, many economists argue that social inequality slow down the rate of innovation and economic growth.

Why #2: when you look at Western capitalist societies there appears to be a strong correlation between social mobility and access to opportunities (e.g., education, health care, etc.) and a society's ability to innovate. Note that "innovation" here refers to the society being able to solve other problems affecting said society. In a sense, social inequality and immobility stifle innovation and thus, it is "meta-problem" -- it makes it difficult to solve other problems the society is facing.

Why #3: a lot of literature (in management theory, education theory, etc.) argues that giving people the ability to grow, develop, learn, etc. makes them more productive, creative, and better able to solve problems. Social immobility and inequality is a form of oppression, in this regard.

Why #4: this sort of mobility ultimately aligns incentives -- you are encouraged to be creative, solve important problems, etc. that are valuable for society because doing so will enable you to enrich yourself.

Why #5: because humans need incentives to succeed, and human ingenuity is something that need to be cultivated.

TL,DR: social inequality and immobility is a meta-problem because (a) it makes society unstable and leads to the other issues we are worried about, and (b) reduces humanity's ability to innovate and thus solve other problems.


Thanks.


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?


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.


Initially, Bernard Madoff made money honestly by trading in penny increments when everyone else was trading 1/8 and 1/16. When the exchanges decimalized, he couldn't make money that way anymore, and switched to his Ponzi.

In our society, most of our leaders have the same criminally insane personality type as Bernard Madoff. From their point of view, he was "one of us". When some low-ranking SEC investigators got suspicious, Bernard Madoff was able to use his influence to quash the investigation.

However, most of them don't do something flagrantly illegal like Bernard Madoff. They can ruin a business while deflecting blame to other people, but not something flagrantly illegal where they might get caught. They're "too big to jail".


With more information going around the internet, how to identify hoaxes and false reporting.


I've just discovered there's a book addressing part of that problem:

http://www.powells.com/biblio/17-9780596159795-0

Blog: http://buildingreputation.com/

Wiki: http://buildingreputation.com/doku.php


Online reputation seems problematic to me, because it can be tricked relatively easily. In many systems, online reputation tends to be a function of dedication and time investment rather than ability, and asynchronous communication, anonymity and technological opacity and valnurability are also possible hurdles. Perhaps the problem is even AI-complete.

I'm wondering if one could somehow recover reputation from the real world to online platforms. I think real-world reputation can work extremely well when things are transparent to many people who can construct a coherent mental representation of you and can thus approve of your abilities with high reliability. It creates certain social incentives and pressures which I think are hard to replicate with the current means online.


I absolutely agree that the problem is hard. That's actually part of the point of the reference. It's not just a set of cookbook recipies for "here's how to implement a reputation system", but an exploration of goals, challenges, and other aspects. It includes discussion of multiple issues I've considered on the topic, including overt vs. implicit actions, goals of the moderation system, Sturgeon's Law, and more.

That is: the reference is worthwhile for identifying the scope and dimensions of the problem space, and is a record of and reference for those issues.

Real-world reputation is also a hard problem. The book itself starts with one of the more significant and widely experienced such reputation systems, the FICO score. Understand too: transparency isn't something you can just prescribe by dictate. People and organizations have desires for secrecy, privacy, and some measure of forgiveness for past actions and behaviors. Justifiably in some cases, not so much in others.

It's not as if real-world or online reputation systems are simple. They're not. But they're also not distinct.


- 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.


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?


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?


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.


Yes, at https://dredmorbius.reddit.com/

Thanks for the LessWrong link.


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.


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.


“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


Are those risks, opportunities, or both?


Take a look for yourself:

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


Is there a ranking of these issues?

56,564 entries is a bit over my 7 ±2 short-term memory managemen capacity.

OK, here's a ranking: http://www.uia.be/sites/uia.be/db/db/x.php?dbcode=pr&go=t&t=...

Though "monsters" at #6 suggests at best an idiosyncratic prioritization basis.

More on the Union of International Organizations, for those curious: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Union_of_International_Associat...


Yes, I think "alien abduction" is also on there somewhere...plus every disease known to man.

It's more like a brainstorm of all possible problems. You asked!


Is consciousness a real thing or an illusory experience of continuity of self in what is actually the deterministic mechanizations of brain activity.


The difficult here is to separate the 'problematic' from the 'symptomatic'. I'd say inequality is the problem.


Water footprint of everything is hidden 99% of the time.(like carbon.... But more pressing for us in Cali ATM)


To get us started, what do you think they are?


I've written fairly extensively on that, and the essays aren't hard to find, but I'd prefer not colouring the discussion myself.




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