Ask HN: What are the BIG ideas or tasks the humanity is working on? | Hacker News Reader

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

13 pointsEvgeny13 comments

Inspired by a random discussion on a completely irrelevant site.

The topic starter mentioned some obvious achievements of the past, such as man on the Moon, computers, nuclear energy, supersonic aircrafts etc.

And asked the question - what is the next BIG thing the humanity is trying to achieve?

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.

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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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!

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

Big things tend to really be bunches of little things.

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.

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.

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).

http://www.sens.org/rc (Short version: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategies_for_Engineered_Negli... )

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.

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?

http://www.gov2summit.com/gov2010 http://radar.oreilly.com/2010/05/the-three-phases-of-governm...

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.

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.

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.

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

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...

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