Vote on Google's Project 10 to the 100
project10tothe100.com
project10tothe100.com
Ranking global priorities is a hard problem, but it's one that a lot of smart people have already put a lot of thought into. The Copenhagen Consensus (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copenhagen_consensus) has come up with what I think is a pretty good set of answers.
Here's one item that I'd add to the list, which Copenhagen didn't consider: autonomous vehicle research. Car accidents kill about 42,000 people per year in the US alone, and injure 2.9 million. Sufficiently advanced autonomous vehicles could prevent virtually all of these.
Then of course there are all the "Singularity" ideas: prevention of aging, Friendly AGI, consciousness uploading, and so forth, but most of these aren't going to be accelerated much just by throwing more money at them.
PS; So request you to take a minute and vote for 'Build better banking tools for everyone' at Project10tothe100.com
Give poor people more nutrients and better health... and they'll produce more poor people, who then will run out of nutrients and health care.
The worst effect of malnutrition is that it damages brain development. What could possibly be a better way to get people out of poverty than to make them smarter?
So the first part says population increases due to reduced death rate. The second clause that this effect is limited to about 30-40 years. The next sentence that birth rates "fall in line" which I read to mean decline to account for the reduced death rate. Finally "things level off" meaning that the rate of change of population is reduced to 0, a plateau on a population graph.
Which overall I read to mean that whilst there is a short ("generation or two") increase this is rapidly accounted for by falling birthrates and the overall population growth is near zero, ie population is not increasing.
Do I take it you didn't mean to say that?
Sorry, yes, I used the wrong words ...
Now about this "strongly implied the opposite" the area encompassed included at least China and India as subregions and didn't appear to have a disclaimer - if any region was implied then it would have to be Asia, but I assumed the whole world. Which words "implied the opposite"?
I think in Europe the situation is that endemic populations are breeding below replacement rates (good IMO) but that immigrant populations are cancelling out any benefit and themselves breeding way ahead of the endemic rate. At the same time the countries they are emigrating from are exploding in population and the emigration is not sufficient to level off the population - ie that Worldwide population growth rates are positive but as you note but that the native populations of certain regions are not contributing to the procession towards untenable over-population.
I think the Copenhagen thingy is superficial and sensationalist.
Actually, the implementation of the SENS plan would benefit from having more money. Aubrey de Grey has said a few times recently that they basically have more leads to follow than money to do it. www.sens.org
Aging kills between 100-200k people PER DAY (not to mention all the suffering of people around and loss of knowledge and expertise).
One of the things that keeps poor people poor is transaction fees, high interest rates on loans and, most importantly, difficulty understanding and accessing more advanced financial tools and tax rebates.
I voted for this one over other more noble causes, because this is one area where Google has the capabilities needed to make a difference.
My prediction: based on what is telegraphed from the 10^100 site now, this initiative won't go anywhere, won't create anything meaningful, and won't significantly change anything.
But do consider 'Build better banking tools for everyone' for your vote
Because that's exactly what we're doing.
And these potential projects only showed up because people asked for them.
Google has pretty much just helped validate our market for us.
This is so awesome!
Such an unnecessary problem!
There were different categories and it seems that only one has been retained (social, education).
They have even not published a simple list of submitted project by categories.
By the end of the submission period, they have blocked access to the original pages and now they have flushed their cache.
Challenge categories:
Community: How can we help connect people, build communities and protect unique cultures?
Opportunity: How can we help people better provide for themselves and their families?
Energy: How can we help move the world toward safe, clean, inexpensive energy?
Environment: How can we help promote a cleaner and more sustainable global ecosystem?
Health: How can we help individuals lead longer, healthier lives?
Education: How can we help more people get more access to better education?
Shelter: How can we help ensure that everyone has a safe place to live?
Everything else: Sometimes the best ideas don't fit into any category at all.
I'm now convinced that this game was setup by Google to grab or better to harvest ideas for free and take patents to make business.
I invite everyone to monitor the patents issuing rate from Google since a few months and in the near future.
As an example, I've submitted the Energy meter at the beginning of the game and 4 months later the Google Power meter was published with exactly the same features.
Very sad.
Also it's been mentioned the transparent government; hopefully this will help a bit in curbing the corruption.
Mouli