Hacker News Reader

Comment by dfranke | Hacker News Reader

They're trying to improve global welfare as much as possible, and this is what they come up with? Improved online banking? Seriously?

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.

View on HN

"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."

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).

To be fair, the guy works on aging research. Someone who works on aging research isn't likely to say "Aging research doesn't really need any more money."

Indeed, but it does check out. Every time they've got new funding they've branched out in new directions, and they're pretty transparent in what they fund so that everybody can see that they're not just duplicating work done elsewhere or wasting the money.

I added the qualifier of "most" because I wasn't sure about that one. I'm not a biologist so I have to rely fully on the opinions of others to tell me what avenues of aging research are likely to pay off and how soon. But anyway, I'm pretty confident that the biggest problem all these fields face are their public image. Fix that and the money will follow.

I hate having a car. I would love to see autonomous vehicles...but 40,000 deaths with 3 million injuries is not a big enough target when 3 Billion people on this planet live on less that $2.50/day. We have bigger problems to solve. I put my vote on improving "Government Transparency".

The world has bigger problems than car accidents, but think in terms of bang for your buck. Fighting poverty is hard and expensive. Autonomous vehicle technology could be had for a fraction of what gets spent on pork projects during any given week that congress is in session.

And that's why "Improving Government Transparency" is a good place to put your vote.

Don't think of Online Banking as something that just allows you to not go into the bank, if you do, you're thinking in terms of a first world experience. There are billions of people in this world who have no access to banks, or would not dare trust their money to unregulated and corrupt individuals that head these so called banks. Heck, I have in-laws that keep the bulk of their money in a stove on their balcony of their apartment...and that's in Kiev, Ukraine!

I totally agree with you there are millions...billions who have no access to banking...We are working on how that can change...and how the millions can actually get on to a platform which will enable democratization of the entire banking and other wealth creation processes

PS; So request you to take a minute and vote for 'Build better banking tools for everyone' at Project10tothe100.com

I voted for banking.

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.

Not everybody thinks the Copenhagen "Consensus" has the best answers, despite it's name. My impression is that they completely neglect the economic basis for squalor (they suggest better nutrients, de-worming and so on, but don't address why people are in that situation to begin with).

Good point.

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.

I think you two have this completely wrong. Falling death rates produce a population explosion, but only for a generation or two. After that, birth rates fall in line and things level off. China and India have already seen this play out.

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?

I am not sure what is cause and effect here. To my mind, the Copenhagen thing does not address the reasons for people being poor. I don't think they are poor because malnutrition damaged their brains.

I think the Copenhagen thingy is superficial and sensationalist.

So what you're saying is global population is not increasing?

I haven't the slightest clue how you extracted that conclusion from anything I've said.

Falling death rates produce a population explosion, but only for a generation or two. After that, birth rates fall in line and things level off.

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?

By "level off" I meant "return to a growth rate comparable to before the boom", though in actually it sometimes ends up negative -- Japan and much of Europe is breeding below replacement rates (read: committing cultural suicide). But more importantly, I never said that this has played out everywhere in the world; in fact I've strongly implied the opposite.

So you've got a clue now?

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.

Sufficiently effective public transportation would be better than autonomous vehicles. (Though of course it's not an either-or proposition.)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com