by dmundhra on 7/9/23, 4:27 AM with 293 comments
by xerxesaa on 7/9/23, 4:41 AM
Who will care for these people? How will we deal with the consequences of flat population growth? How will we deal with the stock market's expectations of perpetual growth when the underlying population itself is not growing (and especially since productivity has also been relatively flat)?
by rlupi on 7/9/23, 4:57 AM
If you check the recordings, some sessions were directly focused on connecting problem experts, data access, computing resources and people with skills or idea or passion. The opportunities span from students or researchers, up to what will take innovative companies or bigtech to solve, or government and international organizations.
It was also the place were a lot of discussions about AI regulation took place. The discussions and the decisions that will follow from that meeting will shape the world to come IMHO.
by TheAceOfHearts on 7/9/23, 5:11 AM
Every physicist and engineer in the world should probably try dedicating at least one or two month of their life to figuring out fusion.
If humanity could pay a trillion dollars to instantly unlock fusion it would still be considered a bargain. And yet we don't treat research into that field as something with such a potentially massive impact.
by mikewarot on 7/9/23, 8:32 AM
The US produces large amounts of oil via fracking, which requires more resources to drill and produce than previous methods. At the same time, the wells tend to decline at 40% per year. These wells are making up a larger percentage of our fossil fuel production as time goes by. At some point the energy and resources required to drill a well will match the possible production, and new wells won't make sense, leading to collapse.
Without fossil fuels for transportation, and especially as chemical feedstock to creating fertilizers, food shortages would quickly appear world-wide.
We need to transition away from fossil fuels to avoid this fate. In doing so, we'll also help reduce, and perhaps eliminate the addition of greenhouse gases to the atmosphere, which is a far more immediate concern in the minds of many.
by mikewarot on 7/9/23, 8:44 AM
This causes a host of problems, and almost nobody is aware of them, or incorrectly assigns them to other causes. This results in a patchwork of "solutions" like virus scanners, signatures on executables, and a need for users to be exceedingly cautious about what they do with their computers. Because of this need for caution, users don't feel free to experiment with novel programs or web sites, lest their computer be infected with malware, etc.
Imagine your house without circuit breakers, or fuses. Imagine that there were no widespread use of them. The first shorted cord could potentially take down the power grid, and plunge millions into darkness. We can generally agree that circuit protection is a good idea.
When you run a program, you could explicitly specify the resources it is to have access to, instead of giving access to all of your files and folders. In fact, it doesn't even have to work differently in many cases, just replace the calls to file selection dialogs with equivalent calls to "power boxes" which return file access capabilities for the calling program. This allows the user to quickly and easily work in the manner to which they are accustomed, while simultaneously preventing malicious or just buggy code from accessing anything outside of the wishes of the user, no matter how evil the code is.
Spreading awareness of such systems, incorporating capability based security, is a worthy pursuit over the next decade.
by thelastgallon on 7/9/23, 10:26 PM
This is a win-win opportunity, accelerate renewables and wean off of fossil fuels. I'm working with middle/high school kids on improving charging: HOA managed parks (a LOT of them), parks, schools, utility poles, apartment garages, all new construction ready for EVs (residential, retail and commercial).
curtailment is the deliberate reduction in output below what could have been produced in order to balance energy supply: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curtailment_(electricity)
by creer on 7/10/23, 3:49 AM
Someone threw in the rise of authoritarianism. The issue is much broader. It's one of efficiency; understanding and respect of technology and science (past, current and potential); influence of religions, mobs and fads (including scientific fads and mobs); understanding and respect for economics (mostly taken as a joke and molded to other obsessions); understanding and respect for time scale including the power of engineering at scale (as opposed to the next election or coup).
In general humanity has tremendous resources and potential power - and makes sad and shitty use of it. Yes, different people have different ideas on what is the right thing to do, but that's where the problem is. We need to become more effective at sorting that out. It's hopefully not simply a question of "enlightened authoritarianism can do it". This all deserves work and progress and our systems are dated and don't seem to be progressing currently (I mean over the past 20 years).
And corruption (in broad terms, not just money), and alignment, etc, etc.
by balder1991 on 7/9/23, 4:57 AM
I think this is the threat that will be largely ignored, and because it is purposely ignored it will keep growing in the background until it takes us all down as a storm of natural disasters.
by bradlys on 7/10/23, 2:25 AM
There’s no simple solution when we’ve become such an atomized society and so hyper individualistic. It’s a problem that we rarely care about as well. As soon as someone is no longer alone, they no longer care about this problem that society is going through. As long as the majority of people are getting together (even if it’s a slim majority), nothing will be done.
I think the fall of romantic relationships is a contributor to society becoming more individualistic. I’m not worried about birth rates like everyone else. I’m worried about our happiness.
Being single and alone and without any intimacy is a very unenjoyable existence for most people - and I don’t think there’s ever going to be a cure for it other than to be with someone who loves you.
by dools on 7/9/23, 5:06 AM
you can do a Wardley map that shows the needs of those people, then you can move down the chain of needs, until you find something you're apt to solve.
Personally I'm working on reducing eWaste by providing a global solution to carrying multiple mobile phones as many people do this for work.
by dndn1 on 7/9/23, 6:27 PM
Bret Victor did a good subdivision into sub-problems for a technologist here - which probably suits this audience:
by eimrine on 7/9/23, 4:58 AM
1. Exist
2. Actively making us not noticing their existance by shitting us with some fake problems like gays, drugs, foreigners, terrorists, etc (different set of fake problems per country).
by gravypod on 7/9/23, 5:38 AM
1. Food: Current farming practices emit a lot of CO2, hurts local ecosystems (nitrogen runoff), and consumes a lot of water/fertilizer. Currently proven methods could fix many of these problems.
2. Housing: Bringing modern technology to the construction of homes/apartments could dramatically lower costs. Kit homes are an example where only focusing on the tech and not the zoning/social issues doesn't improve the issues. I think realistically we could build a lot of high efficient, safe (much safer than codes require), and comfortable housing and drive down rental prices substantially while turning a huge profit (if you can sort out zoning).
3. Programming: Working in a large monorepo is amazing. Many people who work at a big tech company which has one will tell you about the amazing stuff you can do in this environment. Open source does not have one and most developers only ever see the multi-repo approach to software development. Building a parallel SWE-tooling stack which was "the monorepo of $FAANG but open source" would allow OSS devs to collaborate and build really cool things.
4. Compute: Non-profit compute infra for common good. Right now everyone is focused on decentralized apps and it's possible these are just too complicated for end users (I certainly am confused but I don't know if I'm just too old). If there was a not-profit-focused compute infra which gave out free compute/bandwidth/storage to open source public commons software that might be a good thing.
by john_max_1 on 7/9/23, 5:26 AM
Our economic growth is based on a growing productive population.
Our economic prosperity is based on a growing productive population.
Different parts of the world are dealing with population collapse.
Look at Japan, a xenophobic country facing population collapse. The total GDP has remain stagnant over the past 20 years.
Look at UAE, a country facing population collapse and acknowledging reality by handing our long-term residency permits to affulent immigrants, mostly Indian Hindus. They are even building the first Hindu temple in Islamic middle-east in Dubai!
Look at Africa, where the population growth combined with sectarian warfare is making for a troublesome living - https://pudding.cool/2018/07/airports/ South Africa is even regresssing. Rich businessman of Asian Indian origin who have lived for generations are already heading for UK/Canada. And with them tax base would collapse like Uganda (90% tax revenue came from Asian Indians in Uganda in 1972 - https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-36132151).
Look at USA/Canada/Australia, all of them have low birth rate but compensate by being genuinely immigration friendly. They will grow while sucking even more productive population out of rest of the world.
The Europe would keep importing cheap labour (by choice) and welfare-loving immigrants from middle-east & Africa (by virtue of proximity). And they would transform Europe, how they tranformed Lebanon - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WubIe3c5NGc, further imagine how the voting blocks would look like when whites are rich & old while non-whites are poor & young. Why would they not demand higher taxation and lower welfare policies?
China would have same fate as Japan. Xenophobia with a collapsing population. China would appear a lot of more timid.
12,000 years ago, when sea levels rose, Tasmania lost connection to mainland Australia, and this lead to decline of knowledge and tools over time.
We might see the same in our world.
So, I believe population collapse is a huge problem.
by ssss11 on 7/9/23, 4:45 AM
by version_five on 7/9/23, 10:39 PM
by whobre on 7/9/23, 6:45 PM
by gmuslera on 7/9/23, 6:27 AM
Problems will not stop to appear while that is not solved. The whole system becomes fragile, and minor disturbances will become major ones.
by serjester on 7/10/23, 12:22 AM
by toomuchtodo on 7/9/23, 4:52 AM
by slushh on 7/9/23, 5:43 AM
This post will fade away in a day or two. However, there could be a place where the answers are condensed into targets to which all available information is added. Structures could form that provide education, information and resources which lead to answers and implementations.
by samantp on 7/9/23, 5:18 AM
by riezebos on 7/10/23, 8:47 AM
1. An organization that addresses antimicrobial resistance by advocating for better (pull) funding mechanisms to drive the development and responsible use of new antimicrobials.
2. An advocacy organization that promotes academic guidelines to restrict potentially harmful “dual-use” research.
3. A charity that rolls out dual HIV/syphilis rapid diagnostic tests, penicillin, and training to antenatal clinics, to effectively tackle congenital syphilis at scale in low-and middle-income countries.
4. An organization that distributes Oral Rehydration Solution and zinc co-packages to effectively treat life-threatening diarrhea in under five year olds in low-and middle-income countries.
5. A charity that builds healthcare capacity to provide “Kangaroo Care”, an exceptionally simple and cost-effective treatment, to avert hundreds of thousands of newborn deaths each year in low-and middle-income countries.
6. An organization that aims to reduce stock-outs of contraceptives and other essential medicines by improving the way they are delivered and managed within public health facilities.
Source: https://www.charityentrepreneurship.com/post/announcing-our-...
by nosmokewhereiam on 7/9/23, 5:24 PM
Soil scouts, with patches for an acre that sequestors x amount units of carbon, or another that rewards those that have y ppms of living microbes.
If someone could recruit, deploy messaging, and enable long term action, at a minimum it'd be symbolic. In tandem it could be hopeful, and with success could be valuable.
Part biology, part humint.
See: JADAM and Korean natural farming.
by Balgair on 7/10/23, 2:15 PM
The next decade is decisive for China's future. She must make her moves soon or is very likely to be shut out of any path to hegemony for the century. What will be the response of the NATO+ countries to Chinese moves? Essentially, are we finally, for really-real-reals this time, going to see the 'end of history'?
by rajanaccros on 7/9/23, 5:22 AM
If we do not take action on climate _now_ then _nothing_ is going to matter.
We will enter into an irreversible feedback loop that causes human extinction, yet it won't be apparent until it is literally on the doorstep for people to realize.
If you are not quitting your job and working to advance the existential threat of climate change and the main driver of the catastrophe (capitalism and perpetual growth) then you are wasting your (and your children's) time.
An excellent book on what needs to be done is Less is More by Jason Hickel [2]. This is the only problem that matters since literally existence depends on solving it. The time for deep concern is over. Action is needed and it is needed now. Education, degrowth, reuse, technology. So put everything else aside or you are laboring (and living) for nothing.
[0]: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41893-023-01157-x
by nojvek on 7/9/23, 4:43 PM
- General artificial intelligence - being able to effectively model how the world works, and search for solutions in that model.
- Energy - nuclear fusion, cheap artificial photosynthesis, cheap solar such that we can have solar on almost every surface facing the sun.
- Molecular assembly - figure out how to custom program DNA from scratch to build what we need. Imagine building more efficient trees where it captures CO2 and sunlight into gasoline, or strong timber directly.
Each of these can go quite wrong if not developed with safety in mind.
I call it the Mind (intelligence), Body (molecular assembly), Energy (putting energy to work) problems.
by peter-m80 on 7/9/23, 9:09 AM
by shortrounddev2 on 7/12/23, 9:23 PM
by iamjk on 7/9/23, 4:53 AM
by hermiod on 7/10/23, 5:37 AM
A pandemic brought a ton of global infrastructure to it's knees, and it could have been so much worse.
What if that happened again?
by dakotasmith on 7/9/23, 5:22 AM
by 1attice on 7/9/23, 6:28 PM
- Novel food sources (we just had the four hottest days on record, in succession)
- Adversarial health care (e.g. getting an abortion in a dominionist state)
by Teever on 7/9/23, 4:58 AM
by habitue on 7/10/23, 12:06 AM
I think people think "AI is overhyped" etc, but there is a difference between there being too many low value AI startups right now (a bubble) and whether a few top labs will produce an AI that threatens humanity.
Even if it's a ten percent chance, it's a huge problem that we need to address.
by kabr on 7/9/23, 4:58 AM
by Toast_ on 7/9/23, 5:12 AM
by revskill on 7/9/23, 5:28 PM
by t312227 on 7/9/23, 11:55 AM
* (real) war
eg. "large" ones between superpowers ... not decimating goat-herders equipped with not much more than ak47 & towels around their heads somewhere in the lesser developed areas of the planet.
* climate-change
eg. taming the resource-hunger of capitalism.
by s-kiel on 7/10/23, 6:53 PM
by Madmallard on 7/10/23, 7:31 AM
by p1esk on 7/9/23, 4:51 AM
by MaxHoppersGhost on 7/11/23, 5:18 PM
by pieter_mj on 7/9/23, 8:23 AM
Emphasizing metabolic (mitochondrial) holistic health approaches in medicine.
by nickd2001 on 7/10/23, 9:46 AM
by GirishSharma643 on 7/9/23, 5:17 PM
by CatWChainsaw on 7/19/23, 11:34 PM
Technology is not going to "save" humanity. It raised standards of living, and it created problems where previously there were none. This crowd has a habit of saying that technology is neutral, that the positive and negative consequences that come from it are people problems. Technology is a people problem, but besides that, they take the hypocritical stance of taking credit for the positive consequences of technology yet pushing the responsibility for negative consequences of technology onto individuals - individuals who react to emerging technology, not create it. Parents are supposed to limit a teen's phone time to prevent addiction but only lip service is paid to disincentivizing the psyops that Big Tech use to create the addiction in the first place.
Swap your stats, trade a little intelligence for wisdom. How many times here have people brought out the could-vs-should quote, completely oblivious to the fact that they were the scientist fools, I've lost count.
The fascination with technological solutions and the marrow-deep, if well-hidden abhorrence of nature will kill us all, and sooner than many here think. How hot are the waters off Florida? How long is Arizona's record breaking heatwave? How many floods did we have this week? You. Won't. TeChNoLoGy. Your. Way. Out. Of. These. "Problems".
Patterns hold, until they don't. Population isn't going to keep growing forever just because Malthus was wrong in his time. Progress isn't guaranteed just because you wished really hard to santa that the singularity would happen in your lifetime. "Humanity has never suffered an extinction event, so it never will" is an abysmally stupid sentence that anyone here should be ashamed of unironically spewing from their mouths. Humanity also couldn't harness nuclear power, until suddenly it could. On the existential threats humanity faces - as many here are so fond of sneering at AI-doomers, reality isn't fiction, so we're NOT guaranteed a plucky hero who clutches victory from the jaws of defeat, as the media that brought us Skynet would have you believe.
Making money the be-all end-all of business and then making business encroah on every other sphere of life is why standards of living are dropping, and every time you feed the beast with rent-based economies you make life worse. When you maximize profit, it comes at the cost of everything else, up to and including your life.
Growth isn't infinite, except for the stupidity of hopium smokers here. Please explain how a planet made of finite mass and energy can keep GDP going up, up, up forever? Based in reality, please.
Limits - they're okay to have. The obsession with breaking all limits, with optimizing for maximum efficiency, are biological edicts taken to an extreme too far to walk back from.
"One of the more annoying and least explicable features of life in the 21st Century is our hubris in glibly assuming that because we have better technology, we are smarter, wiser, and more virtuous than our ancestors." (and also immune to the things that brought down civilizations in the past. History doesn't repeat itself, but it often rhymes.)
by pabe on 7/9/23, 9:05 AM
by cratermoon on 7/9/23, 5:02 AM
by poisonborz on 7/9/23, 6:00 AM
by lakomen on 7/10/23, 1:29 PM
by ecks4ndr0s on 7/9/23, 4:55 PM
by slavapestov on 7/9/23, 9:27 PM
by Apocryphon on 7/9/23, 4:56 AM
by samtho on 7/9/23, 8:03 AM
I think we are going to see additional polarization in online discussion and we will continue to see this spill into the physical world as violence. This level of division has not been seen at this level in modern western societies. More people have taken on their political sports team as the very thing they identify with and their opposing team(s) have been painted as conspiratorial psychopaths, preventing discussion across the aisle from even happening at a meaningful level. In the US, we will see a clear bifurcation of states where any remaining purple states will solidify their leaning during the 2024 election and we won’t see this shift again in a meaningful way for at least a few election cycles.
We are going to see massive, non-collateralized debt defaults and financial companies will attempt to claw back that money, with those who continued to borrow above their means and were hit with variable APR that doubled or tripled interest on their accounts, minimum payments go up, and it becomes unsustainable. We will see a 50% rise in bankruptcies over the next 18 months and a 100-200% increase over the next 5 years. Student loan default will be rampant as payment of these loans will become due again in October, destroying any hope of credit access in the near future to these people. Banks will foreclose but not be have the bandwidth to repossess all the property, leaving empty shells of neighborhoods. The labor market will sharply flip in favor of the employers and labor will lose a lot of bargaining power or other gains received over the last few years. Rent will go up, private equity will buy houses for cheap, mortgage rates will stay just under 10%.
China’s one child policy that began 40 years ago is starting to be felt, with only half as many people at their full earning potential (30s-40s) trying to support an aging population. The bottom has fallen out of their labor force, the CCP’s grip on the people is becoming tighter, but one day they are going to flip the light switch in their home and will be without power. Their strong, centralized government will falter and diminish or outright just fail, the north China plateau will revert to its wasteland type state, formerly propped up by will of the government. Tianjin will be the only city to survive and will receive the majority of refugees from the northern areas. Tianjin, Shanghai and Hong Kong/Shenzhen will revert to city states and will self-govern. Fragmented China will become a huge consumer of global food as they will be incapable of growing their own, with the supply of nitrogen fertilizer and potash being clinched by the Russo-Ukraine war and reserves dwindling, global food shortages will be occur within the next two years.
Russia will continue sending every able bodied man into the nato-powered meat grinder of Ukraine until a proper overthrow of Putin occurs or they run out of people. This will create an absence of men in this generation which will be worse than their losses sustained during WWII. The vacuum of power within the hollowed-out Russia will not last long and I worry to think who will rise up as the next leader. Ukraine east of the Dnieper river will be mostly leveled by then, further exacerbating the food shortages. Ukraine will eventually join NATO, Russia will attempt to create the USSR 2.0 from mainly the west Asian countries.
We may be see a collapse of generalized globalization if the US Navy decides it’s not in its best interest to keep peace on the high seas causing insurance rates to skyrocket and shipping via international waters becomes a dangerous prospect. A lot of our production will move to Mexico where there is an educated and motivated population that is already producing goods of higher quality than China. Trade between the US-Canada-Mexico will become increasingly important due to access to both resources and labor that all 3 bring proped up by agreed upon free trade. This transition will be long and will come with challenges.
The EU will lose more membership and if Germany is unable to fully replace its energy needs, the EU as a whole will diminish. The Anglosphere may create its own free trade agreement, maybe even going so far to allow for free travel amongst the group (but this will be symbolic as very few counties share land boarders). This will create tensions with N. American free trade and Mexico, perhaps prompting Latin America counties into creating its own Schengen-type zone. America-Mexico relations will sour but the trade relations will be to solidified to do anything.
by ioisar on 7/9/23, 11:49 PM
by ferociouskite56 on 7/9/23, 5:13 AM
2030 4 high-NA EUV fabs will have 1.4 nano RiscV chips; rollable microLED; solid state battery. That's still not paper thin all day phones.
1 passenger, only autopilot drones should transport snakebite victims in dangerous countries.