I love the innovative ideas and unexpected insights from the HN community. Let's go deep - what challenge would you tackle if you had unlimited resources? Guaranteed funding, access to top talent, or freedom from your day job?
Why would you choose to solve it? Do you actually need unlimited resources to start?
So, since then, my answer is modern day slavery. Wherever and however it exists.
Don't need unlimited resources to start, just to make a living.
Would likely need unlimited resources both monetarily and legal to actually attempt to tackle it, though.
If I had any real idea of how to start, I'd have done so yesterday.
This is one I have personally donated to, but there are others: https://www.barnabasaid.org/gb/latest-needs/free-christian-f...
If you wanted more hands-on, I'm guessing there is room for expansion in ending inter-generational debt bondage.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perverse_incentive
[2] https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/pmjrdg/is_th...
Why?
Because it's already killing people every day. And is slowly but surely making our environment entirely unstable. But as a typical consumer we don't have much power to stop it.
Do you need unlimited money? Not necessarily, but there are so many different possibilities when it comes to dealing with it. Carbon capture, green energy, (fusion?!), energy storage, planting more millions of trees, phasing out fossil fuels, holding companies accountable for their use of fossil fuels, the list goes on.
Looking at any one of these would be an expensive endeavour. Hopefully we can find small but very impactful methods in dealing with our climate troubles. Because as someone who turns 30 this year, it isn't looking promising for the next 30 years.
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- Completely circular material lifespans. I'm out of my depth here, but there _must_ be a way to gasify/liquify any type of object and filter its contents through a membrane, the same way desalination plants separate salt (NaCL) and water (H20).
- Replacing first-past-the-post voting with proportional representation.
[1]: https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2020/1/15/2105805... [2]: https://www.iut.nu/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/Limited-Profit...
In my eyes the greatest challenge is to find a way to enable humanity to live in a way that does no longer destroy the ecosystem it relies on.
Unfortunately, the solution won't be just technological but rather social, educational and political.
We must find ways to stop overconsumption, overpopulation and to teach children (and people in general) the value of our natural environment.
It'd be great to see the beneficiaries of tech wealth commit to building intentional, public physical learning spaces (again [0]).
Libraries may look different in the 21st century, and have more than books, but their purpose of making knowledge accessible remains the same and as important as ever.
[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnegie_library
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Computing efficiency - The fact is that most of the transistors in a computer sit idle, waiting for their 15 nanoseconds of fame. A first principles review of what is actually possible leads me to suspect we can run LLMs and other large compute loads for 1% (or less) of the current energy requirements without new process nodes, using current fabs.
The Supply Chain - We need to have a publicly documented and tested second supply chain for everything in our society. Less efficient, and more robust ways to make every essential tool and material required for a modern society should be developed. Even if it's 1000x more expensive, it's still better to have that backup rather that being completely without options.
Radio Mesh networking - I'd set up a system in which everyone, everywhere, could stay in touch with everyone else. Governments and other organizations would handle the fiber backbone for big stuff, but a low bandwidth system that could work slowly, and globally, without it should be the thing we can all own.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capability-based_security
Think of it as using circuit breakers, instead of the current approach (in Linux, MacOS, Windows, etc) of just giving applications access to everything by default, and counting on them to be correct, and non-evil.
Within the field of energy storage there are two important sub-fields... grid-level storage (cheap, long-lasting) and high-density (for transport applications). Both fields are already making good progress but I think I'd focus on grid-level first. Success here means basically being able to make the whole world's electricity grids "green". It will also be a massive economic stimulus because electricity will get very cheap.
No, you don't need "unlimited" resources for this, like I said, rapid progress is being made right now, it's just not quite rapid enough for the urgency and more focused funding and stimulus could definitely accelerate things. So if I had a lot of money and top talent I would distribute those among the handful of most promising approaches that are already being tried and keep funneling them there until it's "solved" for what we need.
With unlimited resources you can build a global power grid, which will completely remove the need for any energy storage. "Just" move the abundant generated electricity from the sunny and windy parts of earth to the dark and windless parts.