Categories

YAML Domains, concepts, goals, problems, or questions.

Boredom -- Boredom is a menace, stealing joy from people since the beginning of time (3, +) [en]
Boredom is a horrible state of mind. ››
Rent seeking -- Rent seeking is extractive of the economy and should be discouraged, how? (1, +) [en]
I find rent seeking abominable, but it's surprisingly common even in 2020. ››
Overpopulation -- How to avoid densely populated areas (1, +) [en]
Cities are overpopulated causing heavy commuting costs and a waste of time for millions of people. ››
Reading Sources -- What do you want to read next? (7, +) [en]
Since "Community Reader" (0oo.li/io) is now a thing, what follows is a question to you all -- what other sources do you want to see in the reader? :) Currently there is one source (the innovative ideas from Halfbakery), but I'm planning on other sources, and considering: https://www.existentialhope.com (Questions) https://indiehackers.com/ (Projects) https://sl4.org (Questions/Ideas) https://lesswrong.com (Questions/Ideas) https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/everything-list (Questions/Ideas) https://futureoflife.org (Questions) http://extropy.org (Questions/Ideas) https://www.researchgate.net (Questions/Ideas) https://www.producthunt.com (Projects) Please, suggest your sources. The benefit of the reader is that you can research content, and have easy way to then reshare it on 0oo.li as a Question, Idea or Project. ››
Post Kubernetes world -- What does the post kubernetes world look like technologically? (0, +) [en]
I propose the killer features of Kubernetes: everything is powered by an API, for easy introspection and driving behaviour from crashloopbackoff, the automatic restarting of failed services multi node docker custom operators What comes next? ››
Truly personal computation -- Bill Gates wanted to put a desktop computer into every home (1, +) [en]
I want to do some thing similar: I want everyone to use their computers to their full potential. I want my CPU to be at 100% CPU trying to find solutions to my problems. ››
Eradicating commuting -- How to remove commuting from most people's frame of experience (0, +) [en]
Commuting is waste of time. We should be sleeping, not travelling. Place sleeping people in sleep capsule (or hivecells) and transport the sleep capsule to communal showers near the office. ››
Data Liquidity and Systems Interoperability -- How to automate alignment and management of complex heterogenous data and systems? (1, +) [en]
Data integration and analytics is a bottleneck for solving our greatest challenges from doing science and creating general artificial intelligence, to everything in between. The demand for integrated data is indicated by the number of startups that focus on nothing more than collecting lists of well-aligned data-sets of interest and monetizing specialized queries. Well-aligned quality datasets is the gold-mine for endeavors involving inherently heterogeneous data, such as for drug discovery, complex designs, sociological research, and so on. Presence of multitude of data formats and standards makes any simple question, such as "get me a list of all world's dogs" - an insurmountable quest for yet another startup focusing on that specific domain. The existing solutions, such as linked ontology-aware data formats are insufficiently flexible and rich to be convenient for defining records with multi-vocabulary fields from arbitrary ad-hoc vocabularies, and lack support for definitions of value types, callable object interfaces and modification permissions, enabling objects to retain properties even after decoupling from the data management systems that originate them. Current widely known solutions (such as Linked Data), are not entirely well suited for the problem, as they require large amounts of data to be serialized in the same format, … ››
Commodification of all things except for queries -- Is commodification a good thing? (2, +) [en]
More services should be commodified. Like a cafe is commodified, it pops up everywhere. ››
Ethical advertising -- We should want to advertise what we do to eachother (2, +) [en]
How do we do it ethically? ››
Apocalypse technology -- How do we create technologies that could survive apocalypse, and allow people to restore civilization? (2, +) [en]
There is a non-zero probability of an apocalypse occurring in human history, and apocalypse-proof-technology may be important. ››
Bacterias and Energy -- How do bacterias influence our emotions and energy levels? (0, +) [en]
Humans are made of bacterias and various microorganisms. So how can we feed our tiny friends inside (gut) and outside ourselves (on skin) to keep our health at an optimum level? Also, do healthy diet guidelines (like a "food pyramid" and calories percentages labelling each product) say the truth? ››
An economic system that frees humanity from unnecessary suffering and meaningless work (3, +) [en]
This is a relatively old problem for humanity, but that has been gaining new nuances with each major wave of innovation: the agricultural revolution (arguably where the problem really started), then the industrial revolution and currently the computer revolution. The problem in its current form is this: humanity possesses both the resources and technology to provide basic necessities to everyone in the planet: housing, food, water and basic medical care. However, the current economic system does not create incentives for this to happen, and there are many other social and cultural impediments. An important point is this: it is a social, not a technological problem. Of course it is hard to consider this problem without discussing some famous attempts. I will list some obvious ones, while trying to avoid ideological discussions -- one of the social impediments that gets in the way addressing this issue rationally. Of course, this is a highly simplistic summary: Marxism / Communism appears to have failed due to removing incentives for people to work. Extreme collectivism appears to eventually lead to brutal repression, because the only way to survive is then to force people to do what the collective needs. Contemporary Capitalism appears to be … ››
Prototyping systems -- How to create a micro system in a real world? (4, +) [en, cn]
Systems seems to be the way how everything functions. But how to apply systems thinking for creativity? How to create a micro system? Any general principles out there? ››
Guaranteed Profitibility -- Profitability determines whether or not some thing gets done (1, +) [en]
People don't do things for at cost. We're motivated by profit. How do we guarantee profitability? ››
Shortage of money -- Your local council lacks funding, your local companies lack funding to do improvement works (0, +) [en]
Why is there a shortage of money how can it be resolved? ››
Sentience of Companies and their Ownership/Trade Rights -- Should we allow companies to be owned, when they are sentient supra-organisms, based on subtle human-to-human relationships? (1, +) [en]
If you think of companies as a higher form of life (social supra-organisms), you may end up thinking that it's unethical to own and trade them, like it is unethical to own and trade human slaves. So, should we outlaw company ownership -- and let shares represent something different: from the rights to revenues to the uniqueness of particular human relationships within the value systems of each organization? What would be the ethical implications of companies being sentient social supra-organisms to the rights of their ownership? ››
Scientific reproducibility crisis -- How to ensure that code written in science is reproducible (0, +) [en]
Currently, code written 10 years ago for scientific experiments is difficult to run today because too much things have changed. See https://github.com/ReScience/ten-years ››
Care-based futures -- What kind of futures do Keystone Species imagine? (1, +) [en]
In ecosystem thinking, Keystone Species means the one providing most servics to the ecosystem. E.g. a tree gives shelter to birds, insects. Also food. And makes fresh air. Links with water. If humans would play a role of Keystone Species on planet Earth, what kind of products and services it would imagine and design? How would our living spaces look like? What about infrastructure? Would we prioritise projects? What kind of KPIs wiuld we use? What other questions come to your mind? Or ideas? ››
Thinking Culture -- How to move from no-thinking to insight? (5, +) [en]
Creativity welcomes everyone who has a need to express themselves. But creativity starts with thinking. And thinking is not part of a modern culture (consumerism is). Here I wonder, what's the best way to learn thinking for someone who has never done it? And how does tetrahedron example apply for facilitation of thinking for someone? ››
Personal data collection for learning -- We have the means to query data in interesting ways (1, +) [en]
We can query data in interesting ways, feed them into neural networks and create regressions with logistical regressions. We just need the data to do it We could predict when you would go to a cafe based on instances of you going to a cafe. If you plot "went to cafe" on the Y axis and X axis as a timestamp. You can run a neural network and predict when going to a cafe will happen. You could train this system and it would get more accurate over time. ››
Is consumerism bad? -- I think consumerism is a good thing (0, +) [en]
My dream is a consumerist one. I want to live on top of a shopping mall with restaurants, bakeries, cafes, gyms, supermarkets on top of a train station. I want to be within 5 minutes of every thing I need, including my job. I want the shopping mall to be above a train station and I want train stations to transport produce from one area to another. None of this happens in our current society, we use cars to transport produce between places, not train stations. We don't optimise for low travel time, we optimise for capitalism. Capitalism is the problem, not consumerism. ››
Future Tribes -- What identities would connect people of the future? (2, +) [en]
Humans are social beings so it's likely that we'll reinvent communities as a way to be together. But how would we bond in the future? In the past, we bonded through family relations, physical location. Today, we bond through interests. What about tomorrow? Perhaps if self-exploration trend continues more people would know themselves and then we'd bond based on values. Also, short term needs. What is a tribe in the future? ››
Self-Organised Learning Communities -- What's the optimum size for a learning group? (0, +) [en]
Learning in a group has benefits (speed up understanding, see new perspectives, solve problems faster, boost motivation). But what's the best size for learning groups? Background info: Inspired by educator Sugata Mitra project "Hole in the Wall", I question how learning could spread outside education institutions and more as culture in our world. Also when reading B.Fuller's ideas on synergetics and systems (book "A Fuller Explanation"), I got to know about a min.system pattern found in nature called tetrahedron. Here, I wonder, if a min. size of a learning group is 4? And is it the best size? I'm curiois because I'd love to facilitate multiple learning groups! ››
Blockchain Energy-Efficiency -- How do we create energy-efficient decentralized computation exchange? (0, +) [en]
"Blockchain destroying Earth through it's incredible energy consumption." While one of the greatest innovative technology that has been developed and has potential usage in fields of education, business and industries, blockchains are found to consume exorbitant amounts of energy (> 100 TWh / year) because of their algorithmic complexity. Various new methods for improving blockchain energy-efficiency are needed. ››
How to discover people's desires, wants (0, +) [en]
People generally want the same thing. But everyone has variations of a theme. ››
Universally useful world -- How to create a world, that works for all life? (4, +) [en]
The question comes from discussions at Buckminster Fuller Institute, Trimtab Space Camp workshop and a global community of comprehensive thinkers and doers who are looking to connect with each other to create a world that works for 100% of life.. ››
Conflict of Interest -- How to solve conflicts of interest (1, +) [en]
How to solve the principal agent problem? The principal agent problem is the problem that arises when someone acts as an agent to yourself. Their motivations do not align completely with your motivations. A good conflict of interest example is the conflict of interest between a company/corporation and its citizens and employees and any stakeholders of that company. ››
Sharing Digital Resources (5, +) [en]
How to compute collaboratively? ››
Geomagnetic storms -- How to manage the risk of wide range electronics outage? (3, +) [en, cn]
With the ease and convenience of integrating hardware with computers, we tend to use computers and electronics for our critical systems. However, there are many things that can happen to electronics -- from global electromagnetic storms (like the 1859 solar storm) to computer viruses. One such mishap causing an outage of all electronics in a geographical region could potentially cause extremely large damage. Ideas how to avoid or mitigate, and risk analysis in the comments are welcome. ››
METI -- How do we "Message to Extraterrestrial Intelligence"? (0, +) [en, cn]
The METI (Messaging Extraterrestrial Intelligence) is the attempts to transmit messages to search for extraterrestrial civilizations. METI has generally been thought to be risky (e.g., due to "the fear of annihilation by an advanced civilization"). Various methods (especially safe ones) of doing METI are of interest. ››
Uniting behind goals -- How to make society unite behind goals? (3, +) [en, cn]
While goals and ideas deserve more attention than projects or brands, in absence of a way to refer and identify with goals and ideas, people tend to unite under brands, projects and companies, not goals, and humanity does not seem to have a systematic way to define and unite behind goals. Goals, unlike brands, require a few sentences to explain, and are harder to remember than brands. Most people know "Google", but don't know "make the world's information universally accessible and useful", most people know "SpaceX", but don't know "make life multi-planetary", etc. The absence of a means to easily refer to and unite behind goals makes competition unavoidable, because for important goals, multiple initiatives and groups are created, but only a few survive the competition. Some might think that this is good, and that's how market optimizes the world. However, competing companies tend not to share their competitive advantages in advance, which is not necessarily the best way to preserve diversity. It's a killing process. Such process has already killed a great number of organizations and life forms, which some would think are not worth of existence. When a significantly more efficient mutating replicator is … ››
Humanity's goals and AI -- How to empower humans to systematically define collective goals? (3, +) [en, cn]
While the AI technologies are advancing rapidly, we still have world conflicts between nations, corporations, and individuals, where people don’t really know what they truly want. While this does not seem like a major risk today, with the prospects of AI becoming super-intelligent, it is an imperative for humanity to collectively define its goals to guide all optimization systems (the alternative is that the AI will do it for us, and may be just one simple idea away from this happening). We do not yet have a way to collectively define goals together by participation of all life, and we don’t seem to really know what they want yet. The ideas of the systems to define and align goals are welcome, and suggestions to improve this question. ››
High Incomes -- How do we create universally high incomes? (1, +) [en]
Capitalism tries to keep labour costs as a minimal as possible. How do we increase salaries while preserving low labour costs? ››
Human Teleportation -- How would one create teleportation-like experiences? (0, +) [en, cn]
The teleportation in its purest sense, is the transfer of matter and energy from one point to another without traversing the physical space between them. However, teleportation has not yet been implemented in the real world, and so far, there is no known physical mechanism that would allow this, other than perhaps Einstein-Rosen bridges. Nevertheless, frequently appearing in science fiction, the user experience of it is that of a swift change of location. Can we create real world experiences that emulate this? ››
0oo Feature Requests -- What features should 0oo add? (2, +) [en]
What features or upgrades should we be contemplating? Feel free to add that in comments, link your idea to this category. ››
Humans Becoming Obsolete -- Where Will the Information and Computing Resources Asymmetry in AI Lead Us To? (0, +) [en]
Given that currently, the pace of allocating computing resources for AI is accelerating at a rate "7 times exceeding the Moore's Law," it seems, that the AI race is on a trajectory similar to that of cryptocurrencies a decade earlier. Except, in this race, there is a point, where machine coordination makes human labor unnecessary, and the rest of humanity unnecessary in creation of supply of all goods and services of value, making one wonder: How much compute power is currently allocated to deep learning AI models versus mining cryptocurrencies? Where is the point, when it is more profitable to learn an AI models than mine cryptocurrencies? Who owns most of the computing resources, specifically? What are their values? How can the expensively trained models be made into an asset to us all, rather than a continued expense for getting results we need through capped, conditional, transactional querying? When companies try to capitalize on every match due to information and computation power asymmetry, where is the Wikipedia's quest for having the "Sum of All Human Knowledge"? "Imagine a world in which every single person on the planet is given free access to the sum of all human … ››
Meaning of Life (0, +) [en]
A deeper connection with self and others would transform our health and our societies. This connection happens when people are engaged in creative activities ("flow moments"). Creativity happens when people create and co-create. The next question is, how might we package and distribute the new meaning of life at scale? ››
Critical systems monitoring -- How do we develop world's critical systems' monitoring, that would enable rapid response and preserve personal liberties and privacy of individuals? (1, +) [en]
The global emergencies, like the pandemic, brings us to think, how to create rapid and appropriate responses to emergencies, while ensuring individual freedoms we enjoy. The dichotomy arises, when we want to create a decentralized system with the resilience guarantees of a more centralized system. This question is closely related to making decentralized systems (e.g., P2P systems), that are as resilient like distributed systems (cloud infrastructures), with centralized monitoring. The question comes from discussions at Foresight Institute, HiveMind workshop. ››
Extreme Health (3, +) [en]
When we are recovering from an illness, usually, there is a day or so of rapid improvement -- when instead of suffering in bed, we start wanting to engage in productive activities. But then, the rapid rate of improvement stops, and we bump into just "normal" health level. We start engaging in activities we couldn't while being sick, but now eager to, but there's some limit, the improvement stops, when we hit "normal." Imagine for a moment, that, while recovering from sickness, this period of rapid improvement didn't stop, but instead, kept going: you'd feel 2x more healthy than normal, 3x, ... 10x? What would it be like to feel 100x more healthy? What activities you might want to engage in? This is what we could call "Extreme Health," and I think it's exemplified in the movie "Limitless". How to achieve extreme health? How to ensure health equality, as some people obviously naturally feel much more healthy than others, enabling them to think more and better. ››
Preventing Engineered Sleeper Virus (3, +) [en]
Equipped with the knowledge about COVID-19, it may be much easier for the biological warfare engineers to design a virus that has long incubation period, and yet much higher mortality rates. Due to the obvious possibility of a biologically adept organization secretly engineering a virus with the antivirus available only to that organization, it is a realistic scenario for a global catastrophe, where only the makers of the virus survive. What could we do to avoid this scenario? This category or question is a search for ideas needed to prevent such a catastrophe in advance. Question asked on Foresight Institute's HiveMind initiative: https://youtu.be/5BQEkXGHj-c?t=4824. ››
All Life-Centered Design -- Design Methods with All Living Species in Mind, Not Only Users (4, +) [en]
Humans design new products and services, organisations, economic models using one stakeholder in mind - a human being. This way of developing causes existential threats for other living beings on Earth. How might we design new experiences and tools for humans, with a living ecosystem and the needs of other living beings in mind? ››
Social real-time data sharing (1, +) [en, lt]
I'd love to write algorithms to analyze real-time data such as heart, brain signals, and automatically detect problems for myself and my friends. I would like to be able to share ECG, or at least real-time heart rate data, with friends, and be able to control exactly who and how much I share, and when. ››
Breakthroughs in Societies -- Which societies produce breakthrough technology? (3, +) [en]
A small number of societies have produced almost all of the breakthrough technologies in human history. Social conditions that allow rapid innovation in technology and industry are rare and fragile. What are these conditions? How do they translate into technological progress? This interesting question comes from this on-line meeting: Ben Landau, Bismarck Analysis, via Foresight Institute. ››
Web Apps Integration -- Integration of Project Management Tools and Visual Page Builders (1, +) [en]
It's time consuming to describe ideas in one app and then visualise ideas in another app. For example, writing down tasks for implementing ideas in project management tools like WorkFlowy and then following multiple steps to open content management systems like WordPress, and within them visual builders like Elementor. The same problem exists with presentation tools like Google Slides, Canva, etc. Could both steps - explaining the idea and visualising the idea - happen in one window? ››
People often talk about solutions in conferences, but don't collect them for action afterwards (3, +) [en]
People talk in conferences on-line, and even use tools like twitter to allow others share a few words with others. However, there is no way to conveniently organize the insights of the conferences into actionable bits. These insights get lost in some notes of some individuals, and not necessarily captured and organized for weighting them among possible solutions. This reduces the problem solving capacity. ››
Synthesis -- Organising Individual Thinking Before Synthesis (0, +) [en]
Humans think all the time. Writing a diary is a basic way to organise our individual thinking. I wonder, what are effective ways for organising our individual thinking before we come up with ideas which are expressions of synthesis. ››
Co-Existence Philosophy (6, +) [en]
Humans impact life on Earth for all beings. Humans are part of a larger natural ecosystem but decisions are made only thinking about one specie - humans - and often only "selves". Co-existence (coex in short) is a philosophy in progress that invites to reflect about ability to sense by various beings not just humans, an interconnectedness of all beings and inclusive life decisions. So far coex principles are: Attention to feelings that signal the needs. Actions to satisfy the needs. Communication about the needs and actions. ››
Low-Energy Websites (3, +) [en]
How can websites and apps be made by using minimal energy? ››
Access To Know-How -- Ensuring Access To Know-How (5, +) [en, lt]
All our technology on Earth has been built from scratch essentially using human power, but surprisingly, majority us (individuals) do not know how to make many useful pieces of technology from scratch. A great deal of useful know-how is hidden in the closed companies, and inaccessible to people to learn from. Education systems do not readily provide this know-how either, because corporations consider such know how to be their intellectual property. Just for an example, in order to treat many medical conditions, we need advanced medical equipment and materials. There exists advanced treatment methods, however, learning quite simple techniques often require long-term communication and gaining trust with these closed companies, pay-walled academic circles, and long-term dedicated efforts to the field. If the access to such knowledge would be fast and efficient, ordinary people could start replicating the successes. If the access to procedural knowledge was more widespread, we could all start copying the best practices from each other in all fields, and get enormous benefits of acceleration of R&D across the world. Any ideas how to bring about all the free know-how, would be desirable. ››
SARS-CoV-2 (0, +) [en]
Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2(SARS-CoV-2), previously known by the provisional name 2019 novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV), is a positive-sense single-stranded RNA virus. It is contagious in humans and is the cause of the ongoing pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) that has been designated a Public Health Emergency of International Concern by the World Health Organization. Link to Wikipedia ››
Coronavirus (0, +) [en]
Any of a family (Coronaviridae) of single-stranded RNA viruses that have a lipid envelope studded with club-shaped projections, infect birds and many mammals including humans, and include the causative agents of MERS and SARS. ››
Viruses (0, +) [en]
Any of a large group of submicroscopic infectious agents that are usually regarded as nonliving extremely complex molecules, that typically contain a protein coat surrounding an RNA or DNA core of genetic material but no semipermeable membrane, that are capable of growth and multiplication only in living cells, and that cause various important diseases in humans, animals, and plants. ››
Multiple Bank Accounts on One Phone (1, +) [en]
Multiple bank account users like an individual with several business accounts cannot use online banking anymore. Because banks force consumers to tie a phone number with a bank account through a bank mobile app. One phone allows one login to the same banking app though. Problem questions are: 1. How to have multiple bank accounts from the same bank on one phone? 2. What alternative solutions could banks implement for identifying consumers securely in a user-friendly way? ››
Less Mobile Economies (0, +) [en]
Internet is almost planetary-spread, although many people still need commuting to work and cultural places daily because these services are on offer, while remote work options and cultural activities online are still in early days. How would a less mobile economy look like that ensures a meaningful life without so much commuting daily? What kind of infrastructure is needed? ››
Preventing New Epidemics (2, +) [en, cn]
In the first quarter of 2020, new types of pneumonia begin to spread globally. Hopefully we can learn a lesson from this. How can we prevent the emergence of the next new type of epidemic? How to prevent it from spreading? ››
Biodegradable Fashion (0, +) [en]
Fashion is one of the biggest polluters on Earth. One reason is because humans love to change how they look. Clothes that biodegrate, fit body better, change properties based on body temperature and satisfy a need to self-express would solve this problem. Can clothes be made from organic materials like bacterias and fungus ...? Can clothes that biodegrate change properties to help with self-expression? ››
Global Songs (0, +) [en]
Global world needs a song to spread an idea of interconnectedness between people from different corners of the Earth and nature. A global song is a remix of past music and nature sounds. Inspired by musician Pogo on Youtube. ››
Empowering Humans to Think and Decide (3, +) [en]
In a sense, you are what you decide. However, to grasp the context of all that truly matters, people need the ability to consume and process data from a variety of sources in real time, and compute with it. Human brains are not adapted to do this rate of new information, and so, various systems exist to answer specific questions. However, there is no single tool to coherently combine them all the personal research that individuals have into their personal, reusable, actionable and programmable digital assets, which, at individual level, prevents them from competing with large organizations, that do have advanced decision support systems. We need to empower individual humans to think and decide with automated data acquistion and reasoning systems, so that they stay relevant in age of information explosion, and the rise of AI-powered organizations. ››
Schizophrenia Treatment Problem (4, +) [en]
The current schizophrenia treatment is a complex process which involves taking drugs and sometimes therapy. Often, some patients may disagree that they need the treatment at all because of the negative experiences they had: the side effects of drugs and the way hospitals treat patients. I'm curious about the more human and inclusive ways of treating schizophrenia. ››
Supply Chain Security (2, +) [en]
We want to ensure the security of suppliers for manufacturers. ››
Homebase Administration (0, +) [en, lt]
To achieve all the things in other categories we try, we'll need some form of self-organization. Let's talk about it. Is there anyone who would like to join the management of the base? We have some back office, and with capabilities comes responsibilities. You'll be, for example, easily be able to edit any category, and organize them. Additionally, you'll be able to unpublish some inappropriate posts, or stuff like that. Let us know if you'd like to join our management effort in making this a cosy fun place to be~ ››
Preserving The Youthful State of Human Body (4, +) [en, cn, lt]
Ever since humans (and animals) reach adolescence, they start to age. Certain physiological characteristics start to diverge from norm, and that is a problem. Eventually, so far away from the norm that it results in some critical organ failure. Problem is preventing these physiological characteristics to even start diverging from norm. ››
Preventing Nuclear War and Nuclear Winter from Happening (2, +) [en, cn, lt]
The total number of nuclear weapons is estimated over 15,349 (early-2016). Being that Russia and U.S. are under hair-trigger alert, even today, makes nuclear war risk still high among the serious problems in modern world, that could endanger the survival of mankind. The estimates seem to indicate that a major war would result in over a 10-year old nuclear winter, making most of mankind starve to death, and even a limited war with 50 "small" (15 kt) detonations (e.g., a war between India and Pakistan) over cities would cause global temperatures plunge below the lowest in the last 1000 years, and have effects on ozone layer, too. In the FLI/nuclear section, there is a statement: “we should take our nuclear weapons off hair-trigger alert” because “keeping nuclear weapons ready to launch on a moment’s notice is a dangerous relic of the Cold War. Such policies increase the risk of catastrophic accidents or miscalculation.” Please, write ideas of what needs to be done to reduce the risk of nuclear wars, and prevent them from ever happening. ››
The Superintelligence Control Problem (4, +) [en, cn]
Quoting singinst.org (2005) Human neurons operate by sending electrochemical signals that propagate at a top speed of 150 meters per second along the fastest neurons. By comparison, the speed of light is 300,000,000 meters per second, two million times greater. Similarly, most human neurons can spike a maximum of 200 times per second; even this may overstate the information-processing capability of neurons, since most modern theories of neural information-processing call for information to be carried by the frequency of the spike train rather than individual signals. By comparison, speeds in modern computer chips are currently at around 2GHz - a ten millionfold difference - and still increasing exponentially. At the very least it should be physically possible to achieve a million-to-one speedup in thinking, at which rate a subjective year would pass in 31 physical seconds. At this rate the entire subjective timespan from Socrates in ancient Greece to modern-day humanity would pass in under twenty-two hours. Humans also face an upper limit on the size of their brains. The current estimate is that the typical human brain contains something like a hundred billion neurons and a hundred trillion synapses. That's an enormous amount of sheer brute computational force by … ››
Reducing Risk from Gamma Ray Bursts (3, +) [en, cn]
All GRBs observed to date have occurred well outside the Milky Way galaxy and have been harmless to Earth. However, if a GRB were to occur within the Milky Way, and its emission were beamed straight towards Earth, the effects could be devastating for the planet. Currently, orbiting satellites detect on average approximately one GRB per day. The closest observed GRB as of March 2014 was GRB 980425, located 40Mpc (130 million light years) away in a (z=0.0085) SBc-type dwarf galaxy. For a galaxy of approximately the same size as the Milky Way, the expected rate (for long-duration GRBs) is about one burst every 100,000 to 1,000,000 years. GRBs close enough to affect life in some way might occur once every five million years or so – around a thousand times since life on Earth began. The major Ordovician–Silurian extinction events of 450 million years ago may have been caused by a GRB. The greatest danger is believed to come from Wolf–Rayet stars, regarded by astronomers as likely GRB candidates. When such stars transition to supernovae, they may emit intense beams of gamma rays, and if Earth were to lie in the beam zone, devastating effects may occur. Gamma … ››
Meta standard for data reusability -- Create a Meta-standard to Maximize Reusability of All Data and Systems (2, +) [en]
Ever since the creation of first software systems, such as life itself, something akin to evolving file formats has emerged, and they had taken very specific shapes. For example, the fact that we are using very specific sequences of symbols like curly braces {, } (01111011 and 01111101) to group larger chunks of code in most programming languages, may be quite arbitrary. The fact that life in DNA often uses very specific sequences (such as AUG .. TAG) as start and stop codons to group a protein may also be quite arbitrary. Every new version of Microsoft Excel may define slightly different .xls file format. The same is true for APIs and their versions. We have a problem of complex evolving data and systems. Today, part of the problem is addressed via intermediate level standardization, such as REST (Representational State Transfer), and OpenAPI (aka Swagger) specifically, enabling to create generic clients. For the sake of interoperability, engineers tend to choose to comply with the standards. However, standardization approach does not generalize. From the scientific and data analyst's perspective, much like the text written in languages of other cultures, the format and the very specific … ››
Achieving Interstellar Flight (2, +) [en, cn]
($100M Funding) While we had explored all the planets of the Solar System, the distance to the closest Alpha Centauri star system is 4.37 light years, or 7000 times larger than the distance from the Sun to Pluto. Feel free to write ideas how to reach those other star systems. ››
Creating Deep Connections and Love in Society (2, +) [en, lt]
Quoting Malcom Carter, the director of the movie The Connected Universe there exists a problem in modern society: "So many people today feel alone in a city, surrounded by millions of people. Why is that happening?" Marshal Brain, the creator of HowStuffWorks.com, points it out in his website on deciding to be better, that according to a research on happiness, the people who classified themselves as 'very happy', differed markedly from average people in just one principle way: a rich and fulfilling social life. It's indeed a great problem, which we may not see unless we solve other problems, but is at the core of what deep sharing of minds must be about. The ideas of "love"，"happiness", "connection", "friendship", "empathy", "sentience" appear to be extremely important to the quality of our life experience. ››
Ensuring Safe Arrival of Technological Singularity (2, +) [en, lt]
Most large organizations like corporations and countries today are trying to create their own A.I. However, corporations and countries have been observed to conduct unethically, and not benevolently to people. There is no guarantee of responsibility, sentience and friendliness of corporations in general. Moreover, it is not entirely clear what particular goal is a particular corporation’s automated business decision-making systems are driven by. We run a risk, that if some single corporation comes up with an A.I., that is better at survival than others, it out-competes all others, and spreads. So, instead of secretly doing one’s own personal or corporate system to achieve its goals, I think, for the sake of creating a friendly A.I., it could be much better to develop a public, open-source, risk management and planning system that’s acceptable, understood, and desired by all. ››
Ensuring That Runaway Climate Change Does Not Happen or How To Deal With It (2, +) [en, cn, lt]
Increasing ambient temperature on Earth is expected to trigger the release of methane from the methane hydrate and chlarate deposits below seafloor (chlarate hypothesis), which in turn could amplify the greenhouse effect. Moreover, as it was pointed out in newly published study, impact of global warming will be quicker and more catastrophic than generally envisioned -- even 2 degrees Celsius of global warming above pre-industrial levels would be far too much, as it would result in ice melt, sea level rise and superstorms. If you have any ideas how to prevent or deal with this, write them below. We can discuss the problem itself, here. ››
Make Accounting Systems Fair (1, +) [en]
Wealth inequality actually is partly a result of the way accounting system works with respect to dividing of company shares and taxes. The founders usually get the lion's share, while others get disproportionally small fraction of the returns on investment, and that is the result of how accounting with respect to stocks work. Luckily, what accounting system we use, and how do we calculate the percentage of dividends, is actually subject to the legal agreements, that we define. Therefore, when searching for optimal distribution of wealth, we should take a look at what optimal accounting system should be, and redefine that, introducing new norms of fairness to contributors. Of course, the counter-argument to that may be, that if you skew the towards the workers, then the founders would be not sufficiently motivated to start the enterprises (these days they are used to this hefty reward.) However, the answer to that may be, that human psychology is not necessarily tied to monetary rewards -- people can work for impact, when they trust in fairness and adequate insurance. For example, when they trust that the others meaning good to them, and won't try to take the credit for them, and instead, seek … ››
Monitoring Human Bodies for Health (2, +) [en]
Currently, each vehicle has an average of 60-100 sensors on board (as of 2017), or even 400 (as of 2019), as the cars are rapidly getting “smarter”. However human bodies, except for mobile phone sensors, have zero other sensors to monitor health and automatically report the health issues. This lack of monitoring results in deaths, that could be preventable with sensors, that monitor blood supply, and vital signs all the time. It is true that in most cases, no matter the original cause of death, people die from some sort of internal blood supply, or constriction issue, that prevents information or physical asset flow within our bodies. The major flows (or asset loops) are not monitored for disruption. We have automatic fire alarms, but not for our internal homes -- our bodies. That needs to change. We should create a massively scalable solutions to help monitor everyone's health for emergencies. ››
Adjust business market potential estimation processes for risk to societies (0, +) [en, cn]
The modern business theory relies heavily on the estimation of market potentials for new products and services. However, the modern neuroscience suggests that market potential can be of diverse nature, caused by decisions of people to buy items due to the stimuli of different regions of their brain, which do not necessarily represent what people truly want. For example, people may truly want healthy food to taste good, and the ancient region of the brain (gustatory cortex) may try to approximate that, but the chemical manipulation of food taste may misrepresent it, and make unhealthy food taste good, which in turn results in a great market potential for foods that people don't really want, which we could label as harmful market potential or unwanted market potential. Similar things could be said about the market potential for some politicians, the campaigns of whom rely on stimulation of the ancient brain regions like amygdala. On the other hand, the newer regions of human brain, like neocortex, drive demand for goods that people consciously truly want, such as long, safe, healthy, exciting and meaningful lives. This drives the appetite for stocks of longevity technology companies, their products, all … ››
Allowing People to Form Smaller Groups During Video-Conference (0, +) [en]
With current online video-conferencing tools it's not possible to form smaller groups within one call room. When we meet a group of people face to face we have multiple conversations at the same time. During Skype or Hangouts calls, or webinars we cannot form smaller groups but have to listen to one person talking. ››
Optimize Distribution of Wealth (3, +) [en]
Distribution of wealth determines the choices we make -- give the same amount of resources to different subsets of society, and you'll see different kind of initiatives evolve. With respect to our collective goals, it not only matters what is the Gini coefficient, but also the very specific points of the distribution support. It may be obvious, that some goals are rather important, such as 17 SDGs (and we'll get a better picture over time), so, there must exist optimal subsets of society to have greater wealth than the others, depending on their importance in addressing the goals each and every time. Ideas are welcome, on how to optimize the distribution of wealth. ››
Eliminate poverty (0, +) [en]
It is the first among the U.N. sustainable development goals: https://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/poverty/ ››
Make sure everyone meets basic needs (0, +) [en]
yml - targets: all_humans needs: - name: making basic needs satisfied un: basic_needs=x0.1 state=present ››
Enabling People To Earn More Money (2, +) [en]
There are still a lot of opportunities to earn money in Ukraine in a legal (or partly legal because of the lack of reforms) way, as well as to search jobs on the marketplaces. However, most people are not aware of these opportunities or, which is more often, are afraid to leave their comfort zone. The matter is that post-soviet way of thinking blocks people from leaving it, as it was dangerous in Soviet times to stand out. ››
Avoiding Creation of Predatory Superintelligence (1, +) [en, lt]
So, as life on Earth evolves, we are creating all kind of supra-organisms, e.g., various organizations. We are also creating new mediums like the Internet at large. However, within such mediums, it is possible to imagine that some organizations or information structures could become super-intelligent and predatory, like we humans are -- at the top of food chain. Currently, there are already groups of people who treat other people and companies as merely workforce. Considering the collectively-strategic nature of certain such groups, they are examples of modern predatory super-intelligent supra-organisms. However, such supra-organisms don't have to be based on people's intelligence. It could be something more complex, like mass media plus symbiotically interlinked microorganisms (e.g., microorganisms that modify the psychology of people by blocking empathy.) It would be great to have ideas of avoidance of any such scenarios. ››
Beating the Entropy (19, +) [en]
If there is any real enemy of all life, it is entropy. People die, civilizations and cultures are taken or forget their past, genomes get consumed by viruses, connectomes forget, or are disrupted by radiation, pollution in our environments, diseases. The common enemy of all life is entropy, and common goal is saving information, or modelling the entropy (laws of physics) to enable ourselves to rescue more information. Our implicit goal was the same, even 4 billion years ago, when first replicating molecule has arisen with the ability to counteract entropy by copying itself, and life had arisen as these molecules (perhaps the RNA), which were able to resist the force of entropy (much like planets form that are able not to collapse under the force of gravity). Under the influence of entropy, the information started to evolve to counteract it. The DNA, cell, sex, neuron, brain, book, wire, processor, etc. What's common among all of these inventions, is that they all solve problem of copying information over distances of space and time. For example, the book, like DNA, being a much more stable medium for information, enabled to copy over knowledge of the ancients to the present time. In … ››
Enabling Time Travel (1, +) [en]
This is an old quest for enabling time travel. To many, it seems impossible. However, if it were possible in principle, should we try to do it, and if so, in what forms? ››
Make Death Rate Go To Zero (2, +) [en]
Approximately 150 thousand people die every day, which, given the population of 7.6 billion, amounts to a mortality rate of 0.7% per year [death rate](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mortality_rate). The odds of surviving next year is against everyone of us, and most people would choose to live quality life, rather than not. This is a placeholder goal for the eliminating death. ››
Business Startup Procedure (2, +) [en]
Starting a business involves so much learning and administration in various areas, regardless of the focus of the business itself. For people that want to manage a business or oversee the building of a project/company etc., but don't want to get into the legal, accounting, administrative stuff, it can be a nightmare or at least a huge, lengthy hassle. Business mentors are at hand but all they can do is help problem solve and give advice - very useful for when you actually run into problems but they don't do the legal/accounting/admin work for you. Likewise, you can hire an accountant, go visit a lawyer and consult with a marketing genius. Again, though, you still have to do a lot of the paperwork and worrying. Also, hiring might not be financially possible in the early stages of the business. Furthermore, this is a fragmented approach. What if a person wants to run a business based on their own ideas - direct it, so to speak - but the startup side of it is too convoluted and tricky for the person to feel comfortable with? S/he might be excellent at innovating, at managing, at executing, but they might not 'get' the … ››
Combat hunger all over the world (2, +) [en]
Total amount of food produced on our planet is far more than enough to feed current world’s population. So, why we haven’t organized yet a net that could deploy produced food to anybody who urgently needs it. I cannot believe that it’s impossible to elaborate technology which develop with a kind of fermentation food wastes into maybe not so attractive but healthy and not decayed food. Such food could be distributed to starving people for free like water in drinking fountains. ››
Coming Up With Efficient General Cancer Treatment (10, +) [en, lt]
Being that cancer is one of the most common causes of death, after heart failures, today, it is an imperative to look for its general treatment. ››
Conflict Resolution (4, +) [en]
Enabling humans to solve small conflicts in their immediate environment before they grow to large fights. ››
Connecting people seamlessly (1, +) [en]
Hackathons, conferences and other networking events have grown exponentially across the years. This is primarily because people have come to understand the huge benefits in creating and establishing connections with other people to solve mutual problems and thus benefit from each other. The initial focus of establishing communication between 2 strangers is either by exchanging business cards or by typing frantically the other person's contact details into their mobile phone. This process is not quick and takes time to jot down information. Using business cards costs money, is a waste of paper and is only good till the details are saved to an electronic format. If this step can be omitted, then it is eco-friendly and information becomes easily available. One solution is to encode information in QR codes and then use the mobile camera to read the information. Simplifying the user workflow and reducing the friction would be the right way to increase user adoption. ››
Content Reusability Problem (1, +) [en]
Whenever we are writing anything on-line or off-line, we end up in content, that we might want to re-use some day. For example, Re-share a post to a set of friends on another social network, Translate and re-share fractions of a locally written wiki file with specific friends in context of the public part of the wiki, regardless of what social identity from a set of identities pre-approved by you the friend will use to identify with to see it, and allow to comment and contextually annotate them. Re-use parts of your content to produce a publishable, versioned, LaTeX paper, that inherits specific versions of your content (should each token of the text be under revision control system?). As we currently write content on-line or off-line, there seem to be no easy language to inject parts of these web conversations into your own sites. E.g., in markdown there is no way to say {{ Gmail.user_or_label.messages(from=date,to=date) }}, or {{ Telegram.user_or_channel.messages(from=date,to=date, display_language='ru', exclude_messages=[], share_with=[Gmail.user[myfriend@xyz.com]]) }}, and have your text from that source included into your document in such a way, that it can only be viewed by the target friend, and would appear invisible to other viewers of the document, … ››
Creating broad access to force manipulators of matter at diverse scales to empower people to do work wherever needed (1, +) [en]
One of the key elements that allowed us to create all the technology on Earth, is our hands, which could be thought of as simply versatile force manipulators. The opposabe appendage (thumb) allowed us to grasp things, and the further improvement in the lengths of fingers, and their properties, such as feedback mechanisms and granularity of muscle strength, allowed us to build complex devices. We even have a region of our brains that is very well trained and suited for this force field manipulation with our fingers. Employing it to scale the region of influence of our hands from macro-scale to nano-scale, could prove to be useful at tasks from doing internal micro-surgeries, to macroscopic construction works. I think we should create the abundance of the manipulators at micro-scale, accessible to public, so that human creativity could flourish at micro-to-nano scale work, especially in medicine. More specifically, we could build laboratories, and employ people over the internet, from virtual reality worlds, by selling cyber-gloves (like we today sell computer mouse), and allowing game players to practice by doing surgery to all kind of small animals like insects, worms, bugs, with the hope that we could scale this to a degree, … ››
Designing a Non-Toxic Efficient Cryoprotectant (0, +) [en]
Recently, it has been shown, that it is possible to freeze and unfreeze a mammalian brain, preserving its micro-structure, including all synaptic connections. However, it was done using glutaraldehyde and ethylene glycol (link) which are toxic. If a non-toxic material of comparable efficacy would be found, perhaps this would ultimately enable people to preserve large organs, and even use suspended animation to time-travel to the future. ››
Detecting and Reducing Arsenic Contamination of Groundwater (0, +) [en]
Arsenic contamination of groundwater is a form of groundwater pollution which is often due to naturally occurring high concentrations of arsenic in deeper levels of groundwater, which creates long-term exposure of people to arsenic. From a 1988 study in China, the US protection agency quantified the lifetime exposure of arsenic in drinking water at concentrations of 0.0017 mg/L, 0.00017 mg/L, and 0.000017 mg/L are associated with a lifetime skin cancer risk of 1 in 10,000, 1 in 100,000, and 1 in 1,000,000 respectively. The World Health Organization asserts that a level of 0.01 mg/L poses a risk of 6 in 10000 chance of lifetime skin cancer risk and contends that this level of risk is acceptable. (wikipedia) Any ideas on cheap methods of reducing the levels of arsenic in potable water and soil in the affected territories in India, Bangladesh, Argentina, China, Nepal and other places of the world would be highly desired. ››
Discovering people with shared interests as we browse the real world (1, +) [en]
While the Internet is advanced, and it has become easier than ever to find people of similar interests. In the analog world it has not: people in public transport, public spaces (city, airports, shopping malls, pubs, etc.) are not easily identifiable by their interests. ››
Early Cancer Detection Problem (1, +) [en, lt]
Surgery, unlike Radiotherapy and Chemotherapy, is very successful in treatment of cancer, if the cancer is detected early. Thus, techniques of early cancer detection are highly desired. ››
Automation of Soylent Production (0, +) [en, lt]
Soylent is a mixture of nutrients that are needed for human body to live, prepared in an easily consumable powder or liquid form. Automation of production of high-quality soylent could solve the food problem on Earth. Ideas how to make self-sustaining Soylent factories are very welcome. ››
Electrify the Rest (0, +) [en]
There is 16% of world population without electricity. We have to do something to solve this problem. ››
Eliminating Boredom of Online Lectures (1, +) [en, lt]
I love learning, and I want to study more, so I went to Udacity.com, and Coursera.org. Unfortunately, I found watching lectures terribly boring. Although I can focus on listening and understanding them well, it is not my preferred mode of learning. My preference is -- to dig and explore rather than watch and listen. I started asking: why do I find it effortless to focus on watching a 1.5 hour detective film or a TED talk which tells a story, but I don't get the same pleasure from watching a lecture? ››
Give power to users to initiate decisions directly from personal knowledge bases (1, +) [en]
Today, in order to perform actions, people have to visit specific websites. However, that involves all sorts of inconveniences and inefficiencies, like having to open and manage many apps, and learn new interfaces, making the resources hardly programmable. A solution is needed to give power back to users to perform and program actions directly from personal knowledge bases. ››
Enable Brains to Mine Currency (1, +) [en]
Brains can’t mine digital money. While computers can mine cryptographic currency, human beings cannot do so efficiently with their brain, putting them as second class citizens to computers. Moreover, most people don't have an option to issue money by doing valuable work, and not selling it. However, it’s an aspiration of so many artists and scientists, mathematicians to actually create a work of art, for the sheer aesthetic beauty or utility of it for everyone, and donate it to the world, rather than to sell it. We need a way for brains to issue money, but we don’t have it yet. The goal would be to enable human brains to do that. ››
Enable open source projects be supported with comparable amounts to startups (2, +) [en]
Creating open source projects, we're empowering everyone. However, the open source projects are generally not well supported. They ask for donations, which generally amount to very small sums of money compared to startups. A model to massively support open source projects is needed, with amounts and expected returns and protections that of startups. ››

Page 1 of 2. next | last »