Problems
What is the most valuable problem you can solve right now?
Priority
Which problems should be at the front of the line.
- Magnitude of Pain or Loss
- Clear Picture of Success
- Solution Overlaps Capabilities
- Justified Value Proposition
- Timing Seems Right
Categories
Trust in The System
Trust in the systems that govern us is at an all-time low.
The media, government, profit over principles, fake identities, and AI fueled scams.
The Metacrisis
Trying to solve the metacrisis by giving lots of control to central authorities could lead to oppressive dystopias.
- Technological risks: Potential catastrophic impacts from advanced technologies like AI, biotech, cyber weapons, etc. becoming more accessible and powerful.
- Environmental issues: Climate change, biodiversity loss, pollution, unsustainable resource extraction, etc. driven by an economic system requiring exponential growth on a finite planet.
- Fragility of global systems: Increasing vulnerability of interconnected global supply chains, institutions, and international order to disruption.
- Coordination failures: Inability to adequately address global challenges due to multipolar traps, arms races, short-term incentives, etc. that prevent necessary cooperation.
If everyone does their own thing without [coordination], things will likely end in catastrophe. The key challenge is finding a "third way" that avoids both catastrophic outcomes and dystopian centralized control.
Software Integration
Systems that don't talk to each other are massive waste of time and money.
Crony Capitalism
- Nepotism
- Ego over ethics
- Short-term thinking
- Cannot trust centralised power
- The rich keep becoming much richer
Moloch
Technology is not values neutral.
The dance with evolving technology that empowers can also destroy us. Technology shapes humanities perception of reality far more than we shape it.
Some technologies more reliably make the world better than others. We need active human intention to choose the directions that we want, as the formula of "maximize profit" will not arrive at them automatically - Techno Optimism, Vitalik