5 ms·

Ask HN: If humankind could coordinate to have a shared goal, what should it be?

5 points by desertraven 6y ago

In this time of unprecedented connectivity across our species, assume for a moment we could coordinate to achieve a single goal. What do you think would be the most worthwhile one?

Cyberthal 6y ago
Climb the Kardashev scale.
throwaway888abc 6y ago
Get rid of politics ?
- desertraven 6y ago
  Anarchy you say?!
  - krapp 6y ago
    Anarchy is still politics.
eucryphia 6y ago
We already do; life, liberty and the persuit of happiness. You won't achieve that chasing someone else's goal.
jka 6y ago
Build a transparent, open and collaborative system that we can all inspect and trust, that has the following goal: Determine and sort the most significant causes of harm to life on earth, including citations and with ranking corrections possible as further evidence becomes known. Where possible, provide the ability to perform regional geographic analysis, and associate man-made causes with their financial supporters and benefactors. Publish and disseminate this information with high integrity and authenticity assurance and without any editorial comment, ideological leaning, advertising or emotional appeals. Tediously and meticulously continue to accept corrections and updates, and publish them in an append-only format. (this would be something like a funnel to combine conent from academia, the press, financial transparency initiatives, and fact-checkers - distilled, open, and with community curation) People aren't all rational, and some people (sociopaths for example, or people with vested interests who are genuinely unaware of the harm their financial investments cause) don't really care for the outcomes of those they affect. So this platform would not immediately result in utopia - those people would be the most likely to attack it, deride it, claim that it is flawed, discredit or downplay it, etc. Over time however it would continue its' seemingly boring, methodical analysis and attribution of problems, with gradually improving quality, verification and trust thanks to open publication. At a certain point in time it would gain enough traction, credibility and community resilience to shift opinions at large. Attacks on the platform would intensify as it became a more existential threat to harmers. The goal would be to reach a point at which significant threats to life are being removed as a result, and life could move on to solving gradually more minor and local issues.
- desertraven 6y ago
  You seem to have given this much thought. Do you believe such a system is feasible without the global coordination aspect?
  - jka 6y ago
    Most projects have to start (geographically) somewhere, so there's a decent chance it would originate in one region. That said, it'd benefit from genuinely global co-ordination, since that'd reduce unintentional local cultural biases. Language barriers become an issue in a global environment, although the concepts underlying data and science are more concrete than the words we use to communicate them. Presenting the findings in an easy-to-understand format that is readable worldwide and that could inform decision-making worldwide is also a challenge. But to get back to your question: yes, it'd be feasible in a non-global setting, although that would (I'd expect) result in platform blind spots and perhaps even the kinds of bias that allow harms to perpetuate in the first place.
    - desertraven 6y ago
      Could you speak of technological feasibility? Would such a platform require research-based solutions, or is this system a sum of solved problems? Also, I understand many successful innovations have good timing to thank. Do you think now is the right time for the world to accept such a system?
      - jka 6y ago
        It seems feasible - the technology components to build a platform like this exist, and the sub-problems (community-building, trust/spam, peer review and consensus, supply chain analysis, and so on) have been researched and developed into large-scale production systems. Bringing the pieces together in a robust and scalable way that results in an effective, simple and collaborative product is the challenge. It's potentially more a question of motivation, persistence and focus than technology. As for whether the timing is right for it to succeed - I don't know: Some people might not want or find it easy to follow even the best-intended guidance a platform like this could provide, for example if they're bound by local economic or cultural habits and constraints. That could lead to social rifts ("we can't make these changes" vs "those people won't make the changes") which risks creating undesirable conflict.

5 points by desertraven 6y ago

In this time of unprecedented connectivity across our species, assume for a moment we could coordinate to achieve a single goal. What do you think would be the most worthwhile one?

Cyberthal 6y ago

Climb the Kardashev scale.

throwaway888abc 6y ago

Get rid of politics ?

desertraven 6y ago
Anarchy you say?!
- krapp 6y ago
  Anarchy is still politics.

eucryphia 6y ago

We already do; life, liberty and the persuit of happiness. You won't achieve that chasing someone else's goal.

jka 6y ago

Build a transparent, open and collaborative system that we can all inspect and trust, that has the following goal: Determine and sort the most significant causes of harm to life on earth, including citations and with ranking corrections possible as further evidence becomes known. Where possible, provide the ability to perform regional geographic analysis, and associate man-made causes with their financial supporters and benefactors. Publish and disseminate this information with high integrity and authenticity assurance and without any editorial comment, ideological leaning, advertising or emotional appeals. Tediously and meticulously continue to accept corrections and updates, and publish them in an append-only format. (this would be something like a funnel to combine conent from academia, the press, financial transparency initiatives, and fact-checkers - distilled, open, and with community curation) People aren't all rational, and some people (sociopaths for example, or people with vested interests who are genuinely unaware of the harm their financial investments cause) don't really care for the outcomes of those they affect. So this platform would not immediately result in utopia - those people would be the most likely to attack it, deride it, claim that it is flawed, discredit or downplay it, etc. Over time however it would continue its' seemingly boring, methodical analysis and attribution of problems, with gradually improving quality, verification and trust thanks to open publication. At a certain point in time it would gain enough traction, credibility and community resilience to shift opinions at large. Attacks on the platform would intensify as it became a more existential threat to harmers. The goal would be to reach a point at which significant threats to life are being removed as a result, and life could move on to solving gradually more minor and local issues.

desertraven 6y ago
You seem to have given this much thought. Do you believe such a system is feasible without the global coordination aspect?
- jka 6y ago
  Most projects have to start (geographically) somewhere, so there's a decent chance it would originate in one region. That said, it'd benefit from genuinely global co-ordination, since that'd reduce unintentional local cultural biases. Language barriers become an issue in a global environment, although the concepts underlying data and science are more concrete than the words we use to communicate them. Presenting the findings in an easy-to-understand format that is readable worldwide and that could inform decision-making worldwide is also a challenge. But to get back to your question: yes, it'd be feasible in a non-global setting, although that would (I'd expect) result in platform blind spots and perhaps even the kinds of bias that allow harms to perpetuate in the first place.
  - desertraven 6y ago
    Could you speak of technological feasibility? Would such a platform require research-based solutions, or is this system a sum of solved problems? Also, I understand many successful innovations have good timing to thank. Do you think now is the right time for the world to accept such a system?
    - jka 6y ago
      It seems feasible - the technology components to build a platform like this exist, and the sub-problems (community-building, trust/spam, peer review and consensus, supply chain analysis, and so on) have been researched and developed into large-scale production systems. Bringing the pieces together in a robust and scalable way that results in an effective, simple and collaborative product is the challenge. It's potentially more a question of motivation, persistence and focus than technology. As for whether the timing is right for it to succeed - I don't know: Some people might not want or find it easy to follow even the best-intended guidance a platform like this could provide, for example if they're bound by local economic or cultural habits and constraints. That could lead to social rifts ("we can't make these changes" vs "those people won't make the changes") which risks creating undesirable conflict.