Ask HN: What would you work on if you couldn't fail?

I've been sprinting 10-16 hours a day for almost a month now. I feel cool, calm, and collected though.

A lot is happening in the world and in our industry but I am doing all I can to be part of the cure, not the cancer.

This gives me peace of mind and helps me adapt regardless of if YC backs me or not. I'm moving to Palo Alto regardless, just being in the zip code alone will be enough at this point.

12 points | by rblion 21 hours ago

10 comments

  • muzani 7 hours ago
    Fixing inequality. Properly, not the current form which overcompensates and just flips the inequality. It is a hard problem because people are unequal and shouldn't not be forced to be equal, but you want this to be controlled and not a runaway loop.

    The ideal IMO is single breadwinner households with a two story house and one car and decent public transportation. Single breadwinner is particularly important - many families grow up with both parents absent for much of their lives. They don't learn what love is and this leads to broken families and crime as their children don't have a good framework.

    Inequality also causes a lot of political distortion. When the rich get richer, they try to hold power. They spend more, debt goes out of control. The poor are treated like they deserve to be poor. Bad work ethic becomes the norm for this society. Increased debt and spending hits a point where the ROI is negative. The poor become increasingly desperate and murderous. Wars trigger. The empire overextends. The inability to pay debts result in bank runs. And this pattern repeats itself again and again in nearly every fallen empire.

    No amount of technological advances or wealth helps if there's runaway inequality.

  • hiAndrewQuinn 8 hours ago
    Existential risk from superintelligent AI, naturally. Even if it turns out to not be a risk I'd sleep a lot easier at night with an ironclad mathematical proof of why exactly it isn't on the presses. And if it is a risk, it's almost certainly the most important thing anyone could work on right now.

    I'm interpreting "can't fail" as "guaranteed to succeed one way or another", here.

  • mikewarot 18 hours ago
    I strongly believe the von Neumann architecture is a premature optimization. I want to bring bit level systolic array chips into reality and democratize access to petaflops.
  • bjourne 5 hours ago
    Proving p=np
  • chistev 16 hours ago
    A personal blog that ends up becoming the biggest in the world.
  • billconan 4 hours ago
    elderly care robots
  • throwaway843 15 hours ago
    Ascension。
  • bell-cot 20 hours ago
    Time travel.
    • sslayer 15 hours ago
      Perpetual energy, Zero point energy, warp drive, gravity manipulation, teleportation
  • bitbasher 13 hours ago
    Prevent cancer?
    • muzani 12 hours ago
      Why cancer specifically? Why not say, diabetes or heart disease?
      • nothercastle 2 hours ago
        Those two have an element of self infliction. Often, but not always related up poor lifestyle choices. Cancer can get anyone rich or poor healthy lifestyle or terrible one
  • fuzzfactor 10 hours ago
    I'd be working on the same old things, but with a whole lot better luck :)