Fight death.
- Fight death of individuals:
Cryonic preservation: http://www.cryonics.org/ -- see also http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Cryonics
Basic research on aging and fighting it: http://mprize.org/
- Prevent the extinction of Earth-originating intelligent life:
Oxford Future of Humanity Institute - academic research on global catastrophic risks. http://www.fhi.ox.ac.uk/
Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence - http://singinst.org/
- Where to hang out with other people interested in rational philanthropy with maximum utilitarian impact per marginal dollar: http://lesswrong.com/ and http://felicifia.com/
As far as the human race is concerned, pretty much everything you listed (cryonics, anti-aging, preparing for AI that may never be invented, etc) has the least amount of utility per dollar spent.
I think it's a mistake to let the zealotry of the singularity weirdos cast doubt on everything that they're predicting; yes, they've got some pseudo-religious delusions about what AI will do for us, but I don't think they're far off when they say that it's coming, fairly soon, and there's nothing anyone can do about it.
There are some very clear numerical reasons that AI has failed thus far (we simply don't have the computing power right now - people hoped that we were clever enough to find algorithmic workarounds, but apparently we weren't), and whatever happens in the actual field of AI research, we're all but guaranteed to succeed at brute force AI some time over the next 50 years or so. The only real question is whether someone is able to figure out a hack that makes brute force unnecessary and bumps the timetable forward, but as I mentioned above, so far nobody has, so we may just have to wait for full brain simulation to be feasible.
Apart from that, I'd agree with you: with a few notable exceptions, most Singularity inspired "work" has been very low ROI, amounting to little more than speculation about the future and how great it will be rather than actually doing something to ensure a good outcome. There also seems to be a common delusion (again, with a few important exceptions) that AI will automatically be friendly without us needing to spend significant efforts towards that goal, which is very misguided.
...especially since a lot of the best funded and most focused AI research is taking place in China right now. In the rest of the world the past failures of AI have made people assume that it's a fool's errand, so there's not a lot of money going towards it, which could be a real disaster - regardless of how friendly AI can be made in principle, it's pretty much assured that if the Chinese government gets there first, we're going to see some pretty nasty stuff (though an argument could be made that once any government gets there we're all screwed).
If we are to invest in basic science, it seems like more could be accomplished by understanding how beliefs are formed, and how beliefs map to behavior. With this understanding, we could shape society so that people grow up to be more rational and altruistic, and thus far more interested in spending $10 on life extension than on lottery tickets.
From another angle, most premature death in the US occurs from diseases of behavior. We could extend a lot of lives if we understood why most people pick short term payoffs (McDonalds, TV) instead of long term payoffs (vegetables, exercise).
With that said, my own efforts are going into AI, not aging; the negative side of AI (recursive self-improvement by an agent with non-human-aligned goals) is something that, for all we know in this epistemic state, could happen at literally any time (hidden NSA lab finally achieved AI a month ago, it improved to superintelligence a week ago, cracked the protein folding problem, emailed some DNA strings to protein synthesis labs, got nanotechnology an hour ago, whoops we're all dead).
So if you're one of those people for whom problems don't exist unless they at least might destroy your self of tomorrow and not just your self of thirty years from now, I actually am spending my time on one of those problems.
But mostly I regard immediate temporal proximity as an invalid constraint on philanthropy.
;)
I visit HN mainly for the technical/startup articles. I would prefer, personally, for general interest items to remain on reddit, since I check both. It's not good vs. evil! We can have both.
Two quick stories for you, which I hope will give you some perspective:
1. I knew a billionaire with cancer. Imagine having all the money in the world and being unable to eat.
2. I knew a super millionaire with half a dozen properties all over the world who lived next to another super millionaire with half a dozen properties all over the world; they were locked into a multi-million dollar argument over 6 feet of beachfront between them.
This is actually very relevant to my life. My medical condition can seriously interfere with the ability to eat and can cost hundreds of thousands per year in medical expenses. My oldest son has the same diagnosis. So, by getting me and my kids well, I am literally saving millions of dollars over the course of our lives, even though my income is probably a lot less than most members of this forum and the quality of life aspect of it is worth way more than money to us.
That helps keep me sane in the face of serious financial issues. :-) I also like to think that if I ever do have serious money, this perspective/experience will continue to keep me grounded and keep my priorities straight.
It really sucked, though it's largely over and I can't imagine what someone with serious issues goes through.So good luck with getting well!
I was tested with no conclusive result, but it was also during a listeria outbreak which I was not tested for.
It was a rough few months.
But I am mostly well. Finishing up the process is basically just a matter of time. :-D
Next project: Figure out how to support myself without a day-job! ;-)
Thats a hard question, with that kind of money I can't think of any obvious ideas that would have a big impact on humanity.
If he had said I have $20 billion heres my ideas:
- Make Creative Commons text books. Hire a group of editors and staff that over see super star teachers who write the books. Release them under the CC licence.
- Startup Apartment Complex in San Fransisco. Build a large building in San Fransisco with small apartments. Small on size big on quality. Some floors would be modular office space. Subsidize the rent for equity in Startups that move in.
- Rethink college: Start a college a new college. It would be like a start up but instead of starting a business your creating a new college.
- Create an ethical version of Best Buy. An consumer electronics store that actually puts the customer first and treats it's employees well. The same for an ethical version of Kmart.
Hypothetically supposing you were to automate a labor-intensive process in the field of your choice, and market that successfully to 100,000 people saving them each one hour a year, you'd have contributed essentially fifty full-time workers of your chosen profession to the community. Those could be nurses or teachers or priests or what have you.
That is very doable on dollar amounts much, much smaller than $20 million. Plus, the Internet chews up numbers like 100,000 for breakfast.
The problem being that no one will use them. There was an article a while back about how all the textbooks' content is basically controlled by some Christian 'watchdog' group in Texas.
2. He said that before taxes he had 30 million dollars, so the startup was sold for >=30 million dollars.
3. He is married and has an 11 year old daughter (and at least one more kid). Him and his wife are at least 30 years old.
4. At least one newspaper reported on him selling his startup.
I tried using CrunchBase to search for his startup but the list of companies sold in the last 5 years is huge...
Give the guy some privacy.
Bottom line: the information is meant to be read but decency and common sense should prevent you from probing deeper. If you don't follow these guidelines, interesting people will stop posting online. Unrestrained curiosity in these situations leads to everyone losing.
Stop and think for a moment... Here's someone who made it! He's got what most of us want. And he's offering to talk about how he got where he is and how he thinks about his future direction. He's asking for comments on that direction... sure... but he's also giving us a gift.
Since he values his privacy, he asks that people respect that and not reveal who he really is.
So... instead of taking part in the real discussion, some people want to out the OP. which would effectively kill the interesting conversation and chill any potential other people out there who might be willing to to post the same kind of thread.
- try to help others(less fortunate). Setup/contribute to charities, teach, cure, feed...
- try to change the world. promote democracy in russia, try to figure out how gravity works, actively support/participate on a team that does something visionary such as new energy initiatives or space exploration.
- defer the question for some time. Try to turn 20 into 200.
You should probably do this, plus one of the other three.
Question: Do your kids know how much money you have?
His answer: My oldest is 11, and I think she is figuring it out. It's hilarious, because over the last couple of years she comes home and says "My friend is totally rich - can we be rich someday? They live in a mansion!"
http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/azgs6/iama_guy_who_sol...
More importantly though, when my kids where a little older, I would disappear for a year, roaming as a drifter, I would find individuals and families in need, not broke people, but people who have a tragic life story to tell. I would personally help them one by one to overcome their adversity by becoming their true friend as well as helping them financially and psychologically repair their and their families life.
When I returned from my travels I would use my journal to write a novel and then produce a film titled "the man who purchased friends" or "buying friends" I can't decide. Obviously I would change my friends names as well as my own so that it could be construed as potentially fictitious accounts, leaving people to wonder always makes for a better tale.
Well, you could deploy 1mm or so in angel investments.
