Compilation of currently existing project ideas to significantly impact the world

If I can introduce a problem domain that doesn't get a lot of play in these communities but (I think) should:

End-of-life healthcare in the US seems like a huge problem (in terms of cost, honored preferences, and quality of life for many people) that's relatively tractable for its size. The balance probably falls in favor of making things happen rather than researching technical questions, but I'm hoping it still belongs here.

There's a recent IOM report that covers the presently bleak state of affairs and potential ways forward pretty thoroughly. One major problem is that doctors don't know their patients' care preferences, resulting in a bias towards acute care over palliative care, which in turn leads to unpleasant (and expensive) final years. There are a lot of different levers in actual care practices, advanced care planning, professional education/development, insurance policies, and public education. I might start with the key findings and recommendations (PDF) and think about where to go from there. There's also Atul Gawande's recent book Being Mortal, which I've yet to read but people seem excited about. Maybe look at what organizations like MyDirectives and Goals of Care are doing.

This domain probably has a relative advantage in belief- or value-alignment for people who think widely available anti-aging is far in the future or undesirable, although I'm tempted to argue that in a world with normalized life extension, the norms surrounding end-of-life care become even more important. The problem might also be unusually salient from some utilitarian perspectives. And while I've never been sure what civilizational inadequacy means, people interested in it might be easier to sell on fixing end-of-life care.

[-][anonymous]11y60

I can hardly agree more that end of life care is a major problem in the US. At age 25 I actually just got a living will and durable power of attorney document set up in the unlikely case of incapacitation after seeing within my own family just how important the latter document was to making sure that the medical system actually behaves in your interest when you can't direct it rather than acting out strange motions that just cause pain, and inferring that the former would also be quite useful in the case of particularly severe unexpected issues.

[-]diegocaleiro11y80

Breakdowns of larger questions or projects present in any of the lists above into smaller chunks within the format also much appreciated.

Example: Area: Cryonics Project: Scan 2mm by to 2mm voxel of a vitrified brain of someone who did not want to be cryopreserved, slicing it in slices at least 100nm thin, and using current technology see to what extent an axonal projection brainmap of this area could be generated in comparison to a non vitrified brain which has been through a different or no process post-mortem. Notes: Needs research approval, funds, at least two people etc... etc...

Would be an example of breakdown of "Preserve Brains", already delivered in the suggested format.

[-]Houshalter11y30

Wouldn't you want to try that on animals first?

[-]diegocaleiro11y60

That's just an example.

[-][anonymous]11y30

Extend female fertility, postpone menopause etc. It is the technological solution to the social effects of The Pill, which gave the choice to women to not have kids (without resorting to celibacy), extending the possibility of the choice to have kids later into life, in the fities, sixties is IMHO the logical way to revert some of its effects (such as smart people not reproducing their genes enough). Do you want a higher IQ population, an eugenic effect without threating anyone's liberty? Help smart women have more kids by giving them more time to make this choice. For people worrying about human genes / IQ this is IMHO a very good idea.

[-]Lumifer11y30

Why do you expect that extending the child-bearing age will eugenically improve IQ? In other words, why do you think that there will be more high-IQ old mothers than low-IQ old mothers?

[-]Vaniver11y30

Why do you expect that extending the child-bearing age will eugenically improve IQ? In other words, why do you think that there will be more high-IQ old mothers than low-IQ old mothers?

Part of that could be expecting current trends to continue--that is, higher IQ women are more likely to attempt to have children later in life, and because fertility is lower at higher ages, they end up having fewer children overall. If people stop having children because they have enough, rather than because they are biologically unable to have more, this should have at least a counter-dysgenic effect, though not necessarily a eugenic one.

[-]Lumifer11y40

If people stop having children because they have enough, rather than because they are biologically unable to have more, this should have at least a counter-dysgenic effect

Unless high-IQ women stop because they had enough and low-IQ women stop because they are biologically unable to have any more -- in which case the effect will be dysgenic.

[-][anonymous]11y00

I expect children have a diminishing marginal utility. Enough is enough, when all your free time and money is used up by them, even less intelligent people tend to stop. I think.

[-]Curiouskid11y00

I expect that in vitro selection for IQ is an easier problem to solve and will have greater impact on the population's IQ.

[-]casebash10y00

The creation of better resources for online communication and collaboration. There is so much that can be done here.

Google wave was fantastic it was a shame it was killed. Rizzoma improved this concept by adding todos and the ability to tag people, but unfortunately their interface was still clunky and had performance issues.

Stackoverflow revolutionised the question and answer model for programming, but open source clones appear to be far inferior, and so creating one of these sites is subject to a single gatekeeper.

The mailing list and forum models have had long periods of stagnation. Recently, Groups.io and Discourse demonstrated that there was value in modernising these tools. This demonstrates that it is worth taking another look at these tools to see what can be done with them.