If I Had $100bn In Liquid Cash, How Could I Help Humanity With Tech etc?

reply to post by HomoSapiensSapiens


This is a good question and also challenging to work with on a creative level (for me). On a strictly technological front what comes to mind is a simple stress measuring device. Something that measures ones level of stress.. Stress causes a ton of health problems (including cholesterol and heart disease, autoimmune diseases, and all sorts of psychological ones such as depression, somatization, paranoia, psychotic episodes, etc). People dont always recognize the level of stress that may build over time and coping strategies can't be implemented without awareness so people use maladaptive means to cope (old brain in a modern world).

How could this make the world better? Perhaps a small piece of many ideas but could bring awareness to those who respond in negative ways such as leaders of countries, kids whose stress manifests in later mass shootings, etc. If people, lets say in a region were identified as high stress overall it could be asked - what is this occurring from and let's change it - resources, tyranny.... It would be a voluntary thing but people might opt to use it with a bit of education on the health benefits so data could be forthcoming just as we know about disease outbreaks.

Because we are learning more about collective consciousness and invisible energy which affects us such a machine could also take the stress temperature of entire regions. It's a way to provide interventions sooner perhaps and to begin a cycle of people building insight. Right now we feel and sense things on a large scale. We might recognize a gradual building of stress on a personal level if paying attention. seriously just off the top of my head but wanted to contribute so know there are likely many cons to this idea but there it is.

Originally posted by HomoSapiensSapiens
If I had $100bn/£100bn in straight hard cash, what would I invest in for the benefit of humanity (and also ensuring future wealth growth for myself)?

The first and second are not fully compatible.

What could I set up? What would I invest in? What are the world's poorest in need of? What are we, generally as a species, in need of?

I would set up a foundation which would be able to donate about $4 billion per year nearly indefinitely. I'd allocate half of that to basic and moderately applied physical science & engineering. I would then fund the type of innovative but non-standard projects which have a hard time getting through major funding agencies, scientists somewhat outside the mainstream (I'm not talking about the wackjobs who sometimes come to ATS who don't even remotely understand quantum mechanics) I'd recognize there is a big "valley of death" problem between the initial discovery and commercial application which historically has only been filled with military funding, and this is not sustainable.

This level of funding is only a moderately small DOE national laboratory---you're not going to make an enormous difference on its own.

I would consider some exotic but expensive things which require concentrations of funding greater than typical basic-science single investigator grants, like non-tokamak experimental fusion concepts, modular small nuclear reactors, and experimental gravitation. The last is the real ultra-longshot. Probability of success is tiny but the consequences are enormous---multiply together and you get something O(1). There are some small anomalies in gravitation (Tajmar's experiments on superconducting discs) and changes in gravity during a solar eclipse which have not been well understood. The goal is to look for the possibility of unexpected physics. I wouldn't support high-energy particle experimentation---what matters on Earth is what happens at lower energies and how to engineer them.

The world's poorest are in need of infrastructure, security, liberty and much much less corruption. This costs much much more than $100 billion.

Id take over the world and knock the rest of humanity back to the stone ages and give them fire and writing...

What? Someones already doing that... ok. Ill be back.