This essay outlines 10 problems that, if solved, will respectively 100x the future of humanity. These problems will guide my career pursuits & ensure I’m doing something meaningful. Hopefully they’ll spark something in you too.

Why I’m Writing This Essay

I don’t know about you, but I want to be a part of something great. When I’m 80, I want to look back and feel like I punched my dent in the universe. That I pushed humanity forward.

Or at least that I tried.

To build something great, you need to dedicate at least a decade. If I plan to work hard from 20–60, that means I only have 3–4 chances to move the world. That’s it.

I want to make sure I’m working on something that matters. The ideas below are how I plan to spend my shot attempts. How will you spend yours?

Before I start, I want to give a little background. I truly believe we can create a digital renaissance. A renaissance where everything necessary to survive is taken care of; and we have the time, resources, and abilities to create moonshot projects. Personally, I want to be in the room where it happens.

I want to tell my grandkids I helped millions of people live more meaningful & invigorating lives. That I gave them more stability to actualize their dreams & more tools to channel their creative prowess.

I also want to die knowing society was better-off than when I was born. I don’t want us to nuke ourselves into oblivion. Or become a second class species to AI. Or leave a permanent split of “haves” and “have-nots”. Or let any other existential risks fuck up the good things we’ve got going for us.

I hope you want these things too. In fact, I think making sure we get to the digital renaissance should be the singular focus of our generation.

If you’re an ambitious person looking for a noble cause to point your motor towards — these ideas are a great place to start. Even if we fail, it won’t be in vain. We’ll be pushing the societal ball towards a better future.

Without further adieu, here are some of my ideas worth fighting for:

Note: Thanks to Jake for inspiring this essay and many of its ideas.

1) Universal Basic Everything

One of the largest barriers to entry for building something new is “Well, I need healthcare/food/etc” (especially for those who have families).

Right now, only immensely privileged people have the opportunity to attempt to build truly crazy shit (or even anything at all). People need to know they’ll be safe from outside forces so they can focus on creating their art, science, etc. For us to arrive at a digital renaissance, we need to be 100% focused on what we’re doing, not on how we survive. This means providing a base level food, water, shelter, health, education, & economic freedom.

An average base level should be table stakes for anyone born on Earth.

The good news is that lots of smart people are already working on these problems. Khan Academy is making headway with free school resources and personalized tutoring. Bitcoin is helping citizens in corrupt economies reliably save, spend, & earn money. Etc, etc.

The bad news is we are still so far behind. Some folks win the birth lottery and get the foundation to build a good life. Others don’t and that’s fucked. So let’s fix it.

2) The Habit Engine

There’s nothing worse than knowing what you should do, and not doing it. Hitting the gym, working on that project, getting away from your phone, spending time with friends, having a hard conversation, etc. We’ve all had that internal monologue.

We feel awesome when we do it. And like shit when we don’t.

I think the disconnect between doing productive vs consumption oriented tasks is getting too large. It takes 10,000 hours to be a professional violinist, but it takes <1 second to open TikTok. Our monkey mind is in a constant battle with our thinking mind. Sadly, many modern tech companies arm our monkey minds with AK-47s and bazookas. It easily hijacks our decision-making towards short-term, dopamine-focused decisions. Not surprisingly, depression & loneliness have skyrocketed.

We need to even the scales. Books like Atomic Habits, website blockers like BlockSite, & apps like OneSec are pulling their weight & helping people (especially myself). But, those resources aren’t widely spread in society & don’t work all of the time.

If we can truly align our wants with our actions, societal productivity and satisfaction would skyrocket.

3) Green Planet

This one’s pretty straightforward. Our planet is breaking down and humans are going to suffer massive consequences if we don’t FITFO.

We’re like Lebron in the 2016 NBA Championship — down 3–1 with our legacy on the line. We can’t afford a 4–1 loss. Sadly, society is not going to change its current behavior. We need our late-game chasedown block & dagger 3:

Build green companies that have flat-out better products & user experiences than its competitors.
Generate & store energy through sustainable sources.

I’m painting a broad brush here but I think we can do that through government incentives, capital investment, research, & entrepreneurship. Oh, and lots of hard work.

4) BioOS

I want to play basketball at 50, hike at 70, and feel good at 90. I also want to track when I’m most efficient, and what my compounds, foods, levels of sleep, etc are when I’m hitting my stride.

To do this, I think we need to do 4 things:

Define long-term health goals
Collect health data through real-time biological monitoring via wearables & at-home health kits
Create proactive life protocols that account for your goals & current health status. I’m talking Andrew Huberman level recommendations specifically tailored to each user.
Use machine learning models to forecast our future physical health & stay proactive.

But more than that, the body knows we’re sick before we do. We’re already seeing indicators (like HRV & average body temperature) change before we know we’re infected. If you can track this data, you can not only know what is and isn’t working for people from a diet, exercise, health, sleep, etc perspective, but also how to mitigate the spread of diseases. We could save 100,000s of lives.

Since health is wealth & time is our most valuable resource, I’m all in on innovation for healthier, longer lives.

5) Walkable Cities & High Speed Travel

Urban planning is like the invisible hand for quality of life. Your city’s walkability subtly pushes you to certain mindsets & attitudes.

More walkable → more community → better quality of life. You can feel the difference when you go to Madrid or Amsterdam. It just feels right.

On top of that, we need to be building high speed rail. Maglev trains. All that amazing stuff. We need to be able to go farther, faster. Not because I want to spend weekends in New York and weekdays in San Francisco, but because we need affordable housing. People are priced out of the cities they need to work in. We can price them in by making those cities commutable from farther away, low-cost areas.

6) Personalized Therapists

Life is hard. Some folks don’t have the resources to properly bounce back from hard times. Those mental health resources (particularly therapists) are out there, just not available for everyone.

Imagine if every person had someone who knew them well, leveraged endless mental health knowledge, & had infinite energy to help.

It would be pretty awesome right? I bet you have some friends & family whose lives would change with this.

Along with education, I think this is my favorite use case for AI. Personalized therapists, for free. I’m not sure if they would be licensed therapists. But even something in between a therapist & good friend would help a heck of a lot of people.

There’s a lot of problems to figure out here (professional responses, regulations, comfortable medium to talk, etc). But, I think we’re really close to a tipping point.

7) Become A Multi-Planetary Species

The famous asteroid that made the dinosaurs sad was about 6 miles in diameter. That’s it! That’s all it takes for humans to be gone. Poof.

Such a lame ending to the human story & its amazingness. We can prevent that outcome by getting another planet under our belt.

Plus, there’s nothing more human than exploration. It brings us together! Apart from the last 300 years, humans have looked up at a star-filled sky for ~300,000 years. Every civilization admired the stars. Now we have the chance to be a part of them. That’s fucking incredible!

We could use a unifying mission right now. I say we rally the troops and get on our way to becoming a multi-planetary species. Not because it is easy, but because it is hahhd.

8) The Great Matchmaker

We have 8 billion people with infinite opportunities & experiences on Earth. Yet — far too many live lonely, boring, unfulfilled lives. Why? Because search is solved, but discovery is not. Finding your tribe, relationships, mentors, etc. is terribly inefficient. The best way to find your people is to have a friend who:

Knows both of you
Has the extroversion to shove you together
Both of you overcome your awkwardness and figure out you’ve got lots in common

This goes for jobs too.

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If you want to build rockets you have to figure out where all the rocket people are, show enough clout to get into SpaceX (If you even can, foreigners are completely out of defense businesses), work your ass off at some big company where 80% of your job isn’t what you’re wanting to be doing, and FINALLY maybe get to building some rockets.

Let’s move straight to the end and get to the good stuff right away. And do it for everything — friends, jobs, interests, & experiences. Let’s solve discovery (and community).

9) Personalized Assistants

I absolutely hate boring, mundane tasks. I’m sure you do too. It saps our energy & dulls our minds.

If we give humans the tools to automate away the boring and mundane shit from their life — we’d all be a lot better off. “Summarize this”, “Plan this later”, etc. We can unlock our full creativity by getting rid of bullshit tasks.

I think assistants like Siri and Google home are getting there. If you factor in ChatGPT plug-ins, this future seems very very close.

And now, last but certainly not least…

10) The Wizard Hat Era

Note: This entire section is inspired by Tim Urban’s epic blog post on Neuralink. If you’re confused or interested, read this.

Here’s a mindboggling mouthful: the wizard hat era will give us cyborg superpowers by weaving computers with our brain using brain machine interfaces (BMIs).

Reading this probably gives you the heebie jeebies. I get it. To be honest, some days I don’t know how to feel about it either. It may help to know the average person is already a cyborg!

Compared to people 25 years ago, we are a different creature. You can get almost any answer instantly with Google, access any book in the world, do incredible calculations with Excel, take a zillion pictures, record videos anywhere, chat with someone in Timbuktu for free, & communicate with millions via social media. Sounds like the Terminator’s friendlier cousin if you ask me.

The wizard hat era takes these superpowers and uses BMIs to add a digital 3rd layer in our brain. Right now we have 2 layers: the brain stem (aka monkey mind) & the limbic system (aka rational mind). The digital 3rd layer will be like a phone & computer in your head. It will feel just like thinking. Except you’ll have the power of a cloud-based AI with access to the internet.

Absolutely nuts.

This will fundamentally change how humans communicate, heal, & generally think. Here’s how:

Fast, Nuanced, & Accurate Communication

We’re already a cyborg. We already have superpowers. And we already spend a huge part of our lives in the digital world. When you think of it like that, you realize how obvious it is to want to upgrade the medium that connects us to that world. Instead of typing with our thumbs, let’s just talk brain to brain.

Go from this: