r/Lightbulb

A man starts noticing disturbing photographs of murdered people and severed body parts appearing in his iPhone's camera roll. He keeps deleting them, but they reappear, along with new ones. Afraid that seeking technical help might make him a murder suspect, he changes his iCloud password to something impossible to guess.

Then actual human body parts start appearing inside his house, some matching those in the photographs.

He fears someone is threatening to murder him, but he's also afraid to contact the police because they might suspect him of being responsible for the murders. So he starts hiding the remains.

He installs security cameras throughout his property, but the body parts keep appearing. Whoever is leaving them knows how to avoid the cameras, forcing him to search increasingly obscure places for remains.

Terrified for his life, he arms himself with guns and rifles.

Eventually, he catches someone on his property leaving another body part. A deadly confrontation follows, and he kills the intruder.

But instead of calling the police, he hides the body. After all, he's already spent weeks concealing human remains from multiple victims. He's terrified that the police will accuse him of being a serial killer.

What do you think of this horror movie idea?

A button on your steering wheel where you can activate speed limit mode. Most modern cars have GPS and know (usually) what the posted speed limit is. You can hit the button and your car will automatically go the speed limit. The brake and gas pedal still work, you can speed up or slow down. Once you take your foot off, the car will resume speed limit mode. When you brake to below a certain speed (ie stopping or turning), the mode is deactivated. Now you can go the speed limit without constantly adjusting your foot on the gas pedal or watching the speedometer.

In the near future, AI has made most mathematicians unemployed. To pressure the government into paying them generous lifetime pensions, they launch a campaign of "math harassment."

They approach random strangers in public places and ask them math questions, deliberately making them feel stupid when they can't answer.

The campaign exploits people's lifelong fear of mathematics, often rooted in humiliating classroom experiences. As the harassment spreads, people become afraid of encountering mathematicians in public.

The mathematicians insist they're doing nothing wrong. They're merely asking questions and promoting mathematical literacy.

Eventually, public pressure forces the government to pay the mathematicians for life just to make them stop.

But then universities report a massive increase in mathematics enrollment.

Most homes are full of little responsibilities and worries: Did I lock the door? Did I leave the stove on? Is a faucet running? Do I need to clean the bathroom? Did I forget some maintenance task?

What if an apartment or condo building was designed to eliminate as many of those concerns as possible?

There would be no ovens, stoves, microwaves, air fryers, candles, space heaters, or other major fire hazards in units or common areas. The point would be to make fires and disruptive fire alarms extremely rare.

Since residents couldn't cook, the building would provide a default meal service. Food could be prepared at a separate commercial kitchen and delivered in bulk. With hundreds of residents using the same service, economies of scale could potentially make it far cheaper than everyone ordering takeout individually.

Cleaning would also be included. A combination of cleaning staff and robots would regularly clean each unit, and the apartments themselves would be designed to be extremely easy to clean.

Other features could include automatic door locks, faucets that shut themselves off, automatic leak detection and water shutoff, lights that turn off automatically, and building-managed maintenance.

Residents could still do personal things like their own laundry.

The basic idea is that you could walk out of your apartment and not have to think:

Did I lock the door? Did I leave something on? Is water running? Is the apartment dirty? Is there something I forgot to maintain?

There simply wouldn't be much to forget.

This could be especially useful for some people with OCD who struggle with repeated checking related to locks, fire, water, cleanliness, and similar concerns. It wouldn't be a treatment for OCD. The idea would just be to remove many of the household uncertainties in the first place.

It could also appeal to anyone who hates chores, travels frequently, is very busy, or wants the convenience of a hotel without actually living in a hotel.

Basically: an apartment building designed around carefree living, where most household chores, hazards, and things you normally have to remember are engineered away.

Scientists discover that homeless people are unusually good at predicting the future. The longer someone has been homeless, the more accurate they become, but the ability disappears as soon as they are housed.

Society adapts. Some use it to make money on the stock market, avoid danger, or commit crimes. Hedge funds and governments recruit long-term homeless forecasters. Cities even start bragging about their homeless populations.

Then many of the most accurate forecasters independently predict that a massive disaster will happen soon.

Instead of evacuating the city, officials rapidly house every homeless person, destroying their predictive abilities.

Nothing happens immediately.

But the predictions never said exactly when.

Was the disaster prevented somehow? Were the predictions wrong? Or did society destroy its only warning system while the disaster is still approaching?

Nobody can know, because the people most capable of answering the question have lost their ability.

Human thinking time is a scarce resource, and wasting it on adulting is disrespectful to the human brain.

Think about how much mental energy people spend remembering bills, checking locks, cleaning, buying groceries, scheduling appointments, maintaining appliances, tracking subscriptions, filling out forms, and remembering dozens of other little responsibilities just to keep their lives functioning.

These are exactly the kinds of repetitive, predictable tasks that machines, infrastructure, and specialized services should be doing for us.

Automation should free humans to be human.

Imagine a sufficiently advanced society where this principle is taken seriously. Most routine responsibilities have been automated, and unnecessarily doing them yourself is considered a waste of human cognitive resources.

Eventually, excessive adulting becomes a crime.

Minor offenses might result in warnings or fines. Repeat offenders could face increasingly serious penalties. Persistent, flagrant adulting could ultimately result in prison time.

“Sir, step away from the vacuum cleaner.”

“Ma’am, our records show that you manually paid six bills this month.”

“You have a certified automatic locking system, yet you repeatedly checked your front door yourself.”

“You were previously ordered to stop doing your own taxes. I'm afraid you'll have to come with us.”

It sounds absurd, but I think there is a serious idea underneath the satire.

We have incredibly capable brains, yet we routinely use them as biological reminder systems, schedulers, cleaners, administrators, and household-management computers. We call this “being a responsible adult.”

Why should that be considered admirable?

Humans should be spending more of their limited thinking time creating, learning, socializing, playing, exploring, solving interesting problems, or simply thinking. Machines should handle as much of the repetitive maintenance of existence as possible.

Adulting turns humans into mindless machines. Automation frees humans to be human.

The ultimate goal of technological progress shouldn't be to make us better at adulting.

It should be to engineer adulting out of human life entirely.

A genius may have trouble finding people they can relate to intellectually. Coworkers may feel threatened or resentful and may not want to work with someone who makes them feel comparatively unintelligent. Some people may even dislike them because they see extraordinary intelligence as an unfair advantage that the person simply happened to be born with.

Employment itself could be difficult. Someone who is extremely intelligent might have a particularly hard time tolerating a boss they believe is making obviously bad decisions, especially when they are expected to obey those decisions anyway. They may become frustrated by bureaucracy, repetitive work, meetings that seem unnecessary, or having to spend much of their life doing work far below what they believe they are capable of. They may also find it harder to accept the ordinary hierarchy of a workplace when intelligence and authority do not line up.

There can also be painful problems in their personal lives. For example, an extremely intelligent parent might privately struggle with disappointment if their children turn out to have ordinary intelligence, then feel terrible and guilty for having that reaction. They might also have difficulty finding close friends or romantic partners who can relate to the way they think.

Obviously, all of these things do not happen to every highly intelligent person. But students often imagine being a genius as getting all the advantages of intelligence with no serious disadvantages.

Schools could teach the more comforting idea that every position in life comes with problems of its own, including positions that seem extraordinarily fortunate from the outside. You may not actually want someone else's gifts if you also had to accept all the problems that came with them.

I have this idea to connect people that have different views on political issues for a civil conversation online. This would be different than your typical chat app, because each user would be anonymous (but verified as not being a bot), and each conversation would be moderated/facilitated by an AI moderator.

The idea wouldn't necessarily be to debate, but rather to understand a view different than your own, and have a chance to express yourself and be heard.

The way it works would be simple:

1. Pick a salient topic you care about, and specify your position on it.
2. The platform matches you with a person that has a different view
3. You chat about it in a provide 1-1 chat, that is moderated by AI to make sure things are civil and the conversation doesn't stall.
4. At the end of the conversation, you get to see a small blurb about the person you are talking to (i.e. where on the political spectrum do they identify, what is their age range, hobbies, etc.)

The thing I like about this idea is it takes out the effort and risk of talking to someone with a different political view. I got the idea because I have been trying to get outside of my bubble and it has been very challenging to find people that have different views and are available and open to a civil conversation.

What do you think?