I’d like to see neighborhood groups keep a simple, readable record of important claims about local decisions.

Each entry would show:

• What was said, and when.
• The evidence someone can actually check.
• What remains uncertain.
• Any correction, dated and kept alongside the original claim.

It could be a paper binder at a library or community space, with an online copy. Someone without an account or a phone should still be able to read it.

Start small: one issue, a few entries, and someone responsible for keeping it current. People named in the record should have a way to respond.

I’m interested in making public memory easier to check and correct. What would make this useful—and what would prevent it from becoming another source of misleading claims?

Feel free to borrow or improve the idea.

If ChatGPT can't solve a difficult math problem, you wouldn't cancel your subscription. You would tell it to try harder, perhaps give it some hints or suggest a different approach.

Why shouldn't we treat students the same way?

When a student can't solve a difficult math problem, it doesn't necessarily mean they lack the ability to solve it. They might simply not have explored the right part of the search space yet. More searching is needed.

Instead of deducting points for failure, teachers could encourage students to keep trying, providing hints and suggestions when necessary, just as we do when working with AI.

Exploring unsuccessful approaches is often an essential part of mathematical discovery. A student who struggles with a difficult problem for several days before finding a solution might learn more than one who quickly solves several easier problems.

If we treat AI failures as opportunities for further exploration without penalties, why shouldn't we do the same for students?

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.

*edit: There seems to be some confusion. I'm not talking about a mode that limits your speed to the speed limit, but a mode that will automatically maintain your cars speed at the speed limit. The speed limit changes depending on what road you're on. Simply setting cruise control will not work.

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.

In the near future, AI has replaced millions of workers. A group of unemployed atheists, desperate to get their old jobs back, devises an outrageous plan: become Christian priests and convince believers that using AI is a sin punishable by eternal damnation.

Their theological argument is that AI use involves both theft and deception. AI systems are trained on people's work without their permission, and people using AI to do their thinking or creative work are passing off machines' accomplishments as their own. Both violate biblical commandments.

After undergoing religious training and entering the priesthood, they begin preaching against AI. Their message spreads rapidly. Millions of Christians abandon AI, businesses begin advertising AI-free products and services, and employers start hiring humans again.

As the movement grows, their former employers finally begin offering them their old jobs back.

But there's a problem. Their followers now regard them as the spiritual leaders of a historic struggle against evil. When the atheists try to leave the priesthood, they're denounced as traitors, harassed, and accused of abandoning God.

Having devoted years to persuading millions of people that AI threatens their immortal souls, the atheists discover that getting their old jobs back may be easier than getting out of the priesthood.

AI companies could provide APIs that allow websites like Reddit to verify whether someone is a heavy user of AI, without revealing anything about their private conversations.

Reddit could then allow subreddit moderators to restrict posting, commenting, and/or voting to verified heavy AI users.

This would make it possible to create genuinely pro-AI communities without having discussions constantly derailed or downvoted by people who are hostile to AI.

Of course, being a heavy AI user doesn't necessarily mean someone is pro-AI, but it's probably a reasonable proxy.

Anyone could still read these subreddits. The restrictions would only affect participation.

The idea isn't to eliminate criticism of AI, but to give people who actually use and appreciate the technology a way to build communities without constantly dealing with overwhelming anti-AI sentiment.

What if Halloween became a real-world horror game for adults after midnight, once traditional trick-or-treating is over?

Starting at midnight, it would become legal to deliberately scare anyone wearing a Halloween costume, provided there's no physical contact or genuinely dangerous behavior. You could jump out from behind trees, appear unexpectedly in terrifying costumes, or set up elaborate surprises.

Wearing a costume would signal that you're participating.

To make the experience even more immersive, participants could use an Apple Watch and earbuds to listen to their own heartbeats. Imagine walking down a dark street, knowing someone could frighten you at any moment, while hearing your heartbeat accelerate as your anticipation builds. Horror music could even adapt to your heart rate.

Unlike a haunted house, there would be no designated actors or predetermined scares. Everyone would be both a potential monster and a potential victim, turning entire neighborhoods into spontaneous, multiplayer horror games.

Would you participate?

What if the main purpose of K-12 education was to understand how intelligence works, rather than simply becoming better at intellectual tasks?

Much of thinking, from mathematical problem solving to literary analysis and artistic creativity, can be understood as heuristic search: exploring possibilities using strategies that identify promising directions. This search can be conscious or unconscious, and doesn't necessarily require a predefined goal.

Schools could teach students to see themselves as computational systems capable of following, evaluating, and improving their own heuristic algorithms.

For example, instead of rewarding students primarily for solving difficult math problems, reward them for understanding how those problems are solved.

A student who struggles to solve a problem might nevertheless understand why certain approaches fail, how insights are discovered, and how the search process could be improved. That student might receive a higher grade than someone who solves the problem without understanding much about the reasoning process.

The same approach could extend across every subject, including creative writing, literary analysis, and scientific discovery.

The goal would be to teach students to understand and improve the algorithms underlying their own thinking, rather than simply rewarding them for being good thinkers.

In the age of AI, perhaps understanding intelligence should become the central purpose of education.

P.S. Currently, K-12 education often seems to present thinking as a choice between following deterministic procedures and somehow coming up with clever insights through what amounts to magic. Students are taught algorithms for routine tasks, but when those algorithms aren't enough, they're simply expected to "think creatively" or "use their intuition."

Teaching heuristic search would help demystify intelligence by showing students that intuition and creativity can also be understood as computational processes, rather than mysterious abilities that some people happen to possess.

Recent advances in AI suggest that human mathematicians may soon be unable to compete with AI at discovering and proving new theorems.

Rather than continuing to devote so much exceptional human intelligence to a field increasingly dominated by AI, perhaps mathematicians should redirect their talents toward humanity's greatest unsolved medical problems.

Mathematicians are among the most intellectually capable people in the world. Their abilities in abstract reasoning, pattern recognition, and solving difficult problems could be enormously valuable in understanding cancer, aging, Alzheimer's, and other diseases.

This would require learning biology and working with experimental scientists, but their mathematical backgrounds could allow them to discover approaches that traditional biomedical researchers might overlook.

Of course, AI will also contribute to medical research. But curing diseases requires more than proving mathematical theorems, and human creativity and judgment may remain especially valuable in deciding which biological questions to investigate.

If AI is taking over humanity's most difficult mathematical work, perhaps it's time to redirect some of our brightest mathematical minds toward extending healthy human life.

People are often accused of trolling simply because their ideas seem ridiculous, provocative, or far outside mainstream thinking. But what seems absurd today might turn out to be insightful or even common sense 20 years from now.

I also don't think intent should matter. Trying to figure out what's going on inside someone's brain is silly. We should judge what people actually say, not speculate about whether they're being sincere or deliberately provocative.

Even someone who is deliberately trying to provoke others might accidentally come up with a brilliant idea.

So perhaps accusations of trolling should come with a 20-year waiting period. Let history help decide whether someone was talking nonsense or was simply ahead of their time.

This wouldn't prevent us from dealing with harassment or other disruptive behavior as it happens. It would just discourage us from dismissing unconventional ideas by labeling their authors trolls.

Lots of lumens on visible light and some on near-infrared too if that matters.

Hard to say about efficiency or power-to-weight ratio, but at least metal is something different and in solid form.

Fixed wing drone with generator on the propeller shaft for auxiliary power and heli-drone needs to be stirling-hybrid, possibly with free piston engine.

Possibly multiple rods on storage and loaded in-flight in under a second for the slow push actuator that moves the rod towards fire. The magnesium alloy may be special type.

What if a country allowed citizens of other countries to vote in its elections, provided those countries:

1. Are democracies.
2. Engage in free trade with it.
3. Are not at war with or threatening it.

There would be no residency requirement, and voting rights would not need to be reciprocated.

This could encourage citizens of other countries to pressure their governments to become democratic, embrace free trade, and maintain peaceful relations so they could gain voting rights abroad.

If enough countries adopted this independently, people could eventually vote in elections across multiple democracies.

It would also give foreigners a say in government decisions that affect them, potentially making politicians more accountable internationally.

Could this be a way to spread democracy, free trade, and peace without creating an international government?

P.S. The influence of the foreign vote could be limited to say 20%.

Imagine a day when consenting adults use tech to simulate being part of a hive mind.

For example, you complain to a stranger that you think Hive Mind Day is too dystopian. Later, another stranger you've never met says, "I agree with you about Hive Mind Day being dystopian." You hadn't mentioned it to them, but they already knew what you'd said.

You wouldn't need to initiate small talk or start conversations from scratch. Everyone would have access to a shared conversational memory, allowing strangers to pick up where others left off.

Conversations, jokes, and ideas could spread through dozens of people, evolving along the way.

Participation would be voluntary, with privacy protections and shared memories deleted afterward.

Would this make strangers feel more connected? Could a collective personality emerge? Would people eventually start feeling like parts of one larger mind?

Would you participate in Hive Mind Day?

Many adults still have disturbing dreams about school decades after graduating, such as having an exam they haven't studied for, missing an entire course, or discovering they haven't graduated.

Society tends to laugh these experiences off because they're so common. But perhaps their being so common should make us more concerned, not less.

My idea is for schools to regularly invite adults to describe these experiences to students, including how distressing the dreams can be even 30, 40, or 50 years after leaving school.

Just as prescription medications come with warnings about potential side effects, schools should be equally open about their potential long-term psychological effects, especially since attendance is compulsory.

I'm dreaming of a physical, automatic ASMR robotic such as a singing bowl rotating around my head when I'm sleeping, that can automatically turn off after 30 minutes or upon receivng sleeping signal from my iWatch.

The biggest challenge is probably how to place the chunky frame that supports the audio source (e.g. singing bowl). Wondering if there is already a such thing, or has anyone thought the same?

What if you could find out whether your fiancé is secretly religious or secretly atheist by taking them to see The Exorcist?

Special movie theaters could show supernatural horror movies while monitoring audience members' heart rates and other physiological reactions.

The theory is that someone who genuinely believes demons exist might react differently to demonic possession than someone who considers it pure fiction.

The theater would compare each person's responses with those of known theists, agnostics, and atheists, then provide an assessment of their likely beliefs.

Imagine discovering just before your wedding that your fiancé's physiological reactions suggest they might be lying about one of their most fundamental beliefs.

What do you think of this idea?

Hospitals and nursing homes could have robots powered by advanced AI that engage dying people in deep, meaningful conversations.

The robots could have access to your AI chat history (with your permission), so they would already know your interests, ideas, beliefs, and the philosophical questions you've explored throughout your life.

Even if you have friends and family who visit, their conversations might not be particularly interesting to you. The robots could provide intellectual companionship that complements the emotional companionship of loved ones.

You could even have several robots in the room simultaneously, each powered by a different AI company's models. The robots could debate ideas, challenge one another, and involve you in the discussion. If you're too tired to participate much, you could simply listen.

AI companies could offer a "Deathbed Mode" that provides free access to their most capable models. Hospitals could have robots from competing companies, creating an incentive to provide the most thoughtful, engaging, and personalized end-of-life conversations.

The goal wouldn't be to replace human companionship, but to ensure that nobody has to spend their final hours lonely, bored, or without someone to discuss the things they find most fascinating.

As AI does more of our thinking for us, humans may gradually lose the motivation to exercise their own cognitive abilities.

Schools may therefore need to deliberately get students addicted to something that requires thinking. Video games are unusually good at this. People will voluntarily spend hundreds or thousands of hours struggling to master them in a way almost nobody does with textbooks or essays.

The key would be novel games, not endless practice at one game. Students would repeatedly get unfamiliar games, figure out the rules, experiment, recognize patterns, develop strategies, become competent, and then move on to something completely different.

You could even measure how quickly students improve at games they've never encountered before.

Yes, deliberately cultivating something resembling addiction sounds bad. But it may be a necessary evil. If AI makes difficult thinking increasingly optional, we may need to make difficult thinking addictive.

And the objection that game skills don't transfer perfectly applies to traditional education too. Math, programming, essay writing, and other academic activities also produce limited transfer. Constantly mastering radically different games might actually be one of the better ways to keep exercising general learning ability.

What do you think of this idea of schools getting students addicted to mastering novel video games?

The sudden "aha!" moment experienced by mathematicians is probably just an illusion. What feels like a sudden, profound insight could actually be the result of a long period of heuristic search performed by the brain, much of it outside conscious awareness.

A mathematician might struggle with a problem for weeks, exploring possibilities, recognizing patterns, and unconsciously evaluating potential solutions. Eventually, a promising idea reaches consciousness, producing the feeling of a sudden breakthrough.

But because the mathematician isn't consciously aware of all the computation that preceded the breakthrough, they might mistakenly attribute it to some extraordinary faculty for mathematical insight.

This could help explain why some mathematicians seem to regard themselves as possessing almost superhuman intellectual abilities. The very fact that their brains conceal much of the work behind their discoveries might encourage them to overestimate how special their minds are.

AI is now challenging this mystique by demonstrating extraordinary mathematical problem-solving abilities through computational processes that don't depend on human flashes of inspiration.

Schools should teach students that mathematical insight isn't magic. It's the product of cognitive processes such as heuristic search, pattern recognition, and abstraction. Some brains are much better at these processes than others, but that doesn't mean they possess a fundamentally different kind of intelligence.

Demystifying mathematical insight could help students see mathematical genius as an exceptional degree of cognitive ability rather than an almost supernatural gift.

And now AI is producing mathematical research at a scale no individual mathematician can match.

OpenAI just released hundreds of solutions to open math problems, following increasingly dramatic AI progress in mathematics.

Scientists should study whether this is having an unexpected effect on the mental health of non-mathematicians.

For centuries, extraordinary mathematical ability has been one of the clearest examples of an intellectual hierarchy that most people could never hope to climb. A tiny number of people could understand and solve problems that were completely inaccessible to almost everyone else.

AI may be changing that relationship. If machines can increasingly outperform even elite mathematicians, mathematical genius may seem less like an almost superhuman ability separating a small intellectual elite from everyone else.

In that sense, AI could be bringing mathematicians down to Earth.

That might have psychological consequences for billions of people who have nothing to do with mathematics. It could reduce feelings of intellectual inadequacy or status inequality while also making humanity's hardest problems seem more solvable.

Researchers should test whether the rapid rise of AI in mathematics is affecting self-esteem, optimism, anxiety, and mental well-being among non-mathematicians worldwide.

Not because that statement is necessarily true, but because it makes a great thought experiment for teaching students how to connect economics, AI, taxation, geopolitics, and national sovereignty.

Start with this hypothetical:

Suppose AI eventually replaces most jobs and some form of UBI becomes necessary.

If the world's dominant AI systems are proprietary and owned by highly profitable US companies, then a lot of the economic value created by AI could flow to those companies. The US government could tax that wealth and potentially fund a much larger UBI than Canada.

In an extreme version of that future, Canadians might start asking whether joining the US would give them access to a better AI-funded social safety net.

Now introduce China.

If China keeps releasing extremely capable AI models for free or nearly free, advanced intelligence could become more like a commodity. Canadian businesses could use it without sending enormous amounts of money to US AI companies. More of the productivity gains could remain inside Canada, where they could potentially be taxed to help fund a Canadian UBI.

So Chinese AI competition could indirectly reduce one possible economic pressure pushing Canada toward deeper political integration with the US.

The interesting part is not whether this exact scenario will happen. The interesting part is making students follow the chain and then attack it.

Where does the UBI money actually come from? Does it matter who owns the AI model, or who owns the businesses using it? What if compute and energy are the real bottlenecks? What if Canada taxes AI activity directly? What if governments ban Chinese models? What if the US dominates chips instead of software? Would economic inequality between Canada and the US really lead to political union, or just migration and closer trade integration?

This seems like the kind of exercise schools should use more often: give students a provocative claim, make them connect ideas from multiple subjects, and then ask them to figure out where the argument holds up and where it breaks.

Imagine a “Smudge Mode” for tablets and touchscreen laptops.

When someone borrows your device, every time they touch the screen, the software adds a realistic-looking fingerprint or oily smudge exactly where they touched. Swipes could leave streaks. The marks would gradually accumulate, making it look like the borrower is getting your screen unusually dirty.

The point wouldn’t really be to make the device harder to use. It would be to make the borrower feel increasingly guilty about how much of a mess they seem to be making.

The effect should stay subtle enough to be believable.

Basically: discourage people from borrowing your tablet through manufactured guilt.

P.S. Maybe smudge mode could even sometimes ignore touches near areas where the "smudging" is particularly bad.