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Best response so far imo. People really struggle to find big ideas that are not just funding others’ ideas or lives in disguise.
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Replying to @vgr
I build a giant ball of titanium, as large and as a perfectly round as $ 1 billion can get me. Then drop it on top of Mount Everest. Cos, what else can you do that will last a million years and make everyone go "who the f*ck did that?"
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Another top 5 shortlist. Many are coming up with vague versions of rewilding, but the wilderness corridors detail really levels up this variant. Internet of national parks!
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Replying to @vgr
Use it to buy and preserve land to create wilderness corridors connecting national parks / forests.
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Another top 5 shortlist idea. I like the sheer nudging busybodyness of it. Likely to delightfully annoy everybody.
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Replying to @vgr
PSA campaigns to stop behaviors that lower the overall social good. Examples like leaving too much space between cars at left turn lights, using hazards in the rain, not returning shopping carts, littering, over-packaging by manufacturers, the wave at baseball games.
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There are many architecture ideas but most are boringly trad or arbitrarily zany. I like this one for the sheer misanthropy of it. Also I actually like brutalism. Big concrete blocks. What’s not to like.
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Replying to @vgr
build new/replace existing public buildings with brutalist architecture
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Honorable mention in the media category, which has no winners yet. I like the structural novelty of it, but it lacks the specifics that would distinguish it from investment in a category of ideas rather than a specific idea.
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Replying to @vgr
Build the biggest treasure hunt in history. Fund the creation of a complex literary puzzle hunt that spans both video, books, comics, websites, & music. Have multiple diverging storylines each with their own prizes at the end.
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The best idea so far in the pragmatic category. This is the sort of clumsy seeming banal idea that can transform into a miracle if someone throws enough money and focused attention at it.
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Replying to @vgr
I have a lot of undeveloped technology ideas. I'd hire people to develop them. A "simple" one is a medical scanner and display system that would facilitate basic appointments. The parts of the system exist, but no one has put it all together yet. It's probably too expensive now.
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Another good one in the general misanthropy category, elevated by the Culture like combination of starship, robot, and paperclip maximizer. Any of the 3 alone would be a category, but the intersection is an idea
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Replying to @vgr
Build an AI (and associated robot / starship) that is optimised to build paper clips. Why? Because I am a nihilist.
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By your logic then even this idea is funding others due to the fact that the titanium is purchased from someone, also the logistics of hauling it to the top of Mt. Everest likely also pads some pockets.
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