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by muzani 2417 days ago
I'd say it's something that has to grow exponentially for a very long time.

That rules something like finance out, which compounds very poorly, and hasn't produced trillionaires despite being around for centuries.

I'd bet on education. Colleges and universities can be worth billions each. While the billion dollar ones are pretty good, the sub billion ones aren't and are getting competed with by several month courses.

It seems something mostly neglected. Universities hire the smartest people, but teaching still uses the same old lecturing technique for decades, despite all this interactive technology. We've learned a lot about psychology and productivity. We have tried improving education technology, but it seems to just be a side gimmick. This can also be combined with upcoming new tech like AI to work better.

It seems like something that compounds very well. If you can hack your brain to have, say, 90% comprehension, and comprehend harder things, you can also discover better education techniques and train others.

Energy would be second. Oil has already produced trillionaire families, but it's too big to concentrate on one person.

I'd imagine Bill Gates's shiny new nuclear plants could push him into trillionaire territory. Combined with the new electrical vehicle trend, people could be migrating from oil to electricity.

2 comments

Any particular thoughts on how to improve education with interactive technology? I am a teacher and hence curious on how it can be improved.
Lol, we should be asking you that question.

Spaced repetition seems promising. Or letting students learn at their own pace. Maybe going deeper down in details they're interested in. But we had those for decades and they never took off.

Maybe we should be looking more into learning than teaching.

I learnt a lot from Europa Universalis. I think people should be able to simply experiment more with things, see what happens when they tweak things, actually play.

We teach derivatives and integrals all the time, and yet nobody has mainstream software that illustrates how they work. The concept is easy visually, difficult in writing. It's used a lot in algorithms, but that's more because programmers make algorithms to illustrate to themselves the concept. We can do a good deal with physics, chemistry, and so on.

I'm betting on Education too. Healthcare seems just as big and inefficient to me honestly.
Healthcare, yeah.

It doesn't have the exponential effect, though, and it's a big market spread over many players. I'm sure it could be more efficient, but how much does that change?

Then again, reading the Checklist Manifesto, where a checklist made such a difference, that makes me think that healthcare can be far improved.