[candu]

Those are all highly worthwhile problems to work on...

...but I'm not convinced any of them are low-hanging fruit. Almost everything on this list would require sustained R&D across several fields of expertise, and many of them have the significant added challenge of overcoming entrenched interests / power structures.

That's not to say we shouldn't try! Solving even a small part of anything here would materially improve quality of life for a lot of people - but these are not "I could solve this in a weekend" problems; these are generational problems, towards which meaningful effort could easily be measured in thousands of person-years from entire teams / organisations / ecosystems of smart people, and where even a chance at success would require a steady supply of adequate resources that is durable across periodic economic shocks.

CERN is the closest thing I can think of as a useful mental model here: sustained cooperation across multiple nations, massive amounts of public investment, clear tangible outcomes over a period of decades.

[bsenftner]

> but these are not "I could solve this in a weekend" problems

Perhaps it requires genius?