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The Most Pressing Question(s) On Earth
I'd say there's no more pressing question than whether the largest US tech companies will deliver on the growth outlook implied by their valuation metrics, but that'd be... well, uncouth, let's call it.
There are certainly more pressing questions in the world than that. Here's an example: Is humanity staring at an accelerated climatic oblivion? The answer appears to be "yes," or at least "maybe," judging by catastrophes like what's unfolding in California.
Here's another example of a question
If the AI currently being used by folks like Yahoo, Google, Amazon and others in their relationships with me, is an example of the wonders we are to receive from AI, count me out. They are not ready for prime time. I am petrified at the prospect that AI will find its way into medicine, medical record-keeping, utilities, finance, or any other activities required for daily life. I am scared to death because the very process of creating AI to begin with is one of making successive approximation errors until one “gets it right.” Would you want to hear your surgeon say “oops” while testing some AI rules? Also, no one knows if AI, once created, will be in any way, stable. I don’t think it can be. My late wife was a labor statistician for the State of Ohio, with results sent to DC every month (and immediately reported here). She was responsible for non-profits and small firms. In my last year as a regular TA we used to talk about the issues related to sampling theory and estimation algorithms. (Yes, we were both geeks. It’s a tough life but somebody’s got to do it.) Mostly, my wife and her colleagues were concerned about the inherent instability of the process and its outcomes. The labor department was steadfast in trying to create a false sense of stability by keeping all the estimation rules constant for as long as possible.
As to the most pressing question. For me that is absolute. There are over 200 sovereign nations on earth. The peoples living in each of these nations wants to live their own way. For humans to survive as a species all of us will have to put aside all personal desires, pool all our wealth, share all out resources, put aside our individual spirituality, learn one language, and work together for one common goal, survival. [Bees do it, ants do it, … ] No room for the luxury of differences of opinion or anything else. The chances of that happening approach zero. The beliefs of the three “great” religions, alone, will prevent the necessary adjustments. No one nation must be allowed to survive as the single leader, especially not the US, China, India, or Russia (or whatever it calls itself these days). We got notes to this effect during this decade. One of those is being opened right now in sunny, windy CA. My nephew and his family are among 100,000 under evacuation orders and moved 70 mi east to be with my sister, who herself has been evacuated from her house twice in the last five years.
H-Man, when the dominoes supporting the Mag 7 start to fall, the first question will be “how did I not see that?”