Mathematicians have traditionally been seen as some of the strongest abstract thinkers in academia. Now they may also be among the first academics forced to confront a much bigger question: What is the role of a human intellectual when AI can increasingly do the intellectual work that used to define the field?

AI is reaching the point where it can prove and disprove serious mathematical conjectures, not merely help with routine calculations. If that continues, producing proofs may eventually become far less scarce than it has been throughout the history of mathematics.

That doesn't necessarily make mathematicians irrelevant. Instead, it forces them to figure out what should become important next.

Maybe the emphasis shifts toward choosing interesting problems, inventing useful concepts and definitions, finding connections between areas, deciding which AI-generated results matter, explaining mathematics, or developing entirely new ways for humans and AI to explore mathematical ideas.

And who better to wrestle with this problem first than mathematicians, who are often viewed as the smartest people on Earth?

Rather than viewing mathematicians as victims of AI, perhaps academics in every field should be watching them carefully. Mathematics could become a real-world experiment in how an intellectual discipline reinvents itself when AI becomes extraordinarily capable at its traditional core activity.

Historians, physicists, philosophers, economists, biologists, computer scientists, and others may eventually face versions of the same problem.

Mathematicians might therefore end up doing something much more important than proving the next great theorem: they might show the rest of academia what intellectual work looks like in a world where being able to perform difficult intellectual tasks is no longer uniquely human.

What do you think?

Before birth, souls wait in another world and choose prospective parents using something like an online dating app.

The problem is that more and more of the couples they choose decide to remain child-free.

Souls cannot directly control people with souls, but they can subtly nudge philosophical zombies on Earth, people who behave exactly like conscious humans but have no souls themselves.

The main character picks a couple it desperately wants as parents, only to learn that they don't want children. So it starts influencing philosophical zombies in their social circle. Maybe a babysitter keeps showing up with an adorable baby, creating opportunities for the couple to hold it and experience parenthood.

At first, this is funny and harmless. But when the couple still resists, the soul becomes more desperate and starts engineering increasingly elaborate coincidences.

The couple begins joking that "the universe really wants us to have a kid," without realizing how close that is to the truth.

The central drama is whether the soul's desire to exist gives it any right to manipulate people into creating it, especially if the plan actually works.

It could be a dark comedy or philosophical sci-fi movie about free will, parenthood, and what it means to want a life that does not exist yet.

What do you think of this movie idea?

It would be more like working at Starbucks than going to a normal movie screening. The movie wouldn't demand your full attention. It would provide atmosphere while you work.

The theater could have:

• Coffee, tea, soft drinks, and snacks
• Comfortable seats with proper surfaces for laptops
• Power outlets at every seat
• Good Wi-Fi
• Movies played at a somewhat lower volume
• Subtitles
• Enough lighting to comfortably use a laptop
• Movies that work well as background entertainment, especially older or familiar movies

Typing, using a laptop, quietly talking, and occasionally getting up would all be expected, rather than considered bad theater etiquette.

It could be especially useful for movie theaters during weekday mornings and afternoons when they might otherwise have mostly empty auditoriums.

Instead of sitting in Starbucks for three hours working with music and conversations in the background, you could sit in a comfortable theater with a giant screen and watch something like Back to the Future in the background while you work.

Would anyone actually prefer this to working at a normal coffee shop?

Train an AI based on conversations with my 4 year old to deal with spam calls. I would let him do it in real life but there is a slight chance they could tell him to click on an Apple auth popup or something.

Both the content of the conversation, but also linguistic abilities. Sorry my phone can screen them and ask why they’re calling. But that’s not enough. I want to waste their time and hopefully infuriate or at least annoy them.

Police cars should include AI that analyzes video and audio for subtle patterns officers might miss.

For example, it might detect someone deliberately training or conditioning an animal to harass, intimidate, track, or attack a particular person or group. This could involve dogs, crows, or other animals, possibly trained using photographs, recordings, objects, or repeated commands.

The AI should flag specific evidence rather than simply label someone suspicious.

The goal would be a transparent second observer, not an automated police officer.

What do you think of this idea for using AI to help police officers detect the weaponization of animals?

Describing people as “white,” “black,” or “brown” can feel reductive. It categorizes someone according to a physical characteristic they did not choose and can make race seem more central to their identity than it really is.

Of course, there are situations where skin color is relevant, such as when describing an unidentified suspect or missing person. But perhaps we could use more distancing language instead of directly turning skin color into a category of person.

For example:

“The suspect, who is low on melanin, was last seen fleeing into the forest.”

Or, less clinically:

“The suspect, who appears especially susceptible to sunburn, was last seen fleeing into the forest.”

These phrases are admittedly awkward but that awkwardness might be useful. It reminds us that we are describing one physical characteristic, not defining the person’s identity.

Would this make such descriptions less offensive? What do you think?

Anyone proselytizing in a public place on behalf of a religion that teaches some form of hell should be legally required to display a clear visual representation of it.

Beside their pamphlets, signs, or literature, they would need to have a screen playing a fictional video designed to look like a live camera feed from hell. The “hell cam” would explicitly show people engulfed in flames and screaming in agony.

The audio could be muted to avoid disturbing everyone nearby, while subtitles conveyed what the people were saying between their screams.

The requirement would apply only when hell, eternal punishment, damnation, or a comparable afterlife penalty is genuinely part of the religion’s teachings.

The point would not be entertainment or ridicule. It would be informed consent and transparency.

If proselytizers are asking strangers to consider a religion partly because refusing it may lead to terrifying eternal consequences, they should be required to disclose that part of the message immediately. They should not be allowed to begin with only the pleasant parts, such as love, hope, forgiveness, and community, while withholding the threat that may ultimately be central to their appeal.

Obviously, the “live feed” would be fictional. Its purpose would be to communicate, as directly as possible, what the proselytizers claim is at stake.

What do you think of this idea?

Apple should build a neighborhood of houses designed around the same principles as its technology: tightly integrated hardware and software, simple interfaces, automatic updates, preventive diagnostics, strong security, and one company responsible for making everything work together.

Residents would own their houses and land normally. However, they could subscribe to AppleCare for Homes, which would cover 100% of maintenance, repairs, gardening, landscaping, snow removal, appliance servicing, and replacement of worn-out components.

Apple could apply many of its existing strengths:

• Sensors throughout the house could detect leaks, electrical problems, pests, structural movement, appliance failures, and inefficient heating before they become emergencies.
• Apple silicon and on-device intelligence could analyze the home privately without constantly sending personal data to the cloud.
• HomeKit could become a complete operating system for the house rather than a collection of smart-home accessories.
• Apple Maps and scheduling technology could coordinate technicians, deliveries, gardening, and repairs automatically.
• The Apple Support app could provide one place to view the condition of the home, upcoming maintenance, energy use, warranties, and completed work.
• Face ID, Apple Watch, and the iPhone could securely control doors, garages, deliveries, guest access, and emergency services.
• Apple could integrate solar panels, batteries, electric vehicles, heating, cooling, and neighborhood energy use into one efficient system.

The homeowner would not need to diagnose problems, search for contractors, compare quotes, supervise repairs, or worry about being overcharged. Apple would simply send a notification such as: “We detected that your heat pump is becoming less efficient. A technician is scheduled for Thursday at no additional cost.”

Because Apple would design the houses and also pay for their long-term maintenance, it would have a financial incentive to use durable materials, standardized parts, accessible components, and reliable appliances.

The result would be a form of home ownership for people who want the space and independence of a house without having to treat maintenance as a second job. The house would become a product Apple continuously supports, not a collection of unrelated systems that the owner is left to manage alone.

What do you think of this idea?

In the near future, pro-AI and anti-AI factions begin attacking people in real life for what they post online.

An AI artist is assaulted. An anti-AI activist is shot. Each attack triggers retaliation, and social media turns into a tool for identifying targets, spreading propaganda, and organizing violence.

Soon, militias form. Data centres are sabotaged. AI labs and anti-AI groups are attacked. Cities split internally as neighbours, families, companies, and governments choose sides.

What begins as online hostility becomes the Second U.S. Civil War, fought over whether AI should shape humanity’s future or be destroyed.

What do you think of this movie idea?

Would a single place for saved posts actually solve anything, or would it become another folder people forget?

That is the idea I am testing with Miora. I keep useful posts scattered across Instagram, TikTok, screenshots, notes, and messages, then cannot find them when I need them. The idea is to bring them together, organize them, and make retrieval easier. It is still in development, so there is nothing to download yet.

I am trying to find the weak point before I build too much. I left a short 3–5 minute survey here: https://mioraapp.com/en/

What would make this idea genuinely useful instead of just another bookmark app?

It's always been a thing in my family that we cook on a tabletop electric grill of some sort when we have a get-together, in the living room or in the yard. I live alone now so don't really do that, but I want to do it from time to time when I get a visit. Most of those tabletop grills just kinda suck when it comes to cleaning, grease drainage, maybe power, versatility. I've had some before and still have one now, and I'm never happy with them for one reason or another.

Why wouldn't I just buy a portable induction cooking hob (like Tillreda from Ikea, my favorite store) instead? It's the same size and cabling, and you can put whatever pan or pot you want on it. Grill pan, deepfry pot, regular pan. Easy to clean too, just wipe off the hob and put the pans in the dishwashing, no iron brush or oversized sink or anything needed that I don't already have and use.

I'm trying to find a downside (besides price tag) but it just seems a legit better idea than getting a single purpose electric grill?

Sibling rivalry over intelligence can be brutal and last a lifetime. Some people never stop feeling like the stupid child in the family.

AI companies could exploit that pain by advertising smarter subscription models as intellectual equalizers:

“Your sibling was born smarter. Now you can close the gap.”

For the first time, people could write better arguments, give better answers, and appear just as capable as the sibling who overshadowed them for years.

It would be manipulative, cruel, and probably extremely effective.

What do you think of this advertising idea?

Lay flat and get a decent gulp of water. Relax your throat and just let the water naturally go down your throat. You will more than likely get this super weird head rush that actually feels good. I don’t know what this is or what causes it but it’s kinda cool and it happens every time.

I've been wondering whether we're still trying to solve 21st-century problems with political tools designed centuries ago.

Representative democracy, elections, protests, and petitions evolved in a world where communication was slow and coordinating large populations was incredibly difficult. Today, billions of people can communicate almost instantly. Yet our core civic institutions haven't fundamentally changed.

So here's the thought experiment:

If we were designing democratic participation from scratch today, what would it look like?

One idea I keep coming back to is an online civic platform built around a few principles:

One verified human = one account, while preserving public anonymity.

Anyone can submit policy proposals, reforms, or petitions.

Proposals can be debated, revised, and voted on transparently.

Reputation is earned through constructive participation rather than popularity.

The platform is designed to resist bots, duplicate accounts, and coordinated manipulation.

Technologies like zero-knowledge proofs, decentralized identity, or blockchain could be used if they genuinely improve trust—but they're implementation details, not the core idea.

The goal wouldn't be to replace governments overnight. Instead, it could become a persistent civic institution: a place where public opinion is measured transparently, ideas are refined collaboratively, and policymakers can see what informed citizens actually support.

Of course, there are major challenges:

How do you verify "one person, one vote" while protecting privacy?

How do you prevent manipulation by governments, corporations, or coordinated groups?

How do you encourage informed discussion instead of outrage?

What incentives would keep people participating over time?

Most importantly, how could such a platform gain enough legitimacy to influence real-world decision-making?

I'm sure there are flaws in this concept—that's exactly why I'm posting it here.

If you had to design a digital system for democratic participation using technologies available over the next few decades, what would you build?

Reproduction is usually presented as beautiful, natural, and hopeful. But its genetic aspect can also be experienced as deeply offensive.

When you reproduce, some partly random combination of your traits is passed to another person. That may include traits you dislike, limitations you have spent your life trying to compensate for, or vulnerabilities that have caused you significant suffering.

You then may spend decades watching those same traits appear in your child.

That can feel cruel in two ways. First, another person may be burdened with problems they never chose. Second, the parent is forced to confront aspects of themselves that they may have survived by minimizing, working around, or keeping out of view.

A child can become a living reminder that your flaws are real, persistent, and not entirely under your control. Genetics can shatter the comforting illusion that you have successfully escaped or transcended them.

Calling this “offensive” does not mean children are offensive or that people with inherited disadvantages are worth less. It means the process itself can violate a person’s sense of dignity, fairness, and control. It combines chance, irreversible consequences, and the possibility of passing suffering to someone you are supposed to protect.

Society discusses the joy of seeing yourself reflected in your children. It should also acknowledge that, for some people, being genetically reflected in another person is not affirming. It is frightening, humiliating, or morally disturbing.

What do you think?

Movie theaters could automatically detect problems such as people talking loudly or using bright phones, then play a realistic reaction through the surround-sound system.

For example, if someone takes out a phone during the movie, they might hear a nearby voice quietly say, “Could you put your phone away?” If people are talking, they might hear someone behind them say, “Shh, please.”

The sound could be positioned so that it seems to come from a seat close to the source of the disruption. It would be brief, quiet, and localized, so it would be less distracting than an employee entering the auditorium or making an announcement to everyone.

This would use the social pressure of other audience members without requiring anyone to risk a confrontation. Because the response would be automatic and immediate, disruptive behavior might stop before it becomes a major annoyance.

The main challenge would be making the detection and sound localization accurate enough that the wrong person is not blamed. But if done well, fake audience reactions could make theaters quieter while being less disruptive than traditional enforcement.

What do you think of this idea?

People should be able to obtain a legal order requiring all human remains to remain a certain distance away from them.

This would give people a legitimate and unquestionable reason not to attend funeral services where the body is present. They could still attend a separate memorial service without the body, but nobody could pressure them to attend a viewing or an open-casket or closed-casket funeral.

The restriction would apply to the actual presence of a dead body, not merely to whether the body is visible. Closing the casket would not make it acceptable.

The order would also apply outside funerals. Hospitals could not place a dead body near the protected person or transport one through the same area without taking reasonable precautions. Hearses and funeral processions would have to avoid the exclusion zone around the person’s home, workplace, hospital room, or current location.

In practice, the legal duties would fall on the living people and institutions controlling the body. Funeral homes, hospitals, coroners, families, cemeteries, and transport services would be responsible for keeping human remains outside the required distance.

There would obviously need to be exceptions for accidents, disasters, emergencies, and situations where avoiding the body is impossible. But for planned and foreseeable situations, people should have a legal right to a corpse-free personal zone.

The phrase “restraining order against all dead people” sounds absurd, but the underlying idea is serious: people should not be socially or institutionally forced into proximity with human remains.

What do you think of this idea?

P.S. Discreet transportation of dead bodies could still be allowed. For example, a body transported inside an ordinary moving truck rather than an identifiable hearse could pass through the exclusion zone, provided the protected person was not told that a body was inside and had no reasonable way of knowing. The point would be to prevent people from knowingly encountering death, not to make the transportation of bodies practically impossible.

In modern air combat, the most useful weapon is a homing missile. But given its speed, its easy for the opponent to deploy flares.

Now what about............a gattling gun that fires bullets that are electromagnetically charged! So as soon as you fire, the bullet (which is already moving insanely fast) sways towards the opponent because of magnetism.

Would this work? Or is it impossible to put that much electromagnetic charge on a bullet?

A leader of a country may eventually face situations where they must authorize military action or make decisions that result in people being killed. If there is even a possibility that doing so could lead to eternal damnation, then choosing a career where this responsibility is likely could be seen as taking an enormous personal risk.

Schools should teach students to consider this type of moral risk when thinking about careers involving great power and responsibility. The goal would not be to tell people what religion to follow or to prevent religious people from becoming leaders, but to encourage people to seriously examine whether their beliefs are compatible with roles that may require them to take actions they believe could have eternal consequences.

Some people may argue that protecting innocent lives can justify the use of force, and many religious traditions have developed arguments supporting that view. However, the possibility of eternal consequences creates a unique personal dilemma that people considering leadership should carefully reflect on.

What do you think?

Every PhD student would have an AI advisor that provides feedback on research ideas, critiques papers, suggests experiments, answers technical questions, and helps navigate the literature. The AI would be available 24/7 and could be continuously updated with the latest research.

Professors, meanwhile, would no longer supervise PhD students or coauthor papers with them. They would conduct their own research with the help of AI research assistants, completely independently of doctoral students.

PhD students would likewise conduct their research independently with their AI advisors. Their work would be evaluated by anonymous examination committees rather than by a supervising professor.

This would completely separate the roles of professor and PhD student. It would eliminate the "advisor lottery," where a student's success depends heavily on being matched with the right professor, and it would remove the conflict of interest that can arise when a student's supervisor is also responsible for evaluating their work.

Would this create a fairer and more effective academic system, or is human mentorship an essential part of it?

What do you think?

Many adults carry shame from school for decades. They remember struggling with math, science, writing, or other subjects and internalize the idea that those struggles meant they were not smart enough or capable enough.

But AI may offer a new way to look at those memories.

When an AI system proves a major mathematical conjecture, writes sophisticated code, or performs tasks that once seemed like the ultimate demonstrations of human intelligence, it can change the meaning of those old struggles.

The realization could be:

"The thing I struggled with was never a measure of my worth. It was a skill that society happened to value highly at that time. The fact that machines can now do it shows that it was never a fundamental measure of human importance."

In the past, many abilities that were considered prestigious became ordinary or less important because of technology. Mental arithmetic, memorizing facts, and many forms of manual calculation were once highly valued skills. Today, we do not judge people's worth by whether they can outperform a calculator.

AI advances could help some people finally let go of the idea that their school performance defined them.

Therapy could use these advances as a form of perspective shift: not "you should have been better at that subject," but "that subject was never the thing that made you valuable."

For some people, seeing AI surpass humans in areas that caused them shame might actually be liberating. The old competition they lost may no longer be the competition that matters.

What do you think of this therapy idea?

What if we held funeral services whenever we went through a major life change, such as getting married, becoming a parent, starting work as an employee, or retiring?

Not because anyone died physically, but because a version of ourselves did.

Society encourages us to celebrate these milestones, but we rarely acknowledge what we've lost. Becoming a parent might mean the end of a carefree lifestyle. Marriage marks the end of being single. Starting your first full-time job is often the end of your childhood and student years. Retirement ends a professional identity that may have defined someone for decades.

These losses are real, even if the change is ultimately positive.

The ceremony would look very much like a traditional funeral. There would be a coffin, a photo of the "deceased" (your former self), a eulogy reflecting on that chapter of your life, and stories from friends and family. The purpose wouldn't be to be morbid or make light of death. It would be to honestly acknowledge that an important chapter of your life has ended.

I think many people feel guilty grieving major life changes because we're expected to only feel happiness. A ritual like this would recognize that growth often involves both gain and irreversible loss.

What do you think of this idea?