Seth's Blog : Important problems

Important problems

Some problems are easy to solve, others are difficult, requiring a lot more labor, willpower, resources and coordination.

Some problems have simple solutions, while others are complex in what it takes to move forward.

The trivial problems are fun. They’re simple to solve and don’t require much effort. Yes, please, go solve them.

We’re tempted to focus on the problems that are complicated but apparently easy. Somehow, a tweet or a scientific paper or some other announcement is all that it will take to unknot this situation. Tempting, but unlikely. If all it took to solve an easy problem was telling people the solution, we probably would have solved it already.

The other temptation is to seek out problems that are difficult to solve and complicated to organize around. After all, a herculean problem like this is so hard that no one can fault you if you don’t succeed.

What truly matters, though, are the important problems. The ones that aren’t rocket science, but need a significant amount of guts, emotional labor and community coordination to solve. They’re here. Right in front of us. Simple but difficult. But worth it.