> Basically, you become a pattern matching database of non-obvious cost/benefit trade-offs. What some might call "experience." What makes problem solving skill

> Basically, you become a pattern matching database of non-obvious cost/benefit trade-offs. What some might call "experience." What makes problem solving skills valuable is the ability for the wielder to pattern match effectively. The more problem patterns you can positively match to solution patterns, the more valuable your experience. To a lesser extent, simply being able to identify problem patterns is also very valuable, as if you can avoid the creation of a problem it doesn't matter if you know a solution to it (I don't know how to escape a black hole, so I generally avoid them when traveling in space).