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This is a fun sort of Madlibs game to play: * How can stem cells fight climate change? * How can we use waste heat from nuclear reactors to promote gender equ

This is a fun sort of Madlibs game to play: * How can stem cells fight climate change? * How can we use waste heat from nuclear reactors to promote gender equality? * How can echidnas cure cancer? The challenge is that many revolutionary products sound equally nonsensical at the time. * How can we generate power homes using giant propellers? * How can monkey viruses cure blindness? * How can adding impurities to a conductor let it perform mathematics? We don't seem to have a way to tell which crazy sentences will pan out until we try and see.

reissbaker 7y ago
> We don't seem to have a way to tell which crazy sentences will pan out I think you're missing the OP's point: the point is that the sentence should read: "How can we cure blindness?" If it happens to be via monkey viruses, so be it. But you shouldn't start from "How can monkey viruses cure blindness" — it's not monkey viruses that are the reason to do research, it's blindness that's the reason.
- leoedin 7y ago
  "How can we provide clean energy as cheaply as possible" seems like a pretty big problem we need to solve. Maybe kite power isn't the answer, but it certainly looked like it could be at one point. It wasn't unreasonable to investigate it.
  - davidivadavid 7y ago
    And I wouldn't have made that comment had they stated it that way. The problem with those phony problems is that the success criteria are binary, and not tied to metrics that allow for comparisons with alternatives. If you problem is to generate power with kites, and you have built power-generating kites, then you won. But how good a power source is it in the grander scheme of things? Is it going to move the needle when it comes to CO2 emissions? Again, I don't mind the high school science fair stuff, but I don't think this has a high chance of being the ticket based on fundamentals.
schoen 7y ago
These also sound a little like the AT&T "You Will" ads from 1993. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/You_Will https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/You_Will

reissbaker 7y ago

> We don't seem to have a way to tell which crazy sentences will pan out I think you're missing the OP's point: the point is that the sentence should read: "How can we cure blindness?" If it happens to be via monkey viruses, so be it. But you shouldn't start from "How can monkey viruses cure blindness" — it's not monkey viruses that are the reason to do research, it's blindness that's the reason.

leoedin 7y ago
"How can we provide clean energy as cheaply as possible" seems like a pretty big problem we need to solve. Maybe kite power isn't the answer, but it certainly looked like it could be at one point. It wasn't unreasonable to investigate it.
- davidivadavid 7y ago
  And I wouldn't have made that comment had they stated it that way. The problem with those phony problems is that the success criteria are binary, and not tied to metrics that allow for comparisons with alternatives. If you problem is to generate power with kites, and you have built power-generating kites, then you won. But how good a power source is it in the grander scheme of things? Is it going to move the needle when it comes to CO2 emissions? Again, I don't mind the high school science fair stuff, but I don't think this has a high chance of being the ticket based on fundamentals.

schoen 7y ago

These also sound a little like the AT&T "You Will" ads from 1993. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/You_Will https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/You_Will