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Isn't this a really small problem? If you were to sort by importance all the problems in the world, how close to the bottom would sledding athletes injurying th

Isn't this a really small problem? If you were to sort by importance all the problems in the world, how close to the bottom would sledding athletes injurying themselves be? I feel sorry for those who already incurred lasting damage, but for the rest... it only depends on them to stop.

yetihehe 6y ago
We can't have all people working just on most important problems. Many will just waste time doing this (me for example, I don't know how to end poverty), so we have to have people attached to many different problems. Now this problem may not be the most important, but still maybe if someone has time, she should look at it at least briefly?
- imtringued 6y ago
  What authority decides whether a problem is important and how important it is? It probably doesn't or at least shouldn't exist because that power could be equivalent to a dictatorship. Here is a little bit of hyperbole. "Voting for anyone other than Trump for president is not an important problem" The other extreme would be to assign every person on earth to work on fusion power. Even if we are generous and define importance loosely as reward divided by needed investment (aka ROI) we just end up with the current system. It's still not perfect because it doesn't account for time and corruption. People will optimize for the short term and powerful corporations can create feedback loops by lobbying the government to declare their business as "important" which makes the corporation more powerful and that additional power can be used for lobbying again. However, despite all the shortcomings we still have yet to find a better system. I just realized that this comment was mostly aimed at doublesCs. Feel free to ignore it.
CathedralBorrow 6y ago
Why are you wasting all these words on something that is not at the top of your sorted list? What is the most important problem in the world?
- doublesCs 6y ago
  > Why are you wasting all these words on something that is not at the top of your sorted list? I wrote that out of curiosity about why such an article would end up on the front page of HN. Yes, I understand that HN isn't just business and tech, it's "interesting things" - but why is this article interesting? Since I don't find it interesting, maybe some people found this an important issue, I thought?
  - bitcurious 6y ago
    >I wrote that out of curiosity about why such an article would end up on the front page of HN. (a) It's a well written and interesting article on a sports issue that most don't know about. (b) Its TBI implications are generalizable to a lot of popular activities.
imtringued 6y ago
It's a competition. It only ends when everyone mutually agrees to stop.
- doublesCs 6y ago
  hmm no? I walk away when I decide to walk away, regardless of what "everyone" is doing.

yetihehe 6y ago

We can't have all people working just on most important problems. Many will just waste time doing this (me for example, I don't know how to end poverty), so we have to have people attached to many different problems. Now this problem may not be the most important, but still maybe if someone has time, she should look at it at least briefly?

imtringued 6y ago
What authority decides whether a problem is important and how important it is? It probably doesn't or at least shouldn't exist because that power could be equivalent to a dictatorship. Here is a little bit of hyperbole. "Voting for anyone other than Trump for president is not an important problem" The other extreme would be to assign every person on earth to work on fusion power. Even if we are generous and define importance loosely as reward divided by needed investment (aka ROI) we just end up with the current system. It's still not perfect because it doesn't account for time and corruption. People will optimize for the short term and powerful corporations can create feedback loops by lobbying the government to declare their business as "important" which makes the corporation more powerful and that additional power can be used for lobbying again. However, despite all the shortcomings we still have yet to find a better system. I just realized that this comment was mostly aimed at doublesCs. Feel free to ignore it.

CathedralBorrow 6y ago

Why are you wasting all these words on something that is not at the top of your sorted list? What is the most important problem in the world?

doublesCs 6y ago
> Why are you wasting all these words on something that is not at the top of your sorted list? I wrote that out of curiosity about why such an article would end up on the front page of HN. Yes, I understand that HN isn't just business and tech, it's "interesting things" - but why is this article interesting? Since I don't find it interesting, maybe some people found this an important issue, I thought?
- bitcurious 6y ago
  >I wrote that out of curiosity about why such an article would end up on the front page of HN. (a) It's a well written and interesting article on a sports issue that most don't know about. (b) Its TBI implications are generalizable to a lot of popular activities.

imtringued 6y ago

It's a competition. It only ends when everyone mutually agrees to stop.

doublesCs 6y ago
hmm no? I walk away when I decide to walk away, regardless of what "everyone" is doing.