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If we can land a man on the moon but can't do X, maybe X is the harder problem.
by dehrmann 4y ago
If we can land a man on the moon but can't do X, maybe X is the harder problem.
- babyshake 4y agoOn the other hand, we refer to really difficult problems requiring widespread coordination as being "moonshots".
- colechristensen 4y agoThe thing is landing a man on the moon took dedicating a few percent GDP of the most advanced nation in the world for a decade and scientists poached from the next n countries after the war: perhaps your X isn’t actually the harder problem.
- rzzzt 4y agoSounds like an X-Y problem to me.
- WalterBright 4y agoThat's true. Many problems seem simple, but are fundamentally insoluble. For example, crime rates will never be zero.
- shepherdjerred 4y agoYou're not being creative enough. Crime rate on the moon is currently 0%.
- formerkrogemp 4y agoI think you'll find that's not true either. If you accept littering as a crime, multiple items have been left on the moon.
- matheusmoreira 4y agoPerhaps X just doesn't have enough geopolitical relevance to fund it with ridiculous amounts of taxpayer money. If a problem that ought to be simple is actually hard, it's very likely that it's because whoever's making decisions doesn't want to pay for it. Simple example: queues. It's a mathematically solvable problem but someone somewhere will think that hiring enough people to provide perfect service is too expensive and they're better off making people wait in line instead.