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Does the problem directly cause death, injury, or disability? If so, real problem. Everything else is just a matter of optimizing your level of comfort in the a
by exratione 13y ago
Does the problem directly cause death, injury, or disability? If so, real problem. Everything else is just a matter of optimizing your level of comfort in the absence of real problems.
We can then talk about grading problem importance by its distance from death, injury, or disability (e.g. it's a problem in the solution to a problem in the solution to a real problem), and the probabilities and amounts of death, injury, or disability it does, can, or might in the future cause.
- dquail 13y agoUnder that definition ... there's hardly anyone working on "real" problems. Even Nasa.
- sliverstorm 13y agoSpace travel can be viewed as a very abstract indirect approach to "real" problems, for a variety of reasons, depending on your views of NASA's role in technological advance and the future of our planet.
- salgernon 13y agoJust to be a devils advocate, perhaps it is important to let NASA know that you will be 5 minutes late for a meeting. No, the single instance may not present a life or death situation, but maybe at some point the cumulative effect of solving these first world type problems can have a trickle down effect on making the world a better place for everyone. I saw this as someone that doesn't use uber, twitter, twist or any of the other referenced products.
- Zigurd 13y agoLet's take education and NASA: It's fairly obvious that bad education, on a mass scale, eventually, causes death and/or disability on a mass scale. It just takes time. It takes more time for an existential crisis to emerge because we paid no attention to getting off this rock. But it will surely come.
- exratione 13y agoExactly. It's something to think about when looking at the world that is and the world that might be.
- mturmon 13y agoNASA Earth-observing satellites address a range of very "real" problems affecting people's lives: hurricanes, severe weather, fire, earthquakes. In the longer term, climate change and the many variables that affect it.
- pyre 13y agoI would consider improving education a 'real problem,' and that doesn't directly cause death, injury or disability (unless you want to call those uneducated 'disabled').