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Ask HN: Why aren't you solving real problems?

by mdgrech23 on 9/26/24, 3:08 PM with 51 comments

• by keb_ on 9/26/24, 6:42 PM

  > If you all love problem solving why aren't you doing anything in this space?

  Gonna be real for a second here.

  1. I love problem solving in that I love solving puzzles -- LeetCode challenges, system design problems, optimizing things where there are clear wrongs and rights. Moral gray areas make my engineering/math-loving brain uncomfortable!

  2. Because I have a high paying job in the tech sector that lets me and my family live comfortably, and so long as I don't read too much news or have to engage with people who sleep on the street, I won't act. Also, all my friends and peers are also upper middle class and give me a nice cushy social bubble that never challenges me or exposes me to the realities of people unlike me.

  3. Moral posturing on HN with armchair solutions is easy -- I love pretending that my rationality gained from years of engineering experience somehow position me to have realistic solutions to things like homelessness/gun violence/housing; so I'll comment here with my solutions, but don't dare expect me to ever put any effort into actualizing my solutions.

  We are mostly OK living in a city with homelessness, drug addicts, obese people, and poor disadvantaged youth because on some level we believe it was by their choice that they are in the position they are in.

• by chipdart on 9/26/24, 4:19 PM

  > These are the hard problems to solve. These are the big problems of our time. If you all love problem solving why aren't you doing anything in this space?

  With the exception of inequality and homelessness, you're not describing "the big problems of our time". You're only describing problems specific to the US, and problems that don't hit other countries as hard because they actually tackle those problems.

• by sim7c00 on 9/26/24, 3:23 PM

  Irenology is something i'd hope more people take a keen interest in. It's a relatively new paradigm in peace studies which reflects exactly what the problem is, and how to build towards solving it.

  I'd recommend anyone working in this space to reflect on the concept of imperfect peace, and stop trying to get to utopian peace. Unlike computers, perfect solutions rarely exist in social sciences. This should not undermine efforts to work towards improvements though.

  There are many ways to 'build peace' and we can all be peacebuilders in our personal lives, to reach a better state for everyone on this planet. You don't need to do any big things. If you do, that's great, but each little step helps.

  Personally, I try to encourage this type of thought in those around me, and make them reflect on their actions and how they work towards more peace, or more violence, so they might adjust their beliefs and actions towards more peace (this is really difficult!). Also, my wife studies peace and works there, so I try to support her in any way I can to help increase her agency in this sphere.

  No one can solve all problems, but everyone together can easily do it. Rather than telling people who are stressed out about these big issues to 'care less' or say 'fuck it' like some books and people recommend, I hope someday everyone cares even a little more, so the ones who do care aren't so burdened and cursed by their caring.

  Peace lives within all of us, and it's time to let it out!

• by sk11001 on 9/26/24, 3:23 PM

  > We have an obesity epidemic and now rather than addressing the root problems that lead to the obesity epidemic we have an expensive highly profitable pharmaceutical solution.

  They work well and have a good safety profile. For many people they are the only thing that works. Seems like a good thing that we have them.

• by JTbane on 9/26/24, 3:50 PM

  There are few thing I can do as an individual to alleviate homelessness- throwing money at the problem won't fix it (see NYC spending $332 per diem). I also don't think there is any technical solution to homelessness, it's a political issue.

  Obesity is largely a lifestyle issue (and GLP-1 drugs are promising in fixing it).

• by gmuslera on 9/26/24, 4:59 PM

  We see a problem, we act. Even if we don't understand properly the problem, our possibility of changing something, or creating/feeding a bigger problem with our actions. Everything that gets enough work and money flowing around it is the kind of part of one of the bigger problem examples, so putting even more money in such machines to "solve" something that is put in front of us may be making everything worse.

  And every problem for which the easiest/more direct course of action is just stopping the flow of money is dismissed or have direct opposition, from commuting to climate change.

  (Re)acting how they want on only the approved directions as soon as you receive the right messages in the way they want is part of the problem.

• by Brajeshwar on 9/26/24, 3:31 PM

  This might be relevant here.

  The Encyclopedia of World Problems and Human Potential http://encyclopedia.uia.org/en

• by t-3 on 9/26/24, 3:57 PM

  Fixing the real problems often isn't a matter of technology or thought. There are many issues in which the majority are overruled by an influential minority, almost always because the larger group lacks the will to effect change, usually because they think that any effort will be wasted. Those don't take problem-solving skills, they requires the charisma, leadership, and political ability to motivate masses of people to cause revolutionary systemic change.

• by the_gastropod on 9/26/24, 3:58 PM

  I think all of these problems can be traced back to, basically, free market capitalism being allowed to run a bit too amok. Capitalism is great. But it needs some safeguards in place, and we've just allowed those safeguards to deteriorate into almost nothingness over the past ~60 years.

  The trouble, now, is that these ideas have enveloped and corrupted virtually everything. The tools we have to address them (government / politics) has also been utterly corrupted by money to the point where we're incapable of holding powerful people to account. A handful of individuals have more money and power than entire government agencies.

  I'm not sure if this is what you were suggesting or not. But if you're suggesting some for-profit startup can address these problems, I think it's a bit naive. Tough to 'disrupt' a system working squarely inside of it, susceptible to the same conflicts-of-interest that produce all the other problems you've outlined.

  We need some significant political reforms so we can start putting safeguards back in place, and we can start holding rich and powerful law breakers to account. Until then, we're in a bit of a pickle.

• by znpy on 9/26/24, 7:39 PM

  I'd love to, and I could. I literally interviewed for a job that would have me helping solve actual problems and advancing science.

  But modern society pays me 3-4x more in a job that has me help you waste your money.

  And I'm not rich enough to give up that money.

• by 1vuio0pswjnm7 on 9/26/24, 4:52 PM

  The "problem solving" has a constraint: it must involve software and (most of the time) the web. That severely limits the choice of problems that can be realistically addressed and potentially solved.

• by disambiguation on 9/26/24, 4:11 PM

  "I need money" is a real problem that needs constant fixing.

• by DataDaemon on 9/26/24, 4:26 PM

  I'm afraid we can't solve problems in poorly managed third countries.

• by vrnvu on 9/26/24, 3:56 PM

  imo: In Europe, almost every significant issue has layers of legislation designed to protect large industries and corporations. These laws often prioritize corporate interests over solving real societal problems. I would argue that more freedom for startups to innovate in spaces like Pharma, Industry, Resource Efficiency, Public services... would benefit society as a whole. However, this requires two key things: 1) substantial investment $$$, and 2) navigating through the mentioned layers of bureaucracy and "protective" (protecting who) laws.

  For me, again my opinion, It’s been really frustrating trying to find investment for some MVPs, only to have ideas shut down by these barriers.

• by frotty on 9/26/24, 4:06 PM

  I would assert that it's fairly well established that all of those problems are modified (if not entirely solved) by changing resource allocation, and those with more resources modify the systems more, to their liking.

  Asking "problem solvers" (effectively a non-category since every living human solves a variety of scale and scope of problems) why they're not "solving the big or 'real' problems" is disingenuous: there are a variety of reasons why. greed, selfishness, etc. are easy to point out as the evil motivators but quality of information, access, and ability to allocate impactful resources are also in play.

• by puppycodes on 9/26/24, 9:23 PM

  Who says "we" aren't?

• by urmish on 9/26/24, 3:53 PM

  real problems require people to change habits and thinking. Neither of these are tech solvable.

• by evantbyrne on 9/26/24, 4:00 PM

  People do work on hard problems.

• by NDizzle on 9/26/24, 3:52 PM

  Because our government has been captured in a way, for our entire lives, that actively disallows it.

• by jacobmarble on 9/26/24, 4:00 PM

  One way to frame the capitalist framework: The "private sector" seeks profit and the "public sector" seeks social stability.

  I agree that the problems you describe are important. Most of them fall in the scope of "public sector" problems. I'm not working on those because I've chosen to work in the "private sector".

• by WithinReason on 9/26/24, 4:11 PM

  The obesity epidemic is a societal problem. If you ask engineers (like the ones on HN) to solve it they come up with an engineering solution, which is a pill. Engineers can't solve a social problem.

• by hindsightbias on 9/26/24, 3:49 PM

  How do you intend to force economic equality? And make no doubts, it would involve force. Who are you willing to imprison? The rich or the poor?

  This is a libertarian leaning forum. What you see in the streets may make you uncomfortable, but letting people sleep in the streets and do drugs is a maximized result of that kind of ideology.

• by elmerfud on 9/26/24, 3:57 PM

  I came to look at what you define as a "real problem". The problem is you're describing are no more real than any other problem people have in front of them. Actually the problems you're describing are problems that have existed since the beginning of time and no one through all of history has come up with a broad wide scale solution to that problem because everyone, including you, are simply looking at symptoms and thinking symptoms need to be fixed.

  While there is inequality between lifestyles people have, I dispute the core idea that we are living in an age of mass inequality that is greater or meaningfully different than the equality that's existed throughout all of history. If you take just a cursory glance throughout history with an honest eye you will see the inequality that existed even 100 years ago was so much massively greater than what we have today. The opportunities for people to move between social classes was nearly insurmountable 200 years ago, and even today in some countries it is an insurmountable obstacle for them to do it within their own country.

  If you're living in any first world country the inequality that you're experiencing or you're viewing other people having is so much smaller than what it's been throughout all of history for all of time. So many barriers have been removed and so many opportunities exist that just weren't there before. For over 50 years in the United States and other countries people have attempted to level that inequality and it has utterly failed because it's simply looking at symptoms and addressing them. In fact it seems to have encouraged people to remain complacent and in their place rather than having the opposite effect of motivating them to find and take advantage of opportunities.

  So it becomes incredibly difficult to solve this "real problem" because how do you change people's nature? Why is it that some people who come from the same backgrounds and in the same circumstances can rise out of it and others cannot? Why is it that some people no matter what kind of help and assistance you give them will always need more and never enter a self-sustaining mode? How do you change the nature of people to be something different than what they are or what they want to be? No one's figured out a way in 10,000 years of recorded history. Yet questions like this make it seem like it's a new problem when it's the same problem but that gap is much narrower and there are so many more opportunities to close that gap.

  Nearly every solution that gets posed to this seems to be a wealth transfer from the rich to the poor. There is never been a wide scale instance where this has worked. It works sometimes in very limited scenarios but broadly speaking that solution fails because it doesn't address the core problem of changing the person's nature.

  The one thing that no one really talks about is the massive and voluntary wealth transfer from the poor to the rich. The incessant need for idiotic things from the poorest people who are least able to afford them. This is something that has exploded in recent years with the visual stimulation we get into other people's lives. It used to be there was a phrase keeping up with the Joneses, which meant you see your neighbor get a new car all of a sudden you want a new car too. That was your scope you see your local area and you want to be on par with them. Now that scope is worldwide and I see desperately poor people spending money on the most foolish things because of this consumerism greed that we apparently can't tell them not to be that way. We can't tell them don't just blindly consume things for the sake of consumption because it's considered poor shaming and they should be able to have nice things too. That is the root problem you can have nice things when you put in the effort to get those nice things and once you understand that discipline of denying yourself nice things when you're not ready for them you will have the foundation to close that inequality.

  Just a couple of examples of this in my own personal life a girl who was desperately poor but made enough money to live and potentially get ahead but she was young and poor she wanted a stuffed animal because it was cute and it was viral on tiktok or some other nonsense like that. The cost of this thing was equivalent to two weeks of food for her. She bought it and then complained how poor her life was and how she didn't have enough money for food or to save anything or get ahead. Another example so I had a friend of many years they were very poor as well working day today and always would talk about wanting to go to get some education at some trade classes so they could improve their job skills and get a better job and make more money. They were literally stuck in a rut where they were working everyday and had no time to get a better education to get a better job so they could break that cycle and start getting ahead. So I gave them enough money to live for 6 months and pay for their education so they could break this cycle and get ahead. What they did with my gift was go buy an iPhone 15. They asked me if I was upset that they bought this phone I told him no it's your money to do with what you want but this is the reason you're poor you have the opportunity to break the cycle and get ahead but you purchase some idiotic trinket that you don't need.

  So I can't solve this problem and you can't solve this problem only the people who are in the situation can solve this problem it's an individual thing. The help is there but if you're not using the help correctly you'll be stuck in the same situation.

• by jarule on 9/26/24, 3:45 PM

  You worry about your own problems, and they'll worry about theirs.