# Problems are easy; solutions are hard. **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [May 9, 2011, 9:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/problems-are-easy-solutions-are-hard/581328 "2011-05-09T21:22:05Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 14\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![DataPacRat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/46a35a/32.png) [@DataPacRat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DataPacRat)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2011, 8:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/problems-are-easy-solutions-are-hard/581328/21 "2011-05-11T20:28:51Z")
> [@Lemur866](#): > > The reason people don’t, in real life, assign an infinite value to their own life is that every individual human life must end sooner or later, no matter what steps you take to preserve it. Assuming our technology remains close to its current level, yes. However, there is a non-zero, perhaps even very high, chance that technology will continue increasing, to the point where average expected lifespan increases by about a year per year… and there is a non-zero chance that technology will advance that far by 2050, depending on what assumptions are made about recursive intelligence-increasing technology. > [@](#): > > So you can lock yourself in a vault but eventually you’ll die anyway. Well, if you just lock yourself in a vault, then /yeah/, it’s pretty likely you’ll end up dying sooner or later. 🙂 > [@](#): > > So people make decisions that shorten their lives or carry a risk of death, all day every day. I’ve even made this decision for my precious children, like driven them in my car when their car seats were in my wife’s car. The odds that day would be the day I’d get in wreck and they’d be killed because they were just wearing seat belts and not in a car seat are pretty small, but the risk was present. (See my previous post on ‘micromorts’. 🙂 ) > [@](#): > > Anyway, if you assign a large value to future space habitats, it’s a mistake to focus on our current space program. Focus on basic science and economic development instead. You’d be better off helping little girls in Nigeria learn to read than working on a manned mission to Mars. > > Because at our current economic and techological level a mission to Mars would be a one-off stunt that couldn’t be repeated for decades, just like the Moon landings of the 70s. If we wanted to go back to the Moon we’d be starting over from scratch. QFT. This is, in fact, much the point I was /trying/ to make in my initial post, though I seem to have done so rather poorly. Increasing science, by increasing the prerequisites for it, such as getting governments to respect rights and encouraging economic development. What I’m trying to figure out, at present, are what actions will, in fact, have the greatest effect in this area. ---
**Author:** ![Evil\_Captor](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/f17d59/32.png) [@Evil\_Captor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Evil_Captor)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2011, 8:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/problems-are-easy-solutions-are-hard/581328/22 "2011-05-11T20:41:30Z")
Actually, I don’t see an ELE as that distant. The supervolcano under Yosemite is past due for a blow, and if it matches past events, an ELE or something close to it is very likely. We may have one year. We may have 1000 years. But it’s gonna happen, and if we don’t figure out a way to stop it or survive it, most or all of us are going bye-bye. ---
**Author:** ![Lemur866](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lemur866/32/434_2.png) [@Lemur866](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lemur866)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2011, 9:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/problems-are-easy-solutions-are-hard/581328/23 "2011-05-11T21:26:41Z")
> [@Evil\_Captor](#): > > Actually, I don’t see an ELE as that distant. The supervolcano under Yosemite is past due for a blow, and if it matches past events, an ELE or something close to it is very likely. We may have one year. We may have 1000 years. But it’s gonna happen, and if we don’t figure out a way to stop it or survive it, most or all of us are going bye-bye. Yellowstone isn’t “overdue”. The last supervolcanic eruption there was over half a million years ago. That eruption isn’t associated with a mass extinction. North America would be hit pretty hard, but human extinction would be pretty much impossible. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Hamster\_King](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/8edcca/32.png) [@The\_Hamster\_King](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Hamster_King)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2011, 9:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/problems-are-easy-solutions-are-hard/581328/24 "2011-05-11T21:26:44Z")
> [@DataPacRat](#): > > The Soviet Union was, simplisticly, outspent by the US, and ended up being unable to keep up with the expenditures necessary to keep parity as a superpower; once the US no longer had a competitor, it basically stopped throwing money at new space status-symbols, leaving itself stuck with the mal-specced space transport system for thirtyish years, until China started achieving its own competing status-symbol of a manned space program. You’re conveniently overlooking the longevity and durability of Soviet space technology. After the final shuttle mission this year, it will be Soyuz capsules that sustain our human presence in space. Considering that technology was the product of one of those pesky “totalitarian regimes which do not respect rights and attempt centralized economic control”, I think there might be a flaw in your chain of logic. ---
**Author:** ![nachtmusick](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ac91a4/32.png) [@nachtmusick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nachtmusick)\ **Post date:** [May 14, 2011, 11:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/problems-are-easy-solutions-are-hard/581328/25 "2011-05-14T11:14:26Z")
> [@Lemur866](#): > > Yellowstone isn’t “overdue”. The last supervolcanic eruption there was over half a million years ago. That eruption isn’t associated with a mass extinction. North America would be hit pretty hard, but human extinction would be pretty much impossible. Yeah, that one isn’t going to pop any time soon. Since it only blows every geologic era or so, I think we can assume that we would detect the rumbling and tumbling long before it blows up. There would probably be hundreds of years of “burps” before the ultimate vomit. ---
**Author:** ![Boyo\_Jim](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/87869e/32.png) [@Boyo\_Jim](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Boyo_Jim)\ **Post date:** [May 19, 2011, 8:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/problems-are-easy-solutions-are-hard/581328/26 "2011-05-19T08:32:24Z")
> [@DataPacRat](#): > > … > > Basic ethical standard: A universe in which sapience exists is qualitatively and quantitatively better than a universe without. > > Assumption for this analysis: As best we can test, there’s no supernatural or alternate dimensions, no afterlife, and no life off Earth, let alone intelligence. This planet, and the people on it, are /IT/. > … I question most of what you say right off the bat. Define “better”. Sapient life is “better” for the sapients, probably, but not necessarily for other life or for the ecosystems which sustain all life. It’s conceivable that sapience can lead to actions which may cause mass extinctions, including sapient life in particular, Is you goal actually to protect sapient life? It’s very likely there IS intelligence elsewhere in the universe. Would you heave a sigh of relief if we found incontrovertible evidence of this? What if we came into conflict with some alien race? Is your goal to protect the human race in particular? Is your goal to protect your descendents? Is your goal to protect yourself? What time span concerns you? Ultimately the suns will burn out, entropy will take its toll, etc. I suppose what I’m getting at here is that you are pretending that this exercise is based entirely on a ridiculously altruistic (one might even suggest god-like) motive of preserving intelligence. In the whole fucking UNIVERSE! Possibly for eternity. You need to take it down a few notches, like to, “I want **us** to live! It would be embarrassing for the entire species to be wiped out by one lousy rock falling out of the sky.” ---
**Author:** ![Mijin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mijin/32/9369_2.png) [@Mijin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mijin)\ **Post date:** [May 19, 2011, 10:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/problems-are-easy-solutions-are-hard/581328/27 "2011-05-19T10:00:50Z")
The thing is, even if you agree with all the premises, the actions don’t follow. Doing what we can to improve our chance of survival as a species is very important of course. It doesn’t follow that nothing else we can do has value. I mean, _why_ is it so great to have sapient life in the universe, if long-term survival is our only ambition or activity? ---
**Author:** ![DataPacRat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/46a35a/32.png) [@DataPacRat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DataPacRat)\ **Post date:** [May 19, 2011, 8:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/problems-are-easy-solutions-are-hard/581328/28 "2011-05-19T20:36:23Z")
> [@Boyo\_Jim](#): > > I question most of what you say right off the bat. Which you are, of course, free to do. > [@](#): > > Define “better”. Sapient life is “better” for the sapients, probably, but not necessarily for other life or for the ecosystems which sustain all life. It’s conceivable that sapience can lead to actions which may cause mass extinctions, including sapient life in particular, There is no such thing as an objective standard of value, any more than there is one for beauty. However, the vast majority of people have desires which can be fulfilled without impinging upon other peoples’ desires, eg having the freedom to explore the world around them without getting stabbed, and so there is a general consensus that it’s worth protecting these desires from those few people whose desires can only be fulfilled by blocking others’ desires, ie from stabbing people at random. > [@](#): > > Is you goal actually to protect sapient life? At the moment, yes. > [@](#): > > It’s very likely there IS intelligence elsewhere in the universe. Debatable - especially if we limit ‘universe’ to ‘our past light-cone, plus maybe a few thousand years/light-years’. Ever hear of the Fermi Paradox? > [@](#): > > Would you heave a sigh of relief if we found incontrovertible evidence of this? I would be over/joyed/. > [@](#): > > What if we came into conflict with some alien race? See my second paragraph, above. > [@](#): > > Is your goal to protect the human race in particular? If humans were to create a species of sentient anthropomorphic rodents, ala [http://www.datapacrat.com/Rat%20Lass.gif](http://www.datapacrat.com/Rat%20Lass.gif) , and humanity died out but the rodents continued living, then my goal would still be fulfilled. > [@](#): > > Is your goal to protect your descendents? I don’t expect to have any. > [@](#): > > Is your goal to protect yourself? “I’m going to live forever or die trying.” 🙂 > [@](#): > > What time span concerns you? Ultimately the suns will burn out, entropy will take its toll, etc. I figure to take it in stages - after all, we’ve only known about relativity for a scant century, and it’s possible there’s all sorts of weird and wacky physics remaining to be discovered. I figure I’m not going to worry about how the universe will be a billion years from now until our understanding of physics has stabilized for, oh, at least a thousand years or so. > [@](#): > > I suppose what I’m getting at here is that you are pretending that this exercise is based entirely on a ridiculously altruistic (one might even suggest god-like) motive of preserving intelligence. In the whole fucking UNIVERSE! Possibly for eternity. You say that like it’s a bad thing. > [@](#): > > You need to take it down a few notches, like to, “I want **us** to live! It would be embarrassing for the entire species to be wiped out by one lousy rock falling out of the sky.” So let’s start with that. What do you think an individual can actually /do/ to help reduce the risk of humanity’s extinction from that sort of event? > [@Mijin](#): > > The thing is, even if you agree with all the premises, the actions don’t follow. > Doing what we can to improve our chance of survival as a species is very important of course. It doesn’t follow that nothing else we can do has value. > > I mean, _why_ is it so great to have sapient life in the universe, if long-term survival is our only ambition or activity? I would argue that that ‘if’ is contrafactual. Survival /isn’t/ our only ambition or activity - it’s simply a necessary /prerequisite/ for whatever /else/ it is we want to do. ---
**Author:** ![Ravenman](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ravenman/32/2929_2.png) [@Ravenman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ravenman)\ **Post date:** [May 19, 2011, 9:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/problems-are-easy-solutions-are-hard/581328/29 "2011-05-19T21:30:02Z")
> [@DataPacRat](#): > > If humans were to create a species of sentient anthropomorphic rodents, ala [http://www.datapacrat.com/Rat%20Lass.gif](http://www.datapacrat.com/Rat%20Lass.gif) , and humanity died out but the rodents continued living, then my goal would still be fulfilled. Let me be the first to say: Whoa. ETA: And by that I do not mean “hubba-hubba.” Just, whoa. ---
**Author:** ![DataPacRat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/46a35a/32.png) [@DataPacRat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DataPacRat)\ **Post date:** [May 19, 2011, 9:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/problems-are-easy-solutions-are-hard/581328/30 "2011-05-19T21:56:07Z")
> [@Ravenman](#): > > Let me be the first to say: Whoa. > > ETA: And by that I do not mean “hubba-hubba.” Just, whoa. A fellow named William Fortier drew it in 1992 - the original image-file is at [http://www.datapacrat.com/Furry/CD%20-%20Fur/W%20FORTIER/RATLASS.PNG](http://www.datapacrat.com/Furry/CD%20-%20Fur/W%20FORTIER/RATLASS.PNG) . I’m a data pack-rat, so when I re-noticed that image a few years ago, I un-dithered the colours and ran it through a vectorizer, so it would look a lot less pixellated. I probably set the background too dark, but other than that, I think it turned out reasonably improved, no? ---
**Author:** ![Yllaria](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/yllaria/32/3452_2.png) [@Yllaria](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Yllaria)\ **Post date:** [May 19, 2011, 11:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/problems-are-easy-solutions-are-hard/581328/31 "2011-05-19T23:18:22Z")
> [@DataPacRat](#): > > . . . Possibly we have. In which case, wouldn’t it be a nifty thing to do to encourage as much scientific research as possible in as many fields as possible, in order to try to learn currently unknown ways to solve those problems; and to encourage expansion of the economy, so that we have even /more/ resources to try to solve those problems with? . . . Sounds to me like the best way to do that is to establish a kind of grad/postgrad student welfare system. And/or make receiving any kind of government aid contingent on contributing to some research program, if only as a janitor or experimental subject. You’ll get a lot of crap, padded science, of course. But then any system that has just More Science as its goal will do that. (And people will complain about human rights. Piffle.) > [@DataPacRat](#): > > . . . If humans were to create a species of sentient anthropomorphic rodents, ala [http://www.datapacrat.com/Rat%20Lass.gif](http://www.datapacrat.com/Rat%20Lass.gif) , and humanity died out but the rodents continued living, then my goal would still be fulfilled. . . This has promise, if they’re rat-sized. They’d be cheaper per sentient to send. Now you’ve got me thinking about the feasibility of sending out auto-creches, with stores of frozen embryos. And I don’t have time to flesh that solution out, but it’s given me an idea. Maybe the best way to encourage ELE problem-solving is to fund the publication of science fiction. Either encourage the government or businesses to sponsor contests for SF stories with ELE survival themes or just buy those sorts of books, magazines, and movies ourselves. The writing will reach budding scientists at an impressionable age and possibly steer their field of interest toward something that may save us all. The stories will not be constrained by the current level of technology and may point the way for needed innovations. And it’s relatively cheap. There are thousands of writers and wannabes who would jump all over that. Just have honorable mention prizes for stories with crap plots and characters that have a new wrinkle on survival tech that might be useful. Someone will have to sift through a lot of bad writing, but sacrifices must be made. If you start a non-profit to fund the contest, I’ll kick in twenty bucks. You can do this. ---
**Author:** ![Mijin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mijin/32/9369_2.png) [@Mijin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mijin)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2011, 9:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/problems-are-easy-solutions-are-hard/581328/32 "2011-05-20T09:58:25Z")
> [@DataPacRat](#): > > Survival /isn’t/ our only ambition or activity - it’s simply a necessary /prerequisite/ for whatever /else/ it is we want to do. The fact that survival is not our only ambition or activity is the status quo. You seem to be suggesting something else however: a situation where everything we do is geared, directly or indirectly, to perpetuating our species. I think this is wrong. What are we perpetuating ourselves _for_? As for it being a prerequisite, obviously being alive is a prerequisite for doing things. But the human race preparing itself for an ELE is not a prerequisite for anything, as for almost all of human history we have been ignorant of global threats. Yet we’ve obviously achieved a great deal in that time. ---
**Author:** ![DataPacRat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/46a35a/32.png) [@DataPacRat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DataPacRat)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2011, 7:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/problems-are-easy-solutions-are-hard/581328/33 "2011-05-20T19:26:59Z")
> [@Mijin](#): > > The fact that survival is not our only ambition or activity is the status quo. > > You seem to be suggesting something else however: a situation where everything we do is geared, directly or indirectly, to perpetuating our species. I think this is wrong. What are we perpetuating ourselves _for_? > > As for it being a prerequisite, obviously being alive is a prerequisite for doing things. But the human race preparing itself for an ELE is not a prerequisite for anything, as for almost all of human history we have been ignorant of global threats. Yet we’ve obviously achieved a great deal in that time. True - but I’d suggest you try a couple of mental exercises. An average person has about a 33/1,000,000 probability of dying on any given day. There are certain behaviours that increase those chances, like standing on a hill in a thunderstorm, and certain behaviours that decrease them, like always being sure to wear a seatbelt. What would you estimate is the probability of humanity experiencing an ELE on any given day? Let’s say that an ELE will arrive on Dec 23, 2048 AD. How much money would it be worth spending to prevent that event? That is, if spending X dollars would allow humanity to survive, and spending X-1 dollars would lead to humanity dying off, then how high could X be and still be worth paying? ---
**Author:** ![Mijin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mijin/32/9369_2.png) [@Mijin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mijin)\ **Post date:** [May 21, 2011, 9:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/problems-are-easy-solutions-are-hard/581328/34 "2011-05-21T09:36:16Z")
> [@DataPacRat](#): > > An average person has about a 33/1,000,000 probability of dying on any given day. There are certain behaviours that increase those chances, like standing on a hill in a thunderstorm, and certain behaviours that decrease them, like always being sure to wear a seatbelt. Absolutely. And for very unlikely events which could kill me, I take no precautions. For instance, I could wear a hard hat in case a meteorite were to hit me. However I consider the risk to be so low as to not be worth disrupting the rest of my life so much. > [@](#): > > What would you estimate is the probability of humanity experiencing an ELE on any given day? I think “sometime in the next million years” is a phrase I hear a lot. So something like 1 / 365,000,000? > [@](#): > > Let’s say that an ELE will arrive on Dec 23, 2048 AD. How much money would it be worth spending to prevent that event? Obviously in such a scenario we should spend _all_ of our money. But in reality, we don’t know if such a scenario is approaching, and the probability is very low. I actually believe that we _should_ be spending more on things like monitoring near earth objects, but nothing like what you’re proposing. As others have pointed out, our ability to defend ourselves against such threats is probably going to grow rapidly in the next few centuries in any case, without having to focus our whole society on this one event. I should also point out that this thread has mentioned extinction a lot but the kind of event which wiped out the dinosaurs won’t make us extinct. There are approximately 7 billion of us, and we’re the most adaptable species the planet has ever seen. I’m not saying that we shouldn’t care about such a horrific and devestating event happening, merely that it sits on the same spectrum as other natural disasters. It’s much more devastating but also much more rare. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/problems-are-easy-solutions-are-hard/581328.md?page=1)