solutions are way harder than problems
- status: draft
- type: tweetstorm
- date: 2020-03-07
- Have held off on tweeting this for now since it gets into sensitive stuff.
- just because someone can blow your mind with their diagnosis of your problem, doesn't mean the solution they offer:
- will be viable at all
- will actually solve the problem if implemented
- will not produce worse problems if implemented - this applies to
- apps
- politics
- global policy
...everything? - Re: apps. Slack said "email is broken." They were right.
Now *many* apps are pitching you "slack is broken." They're also right.
But their solutions are still in the same paradigm fundamentally, and fall into similar attractor basins.
twitter.com/littleidea/status/728103353582903296 - Re: politics. This one is fun, actually!
Take a party or movement you disagree with (for me this is almost all of them) and then consider that they somehow managed to successfully diagnose a problem for many people in a way that resonated for those people. - Consider that the following perspectives have each indeed identified things that are broken in the world.
Consider that none of their solutions are adequate.
- hippies
- Jordan Peterson
- feminism (each wave)
- trad-conservative
- SJW
- NRX
- libertarian
- postmodern - other related threads to pull in here
- both/and & either/or...
- "you're either with us or against us"
- variant: "you're either for our solution or you don't care about our problem" - this is very very common and is the main reason why JP and SJWs are fighting
- the definition of "evil" in Finite & Infinite Games by James Carse: ~"(almost) all evil occurs through the desire to eliminate evil" >
- Or there's lots of historical political examples:
- Marx's theories rallied a revolution that didn't really help the proletariat
- Hitler *got elected* based on giving a voice to enough German people
- ...&++
It's easy to be naively inspired if you're desperate for any solution. - Re global policy... externalities are a major factor here. Also just not understanding how complex systems work in the first place.
twitter.com/Malcolm_Ocean/status/1201411445751197697 - stuff to incorporate
- scratchpad
- A memory of convo from Sept 2018 with a friend, who said that he found Mencius Moldbug's writing kind of compelling, but also disturbing.
- > When someone tells you that the actions you are taking are causing them pain, believe them.
> When someone tells you what you should do instead, take *that* as a *hypothesis.*
> People are very very good at identifying problems, and generally not nearly as good at knowing how best to solve them. This is a really strong prior.
> h/t Ethan, who had a post which prompted me to think about this distinction.
- also related: Venkatesh Rao thread on grifts
- > even if we all agree that something is a problem, we may not agree on how to actually go solve it source
8 linked references
Podcast summaries
- Conversation As Medium solutions are way harder than problems the importance of being able to say that you don't yet know how to solve a problem what does it mean to understand each other compromise is not what everyone wants Everyone is basically living in a dream mashup of their current external situation & old emotional meanings Dialectic Higher Dimensional Thinking, the End of Paradox, and a More Adequate Understanding of Realitywith any misunderstanding, it's possible (& usually worthwhile) to come to a place of profoundly mutually satisfying shared understanding just because someone has an articulation of a problem, doesn't mean their proposed solution is any good solutions are way harder than problems SimPol John Bunzl omniwin perspective-taking Coherence Therapy Questions Are Not Just For Asking the point of friendliness is not to avoid conflict, but to actually create contexts that allow for deeper, more intense, prolonged conflict over the long term the importance of being able to say that you don't yet know how to solve a problem double bind contradiction there's no way to communicate correctly or incorrectly - there's just what works in context and what doesn't work meaning John Vervaeke
- 10:48 - 46:10 - How to approach volatile/heated discussions? Higher Dimensional Thinking, the End of Paradox, and a More Adequate Understanding of Reality just because someone has an articulation of a problem, doesn't mean their proposed solution is any good solutions are way harder than problems compromise is not what everyone wants SimPol John Bunzl omniwin perspective-taking with any misunderstanding, it's possible (& usually worthwhile) to come to a place of profoundly mutually satisfying shared understanding Coherence Therapy Questions Are Not Just For Asking the point of friendliness is not to avoid conflict, but to actually create contexts that allow for deeper, more intense, prolonged conflict over the long term the importance of being able to say that you don't yet know how to solve a problem double bind
metaphor
- People resonate with the staleness metaphor a lot, and even though solutions are way harder than problems, my ability to point at the problem in a new way gives people some hope I might have a solution for them
- > I was actually about to delete this onboarding email after a quick scan when the boldfaced "they go stale" caught my attention.
May 30th, 2021
sense of psy-op around better not to start; if you start … › "if you start better to finish" = but we can help
October 14th, 2020
- thread:
September 19th, 2020
- re solutions are way harder than problems, I started drafting a tweet but it got long & complex:
- I regularly remind myself that when people or ideologies say "this is messed up":
- they're almost always right that *something* is borked
- they usually have at least a little insight into what
- no matter how clarifying or mindblowing their description of the problem, 99%+ of proposed solutions are complete nonstarters - Maybe another, even shorter way to put this is "Not liking someone's solution doesn't mean that there isn't a problem. Most solutions are junk."
- Although how I *actually* want to frame it is "just because someone can convince you there's a problem, doesn't mean you have to accept their solution"
- Here we go:
- Accepting that something is a problem does not require accepting any proposed solutions.
99% of described problems are real and important, at least in some sense. 99% of proposed solutions are at best irrelevant and at worst actively would exacerbate things. - (tweeted this)