[cbanek]

This may be a silly question, but why do we think that SV startup mentality must solve every problem?

Like the article states, there are lots of "big" problems, like homelessness, healthcare, and inequality. These are usually the realms of government and non-profits. While some of these are startups or institutions with novel ideas / methods, I'm not sure that entrepreneurship solves everything.

I'm just not sure you can make a working business out of any problem. But I may just be a quitter.

[M_Grey]

There are plenty of people who think that governments need to be smaller, often for ideological reasons. Those people won't or can't accept the scale of problems which require those governments, and are too involved in their own mythology of "bootstraps" and the like to see beyond that. This is often also the reason why people who in no way stand to benefit from the status quo, deny AGW; the solution is ideologically repugnant to them.

Bottom line: people believe what they want to believe, most of the time.

[candiodari]

The economic counterargument would be that any solution to a problem that is not a Nash-equilibrium cannot be implemented. Pretending otherwise is popular, expensive, painful, and doomed to failure as consuming all economic resources on the planet (or any finite amount) cannot fix the underlying problem.

But a government can grow, grow, grow while pretending to solve the problem, failing, and "correcting" for the problem that caused them to fail.

The moral counterargument is that people should be allowed to decide for themselves and for their own government what is and is not a problem. If, under those basic conditions, no policy can work, then those policies are still immoral.

And the moral hazard counterargument is that "qui bono" often fits both sides. In this problem, there is certainly merit to the argument that the IPCC, politicians and scientists involved, the governments, and ... stand to benefit as well. Increased budgets, more people, bigger organisations, more experiments, more things to manage, more power to tell others what to do. Worse, this money and power will come at the expense of the "bootstraps" folk.

Bottom line: usually people on both sides of an argument believe what they want to believe. Exceptions exist, but not nearly as much as I thought when I was 16 years old.

This is why science should work in the hard, provable only, way. That any result can be duplicated by anyone who wants to do so, and anyone should be given the tools to convince themselves any given theory works. Climate science is a bit lacking on this front, to put it mildly.

[Retric]

Depends on what problem your solving. If you want the oldest 10% of the population not to die in poverty that's actually fairly easy to solve. In you want ~0.00% deaths from starvation that's also easy to solve. However it's cheaper to provide basic heathcare to everyone than it is to provide top quality heathcare to the elderly.

Reducing drug use to some significantly lower level is very possible, ending it is not. Going to Mars is easy, colonizing Mars is a pipe dream. Governments can solve a wide range of problems reasonably efficiently, but open ended goals without a clear stopping point become unbound problems.

[M_Grey]

>Going to Mars is easy, colonizing Mars is a pipe dream.

I can't tell you how much I appreciate hearing this position from someone on this site. I've tried to make that argument here and elsewhere, and it's met with an almost religious fury. I really appreciate that I'm not alone in my intense skepticism of this "colonies on Mars: coming soon!" nonsense. I'll believe it when we've solved, or at least even begun to address the big problems involved.

[wtbob]

The oceans are orders of magnitude more hospitable to mankind & human life than is Mars, and yet we have, to my knowledge, absolutely no undersea colonies. The idea that we'll colonise Mars before we colonise the oceans (a full three-quarters of the globe) is, simply, insane.

[Axsuul]

Supply & demand. There's just more people who want to colonize mars. if you're going to make the argument of living underwater, then you might as well live in the desert where it's probably even easier. Just because something is easier doesn't mean you should do it.

[drakonandor]

Perhaps the attitude of "Let's do it!" is exactly what's needed for the first step of solving big, difficult problems?

[M_Grey]

Resources and talent get things done, attitudes do not.

[dash2]

" any solution to a problem that is not a Nash-equilibrium cannot be implemented."

This is empirically false. For example, voluntary contributions to a public good are not a Nash equilibrium, but we observe substantial contributions in experiments with real humans.

It's also weird to argue this and then argue against govt intervention. If you don't think non-Nash solutions to public goods problems such as global warming work, then what alternative is there but government intervention?

[candiodari]

Just because people try, on occasion, to fight a Nash equilibrium does not mean they can win. Hell, I bet people do that by mistake. Often even.

Only if they win would it actually mean something. Call me when donations (or government policy) end poverty, for instance.

[eli_gottlieb]

Social Security basically ended extreme "living on cat-food" poverty among the elderly.

[someguydave]

At the cost of being too expensive to sustain.

[M_Grey]

When I said "people believe what they want to believe" that applied to all people. It is a universal condition.

[macspoofing]

Some of that is the rethoric of startups, which usually inflates the importance of their product. Some people believe it and believe SV can solve anything.

[jxramos]

Exactly, the same rhetoric follows university programs I came to find out too. A little shocking to discover the reality of all this hyperbolic language one can run into in marketing material. But in the end it's all perfectly well explainable, they're creating the public appearance they want to craft and present to the outside world. Can't blame them for stretching stuff.