[humanrebar]

Counterargument by Jerry Seinfeld about thirty years ago:

""" We never should have landed a man on the moon. It's a mistake. Now everything is compared to that one accomplishment. Now we go, "I can't believe they can land a man on the moon, and taste my coffee!" I think we all would've been a lot happier if we hadn't landed a man on the moon. We'd go: "They can't make a prescription bottle top open easily? I'm not surprised they couldn't land man on the moon. Things make perfect sense to me now." Neil Armstrong should've said, "That's one small step for man, one giant leap for every whining, complaining S.O.B. on the face of the Earth." """

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0697684/characters/nm0000632

[dehrmann]

If we can land a man on the moon but can't do X, maybe X is the harder problem.

[colechristensen]

The thing is landing a man on the moon took dedicating a few percent GDP of the most advanced nation in the world for a decade and scientists poached from the next n countries after the war: perhaps your X isn’t actually the harder problem.

[matheusmoreira]

Perhaps X just doesn't have enough geopolitical relevance to fund it with ridiculous amounts of taxpayer money.

If a problem that ought to be simple is actually hard, it's very likely that it's because whoever's making decisions doesn't want to pay for it.

Simple example: queues. It's a mathematically solvable problem but someone somewhere will think that hiring enough people to provide perfect service is too expensive and they're better off making people wait in line instead.

[babyshake]

On the other hand, we refer to really difficult problems requiring widespread coordination as being "moonshots".

[WalterBright]

That's true. Many problems seem simple, but are fundamentally insoluble. For example, crime rates will never be zero.

[shepherdjerred]

You're not being creative enough. Crime rate on the moon is currently 0%.

[formerkrogemp]

I think you'll find that's not true either. If you accept littering as a crime, multiple items have been left on the moon.

[rzzzt]

Sounds like an X-Y problem to me.