[bena]

It's quite possible these people charging into these wicked problems don't understand they are charging into a wicked problem.

Nearly every problem involving people or the environment is going to become a wicked problem. The problem space is just so big and you can't really test at the scale you'll have to implement on.

And it's hard to know what works and what doesn't. Because sometimes things can get better due to something else and your solution just happened to be implemented while that was happening. And it's not like you can isolate either.

Essentially, you're always testing in production.

[marcosdumay]

> Nearly every problem involving people or the environment is going to become a wicked problem.

Plenty of problems are well-defined. Even the ones involving people.

Just because people create situations that are wicked at the macro level, it doesn't mean that most problems reside there. If most problems were wicked, society would never evolve.

[bena]

Just because a problem is wicked, it doesn't mean it can't be overcome. It's not all or nothing.

Also, just because a problem isn't completely solved, it doesn't mean progress isn't useful.

But figure that we don't have definitive ways to effectively teach people. We have ways that work somewhat for some people, but disseminating knowledge in ways people can understand is a wicked problem. Anything you can think of, we have probably tried. And there is still some segment of the population that it does not work on. And those methods will work on those people in other cases. But not the ones those methods worked on in the first place. So obviously the method is not general, it works in some cases.

People make problems wicked. Because every problem becomes incredibly multi-faceted as you are dealing with so many different fields at once.

And it is the navigation of these wicked problems that is responsible in part for evolving us. A lot of societal progress is the result of attempts to solve wicked problems.

[carapace]

I think you have inverted the logic: humans evolve because most of our problems are wicked. If our niche were simple we would not devote so many calories to our brains. (Something like 20% of the oxygen you breath is used in the brain alone!)