[ExI] What are among the world's most important problems to solve, why?

[William Flynn Wallace]

No, I am arguing that important problems may still be deferred to later.
Fixing the sun's expansion into a red giant is important, but it would be
stupid to reallocate resources used for pandemic readiness today into
solving it.   anders

Ok, so Nick is rating as important problems that will likely occur in about
4 billion years.  That's some planning ahead, I'd say.

Another time, same driver, again too much beer for me, I happened to wake
up and see a restaurant passing by that we'd passed twice before - about 3
a.m.

Oh yes, if probability means anything at all, I should have died in a car
wreck numerous times, with that guy or myself driving.  Solution:  got
caught for driving under influence, spent the night on the jail floor, and
quit drinking and driving.  In fact, I quit drinking at all - decades after
I should have.  For me it was a positive feedback loop: each drink dulls
the inhibition so that another drink seems a good idea - like priming the
pump and disabling the shutoff valve.

As far as dodging death, I am an outlier, even if you *don't* count two
cancers!  "Oh what a lucky man he was."  Elton John

bill w

On Sat, Jul 9, 2016 at 3:02 PM, Anders <anders at aleph.se> wrote:

> On 2016-07-09 17:25, William Flynn Wallace wrote:
>
>
> A good article.  However, it does not explain the apparent paradox of
> labeling a problem 'important' and then saying it does not deserve to be
> solved.
>
>
> No, I am arguing that important problems may still be deferred to later.
> Fixing the sun's expansion into a red giant is important, but it would be
> stupid to reallocate resources used for pandemic readiness today into
> solving it.
>
> Once I woke up in a car, after overindulging in beer, and found that we
> were going very fast down a lonely road.  So I asked and he said that he
> was lost, and that his theory was to go as fast as he can so that he will
> find out sooner if he is going the wrong way.  Fits right in to your
> article.  I did solve the problem by looking out the windows, seeing the
> Big Dipper in the back window, and telling the driver that we were going
> South - which was wrong.
>
>
> Figuring out where one should be going before spending effort going
> forward is rational. In a car it might not be too costly to drive a few
> miles wrong and maybe time is precious, but given the nonzero danger of
> driving fast in unknown areas at night your friend probably made a bad
> cost/benefit calculation.
>
> The more costly mistakes or wasted effort (typically because of
> opportunity costs) are, the more effort it is rational to put into planning
> where one should go.
>
> --
> Dr Anders Sandberg
> Future of Humanity Institute
> Oxford Martin School
> Oxford University
>
>
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