I just want to chime in not to disagree with anything you’re saying (for the record I think your post is thoughtful. I don’t know enough about the nuances to agree or disagree) and it isn’t even directed at you but to all of us and our discussion styles. I really hope that the collective We shift to saying something like “One of the many complications…” rather than “The problem” or “The biggest problem”.
When it comes to very large and very complicated problems we often get stuck arguing over which one piece is The problem or The cause or The singular thing. Over and over and over we get stuck arguing over which is the biggest or the only cause/solution.
A ton of the issues that we confront here are some of the most complicated issues that interweave technology, economy, ecology, humans, weird borders, power/influence, money, etc…
I know this is just semantics but I really do believe that for complex issues we’d get a lot further in discussions if we weren’t limiting ourselves to a silver bullet solution or the one cause.
I know it’s “just a casual internet forum” and i know we can’t (and shouldn’t) expect intense rigor on our comments, but i think the hn community has some good minds to discuss some of this and it pokes at me every time i see us (i do the same shit too) get bogged down with “well acksually the biggest cause” or “THE solution is…”
Sorry for the tangent poster and readers, but this minor quibble seems important.
To your point, I wish there were diagrams "we'd" all use to illustrate any issue with complicated interwoven relationships that put the complexity into at least some degree of comparability. Ideally you'd be able to see how some relative amount of funding needs to support some physical effort required and in the context of some degree of regulatory scope.
A simple example is the two-factor, two-axis diminishing returns line graph. As cost goes up, returns decrease and we can point to a spot and discuss it.
I wish I could give you a good intuitive example of a far more complex (more factors), but if this were easy we'd all be doing it and we'd all be seeing such diagrams more frequently. So in the absence of simple and nuanced illustrations, we have lists and we necessarily fall back on language and our own biases like we do here. (Just humans being human, no judgement.)
One possibility I can imagine is a table with solutions on one axis and influencing dimensions on another. e.g., One axis is tech, funding, regulatory, etc. and the other is proposed solutions. In the table, the cross referenced cell might contain a number showing how much of some environmental dimension is needed for a given solution.
This example is crude at best because clearly we can debate what the cross-reference values assigned are, and whether or not they're correct, and even whether or not a dimension should be broken down further, but this technique's shortcomings are a compromise–the price paid for attempting to communicate the holistic understanding of an issue. One hopes that price is worth paying for greater appreciation of the issue's systemic complexities, and enabling others to see and evaluate factors they might not otherwise consider.
> Sorry for the tangent poster and readers, but this minor quibble seems important.
I fully agree. It's not just important, it's actually the essence of the problem.
1. Forest fires are hard to solve because many of the loudest voices on the topic are people who see them as an opportunity to bring up their favorite issue.
2. The fact that root causes are intertwined also means that real progress will be slow and potentially limited, at least in the short to medium term.
When it comes to very large and very complicated problems we often get stuck arguing over which one piece is The problem or The cause or The singular thing. Over and over and over we get stuck arguing over which is the biggest or the only cause/solution.
A ton of the issues that we confront here are some of the most complicated issues that interweave technology, economy, ecology, humans, weird borders, power/influence, money, etc…
I know this is just semantics but I really do believe that for complex issues we’d get a lot further in discussions if we weren’t limiting ourselves to a silver bullet solution or the one cause.
I know it’s “just a casual internet forum” and i know we can’t (and shouldn’t) expect intense rigor on our comments, but i think the hn community has some good minds to discuss some of this and it pokes at me every time i see us (i do the same shit too) get bogged down with “well acksually the biggest cause” or “THE solution is…”
Sorry for the tangent poster and readers, but this minor quibble seems important.