Solving Big Problems Soon: Some Food for Thought
By: Orna Mukhopadhyay
Tags: Coronavirus, Climate Change, Tech, Problem Solving, Technology

We are all waiting too long to solve everything. With climate change, we always expect an immediate solution to come to us which will magically erase every single symptom of our sick planet. During our current global pandemic, we’re all just waiting for a vaccine, seeing the next moves of the corporations working on this — we’re left in a state of the unknown with inaction — this is not a good feeling at all.

We must start as soon as possible. Problems such as the current pandemic and the ongoing threat of climate change have been the results of us ignoring the calls to action. We’re too scared to approach it, and in the end, it becomes worse.

Credit goes to Pixabay on Pexels. Our planet is literally burning up.

Think about procrastinating on a big project — one that should take about three weeks. In the beginning, you perceive that you have a lot of time, and as a result, you don’t work on it. However, as the deadline approaches, you start thinking “oh shit, this is really hard.” Yet, you ignore it because the harder it seems, the more you’re inclined not to do it. On the final day, you realize that you have to start working on it, and the deadline is tomorrow. You may end up finishing, but it does not really end up solving anything — and you end up getting a bad result.

A quite accurate representation of how projects end up going whenever I procrastinate to the absolute last minute. Well, at least I finish? Source: The Poke.

With the current attitude that people have towards big problems, I fear that this might be the result — except the consequences are way bigger than having a bad grade — it affects the future of ourselves and our posterity.

We currently have 16 Sustainable Development Goals set by the United Nations, a global pandemic, and way too many problems on hand. How do we start solving them? If you thought your fifteen pages of FRQs from physics was overwhelming, wait until you see these. It’s enough to make anyone crack.

If you’re ready though, that’s something different. In order to make an impact, the people first must start. To start, we must have courage.

Courage is defined as the “mental or moral strength to venture, persevere, and withstand danger, fear, or difficulty,” according to Merriam-Webster's Dictionary. It isn’t some large, I’m the chosen one conquest — anyone can do it. The accumulation of such mental and moral strength is the key part of this journey.

Building a good habit — or in this case, getting into the flow of solving a problem — is often the hardest to start. Think about the activation energy required to catalyze a chemical reaction — it becomes natural once we surpass a certain threshold. Source: James Clear (I love his blog!).

After bringing the courage to start, we try to get an understanding of the scope this problem provides.

To do this, you must first develop a wider understanding of the problem on hand. This is what we call “deep domain expertise.” They have a fundamental understanding of the big problem at hand — this typically involves a lot of study into EVERY SINGLE POSSIBLE THING that characterizes the problem.

Yet, it’s also important to bring in other people — from other fields —into this problem-solving approach. You establish more perspective through that. Think about all the interdisciplinary research — you have artificial intelligence and a multitude of applications into biology, and you have biophysics, and you have the integration of quantum chemistry and physics for a fundamental understanding of nature as a whole, and etc. You cannot have these projects without collaboration — be open.

Getting out of your space also provides a great perspective. In her book “A Mind for Numbers,” Barbara Oakley describes a test-taking tactic in the diffuse mode — when your brain starts looking at problems from the big picture, rather than a closed perspective — where you look at a problem for about two minutes in a test booklet, and if you’re not able to solve it immediately, you move on. As you’re solving other problems in the test that you’re more comfortable with, you notice that you naturally get an intuition towards solving this problem. To be stuck in that same area is inefficient, which is why so many problem solvers go out of their space. Walk around, do some exercise, go into a different environment — you’ll learn that you’ll get a different perspective on your approach.

Based on the accumulation of all of these approaches and taking action through experimentation and real-world applications, you can finally implement a solution framework that would be effective against your problem of focus.

Credits to Mike on Pexels.

Yet, this process is time-consuming — some people spend decades trying to solve a hard problem. Coming up with the theories of logic and non-Euclidean geometry may be something that, in this case, time is allowed.

But with the current situations in the world right now, we’re on crunch time. We need to 100x this framework to our approach and do it fast.

And with the modern situation, it’s really hard to make an impact without early-stage philanthropy, years and years in labs, venture capital, and government funding. The latter is especially hard.

So how do we achieve this? We push for more support, we need governmental support against the inevitable damnation that will occur to us because we’ve waited too long and there will be a certain amount of time. We must make it so that we can create opportunities that will allow everyone to take a part in problem-solving. Remember, this is a collective effort. The more 🧠-power we put into this, the more effective and efficient the solution.

Credits to Josh Riemer on Unsplash.

With the rising generation of Americans, there have been significant trends. These have been the most educated, the most diverse, and the most willing to tackle these hard problems. Combined with the efforts of the older generation, we’ll be able to establish a massive transformation in how our world is established — and we’ll create a better world for our future.

Think about it: if this is a new transformation among Americans, imagine the rest of the world🌐? If we put in the collective efforts of every individual capable of providing some perspective and augmenting it to prime efficiency, we may not be done in no time — but we definitely will be faster.

In doing so, we can finally “establish the general Welfare…for ourselves and our Posterity.”

Sources