Are definable problems the ones worth solving?

So here’s something that seems quite obvious. A problem that is easier to define has a better chance of being solved. Here’s an example: a car takes an hour to travel 50 miles from home to work. How fast, on average, was the car going? From grade school, one learns to set this problem up using variables and an equation, namely (rate)(time) = distance, and then substitute variables and solve. Due to the invention of algebra, problems such as these are very easy to set up and solve whereas previously they would have each constituted major intellectual challenges. The same thing applies beyond math: scientific and social problems are intentionally couched into ways which make them more amenable to our current knowledge toolbox, such as partial differential equations to model financial markets and bouncing spheres to model moving molecules. And so far, this has yielded an explosion of scientific discovery and knowledge which has transformed our world beyond recognition these past couple centuries.

My concern is that the most important problems to solve for humanity sometimes seem like the most ignored. For example, there is currently massive amounts of money fueling research into extending human life ad infinitum because one can define this problem in terms of biological constraints. But why isn’t this money being used instead to make human life more fulfilling right now, which seems to have much more tangible results in improving humanity? It really doesn’t make sense to live past 100 if the extra years are spent in a barely functional zombie state, as opposed to giving more people the opportunity to live their lives fulfillingly. In a similar vein, there is currently a LOT of money being dumped into generating new forms of technology such as self-driving cars, facial recognition, and spaceflight. Why isn’t at least some of this money being used to revamp the curriculum students learn so that they are prepared for the new world of technology instead of heading into it blind? It seems like the new technology being developed doesn’t seem like it would benefit most people very much if they don’t know how it works and more importantly how to use it correctly.

One could argue in both cases, and in other similar cases, that the incentives are wrong, and that’s why less definable problems are the ones being ignored. And yes, in both cases above one can clearly see the influence of rich donors who want to live longer and have more toys in choosing which problems are considered important. But society is more than just rich donors — it is the entire span of people who make up a social structure, particularly the very lowest people who oftentimes add the most color to a society. Government money, which is what fuels much of the research and development in the United States, should be used towards benefitting the people who need the benefits most even if the problems to solve would become much less definable. Because what is a government for if not to serve the people it governs?

Beyond even those problems that we solve as a society, there comes the problems of the individual which are perhaps even more important. What people and beliefs are worth believing and what ones don’t fit, what is a life well lived, what is one’s relationship to the universe — these are the important questions that every person on this Earth must face. Many of these don’t have defined answers at all. Do we choose to ignore these problems because we can’t solve them at once? Of course we shouldn’t. But it’s easy to lose sight of them when we’re surrounded by much easier problems solve in our day to day existence — where to get the next meal, how to pay next month’s rent, and how to schedule time for friends and work. One can spend a lifetime going through the motions of living, as society makes that way of life so easy. It’s far harder to actively congeal a life which answers the hard questions. But make no mistake: there is only way to figure out how to truly live. And it isn’t by sleeping, physically or metaphorically.

I hope I’ve made my case for non-definable problems clear. We shouldn’t choose problems to solve by their ease of difficulty, but by their importance and impact to our lives. It requires some thwarting of the natural instinct towards laziness, but the results are more than worth it. It remains to be seen, however, if this will be taken seriously at a larger level; God help our species if it isn’t.