[Guest]

In your view, what is the most important problem?

You may give multiple problems; the point is to start a discussion. I'm asking this question here because I realized that I'm not sure what my answer is. I have some ideas, but I'll wait for someone else to share their thoughts before I say anything more.

[Guest]

I would say the most important problem ishere, if you're talking about a moral problem.

If you mean a debatable issue I would say "is there a God?"

If you mean a paradox/logic puzzle, I would say these are mainly for fun and teasing the mind, and that none of them are actually important.

[Guest]

If you mean a paradox/logic puzzle, I would say these are mainly for fun and teasing the mind, and that none of them are actually important.

I would say that many of these problems have some importance, but are not nearly as important as many problems of more practical kinds. This is because I consider an "important problem" to be a problem for which it is important and an urgent matter that we try to find a solution soon. I consider it important that we solve these problems soon because if we do not then there will be significant consequences resulting from the problem the longer we wait to solve or fix them.

If you mean a debatable issue I would say "is there a God?"

I don't think that this problem is nearly as important as the problem that many people irrationally believe in gods and justify absurd actions on such beliefs.

I would say the most important problem ishere, if you're talking about a moral problem.

That's a pretty specific problem. I don't know what my answer to it is because I don't think there is enough information. You try to clarify this with, "These people are anonymous, and the value of each life is thus undeterminable (for example, the sick people may spend the rest of their lives as serial killers, but then again they just as well might work at a soup kitchen to feed homeless people or something. The same applies to the healthy person.)" If the value of each of these peoples' lives is truly completely indeterminable then my answer is that it is indeterminable to decide whether to kill the one person and save the seven or let the seven die and save the one. You, however, come to a conclusion that the seven are more valuable than the one. How? Because seven is more than one? But, the values are indeterminable. You must have assumed that they are not completely indeterminable. In this case, what assumptions about these people did you make to determine their value? You said they are anonymous, but what does that mean? Can I assume that they are seven randomly selected people on Earth who require an organ transport to continue living and the other is a randomly selected "healthy" individual? And what can I assume about the state of these seven people after they get the organ transplant? Some organ transplant surgeries have a chance of being fatal and some transplanted organs are rejected by the body, etc. The problem I have with your expression of this problem is that it is not a very practical problem in that I can't find good assumptions to make about what is going on. As a result, I don't have a good way to compare this theoretical situation to any real-life examples in reality. So in the end, I can't give my answer to your question definitively because I don't understand what is going on (i.e. there are still many things that are unclear--e.g. is there a monetary cost of performing the surgery transplants?. I will mention, however, something to do with the the "killing" part of this moral problem. One, let's say I'm someone who values the seven more than the one. What if this one person who I'm saying I would kill disagrees that he is less valuable than these other seven people? Should I still kill him against his will as I originally said I would? There are different version of these theoretical human-life value problems involving driving trains down different forks on a track to hit different groups of people. In these train examples I would say you are clearly deciding which group to save, rather than would you kill the other to save the one you're aiming at. In this organ problem you propose, however, most people in society would say that the question is indeed whether you want to kill one to save seven, not, should you save one or seven. So I think there is a difference here. Your organ problem would be different if you put these people on two sides of a fork on a train track.

Anyways, before I continue ranting on about a relatively unimportant (but still somewhat important, fun and education to think about) problem, I will say that in my view a more important problem is a more general version of your organ problem: the problem of people not having good understandings of the value of people. There are plenty of people who simply say, "A value cannot be assigned to a person's life as all people's lives are of equal value," whereas others say things like, "women aren't as valuable as men" or "I'm more valuable than anyone else because I'm me." I consider all three of these views dealing with peoples' values of people as important problems. Also, I will make it clear that I think that the more important problem is the problem of most people not having decent understandings of the value of people, not what the absolutely correct moral answer is. We could debate your moral organ problem for a while, but to me it's not very important that we come to an agreement about what the correct moral choice is. Rather, it is important that more people in the world develop a better understanding of such things so that they can make better choices in their lives.

Having said all this, there are other problems which I consider far more important than this problem of people gaining a greater understanding of the value of human lives. I think making this problem more general makes it more important (as a general rule, making a problem more general probably results in a more important problem). The would thus consider the problem of people being uneducated, unable to think critically or rationally, and thus unable to make good decisions to be a far more important problem (although only a more generalized problem) than the problem of whether to save one healthy person or seven people who need the healthy person's organs to survive.

So I think we have so far come up with one important problem: knowledge/education. This is the problem that there are things people do not know and is also the problem that people believe things that they should not. You could break this knowledge/education problem down into several other problems, or you could make it more general by saying that a very important problem is what is going to happen in the future. I was going to say that there isn't a point in generalizing problems to this extent, but now that I have in writing, I change my mind.

I assert that the most important problem is what is going to happen.

To critique my assertion, I wonder if it is worth saying that it is important to know what is going to happen, or to be aware of what is going to happen as it happens, or to learn what happened in the past, or to get as many people as possible to gain as a great an understanding as possible of what happened in the past, present, and future. I'll say that I think such problems of knowing about what happened in the past, etc, are smaller problems that need to be solved in order to solve the greatest, most important problem of all: what happens.

The most important problem is what happens.

Do you agree or disagree? And would you like to break this problem down into some other important problems (such as the problem of education/knowledge) that we should think about and work at solving in an effort to solve the problem of what happens?

Also, I would say that one of the first steps in solving the problem of what happens is getting an idea of what the solution looks like. Only then can you do the physical work in life to make this solution a reality. Roughly I think the solution looks like good stuff happening, but what is this good stuff? This question is clearly a part of this discussion of important problems. It is a question of what you value in a very general sense. If anyone wants to try to describe what it is exactly that they value (it is probably similar for all of us), I would gladly participate in that part of this discussion as well.

Lastly for now, other than the problem of education, what are some other important problems?

[Quag]

Hmmm

interesting

i have read your posts and have much confused thinking.

I disagree with the moral one as it is too specific

I disagree with the god one as i think gods existence or non existence is irrelevant

I'm not sure about the paradox/pussle one either. I think it teaches us to think and therefore is very important. Though not necessarily the most important

What is going to happen next... Yes that is a good one, but not sure if it is the most important one. Have to think about it.

Maybe i need to drink some more port first

[plasmid]

The most important problem I can think of offhand:

Design and come up with a practical way to establish a social and political structure that promotes overall prosperity, security, and the advancement of humanity through the arts and sciences more effectively than the current system does. You may pick the region of your choice as the target for reform.

Try not to get bogged down in details about exactly how to quantify the outcomes and how much weight to place on each of them unless it's genuinely important... in practice if you compare societies like Canada versus Cambodia there is such a vast difference between them on all levels that such fine details don't really matter.

[Guest]

If we're talking about modern problems then:

How long until a world war kills us all? How do we deal with the fossil fuels running out? etc.

[Quag]

solution to fossil fuels running out is already solved. Economics is reason we havent changed. That and people being afraid of nuclear energy.

world war could be a problem. like how you worded it not could there be a war but when. You are an optimist

[Guest]

solution to fossil fuels running out is already solved. Economics is reason we havent changed. That and people being afraid of nuclear energy.

world war could be a problem. like how you worded it not could there be a war but when. You are an optimist

I just have a happy look on life

[Quag]

LOL SD3K

BTW that your Nickname now

seriously more i think about SD3k has a point. war bad.

So how about, not the perfect society. But how do we unite the whole human race in one world govt. Obviously UN haas failed miserably. We need to find a way to remove the power of the state to wage war etc..., yet allow freedom of individual countries to enact laws/economic policy etc., that are fitting to the econmoc/social/ploitical etc... climate of the region.

[Guest]

LOL SD3K

BTW that your Nickname now

seriously more i think about SD3k has a point. war bad.

So how about, not the perfect society. But how do we unite the whole human race in one world govt. Obviously UN haas failed miserably. We need to find a way to remove the power of the state to wage war etc..., yet allow freedom of individual countries to enact laws/economic policy etc., that are fitting to the econmoc/social/ploitical etc... climate of the region.

Agree. It's hard to balance freedom and control, and we haven't really managed it.

By the way, like my new nickname

[Guest]

Most important problem:

"How can we eat cakes without getting fat?"

But seriously, I would agree with Quag:

"What does the future hold", if that's what you said.

I agree SD3K, but what happens if a natural disaster kills us before a war? War's we can predict let's say 5 years before they start, but natural disasters - you can only tell when lava and water is about to be dumped on your head. Simultaneously.

[Guest]

Most important problem:

"How can we eat cakes without getting fat?"

But seriously, I would agree with Quag:

"What does the future hold", if that's what you said.

I agree SD3K, but what happens if a natural disaster kills us before a war? War's we can predict let's say 5 years before they start, but natural disasters - you can only tell when lava and water is about to be dumped on your head. Simultaneously.

You can't necessarily predict wars 5 years earlier and we can see patterns in seismic activity and volcanic activity and hence can see them coming as well.

[Quag]

the 5 year rule was used by Britain between the 2 world wars. It was one of the major reasons they were so unprepaired for the war when it came. So i have to disagree with seeing a war coming. What we can predict about war is that it will be a logn time before we rid ourselves of them, if ever.

[Guest]

the 5 year rule was used by Britain between the 2 world wars. It was one of the major reasons they were so unprepaired for the war when it came. So i have to disagree with seeing a war coming. What we can predict about war is that it will be a logn time before we rid ourselves of them, if ever.

Agreed. What optimists we are

[unreality]

War's we can predict let's say 5 years before they start, but natural disasters - you can only tell when lava and water is about to be dumped on your head. Simultaneously.

You can't necessarily predict wars 5 years earlier and we can see patterns in seismic activity and volcanic activity and hence can see them coming as well.

The reality is that we cannot predict either. We have absolutely no way of predicting earthquakes in advance. And as far as war goes, who knows. That kind of thing could break out anytime and among the sheer number of people predicting all kinds of things, someone will step forward and say they predicted it (one example is economics... you have a million economists writing books about what the market will do next year and there's only so many things it can do so someone's probably right and then they can act like a future-telling god and make a bunch of phoney TV money).

Aaanyway though, I think the most important problem humanity faces is the discovery & contact with extra-terrestrial life.