I started this letter by encouraging you to join me in thinking about a wide variety of problems. I spent a couple of pages looking at objectives, priorities, and perceptions. Then I introduced the idea of root problem types as one possible framework in which to think about problems; as a tool to help compare, contrast, and classify them; and as a means for generalizing about efficient solutions. I went on to look at decision making techniques, quantitative comparisons of problems, systems analysis, and world models. I talked a lot about making good decisions and the importance of maintaining high quality models of the world around us. To that end, I advocated building computer models that are better than the pioneering ones we have today. Someday I'd like to see models that improve on today's models by being more complete, more detailed, more accurate, more accessible, more extensible, more queriable, and more easily customized.
Unfortunately, in the here and now we don't have sophisticated computer models, and still we must try to make the best decisions we can -- the difference between a good decision and a bad one will almost certainly cost us children's lives. Until good computer models are readily available we'll have to make do with the models that we have today -- the mental models we carry in our heads. We can't hope to make our mental models detailed or complete, but it's important to try to make them reasonably accurate at the coarsest levels. The major landmarks of the real world terrain of human problems should be represented by major landmarks in our perceptions and our mental models. We should all be able to answer simple questions about the general lay of the land -- what the largest problems are, whether or not they're readily solvable, and what can and is being done to solve them.
Here in the second half of this letter I want to take some time to focus on the most significant and most under-represented features of today's world. This section represents my capsule summary of the major landmarks of the terrain of human problems. My objective here is simply to educate and inform, and to draw your attention to what I think are the largest, most important features that shape the human world. Here's a quick list of the four landmarks that I'll focus on in the coming pages:
Landmark #1 -- soil erosion, population, and population
momentum,
Landmark #2 -- the small cost of solutions and the continuing
large cost of military spending,
Landmark #3 -- wealth and poverty, and
Landmark #4 -- government.
The Bottom Line
We must build our own mental models of the world, and the burden
falls on us to try to make them roughly accurate at the crudest
levels.
