This is tricky, because it seems like the things that will be useful if the problem remains for a long time, are exactly the things that will prevent the institution from disbanding when the problem is solved.
Like, imagine that an oracle told you that homelessness is a serious problem that will require at least 200 years to be solved. (Imagine a world without a looming AI apocalypse.) In that case, if you are serious about solving the problem, you would want to have: institutions that specialize on homelessness research, maybe to teach it as a subject at universities, people whose full time job it is to solve homelessness, secure funding for such people, etc.
But those are exactly the things that would cause trouble when homelessness is magically gone. People who spent their careers studying something that is now useless. People losing their jobs. Universities that need to update their lessons. -- It would be too tempting to redefine the word “homeless” to refer to something that still exists; and thus people can keep their jobs and funding. Like, maybe “many 18 years olds cannot afford to buy a new house” will become the new operational definition of homelessness. Or it will be considered horrible that the former homeless cannot live in the center of the most expensive city. Or that their new houses do not have gardens.
From certain perspective this is not necessarily a bad thing. The fact that we improved society doesn’t mean we cannot improve it further. Maybe everyone should have a cheap huge house with a garden at exactly the place they want to be, if we could somehow afford it. I mean, our standards of living are already amazing from the perspective of people who lived centuries ago, and we still keep thinking about improving them.
The actual problem is more about priorities. It is okay to expand the definition of homelessness (or anything else) after the original problem was solved. But the new problem is less urgent than the original one; and therefore deserves less resources, etc. But if the existing organization and people want to keep their funding and jobs, they need to insist that the new problem deserves the same priority as the old one. Which means they have an incentive to exaggerate it. Lies lead to misallocation of resources.
A quick idea: You need to make a measurable definition of “homelessness” and publish a graph of homelessness visibly (on your organization’s homepage, in every publication you print). You must keep the original definition; or if you decide to change it, your must keep drawing the line that corresponds to the old definition, and add a new line using different color for the new definition.
An obvious problem: Graph alone does not distinguish between situations “homelessness was reduced by 50% because of ongoing efforts of our organization, therefore it is critical to keep funding it” and “homelessness was reduced by 50% for reasons completely unrelated to our organization, therefore the situation is less urgent”.
You’re right about redefining the word/problem. I’ve been referring to this as “The Pivot” in my head.
It would still be better if we found a way to form institutions such that, once they had solved a problem, their resources were efficiently allocated to the solution of the next-most-pressing problem.
This is tricky, because it seems like the things that will be useful if the problem remains for a long time, are exactly the things that will prevent the institution from disbanding when the problem is solved.
Like, imagine that an oracle told you that homelessness is a serious problem that will require at least 200 years to be solved. (Imagine a world without a looming AI apocalypse.) In that case, if you are serious about solving the problem, you would want to have: institutions that specialize on homelessness research, maybe to teach it as a subject at universities, people whose full time job it is to solve homelessness, secure funding for such people, etc.
But those are exactly the things that would cause trouble when homelessness is magically gone. People who spent their careers studying something that is now useless. People losing their jobs. Universities that need to update their lessons. -- It would be too tempting to redefine the word “homeless” to refer to something that still exists; and thus people can keep their jobs and funding. Like, maybe “many 18 years olds cannot afford to buy a new house” will become the new operational definition of homelessness. Or it will be considered horrible that the former homeless cannot live in the center of the most expensive city. Or that their new houses do not have gardens.
From certain perspective this is not necessarily a bad thing. The fact that we improved society doesn’t mean we cannot improve it further. Maybe everyone should have a cheap huge house with a garden at exactly the place they want to be, if we could somehow afford it. I mean, our standards of living are already amazing from the perspective of people who lived centuries ago, and we still keep thinking about improving them.
The actual problem is more about priorities. It is okay to expand the definition of homelessness (or anything else) after the original problem was solved. But the new problem is less urgent than the original one; and therefore deserves less resources, etc. But if the existing organization and people want to keep their funding and jobs, they need to insist that the new problem deserves the same priority as the old one. Which means they have an incentive to exaggerate it. Lies lead to misallocation of resources.
A quick idea: You need to make a measurable definition of “homelessness” and publish a graph of homelessness visibly (on your organization’s homepage, in every publication you print). You must keep the original definition; or if you decide to change it, your must keep drawing the line that corresponds to the old definition, and add a new line using different color for the new definition.
An obvious problem: Graph alone does not distinguish between situations “homelessness was reduced by 50% because of ongoing efforts of our organization, therefore it is critical to keep funding it” and “homelessness was reduced by 50% for reasons completely unrelated to our organization, therefore the situation is less urgent”.
This was well thought-out, thank you.
You’re right about redefining the word/problem. I’ve been referring to this as “The Pivot” in my head.
It would still be better if we found a way to form institutions such that, once they had solved a problem, their resources were efficiently allocated to the solution of the next-most-pressing problem.