This was originally part of my summary, but it didn’t make sense there.
I take issue with “lack of resources” having its own category. It seems like a special case of a lack of procedural knowledge.
If I don’t have bread, it’s only a problem if I don’t know how to get bread and I don’t know how to figure out how to get bread. If my elbow is broken and I need to get milk home, the problem is not my lack of working elbows so much as my lack of knowing how to get the milk home without using the elbow. Having a working elbow would also solve the problem, but I really don’t know how to instantly fix my elbow. If the fridge is full, the problem isn’t the fridge being full so much as my not knowing how to organize the fridge so that there’s room for the milk. If there is some constraint such that I can’t take anything out of the fridge, I have an unsolvable problem, but absent such a constraint, my problem is better thought of as a lack of procedural knowledge rather than a lack of fridge space.
Of course, not all problems are solvable; if I ask you to lug a cubic meter of platinum back to your house without any mechanical assistance, it really doesn’t matter how toned your elbows are; you aren’t going to be able to do it—that much platinum would weigh about fifty thousand pounds. It’s a problem that cannot be solved, because no procedure exists (within the given constraints) to obtain the desired result. If I ask you to make yourself immortal, it is quite possible that no procedure will accomplish that end within the constraints of reality; i.e. you may have a truly unsolvable problem.
Some forms of resource lack can overlap with procedural knowledge lack, but in some cases the resource is… I’m going to use the word “immediate”, even though that’s not really optimal vocab for the purpose. But sometimes the needed resource is “immediate”, by which I mean to stab in the general direction of something that has to be directly employed in the solution of the problem. Money is a good example of this. Sure, you could frame the issue as not knowing how to get money, but it seems more natural to call it an issue of not actually having money, because the money is to be used immediately.
Sure, you could frame the issue as not knowing how to get money
The solution to “I don’t have enough money” is, generally, to figure out, “How do I get the money I need?” If this is possible, it requires some form of procedural knowledge—you have to know how to get a job, or how to attract investors, or how to rob a bank. Since the shortage can only be resolved by getting more knowledge and then employing it, it seems inappropriate to say the resource is the problem.
“How do I solve this problem without that money?” would also be an appropriate solution, i.e. finding a “taskification” that does not require money as a sub-task. This, again, is knowledge-based.
This was originally part of my summary, but it didn’t make sense there.
I take issue with “lack of resources” having its own category. It seems like a special case of a lack of procedural knowledge.
If I don’t have bread, it’s only a problem if I don’t know how to get bread and I don’t know how to figure out how to get bread. If my elbow is broken and I need to get milk home, the problem is not my lack of working elbows so much as my lack of knowing how to get the milk home without using the elbow. Having a working elbow would also solve the problem, but I really don’t know how to instantly fix my elbow. If the fridge is full, the problem isn’t the fridge being full so much as my not knowing how to organize the fridge so that there’s room for the milk. If there is some constraint such that I can’t take anything out of the fridge, I have an unsolvable problem, but absent such a constraint, my problem is better thought of as a lack of procedural knowledge rather than a lack of fridge space.
Of course, not all problems are solvable; if I ask you to lug a cubic meter of platinum back to your house without any mechanical assistance, it really doesn’t matter how toned your elbows are; you aren’t going to be able to do it—that much platinum would weigh about fifty thousand pounds. It’s a problem that cannot be solved, because no procedure exists (within the given constraints) to obtain the desired result. If I ask you to make yourself immortal, it is quite possible that no procedure will accomplish that end within the constraints of reality; i.e. you may have a truly unsolvable problem.
Some forms of resource lack can overlap with procedural knowledge lack, but in some cases the resource is… I’m going to use the word “immediate”, even though that’s not really optimal vocab for the purpose. But sometimes the needed resource is “immediate”, by which I mean to stab in the general direction of something that has to be directly employed in the solution of the problem. Money is a good example of this. Sure, you could frame the issue as not knowing how to get money, but it seems more natural to call it an issue of not actually having money, because the money is to be used immediately.
The solution to “I don’t have enough money” is, generally, to figure out, “How do I get the money I need?” If this is possible, it requires some form of procedural knowledge—you have to know how to get a job, or how to attract investors, or how to rob a bank. Since the shortage can only be resolved by getting more knowledge and then employing it, it seems inappropriate to say the resource is the problem.
“How do I solve this problem without that money?” would also be an appropriate solution, i.e. finding a “taskification” that does not require money as a sub-task. This, again, is knowledge-based.