It could be that we live in a world where it’s not so, and we must pick between unclear good + tight feedback, or the most good + poor feedback.
I somewhat dispute the framing here.
If the “most important” problems are intractable because their feedback loops are so bad, then our standards for “most important” are themselves mistaken.
It’s like Richard Hamming saying that in some sense, developing anti-gravity is hugely important problem (if you solved that it would have enormous commercial and humanitarian benefit), it’s importance is a mirage, because there’s no-line of attack on it.
It could be case that there are a bunch of problems that will have huge impacts on many people through the whole future, and also, in practice, it’s a bad bet to work on them, because almost no one can do non-fake work in an unaccountable domain.
I somewhat dispute the framing here.
If the “most important” problems are intractable because their feedback loops are so bad, then our standards for “most important” are themselves mistaken.
It’s like Richard Hamming saying that in some sense, developing anti-gravity is hugely important problem (if you solved that it would have enormous commercial and humanitarian benefit), it’s importance is a mirage, because there’s no-line of attack on it.
It could be case that there are a bunch of problems that will have huge impacts on many people through the whole future, and also, in practice, it’s a bad bet to work on them, because almost no one can do non-fake work in an unaccountable domain.