stephen pinker:
if you subsist on problems in society, when there are fewer and fewer problems, you’ll start to scramble and find it necessary to increase the size of the problems, the smaller they are.
On solutions: solutions to problems don’t survive if they solve their problems. they are no longer necessary / have no sustenance anymore and they go away. To the extent that a solution is a system that wants to perpetuate itself, it will avoid completely solving the problem. It might even make sure the problem sticks around or gets worse.