One of the world’s great unsolved problems

Elon Musk does everything he does because he wants to ensure the survival of the species. He thinks that this is the most important problem to be solved. To that end, he founded Tesla to solve energy, and he founded SpaceX to get human civilization on other planets. I say there’s another problem that’s just as big, but far fewer people are talking about it.

It’s the problem of how to get people to do what’s good for them.

So often there’s a course of action available to a human that would be best for a person, and the person doesn’t do it. Maybe because he doesn’t know it’s the right thing to do. Or maybe he does, but he doesn’t know that he can. Or maybe he knows he should and that he can, but he doesn’t have the will power.

Looking at humans on the level of groups, it becomes scary.

The problem can be broken down into a number of sub-problems:

1. How to get people to have true beliefs about what’s really good for them
2. How to get people to do what they believe is good for them