I consider the main measure of quality for a problem to be how much it helps people, not the difficulty in solving it. This measure applies for entrepreneurial problems where you want to earn money, but most other fields too. No harm in solving little problems that affect no one, but for big life passions, I find that service inspires and motivates more than cleverness.
There are a couple of HN tropes that are very similar, but not identical, to this idea.
1. "Growth mindset"
2. "90th percentile expertise in two areas is easier to achieve and more useful than 99th percentile in one"
This post seems to suggest "you should remain open to growing into a solver of problems whose hardness stems from being fairly hard in both technical and non-technical ways while not being extremely hard in either alone, because such solvers are useful".
Not GP, but to me it can be 'negative'-ish in the same way as 'cliché' is, i.e. it doesn't have to be, but can be used like 'well it's a bit of a trope (resp. cliché) that [...]'
The author doesn't have the vocabulary for it, but what they're explaining is the difference between complicated problems and complex problems. The existing education system trains software engineers to solve complicated problems, those are what the author calls "hard problems". What he misses is that the problems he's talking about end up being challenging because they're complex.
edit: lol as i predicted. no responses just downvotes. is r/fragilehner a subreddit?
I'll surely get sure get downvoted but these kinds of paeans are so self-indulgent: smart privileged person (usually elite educated white guy) decides to pontificate on what makes for a gratifying life, what's important, what's valuable (or whatever other good mouth feel word they've chosen to use for their self-aggrandizing that day). and then follows a list of all of their accomplishments that aren't sufficient anymore according to their new measure. but of course now they're working on some nonsense startup that is sufficient.
What kind of echo chamber of privilege is hn where this kind of advice passes for insightful? It's basically like this: guys if you have a million dollars you shouldn't spend it on ABC you should spend it on XYZ.
Well I've got news for you: most people don't have a choice about what they do so whether they want hard problems or not is completely moot. They do the job that pays them to eat and have shelter and build a family. And yes I'm talking even about software engineers.
You should instead be writing about how grateful you are that you've had all the opportunity you've had and how you're actively working to empower others to have just as much (and not with some bs startup that extracts value).
Does anyone care about some white dude talking about how lucky and privileged he is?
No.
It is interesting to hear that even the smartest people struggle with what to do. That’s helpful to other people who do have some privilege yet aren’t as fulfilled as they “should be”.
>That’s helpful to other people who do have some privilege yet aren’t as fulfilled as they “should be”.
you're just doubling down on what i'm taking aim at. you want to be more fulfilled despite all of your privilege? go live in a 3rd world country for a couple of years you'll be fulfilled beyond measure when you return. or hell go work as a teacher in a poor urban school district.
That isn’t really how life works. I’ve been through unspeakable pain (literally, no words to describe it), and in the midst of it it felt that if the pain ever ended, I would be thankful for every day — because it was a day without pain. One day the pain had subsided, and at first that was true. But years later, it’s hard not to just take each day the same way as I did before the pain. Knowledge of the worst doesn’t really improve your day to day, although it can put it into perspective.
It’s the same as if a parent died. People don’t become happier after experiencing that kind of sadness, if anything it makes them more sad.
I doubt if everyone in the world who was privileged took a weeklong trip to the most undeveloped, rough living conditions on earth, that much would change long term.
>I doubt if everyone in the world who was privileged took a weeklong trip to the most undeveloped, rough living conditions on earth, that much would change long term.
I said years for a reason. I'm living proof of this having a tremendous effect on outlook, have spent many years living a village in Africa after undergrad.
If you find yourself thinking "I'll surely be down voted for this" you could use the chance to ask yourself if what you want to say is worth saying and if it is, consider how you could get the worthwhile ideas across without being objectionable.
In this case, for example, it seems like you're partly upset by the author's race and gender. Judging people for that, or holding it against them, strikes me as objectionable.
You're right that not everyone has the opportunity to pick what they want to work on, but that's a rather trivial observation and not one really worth making in my view. If someone wrote about performance bicycles, would you scold them for worrying about such irrelevant machines while subsistence farmers struggled to eat, or people in Asia battled the coronavirus? Must all conversations and topics be about the people in the worst position?
Your comment, since you seem to want a reply and not just downvotes, is needlessly antagonistic and doesn't offer any useful insight. You complain about the race and gender of others, startups you don't like, hackernews, startups, and the idea of extracting value. Your core point is obvious to all readers.
>In this case, for example, it seems like you're partly upset by the author's race and gender
I'm not at all upset by either. I'm upset by the narcissism and the perpetuation of it (visavis the traction this post got).
>Judging people for that, or holding it against them, strikes me as objectionable.
Just to be precise I'd like for you to point out to me where I made a value judgment of the author (rather than the article).
>If someone wrote about performance bicycles, would you scold them for worrying about such irrelevant machines while subsistence farmers struggled to eat, or people in Asia battled the coronavirus?
The linked article is advice on how one should live their life. I have engaged directly with the premise and pointed out that "should" is directly a function of "could".
>Your comment, since you seem to want a reply and not just downvotes,
I bring it up only because it's strictly against the rules to use downvote in disagreement. I haven't insulted or inflamed anyone and yet people's reactions are to be offended.
I'll surely get sure get downvoted but these kinds of paeans are so self-indulgent: smart privileged person (usually elite educated white guy) decides to pontificate on what makes for a gratifying life, what's important, what's valuable (or whatever other good mouth feel word they've chosen to use for their self-aggrandizing that day). and then follows a list of all of their accomplishments that aren't sufficient anymore according to their new measure. but of course now they're working on some nonsense startup that is sufficient.
What kind of echo chamber of privilege is hn where this kind of advice passes for insightful? It's basically like this: guys if you have a million dollars you shouldn't spend it on ABC you should spend it on XYZ.
Well I've got news for you: most people don't have a choice about what they do so whether they want hard problems or not is completely moot. They do the job that pays them to eat and have shelter and build a family. And yes I'm talking even about software engineers.
You should instead be writing about how grateful you are that you've had all the opportunity you've had and how you're actively working to empower others to have just as much (and not with some bs startup that extracts value).
I don’t see why you would get downvoted for this. Your statement sounds reasonable to me.
I think you offended someone. HN really needs to show the flaggers username so there can be more checks and balances against this kind of emotional censoring.
As for the blog, the guy does sound self-indulgent but he still makes a reasonable point.
I don't think the expectation that you not use race and gender as a pejorative is setting a terribly high bar. If I observed that comments like yours were "often written by <non-male gender> <non-white race/ethnicity>" I think it would be more obvious to you that your language was problematic. Why not extend to everyone the courtesies you expect to be extended to some?
Laughing at people "chasing you to downvote you" strikes me as the same kind of cynicism and hostility that encouraged people to downvote you before. One possibility is that the voters of hackernews are too fragile to handle your potent truths. Another is that you are making banal observations in a hostile way and people are simply downvoting you to signal that such comments aren't appreciated.
>I don't think the expectation that you not use race and gender as a pejorative is setting a terribly high bar
I already responded to this accusation. I asked you in particular to point out where I used race and gender problematically. here it in the first response to you:
>>Judging people for that, or holding it against them, strikes me as objectionable.
>Just to be precise I'd like for you to point out to me where I made a value judgment of the author (rather than the article).
You have not but you continue to claim I have. That's very convenient isn't it?
just to recapitulate: this is the only place i've mentioned race and class and gender:
> smart privileged person (usually elite educated white guy) decides to pontificate
what exactly about this is unacceptable in the least?
To bring up that race and gender and class inform biases of an author is not pejorative unless you have a vested interest in protecting that bias.
I am cynical because I write very precisely and very clearly and do not use "purple" language and yet the supposedly astute readers of hn still react viscerally rather than dispassionately. How can you blame me? These kinds of conversations tacitly verboten on hn because they are heavily censured.
Writing precisely and being regularly misinterpreted are incongruous and should produce cognitive dissonance which would let you realize that one of your assumptions is in error.
If I said that comments like yours are frequently written by Jewish transsexuals, you might object to that. You might, at the very least, think it's a weird thing I believe, to ascribe patterns of thinking and writing based on gender or ethnicity. You might also think, even if you couldn't exactly pin down how this belief of mine was problematic, that it represented a kind of belief that would be better off not shared.
"Hey, I'm not saying anything bad about Jewish transsexuals, just observing that they regularly write comments like this and get defensive when I point it out!" If I replied like that, you might think I was just gaslighting you rather than having a genuine discussion.
Regarding how I can blame you - I have already made this clear. You (negatively) characterize people based on their race and gender and ascribe properties to them. The central idea of your comment, that not everyone is in a position to choose what to work on, is very obvious and you deliver it with hostility and cynicism as if you were sharing verboten secrets.
This is how I'm precise where you're not: I'm literally quoting you and myself and you're just further adducing strange comparisons.
So again I challenge you directly quote my value judgments of the author. You can't though. Because none were made because my only point is that advice is facile for whom it is relevant and impractical for everyone else.
>Hey, I'm not saying anything bad about Jewish transsexuals...
I have no idea where you pulled this one from but let's run with it: if I saw comments and articles being written by Jewish Israelis about the impossibility for various reasons of the two state solution I would absolutely point that out without a shred of shame or cognitive dissonance.
>You (negatively) characterize people based on their race and gender and ascribe properties to them.
Show me where I ascribe a single negative property to the author? I explicitly said many many many times that the article is what I'm impugning. I said the writing is self-indulgent and the writing is self-aggrandizing. You can come to his defense all you want but he's not under attack - the facile categorical imperatives are.
Even if I weren't crystal clear in the initial comment every single one afterwards has underscored that I'm talking about the article. But you (and everyone that downvotes) willfully misconstrues in order to reaffirm their own allergy.
>very obvious and you deliver it with hostility and cynicism as if you were sharing verboten secrets.
I'll say it again: if that were obvious this post wouldn't have gotten traction.
Edit: you know what's beyond aggravating about having these meta-debates with people like you? The complete and utter lack of empathy on your part for anyone but this supposedly aggrieved/offended person.
Do you understand how obnoxious it is to come to hn and be ambushed by this kind of humble-brag jibbering? We don't all live in this world and it is all kinds of disappointing to read this constantly. I choose to avoid it on every other media channel (I don't use fb or ig etc).I don't understand why this stuff gets posted here under the guise of "startup culture". It's personal brand building! It belongs in an issue of people magazine rather than a tech site (there's nary a technical issue raised in the entire 1000 words). I say ambushed because I confused this person with Jeremy Kuhn and figured the article was going to be about np approximations.
He's describing a class, which he defines in part by race, but that he also qualifies outside race. I agree that this sort of first-world, upper-class (and yes, to a large extent, white) navel-gazing can seem offensively trite to people who might not have so many options, especially when the systems that produced each's circumstance are one and the same.
>One possibility is that the voters of hackernews are too fragile to handle your potent truths.
Your other comments suggest you are in, or are pursuing, a FAANG internship. The target audience of this piece... is you. The wisdom being preached is that although you may be set to acquire wealth, you may find yourself feeling existentially lost nonetheless.
I do not necessarily care about hard problems, but I do care a lot about interesting work. Fighting fraud sounds interesting, learning accounting sounds interesting. I find interesting for me often correlates to things I don't know. It is hard to get hired on things I don't know and even harder to stay at the job once I've figure the things out. Happy with my current role because I'm working on stuff that I have to figure out.
So I think less so hard problems and more so learning opportunities.
Fraud detection is comprised of a lot of interesting data science and pattern recognition (example being utilization of graph databases like Neo4j and its advantages over traditional RDBMSs of index free adjacency) not to mention the leveraging of ML. If the business paying me to implement this sort of thing is 'stupid' and 'boring' (whatever your definition of that is in the context of a business), why would that make the act of working and implementing fraud prevention any less of an interesting endeavor?
It can be extremely profitable too. If you happen to identify fraud against state or federal government, and it gets successfully prosecuted, you can earn 30% of imposed penalties.
There’s also no such thing as a CRUD app - or rather, there is, but it won’t meet anybody’s requirements as “just” a CRUD app and will require a lot of (unique, interesting, challenging) customization before it’s actually helping anybody do anything.
Generally the customer doesn't want "simple" apps like just using a CLI. Then there is the "evolutionary" aspect of feature creep and requirement specs that add non-optimal constraints.
I wasn't talking about the interface, I was thinking about people over engineering code or just having poor design / architecture that makes it a lot more complex than it should be.
Plenty of 'customised' useful-to-user apps are just CRUD apps though, nothing unique/interesting/challenging, just domain words mapped on to the same multitudinous/boring/easy shell built hundreds of thousands of times before.
The problem with this way of viewing the world is that in reality, this guy is judging technical difficulty from the basis of someone who can complete a college master degree in one year less than planned, then concludes he doesn't generally have problems with the mathematical side of things.
Well of course.
Unfortunately this is no more helpful than stating that Muhammad Ali usually doesn't have a problem with street crime. It does not make a generalizeable approach to the problem.
The actual problem he's describing is a lot like being a great fighter. It is not so much about utterly defeating your opponent in one narrow skill, ignoring everything else. It is about being a little better than them in one area and not fucking up in any other ("easy") area. You can be the best at giving punches on the planet, it will do zero good if you easily loose your balance. Even in already the artificially very limited area of competition fighting, you have to be decent at 10 skills, and good at one. In the real world to solve general problems you have to be decent at 100 skills, from tax accounting to sales, from algorithm analysis to team building. None of these you can be a disaster at.
Exactly. If he could already join Jane Street as an intern... Well of course somebody who already has all the privileges can easily say that "I don't want these privileges and I want to explore something else", but first you have to be in a privileged position to have the ability to choose. For many others it is totally worth it to get into this position first, then think about what their next step would be.
You don't need to work on hard problems but in general, solving hard problems is usually more important than creating another TODO app or a bingo card website. The latter is more likely to make you rich (for certain definitions of "rich"), and yet the former could, if successful, be fundamental for the progress of humanity; but, you know, it's hard.
It depends on how you define "important". Fundamental shifts are great, and they advance humanity a lot all at once. But ordinary achievements that help a few people at a time, a little bit, take on a cumulative importance of their own.
Even after the big "hard" problem gets solved, there's a gold rush of a huge amount of more ordinary work to pick the low-hanging fruit. Those aren't usually hard problems, but finding relatively obvious solutions for the first time. That wheel will be invented over and over for each sub-domain and specific set of requirements, and will gradually come to look like yet-another-TODO-app as everybody craves the next big leap. But until it comes, there remains a lot of room for making somebody's life just a little better by re-applying the last one for the 999th time.
Good for you, but as someone who felt the same way in university, and hasn't really worked on any 'hard problem' since (a few years), I sorely miss academia/studying/learning/challenge, keep thinking about going back for a PhD, wish I'd done it straight at the time (I did want to even then, just thought a break first would do me good), and would relish working on hard problems.
Hard problems are hard because they involve humans. For some reason, the author is confused between the two. Complicated or advanced is not the same as hard.
Anyway, impact is more important than complexity, and not quite as obvious.
A hard problem is climate change, or managing energy market, or figuring new recycling chemistry. Perhaps providing specific medical care in safe manner, or reducing health problems.
Providing food or housingfor 10 billion people, that's a hard problem.
Getting everyone free education of good quality is a hard problem.
Electronic voting is a hard problem.
Hard problems are generally ignored. They do not have obviously actionable solutions.
Complicated problems tend to have many solutions or partial solutions. Additionally it's easy to create a hard problem with an unnecessary solution to a non-problem, see that Wave thing he mentions. (There are many other workable and cheap loan solutions.)
Or fool yourself that you're actually solving any real problem. That typically happens if you define goal without consulting the subjects. (This Wave thing smells of it.)
47 comments
[ 3.4 ms ] story [ 102 ms ] thread"The most damaging thing you learned in school wasn't something you learned in any specific class. It was learning to get good grades."
Getting something others want from you, especially figuring what it truly is, is a huge skill and advantage.
As my mentor Frances Hesselbein says, "To serve is to live." https://www.inc.com/joshua-spodek/6-lessons-lunch-best-leade...
1. "Growth mindset"
2. "90th percentile expertise in two areas is easier to achieve and more useful than 99th percentile in one"
This post seems to suggest "you should remain open to growing into a solver of problems whose hardness stems from being fairly hard in both technical and non-technical ways while not being extremely hard in either alone, because such solvers are useful".
https://www.fastcompany.com/90344944/complex-vs-complicated-...
I'll surely get sure get downvoted but these kinds of paeans are so self-indulgent: smart privileged person (usually elite educated white guy) decides to pontificate on what makes for a gratifying life, what's important, what's valuable (or whatever other good mouth feel word they've chosen to use for their self-aggrandizing that day). and then follows a list of all of their accomplishments that aren't sufficient anymore according to their new measure. but of course now they're working on some nonsense startup that is sufficient.
What kind of echo chamber of privilege is hn where this kind of advice passes for insightful? It's basically like this: guys if you have a million dollars you shouldn't spend it on ABC you should spend it on XYZ.
Well I've got news for you: most people don't have a choice about what they do so whether they want hard problems or not is completely moot. They do the job that pays them to eat and have shelter and build a family. And yes I'm talking even about software engineers.
You should instead be writing about how grateful you are that you've had all the opportunity you've had and how you're actively working to empower others to have just as much (and not with some bs startup that extracts value).
No.
It is interesting to hear that even the smartest people struggle with what to do. That’s helpful to other people who do have some privilege yet aren’t as fulfilled as they “should be”.
you're just doubling down on what i'm taking aim at. you want to be more fulfilled despite all of your privilege? go live in a 3rd world country for a couple of years you'll be fulfilled beyond measure when you return. or hell go work as a teacher in a poor urban school district.
It’s the same as if a parent died. People don’t become happier after experiencing that kind of sadness, if anything it makes them more sad.
I doubt if everyone in the world who was privileged took a weeklong trip to the most undeveloped, rough living conditions on earth, that much would change long term.
I said years for a reason. I'm living proof of this having a tremendous effect on outlook, have spent many years living a village in Africa after undergrad.
In this case, for example, it seems like you're partly upset by the author's race and gender. Judging people for that, or holding it against them, strikes me as objectionable.
You're right that not everyone has the opportunity to pick what they want to work on, but that's a rather trivial observation and not one really worth making in my view. If someone wrote about performance bicycles, would you scold them for worrying about such irrelevant machines while subsistence farmers struggled to eat, or people in Asia battled the coronavirus? Must all conversations and topics be about the people in the worst position?
Your comment, since you seem to want a reply and not just downvotes, is needlessly antagonistic and doesn't offer any useful insight. You complain about the race and gender of others, startups you don't like, hackernews, startups, and the idea of extracting value. Your core point is obvious to all readers.
I'm not at all upset by either. I'm upset by the narcissism and the perpetuation of it (visavis the traction this post got).
>Judging people for that, or holding it against them, strikes me as objectionable.
Just to be precise I'd like for you to point out to me where I made a value judgment of the author (rather than the article).
>If someone wrote about performance bicycles, would you scold them for worrying about such irrelevant machines while subsistence farmers struggled to eat, or people in Asia battled the coronavirus?
The linked article is advice on how one should live their life. I have engaged directly with the premise and pointed out that "should" is directly a function of "could".
>Your comment, since you seem to want a reply and not just downvotes,
I bring it up only because it's strictly against the rules to use downvote in disagreement. I haven't insulted or inflamed anyone and yet people's reactions are to be offended.
>Your core point is obvious to all readers.
Precisely my challenge is that it is not.
What kind of echo chamber of privilege is hn where this kind of advice passes for insightful? It's basically like this: guys if you have a million dollars you shouldn't spend it on ABC you should spend it on XYZ.
Well I've got news for you: most people don't have a choice about what they do so whether they want hard problems or not is completely moot. They do the job that pays them to eat and have shelter and build a family. And yes I'm talking even about software engineers.
You should instead be writing about how grateful you are that you've had all the opportunity you've had and how you're actively working to empower others to have just as much (and not with some bs startup that extracts value).
I think you offended someone. HN really needs to show the flaggers username so there can be more checks and balances against this kind of emotional censoring.
As for the blog, the guy does sound self-indulgent but he still makes a reasonable point.
>I don’t see why you would get downvoted for this. Your statement sounds reasonable to me.
Because hn is very fragile and sensitive about words like "white", "male", "privilege", "elite", "ivy league".
Time and Time again I've been downvoted for mentioning these things when they are germaine irrespective of anything in the content of my comments.
Laughing at people "chasing you to downvote you" strikes me as the same kind of cynicism and hostility that encouraged people to downvote you before. One possibility is that the voters of hackernews are too fragile to handle your potent truths. Another is that you are making banal observations in a hostile way and people are simply downvoting you to signal that such comments aren't appreciated.
I already responded to this accusation. I asked you in particular to point out where I used race and gender problematically. here it in the first response to you:
>>Judging people for that, or holding it against them, strikes me as objectionable.
>Just to be precise I'd like for you to point out to me where I made a value judgment of the author (rather than the article).
You have not but you continue to claim I have. That's very convenient isn't it?
just to recapitulate: this is the only place i've mentioned race and class and gender:
> smart privileged person (usually elite educated white guy) decides to pontificate
what exactly about this is unacceptable in the least?
To bring up that race and gender and class inform biases of an author is not pejorative unless you have a vested interest in protecting that bias.
I am cynical because I write very precisely and very clearly and do not use "purple" language and yet the supposedly astute readers of hn still react viscerally rather than dispassionately. How can you blame me? These kinds of conversations tacitly verboten on hn because they are heavily censured.
If I said that comments like yours are frequently written by Jewish transsexuals, you might object to that. You might, at the very least, think it's a weird thing I believe, to ascribe patterns of thinking and writing based on gender or ethnicity. You might also think, even if you couldn't exactly pin down how this belief of mine was problematic, that it represented a kind of belief that would be better off not shared.
"Hey, I'm not saying anything bad about Jewish transsexuals, just observing that they regularly write comments like this and get defensive when I point it out!" If I replied like that, you might think I was just gaslighting you rather than having a genuine discussion.
Regarding how I can blame you - I have already made this clear. You (negatively) characterize people based on their race and gender and ascribe properties to them. The central idea of your comment, that not everyone is in a position to choose what to work on, is very obvious and you deliver it with hostility and cynicism as if you were sharing verboten secrets.
So again I challenge you directly quote my value judgments of the author. You can't though. Because none were made because my only point is that advice is facile for whom it is relevant and impractical for everyone else.
>Hey, I'm not saying anything bad about Jewish transsexuals...
I have no idea where you pulled this one from but let's run with it: if I saw comments and articles being written by Jewish Israelis about the impossibility for various reasons of the two state solution I would absolutely point that out without a shred of shame or cognitive dissonance.
>You (negatively) characterize people based on their race and gender and ascribe properties to them.
Show me where I ascribe a single negative property to the author? I explicitly said many many many times that the article is what I'm impugning. I said the writing is self-indulgent and the writing is self-aggrandizing. You can come to his defense all you want but he's not under attack - the facile categorical imperatives are.
Even if I weren't crystal clear in the initial comment every single one afterwards has underscored that I'm talking about the article. But you (and everyone that downvotes) willfully misconstrues in order to reaffirm their own allergy.
>very obvious and you deliver it with hostility and cynicism as if you were sharing verboten secrets.
I'll say it again: if that were obvious this post wouldn't have gotten traction.
Edit: you know what's beyond aggravating about having these meta-debates with people like you? The complete and utter lack of empathy on your part for anyone but this supposedly aggrieved/offended person.
Do you understand how obnoxious it is to come to hn and be ambushed by this kind of humble-brag jibbering? We don't all live in this world and it is all kinds of disappointing to read this constantly. I choose to avoid it on every other media channel (I don't use fb or ig etc).I don't understand why this stuff gets posted here under the guise of "startup culture". It's personal brand building! It belongs in an issue of people magazine rather than a tech site (there's nary a technical issue raised in the entire 1000 words). I say ambushed because I confused this person with Jeremy Kuhn and figured the article was going to be about np approximations.
>One possibility is that the voters of hackernews are too fragile to handle your potent truths.
This is it, honestly.
So I think less so hard problems and more so learning opportunities.
Are you saying fraud is justified if a business is boring?
http://we-yun.com/book/%E5%9B%BE%E6%95%B0%E6%8D%AE%E5%BA%93%...
There’s also no such thing as a CRUD app - or rather, there is, but it won’t meet anybody’s requirements as “just” a CRUD app and will require a lot of (unique, interesting, challenging) customization before it’s actually helping anybody do anything.
Well of course.
Unfortunately this is no more helpful than stating that Muhammad Ali usually doesn't have a problem with street crime. It does not make a generalizeable approach to the problem.
The actual problem he's describing is a lot like being a great fighter. It is not so much about utterly defeating your opponent in one narrow skill, ignoring everything else. It is about being a little better than them in one area and not fucking up in any other ("easy") area. You can be the best at giving punches on the planet, it will do zero good if you easily loose your balance. Even in already the artificially very limited area of competition fighting, you have to be decent at 10 skills, and good at one. In the real world to solve general problems you have to be decent at 100 skills, from tax accounting to sales, from algorithm analysis to team building. None of these you can be a disaster at.
Even after the big "hard" problem gets solved, there's a gold rush of a huge amount of more ordinary work to pick the low-hanging fruit. Those aren't usually hard problems, but finding relatively obvious solutions for the first time. That wheel will be invented over and over for each sub-domain and specific set of requirements, and will gradually come to look like yet-another-TODO-app as everybody craves the next big leap. But until it comes, there remains a lot of room for making somebody's life just a little better by re-applying the last one for the 999th time.
Anyway, impact is more important than complexity, and not quite as obvious.
A hard problem is climate change, or managing energy market, or figuring new recycling chemistry. Perhaps providing specific medical care in safe manner, or reducing health problems. Providing food or housingfor 10 billion people, that's a hard problem. Getting everyone free education of good quality is a hard problem. Electronic voting is a hard problem.
Hard problems are generally ignored. They do not have obviously actionable solutions.
Complicated problems tend to have many solutions or partial solutions. Additionally it's easy to create a hard problem with an unnecessary solution to a non-problem, see that Wave thing he mentions. (There are many other workable and cheap loan solutions.)
Or fool yourself that you're actually solving any real problem. That typically happens if you define goal without consulting the subjects. (This Wave thing smells of it.)