problem-solving

"[Wicked problems are] social problems which are ill formulated, where the information is confusing, where there are many clients and decision-makers with conflicting values, and where the ramifications in the whole system are thoroughly confusing."

"“Wicked problems.” It just says it all. Persistent social problems—poverty, food insecurity, climate change, drug addiction, pollution, and the list goes on—seem aptly condemned as wicked. But what makes them wicked, and what are we to do about them?"

"# The planner has no right to be wrong."

"# The existence of a discrepancy representing a wicked problem can be explained in numerous ways. The choice of explanation determines the nature of the problem’s resolution."

"# Every wicked problem can be considered to be a symptom of another problem."

"# Every wicked problem is essentially unique."

"# Wicked problems do not have an enumerable (or exhaustively desirable) set of potential solutions, nor is there a well-described set of permissible operations that may be incorporated into the plan."

"# Every solution to a wicked problem is a “one-shot operation”; because there is no opportunity to learn by trial-and-error, every attempt counts significantly."

"# There is no immediate and no ultimate test of a solution to a wicked problem."

"# Solutions to wicked problems are not true-or-false, but goodor-bad."

"# Wicked problems have no stopping rule."

"# There is no definitive formulation of a wicked problem."

"There are at least ten distinguishing properties of planning-type problems, 1 e wicked ones, that planners had better be alert to and which schall comment upon in turn..."

"The search for scientific bases for confronting problems of social policy is bound to fail because of the nature of these problems... Policy problems cannot be definitively described. Moreover, in a pluralistic society there is nothing like the indisputable public good; there is no objective definition of equity; policies that respond to social problems cannot be meaningfully correct or false; and it makes no sense to talk about "optimal solutions" to these problems... Even worse, there are no solutions in the sense of definitive answers."

"Climate change is a wicked problem… [and] there is no way to solve it without sacrificing something that society currently holds dear, and without thereby generating more problems. For example, shrinking the economy would reduce carbon emissions, but it would throw a lot of people out of work (in effect, we did trial runs during the financial crash of 2008 and the COVID pandemic of 2020; both times, carbon emissions plunged, yet everyone was eager to “get back to normal”). Building vast amounts of low-carbon energy-producing and energy-using infrastructure would also reduce emissions, but that would require tens of trillions of dollars of investment as well as enormous quantities of depleting, non-renewable minerals—the mining of which would generate pollution and destroy wildlife habitat."

"What makes a problem a problem is not that a large amount of search is required for its solution, but that a large amount would be required if a requisite level of intelligence were not applied."

"A problem never exists in isolation; it is surrounded by other problems in space and time. The more of the context of a problem that a scientist can comprehend, the greater are his chances of finding a truly adequate solution."

"Science fiction writers foresee the inevitable, and although problems and catastrophes may be inevitable, solutions are not."

"After 25 years of buying and supervising a great variety of businesses, Charlie and I have not learned how to solve difficult business problems. What we have learned is to avoid them. To the extent we have been successful, it is because we concentrated on identifying one-foot hurdles that we could step over because we acquired any ability to clear seven-footers."

"The problems of three little people don’t add up to a hill of beans in this crazy world."

"It is only insofar as some sort of order arises as a result of individual action but without being designed by any individual that a problem is raised."

"To think out a problem is not unlike drawing a caricature. You have to exaggerate the salient point and leave out that which is not typical. "To illustrate a principle," says Bagehot, "you must exaggerate much and you must omit much." As to the quantity of absolute truth in a thought: it seems to me the more comprehensive and unobjectionable a thought becomes, the more clumsy and unexciting it gets. I like half-truths of a certain kind — they are interesting and they stimulate."

"Basic human problems can have no final solutions."

"Problems or successes, they all are the results of our own actions. Karma. The philosophy of action is that no one else is the giver of peace or happiness. One's own karma, one's own actions are responsible to come to bring either happiness or success or whatever."

"You know where I'm from; you know what I represent. Got a problem? Say that then, say that then. Say that then, want a problem? Say that then, say that then."

"I spent a lifetime trying to avoid my own mental biases. (A) I rub my nose in my own mistakes. (B) I try to keep it simple and fundamental as I can. And I like the engineering concept of a margin of safety. I am a very blocking-and-tackling kind of a thinker. I just try and avoid being stupid. And I have a way of handling a lot of problems. I put them on what I call my too-hard pile. And I just leave them there. I'm not trying to succeed in my too-hard pile."

"If you think cryptography is the answer to your problem, then you don't know what your problem is."

"Here's how to look at problems: Problems are guidelines, not stop signs!"

"When you create a problem, you create pain. All it takes is a simple choice, a simple decision: no matter what happens, I will create no more pain for myself. I will create no more problems. Although it is a simple choice, it is also very radical. You won' t make that choice unless you are truly fed up with suffering, unless you have truly had enough. And you won't be able to go through with it unless you access the power of the Now. If you create no more pain for yourself, then you create no more pain for others. You also no longer contaminate the beautiful Earth, your inner space, and the collective human psyche with the negativity of problem-making. If you have ever been in a life-or-death emergency situation, you will know that it wasn't a problem. The mind didn't have time to fool around and make it into a problem. In a true emergency, the mind stops; you become totally present in the Now, and something infinitely more powerful takes over. This is why there are many reports of ordinary people suddenly becoming capable of incredibly courageous deeds. In any emergency, either you survive or you don't. Either way, it is not a problem."

"As the egoic mode of consciousness and all the social, political, and economic structures that it created enter the final stage of collapse, the relationships between men and women reflect the deep state of crisis in which humanity now finds itself. As humans have become increasingly identified with their mind, most relationships are not rooted in Being and so turn into a source of pain and become dominated by problems and conflict."

"A good way to define alcohol abuse is this: If it causes a problem, it is a problem."

"The main source of problems is solutions."

"At a given moment, the time may simply not be ripe to solve a particular problem. Progress on something else might be needed first, and the necessary clue might come from a different direction. In the case of quantum gravity, the unexpected direction was string theory."

"A problem never exists in isolation; it is surrounded by other problems in space and time. The more of the context of a problem that a scientist can comprehend, the greater are his chances of finding a truly adequate solution."

"Answers to problems can come from any country, however little."

"The design of my philosophical life is based on an examination of the following question: is it possible to secure improvement in the human condition by means of the human intellect? The verb 'to secure' is (for me) terribly important, because problem solving often appears to produce improvement, but the so-called 'solution' often makes matters worse in the larger system..."

"The concern of OR with finding an optimum decision, policy, or design is one of its essential characteristics. It does not seek merely to define a better solution to a problem than the one in use; it seeks the best solution... [It] can be characterized as the application of scientific methods, techniques, and tools to problems involving the operations of systems so as to provide those in control of the operations with optimum solutions to the problems."

"In mathematics the art of asking questions is more valuable than solving problems."

"You had to know the facts if you were ever going to find the solutions."

"Managers within organizations sometimes confront a type of problem that is difficult to solve, in part, because the problems involve many stakeholders with diverse perspectives. The different assumptions from each perspective result in differing views of the problem and potential solutions. It is difficult to produce a satisfactory potential solution when the formulation of the problem definition is the major concern and when applying a potential solution risks unintended consequences. Churchman (1967, p. 141) writes that the solutions proposed to solve these problems "often turned out to be worse than the symptoms""

"The capacity of the human mind for formulating and solving complex problems is very small compared with the size of the problems whose solution is required for objectively rational behavior in the real world—or even for a reasonable approximation to such objective rationality."

"In the literature of problem solving, the topic I am now taking up is called "problem representation." In the past 30 years, a great deal has been learned about how people solve problems by searching selectively through a problem space defined by a particular problem representation. Much less has been learned about how people acquire a representation for dealing with a new problem—one they haven't previously encountered."

"If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate."

"This provides us with our first major clue to the solutions of the problem. Even if the left cannot see the world as full of potentiality, it can hold on to the moments of insight and refuse to let go of them. If I know that present difficulties will end in triumph, I am un-discourageable; I merely have to know it intellectually. And if I can 'know' that reality actually has a third dimension, I shall never fall into the mistake of complaining that there is nothing new under the sun and that life is futile."

"Social workers help people increase their capacities for problem solving and coping, and they help them obtain needed resources, facilitate interactions between individuals and between people and their environments, make organizations responsible to people, and influence social policies."

"You have to start with the truth. The truth is the only way that we can get anywhere. Because any decision-making that is based upon lies or ignorance can't lead to a good conclusion."

"If you think there is nothing problematic or mysterious about a symbol system solving problems, then you are a child of today, whose views have been formed since mid-century. Plato (and by his account, Socrates) found difficulty understanding even how problems could be entertained, much less how they could be solved. Let me remind you of how he posed the conundrum in the Meno: And how will you inquire, Socrates, into that which you know not? What will you put forth as the subject of inquiry? And if you find what you want, how will you ever know that this is what you did not know?"

"Swamp Thing: Always guns. Are they...your only...solution? You can shoot...the animals...in the forest...but you cannot shoot the forest."

"So much of our human resourcefulness comes from having multiple ways to describe the same situations—so that each one of those different perspectives may help us to get around the deficiencies of the other ones."

"It makes sense to ask, "Which methods might work for the problem I'm facing—and which representations are likely to work well with those methods? ...Most computer programs still, today, can do only one particular kind of task, using only a single representation—whereas our human brains accumulate multiple ways to describe each of the Types of Problem we face. ...we need to learn how to switch to another alternative whenever the method we're using fails."