Want to Take On An Open/Unsolved Problem?

CexpTretical writes "The accumulation and focusing of knowledge may be the noblest use or purpose of the internet. There are plenty of open or unsolved problems left for this generation. Why not spend some of your time in the dark of this winter working on one of the big problems facing humanity? Open problems exists in almost every field of study. Wikipedia maintains a small list of them and at least one international group called the Union of International Associations maintains a database of open problems." Which problem do you want to see cracked first? Are you already working on one of these big issues?

Comments

How about somebody taking on the problem of ...

[kunakida]

how to list the world's problems.

Seriously. The database sucked.
If I wanted to find a problem to tackle, just finding a good one is problem enough.

How about getting the problems
-listed by multiple tags
-filterable by area of interest, and skillset required
-prioritized by relevance to science, to humanity, to marketability
-sorted by difficulty, number of extant participants

If you can't communicate why something is a problem, then you have two problems.

Re:How about somebody taking on the problem of ...

[constantnormal]

"If you can't communicate why something is a problem, then you have two problems."

If we knew enough about the problems to do all the categorizations you suggest, then we would be pretty well on the way to solving them. But you're right about the so-called "database" of problems maintained by the UIA. They seem to be missing a description of the problem in many cases. I guess they confuse a name with a description.

The Wikipedia list of unsolved problems is categorized by the discipline of science that they are (apparently) most pertinent to. In some cases, the same problem is listed multiple times. I find it to be a nice set of problems, but curiously brief. If these are all of the big unsolved problems, then we have a distinct lack of imagination.

As to how one would go about ranking them as to difficulty, if you can do that even with problems that we know the answers to, you're a better man than I. In fact, I think that the question of how to rank problems by the difficulty they present is yet another unsolved problem. It very likely encompasses the framework of logic used to describe and solve the problem, with some problems that are quite simple in a sufficiently complex world-view being conundrums in a simpler world view.

Re:How about somebody taking on the problem of ...

[syousef]

Actually he obtained his doctorate the same year he published his Annus Mirabilis papers
See:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Einstein#Works_and_do ctorate

He certainly didn't wait until he had this formal education to think about relativity. He'd done most of the ground work years before. The setting was a much less formal one in which he started out with learning difficulties once fascinated by the mathematics largely taught himself and worked hard until he was outdoing his tutors.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Einstein
"From 1894, following the failure of Hermann Einstein's electrochemical business, the Einsteins moved to Milan and proceeded to Pavia after a few months. Einstein's first scientific work, called "The Investigation of the State of Aether in Magnetic Fields", was written contemporaneously for one of his uncles. Albert remained in Munich to finish his schooling, but only completed one term before leaving the gymnasium in the spring of 1895 to join his family in Pavia. He quit a year and a half before the final examinations, convincing the school to let him go with a medical note from a friendly doctor, but this meant that he had no secondary-school certificate.[4] That same year, at age 16, he performed a famous thought experiment by trying to visualize what it would be like to ride alongside a light beam. He realized that, according to Maxwell's equations, light waves would obey the principle of relativity: the speed of the light would always be constant, no matter what the velocity of the observer. This conclusion would later become one of the two postulates of special relativity"

There are plenty of biographies on Einstein that go into more detail. I've read a couple.

object to definition of "Open Problem"

[Anonymous Coward]

from link in story: "... for which a solution is known to exist but which has not yet been solved". For many open problems, a solution is not known to exist. Indeed, many open problems turn out to have no solution. An example is if no solution can be derived from the axiomatic system in question, since the answer is "independent" of all the axioms, or other times the solution can be the proof that no solution can exist, e.g. for the halting problem. It was an open problem, you were looking for an algorithm, and bam, some wise guy proves that you can't find it. In that case, certainly, a solution was not "known to exist".

Try this at home

[shma]

Here's one from mathematics that caught my eye. The goal is to find out whether 78,557 is the lowest Sierpinski* number. All but 8 candidates have been eliminated and there's a project called 17 or bust which is working on the last eight. As their name suggests, the project has personally eliminated 9 numbers already.

* Some of you may recognize Sierpinski from the carpet which bears his name.

Re:One of the problems taken from wikipedia in eco

[UbuntuDupe]

Very funny, but I actually consider that the most important question of all, because if you know the answer to that, you can generate the wealth necessary to trivially solve all of the others. Look at all the nations of the world and observe what a huge difference the choice of government makes!

It's also the hardest because it's extremely difficult to perform a scientific experiment to test it. There are millions of variables to control, and uncontrollable, and you can't grab X governments at random and make them do something, dividing them neatly into control and test groups. (That's why it's hard for people to come to agreement about the matter.)

Could MMORPG's and realistic computer models of human economic behavior change this? Maybe.

Re:I read it on the internet

[Anonymous Coward]

Sadly, while I'd like to make a jab like that implying that as the Democrats took Congress, government size tripled... the Republicans of the last six years haven't exactly been the lean mean spending-cutting machines that they once could portray themselves as.

Where's a Libertarian when you need one?

I've been working on something similar, feedback?

[chrisgagne]

Take a look at open-source software. It's collaborative, usually high-quality, and responsive to people's wants and needs. Apache and Linux, for instance, are two prime examples of how people coming together can do quite a bit in the world, even if in a limited way. Other fields of pursuit have an opportunity to capitalize the lessons learned in the software industry. Applying some of these lessons to the nonprofit sector could result in a greater net impact for society. It is possible to apply ingenuity to hundreds of real-world problems if we have a collaborative organizational structure. We've seen a couple of examples. For instance, look at http://openprosthetics.org/. This group has applied the open-source model to design better prosthetics, and a few of their prototypes are better than anything currently available on the market. I've been working on researching this topic for the last three years. Here's my story: In December of '03, I read an article in the New York Times about the World Bank Development Marketplace. A group of farmers in Zimbabwe struggled with a herd of elephants trampling their crops. With a $108,000 grant from the bank, they discovered that planting chili peppers around their crops deterred the elephants and provided a valuable cash crop. I asked a friend, Sandy, what she would do to prevent elephants from eating her crops. Pulling from her childhood experience, she suggested without coaching that the farmers plant marigolds around their crops. After all, marigolds kept the deer out of her vegetable patch! Perhaps marigolds would not deter an elephant. Suppose, then, that Sandy were a member of an online group hosted by Usenet newsgroups, Yahoo! Groups, or Google Groups, seeking a solution to the elephant problem. I am certain that she would have made a similar suggestion, and that the group probably would have recognized both its strengths and weaknesses. There is no guarantee, however, that this group would include the botanist, zoologist, or ecologist necessary to explore this seed of an idea. Let's then consider another recent innovation, the social network. One such network, Friendster, has a good search engine that permits finding people based on their interests. 210 people in my "network" have botany as an interest. 252 people enjoy elephants. 17 like Zimbabwe. Over 1,000 are interested in sustainable development. Might any of them be willing to spend five minutes to answer, "Are there any plants elephants don't like?" Over the last three years, I've developed a site called Cerbumi.org ("to brainstorm" in Esperanto) that combine these two tools. A carefully-designed mailing list system allows for rapid real-time discussion and brainstorming, while a flexible membership database allows project facilitators and other members to find expert advice. Built-in reputation-scoring and availability tools allow members to dictate clearly how willing they are to respond to certain kinds of inquires, and to whom. An executive summary is located at http://about.cerbumi.org/executiveSummary, and a Flash-based demonstration is located at http://cerbumi.org/flash/. What are your thoughts? Do you think this is a useful tool? Would you be willing to spend a few minutes of your time working on various projects?

one answer

[Anonymous Coward]

"What caused the great depression?"

That's an easy one. It was a planned controlled crash due to the ability of the private central bankers (who had just relatively recently wrested control of the currency from the actual people) and the big brokerage houses to manipulate the currency supply and the issuance and trading of stocks. It was designed as a heist, a big one, a wealth transference gambit, hidden under color of law and "whoops, an unfortunate accident!". It was an amazing success. They keep doing it, too, just now they have gotten more sophisticated and do it on smaller but longer time scales. they realise huge crashes/heists could lead to "social instability" where their own exalted personages would be in physical peril, so they don't go that far anymore, just close enough.

On a small scale, here is an example that is easy to see, you cannot just "save money" and have it retain value. They artificially inflate the money supply well past what true productivity would indicate as a balanced and accurate growth rate. This is called inflation. So, to "beat inflation", and not have your money "drop in worth", they highly recommend to you that you invest in "stocks", which they also control. And the stocks of today bear little resemblance to the true original meaning, in design or practice. They maintain the name for the most part, and that's it. These create the problem, then offer you *their* solution to the problem, which still goes to benefit them, not you. Also see:Dialectic.

It's a long running con, people get sucked into it all the time, because without careful thought and planning, you will "lose" no matter how hard you work or try to save. You may not find out you have lost until years later, but believest thou, it is designed to make you lose, and to keep you satisfied up to that point with poker chip monopoly numbers.

You see, they really like the notions of aristocracy, with them as the aristocrats. This is no longer quite as popular as it used to be, because the peons don't like that notion or word, so they had to come up with a dodge where they can hide behind other titles and practices, to keep their serfs faked out, but for all practical purposes,they can still live the same way-as aristocrats-as they always did. And this goes on for generations.

Our own US founding fathers warned us about both notions. They warned against private central banks controlling the currency, in detail I might add, with all the legitimate reasons (two presidents were..ousted in a rather severe manner when trying to break that up,as the problem kept being reintroduced, Lincoln and JFK to be specific), and they also set up the public charter system for corporations originally to first be of the public interest, and any profits for the corporations were secondary, and had to always default to being of the public interest when in doubt.

Notice both those things are no longer true, and now we have a lot of problems.

And before the brainwashed economists troll their way in with their indignant stutterings, answer one question-how many shares of stock do you hold in any of the 12 private federal reserve banks? Oh ya, that's right, you don't, and can't, it's a closed system. Well, who owns it then? Answer, other banks, domestic and foreign, who are allowed to "loan" money, and then charge interest to you, in persona and through your alleged government, from a supply that doesn't exist, has never been audited, and has no official oversight. They can create this supply at will, a huge amount. That's where the "fractional" in fractional reserve banking comes from. And what else do these banks do? Well, they "invest", like in ...media companies. Go do some research and see who actually is the ultimate controller of the MSM in its various forms. We had another president who tried to warn his people about it. see:Ike, retirement speech

Sweet deal for them right? A perpetual modern aristocracy, except in name. The

Re:One of the problems taken from wikipedia in eco

[UbuntuDupe]

"Trivial" might have been an exaggeration, but the point remains: if economic resources are nearly superabundant, you can devote a lot more people to tasks like proving mathematical theorems, and more importantly, you will have better mathematical training. It's true that you don't really need lots of economic resources* to prove Fermat's Last Theorem, as anyone can in theory, arrive at the answer. It just helps immensely.

*I don't want to say "money", because what's important is what the money lays a claim to. You seem to be equating money with wealth, which is emphatically not the case. Wealth is what people value; money is an intermediate good in the exchange of wealth. You can easily create more money, but you can not easily create the value of the things it lays claim to. Having the right political/economic system is what I believe would have the largest long term wealth on the ability to provide wealth -- the things people value.

Re:The ultimate problems?

[Whiteox]

OK. The 'Sock Conundrum'
I've given up on this and now, regularly buy socks weekly. I know the cost can be prohibitive, but if you wear them only once, you can get 5 pairs for under $5 if you look around.
There's no need to worry about quality, 'cause you only wear them once. There is no frustration because you know exactly where your socks are at all times - either in a shopping bag with sales tags on them, or in the bin.
There are other advantages that are too numerous to list here.
The way I manage to budget for them is to eat one burger less per week. The trick is however is to find a reliable sock merchant.

Gilligan's Island was thoroughly understood by the Thermians - "Thermians, a peaceful and naïve cephalopod-like alien race who, having received twenty-year old transmissions of.... (Gilligan's Island) from Earth, and having no concept of fiction, have interpreted the show as "historical documents". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galaxy_Quest

So if you re-view Gilligan's Island as a 'History' then the apparent incongruencies are explained away by historical bias.

"Why do good things happen to people who aren't me?" Next Week's Lotto Sweepstake's Result: xx xx x xx xx xx (xx) (xx)

42? 6 x 7!

The Gettier problem

[mdsolar]

The Getties problem came up as an unsolved problem in epistemology, the theory of knowledge. It looks like a problem in unknown knowns to get my former boss backwards. It is listed at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unsolved_problems_in_ philosophy.

[T]wo men, Smith and Jones, who are awaiting the results of their applications for the same job. Each man has ten coins in his pocket. Smith has excellent reasons to believe that Jones will get the job and, furthermore, knows that Jones has ten coins in his pocket (he recently counted them). From this Smith infers, "the man who will get the job has ten coins in his pocket." However, Smith is unaware that he has ten coins in his own pocket. Furthermore, Smith, not Jones, is going to get the job. While Smith has strong evidence to believe that Jones will get the job, he is wrong. Smith has a justified true belief that a man with ten coins in his pocket will get the job; however, according to Gettier, Smith does not know that a man with ten coins in his pocket will get the job, because Smith's belief is "...true in virtue of the number of coins in Smith's pocket, while Smith does not know how many coins are in Smith's pocket, and bases his belief...on a count of the coins in Jones's pocket, whom he falsely believes to be the man who will get the job."

This seems to have something to do with the answer I sometimes give my son when he ask how to spell a word and I answer "With letters."

The problem looks to me to be one of degenerate labeling when passing by reference. Basically, if Smith wants to believe something about people with coins in their pockets he is getting the answer to the question: some people have applied for a job, will one of them get it? If you redirect by the number of coins in a pocket, but you have not checked that this is a unique label, then the question ends up meaning something other than you think it means. The statement about the man with ten coins getting the job is true for the same reason that "A or not A" is true. Regardless of coins, there is no knowledge about the answer to the apparent question (who will be offered the job) until the decision has been made, and since neither Smith nor Jones make that decision, thay can't know its outcome till they are told.

If anyone has worked on this I'd like to hear if this solution has already been discounted.
--
Power your bright ideas with solar: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-users -selling-solar.html

Re:The Gettier problem

[Whiteox]

Everything I've read in response to your initial post clarifies the problem of objectivity. To simplify- Just because Smith believes something to be true, even by 'real evidence' (Jones's 10 coins), can mean that:

1. It really is false - Jones WILL be employed
2. It is true - Smith will be employed
3. It doesn't matter who gets employed as both have met the same condition for employment.

That is a sub-set, independently existing without regard to the real knowledge of the criteria or the objective truth. To say that Smith has objective truth is thus wrong, even though he (and we as witness) knows it is 'justified knowledge'.

Don't read too much into Gettier, as it was only a tool to try and circumvent 'faith'.

This restates the problem in a simpler form:

Whiteox: "I know there is a God. I have proof! I have justifiable knowledge that God exists"
MDSolar; "That's nice. I'm happy for you."

So when God opens up the heavens and makes them both realise that God exists (without faith) - then objective truth be known.

Re:I read it on the internet

[Anonymous Coward]

Years, not months. The size of the deficit is um........... Staggering. The amazing part is how much money can be spent on getting nothing at all done.

Re:Does software count?

[Tablizer]

Constraints could be added as needed, including "type" constraints. It would be flexible that way. Plus, the static model is hard to write "meta" features with. And it could be useful for quick prototyping.

One example is a relational GUI system. Different widgets have different attributes. Either you make an entity for each widget, or you make the attributes dynamic. Existing RDBMS don't handle this problem very well, and that is perhaps why we have crap like DOM. If relational tools were more flexible, then DOM wouldn't exist.

What is Music?

[Philip Dorrell]

What happens inside our minds when we listen to music? Why does enjoying music or being able to enjoy music make us have more grandchildren? What is the formula for calculating musicality?

Unsolved problems in philosophy

[Anonymous Coward]

Employment