∫ A thought on progress

Kernel:

A progress is made when we achieve hard things with reliability.

Over the past month, I have been immersed in a challenging task that required extensive trial and error to complete. This experience reminded me of how we, as humans, strive to make progress within our society. Before pursuing a goal, it's crucial to consider which goals are worthwhile and which are not.

Let's reduce ourselves to the basics for now. We can think of ourselves as something that demands resources. Then if anything would have any value for us, it would be something that suits our need, especially if that need is in high demand. So worth is an economic relativity that tells how much something has for supply against the demand.

However, humans are not that extremely passive. Each individual has the capability to acquire, thrive for the thing that we long for.

Given this venture, one possible definition of worth becomes the rarity of the occurrence of results against effort spent, or simply challenge. If we treat the space of such a challenge as a network of paths. The challenge may stem from either

a limited number of paths to achieve the result or
the probability of success being inherently low for all available paths.

(This is what we mean when we say something is difficult. It's often said that tasks worth pursuing only when they are difficult.)

In the first case, if we manage to identify a path, a better one, or the most optimal path, this endeavor can never be disregarded as progress.

But in the second case, simply finding more paths will not cut it; we must also marshal a significant reserve of attempts to generate enough successful outcomes. Only after that can we claim mastery on such a task.

To continue, let's consider the following questions:

What should an individual do? Should they choose an easily achievable goal and focus on finding the most reliable way to reach it, or venture further and seek a path, reliable or otherwise, to have a glimpse on a more challenging result?

I believe that both types of individuals are required. We need the first type (engineer) to make our life more efficient, more economical, more sustainable, or simply better. Historical figures that can be associated with this type are Henry Ford, Thomas Edison, Johannes Gutenberg, Alexander Fleming, Alexander Graham Bell, among other great engineers who had their hands on establishing working systems for us. But the second type (pioneer) will be the one who incites our society with the sense of discovery and indulge more people with new ideas and motives. Of this type, Albert Einstein, Isaac Newton, Archimedes, Leonhard Euler, Alan Turing, and many more scientists and mathematicians are those who had graced upon humanity with revolutionary ideas and defined the history of science as we know it.

Who will garner more acclaim? Those who uncover simple solutions and share them with everyone, or those who can accomplish difficult tasks?

My rule of thumb is this:

If you stumble upon a simple solution, share it with the world without commercializing it. You may hide your secret, but it would not be of value for long, especially in this information era where the whole world is connected.
But, if you manage to accomplish a challenging task though arduous and hardship, never offer your expertise for free. After all, the only thing in the world that holds real value is the effort to make something happen.

These are my opinions...