The Future?

A math professor made a joke on our math assignment, but everyone thought it was a real, solvable question, because we're so used to being asked to do things we don't know how to do. Several of us were up all night trying to figure out how to solve the problem with the insufficient information provided.
But then, that's what we're always up all night doing. And what everyone worth listening to in science spends most of their time doing.
They're training the next generation of engineers by throwing problems at us that we can't solve- and some that no one can solve. This one was a joke, but I still haven't decided: I think it might have been one of our more worthwhile assignments, to find out that the problem we were working on was not designed to be solved.
In any case, I think they're doing it right: we should be prepared to spend much longer than all night failing to answer questions. That's what we're here for.

Things that are Wrong with the World

To get ideas for my psych class, I went around asking people what was wrong with the world.

I got 133 responses, but that’s too long a list to type up. Here are some of the more relevant/common ones:

1. Stress from classes

2. You can’t feed the food you didn’t finish to starving children

3. Transparency issues (you can’t read people’s minds)

4. Complacency

5. Leadership structures

6. People who think there’s nothing wrong

7. People who don’t think or ask questions

8. People who are too self absorbed

9. People

10. Today

11. People who don’t live in today

12. Not enough meaningful human interactions

13. Fear of change

14. Fear of communication

15. Fear of strangers

16. Fear of commitment

17. Fear of being blunt/straightforward

18. Inconsiderate people

19. Loneliness

Out of this list, I'm hoping to derive something concrete enough to change in the world around me. I haven't picked anything specific yet, but what strikes me is the commonality of the conclusion that the biggest problems our world faces are people and human mental constructs. That means that not only are we our own greatest obstacles, but we know it. And most people are too frightened or self-satisfied to do anything about it.

Iut.