VIII : Problems Are Soluble - That Changes Everything
Why every 'impossible' problem is just a question we haven’t answered yet and how that belief powers progress.
The Night Apollo 13 Nearly Didn’t Come Home
On April 13, 1970, about 200,000 miles from Earth, an oxygen tank exploded on NASA’s Apollo 13 spacecraft. In an instant, what was meant to be the third manned mission to land on the Moon became a desperate fight for survival.
The crew’s life-support systems were crippled. Power was running out. Carbon dioxide was building up inside the cabin. No one had trained for this exact sequence of failures.
The easy response, the fatal response, would have been: “There’s nothing we can do.”
But Mission Control refused to accept that. In the hours that followed, engineers and astronauts improvised solutions with whatever materials were on board: plastic bags, duct tape, and cardboard, to build a makeshift CO₂ scrubber. They rerouted power. They redesigned flight procedures on the fly. Four days later, Apollo 13 splashed down safely in the Pacific Ocean.
What saved them wasn’t luck. It was the conviction that problems are solvable, even when the stakes are life and death, even when you have no precedent to follow.
The Core Idea in Simple Words
“Problems are soluble” sounds optimistic, almost childlike. But in David Deutsch’s formulation, it’s not wishful thinking. It’s a statement about the nature of reality and knowledge:
There are no limits in principle to what can be achieved, except the laws of physics
When something seems impossible, it usually means we just don’t know how yet
Progress is not magic; it’s the result of finding better explanations
This mindset reframes the world.
Instead of asking, “Is this possible?”, you start asking, “What do we need to know to make this possible?”
Why “Unsolvable” Often Means “Unsolved Yet”
History is littered with problems that seemed eternal, until they weren’t.
For thousands of years, smallpox was humanity’s most feared disease. It killed hundreds of millions, disfigured many more, and defied every treatment. People thought it was simply part of life. Then, in the 18th century, inoculation techniques emerged, and by the late 20th century, coordinated global vaccination campaigns eradicated smallpox entirely. What had been inevitable for millennia became nonexistent in a generation.
The key shift was recognizing that unsolved does not mean unsolvable. The difference between the two is often just a matter of explanation and persistence.
The Solubility Framework — A Mental Model for Progress
Think of problem-solving as a loop with four stages:
Frame: Define the problem precisely
Vague problems stay unsolved because they can’t be tackled directly. “We need to go to the Moon” is a goal. “We need a rocket capable of escaping Earth’s gravity with life support for three days” is a problem you can engineer toward.Explain: Build a theory for why things are the way they are
A good explanation points to what would have to change for the problem to disappear.Test: Try, fail, adjust
Problems yield to error correction, not blind faith.Scale: Once solved in one case, apply the solution widely
A single vaccine can lead to a global eradication program. A single computer can lead to a digital revolution.
This loop applies to both scientific and personal problems. Whether you’re curing a disease or fixing a workflow bottleneck, the process is the same: clarify, explain, test, expand.
A Historical Arc of Solved Problems
Ancient Rome: Aqueducts
Cities grew far beyond the reach of local water sources until Roman engineers built aqueducts that carried fresh water from distant springs, changing urban life forever.
Middle Ages: The Number Revolution
For centuries, European commerce was slowed by Roman numerals, cumbersome for calculations. Arabic numerals, with their zero and place value, transformed trade, accounting, and science.
Scientific Revolution: The Printing Press
Before Gutenberg, books were copied by hand, knowledge spread slowly, and literacy was rare. The printing press collapsed the cost of sharing ideas, accelerating the Renaissance.
20th Century: The Polio Vaccine
Polio outbreaks terrorized parents in the early 1900s. Within a decade of Jonas Salk’s vaccine, cases plummeted worldwide.
21st Century: CRISPR Gene Editing
Diseases once thought untouchable, from certain genetic disorders to crop blights, are now within reach of treatment or prevention.
Why Solubility Changes Civilization
A society that believes “problems are soluble” will:
Invest in research even when success isn’t guaranteed
Teach children curiosity instead of resignation
Treat failure as part of learning, not as proof of impossibility
The reverse is also true: cultures that see problems as fated tend to stagnate. They adjust to suffering instead of ending it.
Emotional Power: Belief as Fuel
Believing that problems can be solved doesn’t just shape science. It shapes resilience.
Marie Curie pursued the isolation of radium despite poverty and skepticism, ultimately transforming physics and medicine
Norman Borlaug developed high-yield crops that averted mass famine, earning the title “the man who saved a billion lives”
The Apollo 13 team kept their composure under crushing uncertainty because they assumed a solution must exist
What This Means for You
On a personal level, adopting a “solubility lens” changes how you respond to setbacks.
Instead of:
“I can’t do this.”
You think:
“I can’t do this yet. What knowledge am I missing?”
This shift helps you:
Avoid paralysis in complex challenges
Break down overwhelming goals into solvable pieces
Treat frustration as a signpost, not a wall
Critique & Caution
Deutsch’s optimism is powerful, but it’s not an excuse for recklessness.
Naive optimism can lead to wasted effort on physically impossible goals (e.g., perpetual motion machines)
Over-engineering can solve one problem while creating bigger ones (e.g., DDT wiping out pests but also harming ecosystems)
Moral hazard in assuming future solutions will fix our messes, can justify irresponsible choices now
The balance: act with the confidence that problems are solvable, but also with humility that we may not yet be the ones to solve them.
The Chilean Miners: Trapped and Rescued
On August 5 2010, 33 miners became trapped 2,300 feet underground in a collapsed Chilean mine. The situation seemed hopeless: the mine had flooded in parts, supplies were limited, and the world watched anxiously.
Engineers, rescue experts, and international teams coordinated a plan that combined drilling technology, physics, and human ingenuity. They tested multiple borehole designs, used specially designed capsules to lift each miner safely, and maintained morale through constant communication.
After 69 days underground, all 33 miners were rescued safely — a testament to meticulous planning, adaptive problem-solving, and the belief that no situation is truly unsolvable.
Takeaway: This rescue shows that even extreme, life-threatening challenges can be overcome when creativity, teamwork, and rigorous testing converge. Sometimes, survival depends on treating a problem as solvable with the right knowledge and tools.The Wright Brothers: Flight from Scratch
In 1903, the idea of humans taking to the sky in a heavier-than-air machine was considered almost fantasy. Many had tried and failed. But Orville and Wilbur Wright approached the problem differently: they treated flight as a question of knowledge, not luck.
They didn’t just build a plane; they built wind tunnels to test wing shapes, measured air currents meticulously, and documented every experiment. Each failure taught them something new about lift, drag, and control.
Their persistence paid off on December 17, 1903, when the first powered, controlled flight lifted into the air at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. The Wright brothers didn’t just invent a machine, they created a framework for understanding flight, laying the foundation for modern aviation.
Takeaway: Flight was possible not because someone had a brilliant guess, but because the Wrights built knowledge systematically, testing, learning, and refining until the solution emerged.The Green Revolution: Feeding a Growing World
In the 1960s, fears of global famine loomed large. Population growth was outpacing agricultural output in many parts of the world. Traditional farming methods seemed incapable of meeting the rising demand for food.
Enter Norman Borlaug, an agronomist who applied selective breeding, careful irrigation, and disease-resistant wheat strains to create high-yield crops. What seemed impossible, feeding billions without expanding farmland, became achievable.
The results were staggering: countries like Mexico, India, and Pakistan saw dramatic increases in wheat production, preventing famine for millions. Borlaug’s work didn’t just solve a technical problem; it demonstrated a universal principle: when we apply knowledge systematically, even seemingly insurmountable challenges can be overcome.
Takeaway: The Green Revolution is a real-world testament to “problems are soluble”, the combination of careful observation, experimentation, and bold application turned a global crisis into a story of human ingenuity.If problems are soluble, there is no ultimate ceiling.
The only permanent obstacles are physical laws — and those still leave room for virtually endless advancement.
This connects directly to the next topic, The Beginning of Infinity.
Civilization is a self-correcting, knowledge-creating system. The more we believe in solvability, the faster we build the capacity to tackle even greater challenges.
Where We Go Next
The idea that “problems are soluble” is not just a comforting belief. It is the foundation for every leap forward in history. Once you see it, you can’t unsee it — and you start to notice that many “limits” in your life are really just knowledge gaps.
In the next topic, we’ll zoom out even further — to explore what happens when a society fully embraces open-ended progress. If there’s no final frontier, what does that mean for science, culture, and the future of humanity?