Why problems are either very easy or very hard

Natural hurdles, human hurdles.   Did you notice? It’s quite uncommon to face medium difficulty problems. In your everyday life you are sometimes tasked to solve issues that seem impossible to come to grips with. There are mysteries that seem way bigger than our puny minds. We often get to comment on issues that on the contrary appear quite easy to deal with, and you are left wondering why people are still struggling with them. But you rarely seem to encounter intermediate level problems. How come?   Let’s put down some examples (I’ll alienate some readers in the process).   Producing a new vaccine requires an excellent research team and years of work, and…

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Behold: a hoax buster in total anti-Trump meltdown

How to ruin your reputation. Paolo Attivissimo is a tech journalist and a semi-celebrity; he’s by far the most prominent debunker in the Italian language web. His work to dispel myths and conspiracy theories is well known and appreciated (including by yours truly): among other things, he and his collaborators created websites dedicated to debunking  9/11 conspiracy theories, or the Moonlanding hoaxes (in Italian). Well, he just became unhinged. A few days ago, he published an embarrassing, painful-to-read article against Donald Trump. Here it is (in Italian): FAQ: perché ce l’ho con Trump presidente? Perché sono un debunker (FAQ: why am I mad at President Trump? Because I’m a debunker). Its’ just pathetic: he sounds…

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