Hello,
I came across this question in one of the online blogs and thought it was very interesting.
"An asteroid is going to hit the earth and destroy 100% of it. You have several options: create a missile to destroy it (blowing it into several particles which will still impact the earth but destroy only 50%), or create a missile to push it out of the way (this only has a 50% chance of working though). Which alternative do you pick?"
How do you structure something like this? What is the expectation for a prompt like this? Is it sufficient to just lay out an approach or is it an estimation of probability type of case?
Thanks.
Hi Ian, thank you for your thoughts. The way I am thinking about this is as follows: Supposing that the objective is to save humanity, I would like to look at four broad factors - Technical aspects related to missiles, Human capabilities, and trade-offs. 1. Technical aspects - a. difference between technology of both missiles; b. how much time will it take to build each missile; c. Is it better to build one vs the other in terms of resources available; 2 - Human capabilities - a. Does it need international cooperation? If so, what is the timeline; b - is there a conflict of interest between countries; c - who will lead the mission; d - technical expertise; e - prior experience; trade-offs - a. difference between quality of life; b - can we say which 50% part of the world will be destroyed eg: Antarctica vs America? I apologize for the funky formatting. I am unable to do it the usual way. I would love your feedback on this structure. Thanks
I think this is very structured and good!
However, again, just be careful....do you need all of that? Or, is it as simple as just clarifying...what do we care about most?
You are at risk of overcomplicating a problem to sound smart. It's easy to make thinks complicated, hard to make them simple :)
My main question is: Do any of your points change the expected outcome? Or are they all already embedded in that 50% vs 100%?