Important problems are more interesting than hard ones

The underlying goal was never difficulty — it was leverage. Using skills to have the most possible impact. School made difficulty a proxy for leverage, but it was always a proxy, not the thing itself.

Hard problems in school: narrow ceiling (A+), artificial constraints, no real stakes. Important problems in the real world: ceiling measured in lives changed, real constraints, real stakes. The latter turns out to be more engaging, not less.

The fear — that easy technical work means boring work — assumes the interesting part is technical difficulty. It isn't. The interesting part is the gap between where things are and where they could be. Closing that gap with whatever tools fit is the game. The tools don't need to be fancy.

Given a big enough goal, the returns to intelligence are more evenly distributed across problem types than you'd expect.

Source claim: Important problems are more engaging than hard ones because the ceiling and stakes are higher — difficulty is a poor proxy for what actually makes work interesting.