Frequently Unasked Question #6
What's your problem?
Edited Transcript
To start your journey with Dialogue as a Service (DaaS), take the first step: submit your problem statement. In this video, I offer you support with this step by sharing my own problem statement.
My problem is that Substack doesn’t work for me, at least not yet, and I want it to work. That means something isn’t happening the way I want it to happen. I don’t understand why, and I want to understand, but more importantly, I want it to work. So that’s my problem.
The problem may seem straightforward and amenable to any number of solutions one can find easily with a Google search or a question submitted to an AI. But the problem is also a pseudo-problem; it seems anything but straightforward once you think about it. For example, it’s also true that Substack is working beautifully for me in countless unanticipated ways. At the the same time, the problem statement stands.
That’s why, I work on my problem daily through DaaS. I’m not only a provider but also a consumer — but still, largely, an audience of one. My goal is to change that.
There are dates by which I’d like to do certain things. But those may be the details where the devil hides. The purpose here is to give you an example of how simple this process can be…the process of formulating a problem statement.
The struggle with the devil in the details takes time. The kind of engagements I’m trying to start should last at least a year, but I welcome monthly subscribers too.
Regardless of the subscription tier, the work begins with your problem statement, not mine. Please email your statement to daasnow@proton.me then join me for Seven Days In Dialogue.
Elaborations
I think of DaaS as an alternative to somnabulism and somnabulist approaches to problem-solving. The somnambulist defaults can take many forms. Consider, for example, opinions that start with “We should do something about…”
In my experience with people possessed by such opinions, it doesn’t matter whether we fill in the blank with mentally ill homeless people or the rate of inflation. To paraphrase G.K. Chesterton, the problem for somnambulists isn’t that they can’t see a solution; it’s that they can’t see the problem.
Learning to see the problem requires courage, including intellectual courage— and including courage with low potential upside.
“What we do lack though is courage that has low potential upside: that is, not much to be gained from it. And I am increasingly convinced this type of courage has always been even more rare than the high potential upside type. It requires one to not only have high risk tolerance, but also ignore one’s self-interest — two traits are already rare to begin with, and even rarer together. It requires one to be a sort of Joan of Arc of intellectual life.”
This message may not be the best way to sell subscriptions, but it’s the right message for this moment. If you agree, spread the word.