Is it possible to solve every problem in this world?

In my early career, I used to think that ALL problems in this world can be solved with 3 things: time, effort, and money. If we had all 3 things, I imagined a world where every single problem in this world could ultimately be solved.

If you think of many non-profit organizations, they have a team of dedicated staff members funded by donations working on solving a problem (e.g. medicine distribution to remote places in the world) who put in a lot of time and effort to solve the problem at hand. Oftentimes, they need volunteers to help with the effort as there is not enough staff or money to fund all of the necessary activities to get the problem solved. 

Someone had once mentioned that "if a problem can be solved with money, it's not a problem, just an expense." I really had to sit on that one to think through it more. Does this mean that I should refine my premise that ALL problems can be solved with just 2 things: time and effort?

While it often takes time to solve a problem, without effort, time just ticks on, and nothing is done to solve any problem. Hence, effort is clearly needed. If the problem needs to be solved more rapidly, then more effort needs to be expended to speed up that process. 

Money cannot buy time, but money can buy effort. So is money just a proxy for effort? If a person is willing to put in the effort (and time) to solve their problem, and doesn't need anyone to pay them to do so, then the problem could potentially be solved with just time and effort. Technically, there's an opportunity cost for that person's time and effort. But if the person is unwilling to expend the effort and would rather pay someone to solve their problem, then the problem does indeed become an expense. And the bonus is that they have also saved time by expensing away their problem as so many businesses and consumers do in paying for services that solve their problems.

Let's re-examine my earlier premise that money cannot buy time. We are all aging and cannot tell how long we will live. While we can spend money to go to the gym, eat healthy, pay for medicines to stave off illnesses, we cannot make a payment to live definitively till 95, for example; we can only potentially increase our odds by doing "all the right things" and hope that we can beat the odds. I was told that genetics is the major driver of health and illness. Of course, mortality is still somewhat in our control when it comes to driving recklessly, or eating extremely unhealthy foods consistently, or drinking alcohol excessively. Mortality is also not quite in our control as freak accidents do occur, and truly, no amount of money can enable us to buy our way out of such accidents.

In the world of insurance, actuaries try their best to figure out the probability of a loss event happening. Yet, even with the use of AI, it is difficult to predict Mother Nature's wrath with tornadoes or other situations such as wildfires which are often caused by humans. Uncertainty will always exist, and no amount of AI use will solve that problem. We all have to accept that there are things in life that we simply cannot predict 100% of the time.

So is it a false statement that ALL problems can be solved with time and effort? I believe that the statement has indeed been debunked. Essentially no amount of time and effort can produce an iron-clad prediction to the problem of a loss event happening. Some problems may always remain unsolved due to data gaps that can never be filled in definitively, only with probability. The problems can only be prevented or mitigated to a certain level, but never to a guaranteed level.

Coming back to the original question of whether it is possible to solve every problem in this world? Even with infinite time and effort, it appears that not all problems can be solved FULLY. As the adage goes, life is unpredictable. And that, my friends, is the spice in life! If our lives were completely controllable and predictable, it wouldn't be nearly as interesting as it is. 

While we can solve many problems with time and effort, we cannot solve ALL problems FULLY even with abundance of these problem-solving elements. And yes, some problems can indeed be MOSTLY solved by expensing money, but sometimes "the last mile" can get rather expensive to problem-solve and a bit of time and effort is still needed to get to the finish line to be cost-effective. Plus, there will always be the expectation that the problem is only MOSTLY solved even at the perceived "finish line" but not necessarily FULLY solved. 

As humans we had always expected the unpredictable, but these days with the use of AI, humans have often come to believe that AI can solve things fully...but the reality is that it cannot. Because AI operates in our world of probabilities too.