Solving the Wildest Problems

Not all of life's problems can be quantified, and not all have right answers. Economist Russ Roberts offers a different way to approach them.

-  JASON FEIFER

Russ Roberts was trained to solve problems. But he has found a kind of problem he cannot solve-at least, not with the tools he was trained with.

Roberts is one of the most recognizable names in economics, thanks to his popular podcast "EconTalk." He's currently president of Shalem College in Jerusalem and a research fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution. This means he often thinks in numbers and systems, and to solve problems with cold logic. But when a friend asked for advice on whether to have children or not, Roberts realized that humans often grapple with what he calls "wild problems"-the big, life-changing decisions we all must make, where there is no single right answer and where outcomes are unpredictable.

So how do you solve those problems? That's what he set out to learn, and it is the subject of his new book, Wild Problems, which draws lessons from Charles Darwin, Bill Belichick, and basically everyone in between.

You have been taught to solve problems with economic logic. But as you write in the book, "I have come to believe that when it comes to the big decisions of life, those principles can lead us astray." How did you come to realize that?

Economics is about tradeoffs. We don't have enough money to have everything we want. We don't have enough time to enjoy everything we want. And so the essence of the economics view of human behavior is that we try to be as happy as possible, facing that reality of finite money and finite time.