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Comment by chaps | Hacker News Reader

This is sadly the case with most public good research. Just look at the amount of money that's available for things like police transparency research, or advertisement-less journalism. Even if you do great work in these sorts of fields, there's usually very little to personally gain from it.

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And this is how one day he might be forced to take a job where he becomes one of engineers at VW who hid the pollution so he can pay the bills.

If you want to get paid for exposing scandals, work for a short-seller. See eg https://hindenburgresearch.com/nikola/

True. Even Dr. Michael J Burry who predicted the 2008 crisis intended to short against the banks.

There is a big gap between Observations and Solutions.

Just like the resources, knowledge and skills required to detect Cancer is very different from what is required to treat it, which is very different from what is required to cure it.

The healthy way to go about it involves understanding the gaps(usually from someone/group with experience) and then picking an issue.

"Optimize for a simplistic world Or satisfice for a realistic one"

I cannot for the life of me figure out what the point is that you're trying to make.

I think it's a variant of P!=NP. Solution is not reducible to verification.

Employees who can tell that a problem exists, aren't necessarily as profitable as employees who can resolve that problem. Or in some cases, they may be more profitable. Either way, it is not an identical task.

A person who can identify fraud is very useful in an accounting firm. Not so much in an engineering firm.