Why is everyone shooting themselves in the foot? What's wrong with institutions/incentives that makes foot-shooting an attractor state? Are we in an inadequate foot-shooting equilibrium?
When, how, and why did we start shooting ourselves in the foot? Did it seem like a good idea at the time? Was it addressing a real problem? Did it start small and benign, like scratching an itch on the toe, and then ratchet upwards? Is there some actual still-existing problem that provides rationale or cover for foot-shooting?
Is there a place where people don't shoot themselves in the foot? What's different about it? Can we be more like them?
Have we ever stopped shooting ourselves in the feet before? How did that happen? Could we replicate it?
Does anyone justify or excuse shooting feet? On what grounds?
Is there a special interest group that benefits from foot-shooting? Have they captured institutions to make sure that feet keep getting shot? Could we build a coalition of the feet to provide an opposing political force against the shooting?
What anti-shooting / pro-foot reform could one propose, at the intersection of “small enough to happen” and “big enough to matter”?
How well-known is the foot-shooting? Does it just need someone to bang the drum until it becomes a meme and people decide to do something about it?
(Originally written in response to someone who was demotivated because in his space “the solutions aren't even interesting, it's essentially begging to stop shooting yourself in the foot”)
Is there some reason why it's hard to notice that you're shooting yourself in the foot, or the bad consequences of doing so when they arise? e.g. you never see the lifesaving drugs that weren't developed.
Likewise, is it easier to notice the downsides of not-shooting?
Is there some feature of politics or human reasoning that makes shooting memes dominate? For example, maybe a controversial culture war topic dominates discourse instead of an underlying issue that most people don't find inflammatory enough to debate.
Likewise, is there some feature not-shooting memes don't spread?
(Originally written in response to someone who was demotivated because in his space “the solutions aren't even interesting, it's essentially begging to stop shooting yourself in the foot”)