After being introduced to the Experimental History blog, I found the article Science is a strong-link problem.
I find this framework both interesting and useful. Here, I want to come up with more examples of “weak-link” and “strong-link” problems. I’m well aware that not all problems fit nicely into one category or the other.
First, let’s consider art. I think art, like science, is a strong link problem. We mostly don’t need to protect people from being exposed to “bad art”. If you see an ugly painting or watch a boring movie, you can move on and consume other content.
Pornography and extremely violent art are exceptions. We don’t want young kids to see R-rated movies. The Motion Picture Association’s rating system is designed to solve the weak-link problem of preventing people from watching age-inappropriate movies.
Museums and film festivals are designed to curate content. They solve the strong-link problem of helping people find “good art”. You can debate how well they do this job!
Propaganda is a form of art meant to inspire action or at least get a response. You could say that marketing falls into this category.
Suppose you want some people to buy your product. Advertising to a large number of people who would never buy your product does not produce a good Return On Investment (ROI). In this case, you may want to segment the population and only send your message to a small group of potential buyers. Reaching a few non-buyers isn’t a big problem, as long as you can reach the buyers who must have your product. In this sense, marketing is a strong-link problem. It’s important to reach your most likely buyers.
Education is designed to help most people learn what they need to become productive members of society. “Gifted and Talented” programs exist to help solve the strong-link problem of inspiring the best students. Remedial classes exist to help solve the weak-link problem of getting ill-prepared students to a basic competency level. Standardized tests exist to torment all students and to categorize them into groups that can be dealt with accordingly.
Religion is another interesting case. If the purpose of a given church is to keep as many people as possible from going to hell, this church has a weak-link problem. They don’t need to worry so much about their most devoted members. They need to pull out the stops for their least devoted members!
If the purpose of a different church is to influence a political election, then this church has more of a strong-link problem. They’re not going to lose sleep trying to reach their least active members; instead, they’re going to inspire their most active members to spread their message as much as possible.
It’s fun thinking about strong-link and weak-link problems!
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