# Big H hard problems are those that need a discovery to solve Because big H problems need a discovery, throwing more money at them won’t necessarily make them go faster. In this sense, they can “fail” because you can pour infinite money into them. This is probably another way of seeing science/nature risks. [[Science and knowledge of the universe as raw resources/Nature Risks]] Some people would call this research, but research feels more like a spectrum between Big H and little h problems. Another framing on this is that Big H hard problems are situations where there is a lot of uncertainty around [[Critical path]] and the thing that matters is clock time. [[People time vs clock time]] Contrast to [[Little h hard problems need a bunch of engineering effort but no breakthroughs]] Is Fusion actually a Big H problem? [[deanFusionPowerMagnetic1976]] ### Related * [[Knowledge frontier]] * [[The linear innovation pipeline]] * [[Quadrant Model of Scientific Research]] <!-- #mental-model --> [Web URL for this note](http://notes.benjaminreinhardt.com/Big+H+hard+problems+are+those+that+need+a+discovery+to+solve) [Comment on this note](http://via.hypothes.is/http://notes.benjaminreinhardt.com/Big+H+hard+problems+are+those+that+need+a+discovery+to+solve)