Subject: Wondering if IPv6 deployment is a "super wicked problem"

From: Stephane Bortzmeyer <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 22 Nov 2016 09:23:06 +0100

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wicked_problem#Super_wicked_problems

Kelly Levin, Benjamin Cashore, Graeme Auld and Steven Bernstein introduced the distinction between "wicked problems" and "super wicked problems" in a 2007 conference paper, which was followed by a 2012 journal article in Policy Sciences. In their discussion of global climate change, they define super wicked problems as having the following additional characteristics:

    Time is running out.
    No central authority.
    Those seeking to solve the problem are also causing it.
    Policies discount the future irrationally.

While the items that define a wicked problem relate to the problem itself, the items that define a super wicked problem relate to the agent trying to solve it. Global warming is a super wicked problem, and the need to intervene to tend to our longer term interests has also been taken up by others, including Richard Lazarus.