The Importance of Choosing Valuable Problems to Solve

The speaker questions why there is a tendency to invest time in creating new, potentially unnecessary applications, rather than focusing on solving valuable, unsolved problems like proposing a new scheme for micro-payments. They criticize the lack of consideration for what customers want and attributes this to individuals being trained to solve predefined problems rather than choosing which problems would be beneficial to solve. The speaker suggests that the educational system plays a role in this by prioritizing grading efficiency over the ability to choose problems. Ultimately, the speaker believes that the skill of choosing valuable problems to solve can be learned.