[HN Gopher] Do All Problems Have Technical Fixes?
___________________________________________________________________
Do All Problems Have Technical Fixes?
Author : zdw
Score : 79 points
Date : 2024-09-26 22:24 UTC (5 days ago)
(HTM) web link (cacm.acm.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (cacm.acm.org)
| airstrike wrote:
| To quote Hamlet, Act 3, Scene 3, Line 87: "No."
| Phrodo_00 wrote:
| Betteridge's law of headlines strikes again!
| lccerina wrote:
| This!
| Juliate wrote:
| Sometimes what is needed is not to solve or explain, but to
| acknowledge a problem. To name it. And to have the restraint and
| patience and trust that its understanding, alone, will take care
| of most of it.
| xyzzy123 wrote:
| I feel like the framing in the article is wrong. Tech startups
| are desperately searching for solutions that will generate value.
|
| When a "new hammer" is developed or discovered (lets say,
| radiation) there's a natural inflection point. People will try
| marketing radioactive medicines, radioactive soft drinks,
| radioactive toys, radioactive jewelry.... etc etc. Everything
| will be thrown at the wall to see what sticks. There's no broader
| intellectual movement in play.
|
| This process is more like "product darwinism" than technological
| determinism.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > When a "new hammer" is developed or discovered (lets say,
| radiation) there's a natural inflection point. People will try
| marketing radioactive medicines, radioactive soft drinks,
| radioactive toys, radioactive jewelry.... etc etc.
|
| Have you read anything from the early 20th century? This is a
| noticeable theme in e.g. stories set in the mythos of Conan the
| Barbarian or the Wizard of Oz. "Radium" is treated as
| essentially a form of magic.
| SideburnsOfDoom wrote:
| I don't think "read Conan the Barbarian" is the main takeaway
| of that, though I'm sure "rays" was a trope in fiction.
|
| Quack "radioactive medicines" actually happened to people.
| Product darwinism and actual customer darwinism.
|
| See, e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioactive_quackery
|
| https://www.orau.org/health-physics-
| museum/collection/radioa...
|
| https://histmed.collegeofphysicians.org/for-students/radium/
|
| https://www.dannydutch.com/post/the-strange-story-of-eben-
| by...
|
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/the-lethal-legacy-
| of-e...
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > though I'm sure "rays" was a trope in fiction
|
| No, seriously, "radium".
| lukan wrote:
| And before that, it was "magnetism".
| feoren wrote:
| And today it's quantum mechanics and/or dark matter.
| consf wrote:
| Tech startups are finding what actually works in the market
| croes wrote:
| You mean
|
| Tech startups are desperately searching for buzz words that
| will generate profit.
| SideburnsOfDoom wrote:
| Tech startups are desperately searching for buzz words that
| will generate a VC payday. Actual profit is optional.
| steveBK123 wrote:
| Exactly - buzzwords are new opportunities for fundraising
| first and foremost.
|
| Actual products which provide actual solutions to actual
| customers.. are for the product market fit phase.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| s/profit/increase in valuation/
|
| For most of the startup ecosystem, profits are less a goal
| than liquidity event. Often that comes in the form of an
| acqui-hire, monopoly buying out competition, or a technology
| transfer.
|
| Profits are a distant focus, though remaining ahead of run
| rate has merits.
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| this makes sense if tech startups just existed, but they are
| brought into existence, by people who perhaps think "you know
| what would be neat, and also make money because people would
| totally want that, is radioactive soda pop!"
|
| I guess in the end the effect is pretty much
| indistinguishable.
| saturn8601 wrote:
| That sounds like the what I am seeing in the consumer packaged
| goods industry. In desperation of growth they are throwing
| everything at the wall.
|
| ex: that 'flamin hot' thing took off and post pandemic they put
| it in everything including soda and ice cream. Lets not forget
| every merchandising opportunity under the sun.
| fuzzfactor wrote:
| There's only so many people who can figure out what will
| really sell, or be able to really sell it.
|
| And way more people who wish they could do the former, but
| know in their heart they never will, while having a leg up in
| the latter, often built from a fortunate upwardly-mobile
| sales career where their customers never did get their
| money's worth.
|
| You know the kind I'm talking about.
|
| Which can guide their actions toward a slightly deceptive
| form of marketing, or things even more unsavory.
|
| OTOH, sometimes quite benign, but also less creative.
|
| And it shows.
|
| Otherwise you wouldn't know the kind I'm talking about :\
| nitwit005 wrote:
| Funding, both from governments and investors, also tends to
| chase after trends, so people's proposals will reflect that.
|
| I wish there was some deeper thought or philosophy behind it,
| but that clearly isn't always the case.
| __MatrixMan__ wrote:
| It sort of bugs me when people who claim that a problem cannot be
| solved with technology act like that problem was caused by
| technology. You get both or neither, you can't have just one.
| asmor wrote:
| Of course you can. Technology can irreversibly change
| societies.
|
| Do you have a technical solution to the potential for mutually
| assured destruction through nuclear weapons?
| jjk166 wrote:
| Mutually assured destruction is a technical solution - when
| it is suicidal for either side to attack each other (because
| of a large and robust nuclear arsenal), both can be confident
| the other won't attack.
|
| There are potentially other technical solutions. Anti-
| ballistic missile systems could make nuclear strikes non
| viable, as could more advanced defenses. One could imagine
| weapons designed to remotely pre-detonate nuclear weapons
| making them more dangerous to possess than to use. You could
| by subterfuge render your adversary's nuclear capabilities
| inoperable. You could find technical solutions to the issues
| that make the countries adversaries in the first place, for
| example eliminating dependence on a resource you compete
| over. You could spread propaganda to install a friendly
| government.
|
| There could be and almost certainly are even better technical
| solutions that I don't know, and perhaps no one currently
| knows. Every problem ever solved was at some point unsolved.
| asmor wrote:
| You are misunderstanding me bringing up mutually assured
| destruction. Sure, it prevents preemptive strikes, but it
| doesn't prevent accidental launches, broken early warning
| systems and bad communication.
|
| Do you think the fact that we haven't done any of these
| other measures to a degree that the danger is no longer
| substantial in 70 or so years is a matter of technology or
| priority? If it's priority, how do we prioritize? Is that,
| perhaps, a non-technical problem? If it's a tech
| advancement problem, how do not constantly have a rolling
| window of uncontrolled potentially civilization-ending
| technology?
| __MatrixMan__ wrote:
| Things like stuxnet.
| Terr_ wrote:
| I'm with you in the first sentence, but the second doesn't make
| sense to me.
|
| All 4 combinations of (not-)solved-by-tech and (not-)caused-by-
| tech are possible.
| tomjen3 wrote:
| Can you give a concrete example of caused by technology, but
| not solvable (in principle if that was what you meant) by
| technology? I am having trouble coming up with one.
| __MatrixMan__ wrote:
| Seems to me like the initial causing of the problem would
| have to be a one-time self-destructive event. Like maybe we
| blow up the moon or something and then don't survive the
| aftermath. We can't use tech to solve the problem if the
| problem is that we're extinct.
|
| I think that's pretty far out from the sort of thing that
| people are thinking of when they talk about things you can
| and can't do with technology, so I think it's more sensible
| to just say that the category is empty.
| Terr_ wrote:
| > a concrete example of caused by technology, but not
| solvable
|
| Consider any kind of unrest caused by the automation of
| tasks that formerly required a professional human, such as
| how the industrial revolution affected textile-
| manufacturing and the Luddite reaction. The new technology
| is a major and necessary cause of the situation, yet even
| with 200 years of hindsight it's hard to imagine any new
| followup invention that would promptly solve it.
|
| Another category would be ecological or pollution issues,
| which in many cases involve social and legal solutions. For
| example, the new chemical technology of leaded gasoline. We
| didn't solve by inventing a De-Leadifier Device, or even
| the Cheaper New Formula, but because it became (mostly)
| banned.
|
| It probably goes without saying, but for "solvable with
| technology" I am not including things like inventing a
| time-machine to go back and make it never-have-happened, or
| the idea that it'll be solved _eventually_ when the
| Ascension Device elevates our descendants beyond such
| mortal concerns, etc.
| Terr_ wrote:
| I suspect there's a correlation between how likely someone is to
| answer "yes" and how recently they entered the software
| engineering workforce. At any rate, it's definitely changed for
| me since starting out.
| msla wrote:
| If nothing else, getting people to accept a technical fix is a
| social problem.
|
| On the other hand, yes, some social problems have had technical
| solutions. Remember when "You just can't get good help these
| days!" was a truism? It isn't said as much anymore because the
| underlying problem was obviated: Time was, middle-class
| households were becoming unmanageable due to young women no
| longer wanting to be servants, such as maids; not even the Great
| Depression could shift the problem. Ultimately, the whole thing
| was rendered obsolete by the rise of home conveniences such as
| dishwashers and vacuum cleaners, allowing middle-class women to
| do their own housework.
|
| Those technical solutions still required a social shift away from
| _expecting_ maids to be part of any well-run middle-class
| household, but the technical and the social went hand-in-hand.
|
| https://daily.jstor.org/how-america-tried-and-failed-to-solv...
|
| Side note:
|
| > the Naturalisitic Fallacy that "ought" can be derived from
| "is."
|
| What's the name for the fallacy that "is" can be derived from
| "ought"?
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| "Wishful thinking".
|
| Maybe Panglossianism.
| Peritract wrote:
| > What's the name for the fallacy that "is" can be derived from
| "ought"?
|
| Any deliberate action makes clear that this is only sometimes a
| fallacy.
| kindkang2024 wrote:
| The answer is definitely NO. Technology is always neutral, It has
| no notion of good and evil. It will never has the ability to fix
| the problem orchestrated by evil.
|
| Worldcoin's WorldID could be one of the examples,detail below.
|
| Without True Authority, WorldID or anything technical achievement
| Could Become a Hoax: Concerns Amplified by Worldcoin Ban on X
|
| Link here: https://kindkang.medium.com/without-true-authority-
| worldid-c...
| kindkang2024 wrote:
| Without True Authority and beliefs in Love, any technical
| achievements is just make us easy to destroy ourselves. Think
| nuclear bombs and ww3. Do we still want achieve more advanced
| science advances and use it build more powerful weapons to kill
| the "aliens"that Our Will feels.
| tomjen3 wrote:
| Precision guided bombs would have made short work of the
| nazies, so that's one quick counter to your argument.
| rbanffy wrote:
| In their hands they'd have been equally effective for a
| completely opposite objective.
|
| All vectors add up to zero.
| its_bbq wrote:
| And the not asked often enough corollary: just because there
| exists a technical solution to a problem, does that mean it's the
| right solution?
| pfdietz wrote:
| I often see objections to technical solutions because they have
| the gall to actually solve a problem, but do so in a way that
| the objector doesn't want. If a problem is seen as a way to
| force a particular solution someone wants for other reasons,
| alternative solutions are threats.
| jillesvangurp wrote:
| A lot of problems do. But sometimes the problem is people
| related. You can work around those problems with technology but
| you can't fix them.
|
| In terms of real world problems: climate change, food scarcity,
| poverty, water quality and access, health care, etc. a lot of the
| solutions are technical. And a lot of those solutions are
| directly or indirectly about making energy cheaper and cleaner.
| With cheap clean energy, you can address climate change. You can
| desalinate water (at scale). If you have clean water, you can
| address food scarcity (e.g. irrigate desserts). You can also
| address sanitation. Cheap energy also enables transport, having
| light in people's home (education). so that addresses poverty.
| And so on. All that comes from just a handful of technical
| solutions that make energy cheap and clean. Anyone working on
| those things is accomplishing more than decades worth of well
| intentioned but not very effective activism, charity, diplomacy,
| etc. I'm sure AI has a role to play here as well.
|
| The point is moot anyway. We're not going to turn into Luddites
| and competition continuously drives us to do better. Which means
| people keep on figuring out technical solutions to challenges
| around them. Technology isn't inherently good or evil. But it can
| be very effective sometimes. And of course there is a lot of not
| so effective or misguided stuff as well. Part of the journey.
| psychoslave wrote:
| > A lot of problems do. But sometimes the problem is people
| related. You can work around those problems with technology but
| you can't fix them.
|
| It depends a lot on what is encompassed in the considered
| definition of technology. Education and language can certainly
| be taken as technologies, under certain perspectives at least.
| And addressing individual behaviors with undesirable social
| consequences is something that definitely can be solved with
| appropriate educational "technologies".
|
| In my current perspective, the most weighted factor between a
| technology and an innate individual trait is how transferable
| it is.
|
| >We're not going to turn into Luddites and competition
| continuously drives us to do better.
|
| It all depends on which values we endorse and thus how we deem
| something "better". On global scale, there was probably never
| so much passive aggressive competition within humankind (we
| also never been so numerous to be fair), and its results on
| global biosphere are to say the least completely disastrous.
|
| >But it can be very effective sometimes.
|
| Sure but working on improving effectiveness means nothing. If
| we try to enhance efficiency of gaz chambers, we are clearly
| bringing only more evil to the world. Efficacy is meaningless
| without a kind and generous purpose.
|
| I could almost say "science sans conscience n'est que ruine de
| l'ame", but Rabelais actually wasn't willing to say what it is
| generally thought it means nowadays.
| https://theconversation.com/science-sans-conscience-nest-que...
| kindkang2024 wrote:
| I agree with you.
|
| Before we are so eager to solve the problems, we better
| pinpoint how the problems were introduced and exacerbated. In
| the US, there are conflicts between illegal immigration and
| local communities, or conflicts between BLM and ALM. Especially
| the latter one, which I as an ordinary non-American cannot
| understand why ALM was abandoned like SHIT in the end. I do not
| know that initially aimed to advocate for peace. Quite funny we
| have to choose sides: IsraeliLivesMatter vs
| PalestinianLivesMatter or RussianLivesMatter vs
| UkrainianLivesMatter. In the end, I decided to forget about the
| controversy. And decide to fight back against those who argue
| against "all lives matter" just because of a few bad apples.
| And maybe this is also the reason AllLivesMatterWorld was
| abandoned like SHIT: just because of a few bad apples, we are
| abandoning all apples.
|
| I do not want everyone to upload the truth that all lives
| should matter, but I can make everyone see the truth here: all
| lives indeed matter whether you argue against it or not.
|
| I hope by advocating kindness first, fairness always, and DUKI
| in action help dissolving the original sin that we all have, we
| can solve all the problems that technology and science alone
| cannot solve. DUKI is not dookie as you think. More on
| Www.AllLivesMatter.World
| immibis wrote:
| The phrase "all lives matter" was introduced specifically to
| counteract and silence "black lives matter". It does not
| literally mean that all lives matter - it means that black
| people need to shut up and take what they're given.
|
| Much like "one people, one nation, one leader" does not
| advocate for unity but is, in fact, something Adolf Hitler
| frequently said.
| kindkang2024 wrote:
| I understand that there were many cases where people said
| "all lives matter" with the purpose of trying to silence
| BLM voices, and I judge that as an evil will and condemn
| it. My point is that at least some people who say "all
| lives matter" don't have that kind of evil intent. To
| condemn all uses of "all lives matter" is also an evil
| here.
|
| Reasoning symbolically, I do not see the conflicts here.
| All lives can't matter unless Black Lives Matter, can they?
| But We all should not focus on the symbols only; it's the
| will behind the symbol that matters most. We all should
| condemn the evil will behind all these symbols usage, not
| the original usage of these symbols.
|
| The same applies to the advocacy AllLivesMatterWorld here,
| calling for peace, advocating kindness first, and fairness
| always and envisioned DUKI in action to build the world on
| blockchain, which should be totally decentralized, I only
| feel goodness and don't see evil there. Enlighten me if you
| find there is evil in it.
|
| Believe it or not, actually the AllLivesMatterWorld calling
| for peace was partly inspired by BLM and trying to join the
| voices there, and I have a thanks letter for that. But
| considering that harsh reality, I sincerely hope that we
| all should feel the will behind the advocacy to make a
| righteous judgment, not just associate it with some evil
| usages of symbols and believe we got it right. Because all
| symbols can be used by evil hidden in it, not just All
| Lives Matter but also Black Lives Matter.
| immibis wrote:
| If one hears another say "Heil Hitler" rarely do they
| stop to ask whether maybe it was about a different
| Hitler.
| bsenftner wrote:
| The All Live Matter "movement" is constructed, engineered and
| financed by big money white supremacy as a mechanism to shut
| down all discussions other than theirs.
| kindkang2024 wrote:
| Thank God.I luckily labeled the advocacy using 4 words
| instead of 3, "AllLivesMatterWorld" advocating for Peace
| worldwide.
| troaway56362 wrote:
| Food scarcity, poverty, clean water, basic health care. These
| are IMO excellent examples of people problems, not tech
| problems.
|
| If it were tech problems we wouldn't be drinking clean water,
| driving Teslas and eating fancy food now would we? These are
| more or less solved issues. Now what we have _not_ solved is
| how to share our toys.
|
| Of course, tech _could_ help to lower barrier(s), making access
| so cheap even "they" can have it, but the fundamental problem
| here is: why do "we" have "it" and "they" do not?
|
| These are deeply political problems with exceedingly thin ties
| to technology. I feel focusing on tech distracts from the true
| issues which are again political and cultural, related to, say,
| the economy and its underlying philosophy itself, education,
| geography, history, etc. I don't know where exactly tech ends
| up on this list of major factors, but it's not on the first few
| pages.
|
| Interestingly I think it is the diplomacy and activism that
| enabled the resources to open up and drives activity in tech
| that then eventually winds up where it needs to.
| sameoldtune wrote:
| It's the trickle down theory all over again. If our toys are
| /extremely/ nice then surely global poverty will be
| relieved!?
| msandford wrote:
| Well I mean folks in the developing world now have mobile
| phones which is really changing the way things work. It
| doesn't immediately install a new government and raise
| everyone instantly out of poverty but it's likely a big
| improvement to quality of life.
|
| I'm sure it's not all upside either. But I suspect that
| this is one case if trickle down actually working.
| saturn8601 wrote:
| And eventually the Chinese will sell every person in the
| third world a dirt cheap electric mini car. Sounds like
| in some areas the technology solution is changing lives
| and improving the situation despite poor governance.
| chomskyole wrote:
| I'm a little stunned that these problems can be framed as
| technical...
|
| How cheap would energy need to be for those problems to be
| solved? Can you provide a ballpark dollar figure for how low
| prices would need to go to solve each of the problems? Or a
| wild guess?
|
| Also, if energy production is getting cheaper, but energy
| production is only provided by a few entities (e.g. for reasons
| like production being capital intensive, strategically
| relevant, or first movers advantage / natural monopolies) would
| you believe that energy prices go down to that level if
| production costs fall low enough?
| tomjen3 wrote:
| I am not op, but food is essentially solved, as is most of
| the other things he listed. Socialist and countries at war
| aside famines just don't exist anymore.
| yifanl wrote:
| This seems wrong on its face?
|
| https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/namibia-drought-elephants-
| hipp...
| rbanffy wrote:
| Trickle down doesn't trickle down enough.
|
| https://www.feedingamerica.org/hunger-in-america
| rw_panic0_0 wrote:
| no
| Simon_ORourke wrote:
| No, say you're on a team of five with two consistently poor
| performers that not only fail to achieve limited tasks, but
| constantly draw off support from the rest of the team.
|
| There's no technical fix for that. The nuclear option of getting
| them sacked and replaced dents team morale and probably wouldn't
| let the team back up to speed for three or four months with all
| the onboarding required.
|
| Coaching in areas where they should be self-learning consumes the
| focus of others on the team or in the business.
|
| Ignoring them and ploughing ahead without assigning them work
| drastically reduces team effectiveness.
|
| Not much in the way of a technical fix in sight - unless copilot
| suddenly becomes really really good.
| gonzo41 wrote:
| IDK about coaching. If you've ever been seriously coached for
| performance (think sports) an effective coach will look you
| dead in the eye and tell you you're terrible. At work, in
| technical fields, everyone likes to be liked and shy's away
| from being a bastard to their peers and reports. Especially if
| the conditions aren't that great and killing yourself for your
| current gig isn't giving you windfall returns.
|
| Giving people the tools to succeed or at least being clear to
| them that they and need to do better is a managers job.
| immibis wrote:
| Putting them on gardening leave is a technical fix to that.
| trilbyglens wrote:
| Our proclivity to believing that all problems have technical
| solutions is what has largely lead us into out current cultural
| cul-de-sac. Namely the idea that AI will somehow "save us". I
| can't think of anything more patently stupid. As stated here in
| another comment, technology is neutral, but is also a multiplier
| of force. Many of our technologies simply multiply the force of
| the already powerful, against the power of the powerless.
| mettamage wrote:
| My gripe with titles like this is that problems as a class are
| much bigger than technical problems.
|
| For example:
|
| Many people on HN seems to have dating problems. Whenever an
| article on dating is in the front page, I see those issues in the
| comments. In most cases, that class of problem requires people to
| work on themselves. Online dating for sure as hell isn't solving
| it.
|
| Some of my comments outlined how to solve dating problems for cis
| heterosexual males. Most of the partial solutions are non-
| technical in nature. Some are technical if it concerns online
| dating.
| consf wrote:
| A good example
| jansan wrote:
| Online dating could probably help a lot if it was optimized for
| actually providing a solution instead of maximizing profit. If
| these services actually manage to find a matching long-term
| partner, they will lose two customers.
| mettamage wrote:
| There's a Dutch app that's pretty good (it's called Breeze).
| Many tech orgs do find a good solution but they are usually
| not blitz scaling
| lesuorac wrote:
| Perhaps you'd lose two customers but uh people are a
| renewable resource. If your service actually worked well
| you'd have an endless supply of future customers as your
| previous customers reproduced.
|
| But its definitely a problem that actually doing matchmaking
| isn't as profitable as a chat app. Well for a publicly traded
| company in today's environment of short-term thinking;
| perhaps if it was a dividend company it would be feasible.
| HPsquared wrote:
| Dating falls under the sales and marketing department, which a
| lot of technical people neglect to their detriment.
| crvdgc wrote:
| Perhaps the title should be "why do tech leaders believe all
| problems have technical fixes?" To that question, isn't the
| author analyzing too much into a salesman's pitch? They profit
| from selling technical solutions, so of course they'll say
| everyone can use one.
| croes wrote:
| You can deal with those scammers, because in the end they know
| it's not true.
|
| The real problem are the true believers
| dartos wrote:
| All problems except the problem of too much abstraction
| Artzain wrote:
| One way or another, there must be solutions. I always think about
| companies sending rockets to Mars. So what's stopping us from
| fixing a few bugs
| unnouinceput wrote:
| Problems in this world are of 2 types. Technical and political.
|
| Do all "technical" problems have technical fixes. A very sound
| YES!
|
| What about political problems? Sometime they can be fixed with a
| technical fix but ALL of them can be fixed with assassination.
| jjk166 wrote:
| Not all problems have technical fixes, but all fixes are
| technical. Technology is the application of knowledge to solve
| problems. Some technologies fall outside of what typically comes
| to mind when the word is brought up, for example languages and
| currency and tax codes are all technologies. Anything that
| actually fixes a problem is going to wind up being technical.
| There is a long and ever growing list of problems solved by
| technology. It is arguably the hallmark of our species to look
| for technical solutions to problems, and we will continue to do
| so until we go extinct.
|
| There are problems that don't have solutions. Some people want to
| do A, some people want to do B, you can not do both, and doing
| neither will piss off everyone - no matter what someone is going
| to be unhappy. You might find better "solutions" or solve
| adjacent problems, like "we'll do A today and B tomorrow" but the
| core issue is intractable. It is the human condition that we will
| always have some such problems, but they are few and generally
| affect the upper levels of Maslow's hierarchy of needs. For the
| lower level stuff - typically anything involving material needs -
| technical solutions exist.
|
| The problem with this article and the many others like it is that
| it fails to distinguish between the search for genuine technical
| solutions to problems and tech bros proposing bad technical
| solutions to problems. That a problem theoretically has a
| technical solution obviously does not mean your slight twist on a
| note taking app is such a solution. Why these narratives are
| pushed is reasonably easy to understand - it boosts the ego of
| the person who developed the proposed "solution" and asserts a
| value of the product to both potential customers and investors.
| In particular, the phenomenon is heavily fueled by entrepreneurs
| with little understanding of the underlying problem pitching
| solutions to investors who have equally little understanding of
| the underlying problem.
|
| I'm fine with calling out dumb ideas, but going further to this
| narrative of "some proposed technical fixes wouldn't work
| therefore technical fixes don't work and anyone looking for a
| technical fix is delusional" leads to a defeatist attitude. For
| every solvable problem a technical solution does exist, it's just
| really unlikely you'll stumble upon such a solution after
| watching a few hours of videos on the latest tech fad.
| jmull wrote:
| Obviously, no.
|
| But it's simpler than all the things the article goes in to.
|
| Tech "leaders" get rich(er) if they can convince a bunch of
| people they have the solutions to their problems. There are
| various ways to accomplish this and any specific tech and even
| tech itself is practically incidental.
|
| Each hype wave is just another opportunity to do so. I think tech
| is generally popular among the people trying to get rich(er)
| because it's changing pretty fast which provides a regular series
| of hype waves with regular opportunities to convince people you
| have the solution they need. (You even get fresh opportunities to
| convince people they have brand new kinds of problems, which, of
| course, you have the solution to. Tech is very flexible.)
| InDubioProRubio wrote:
| No, there are problems that are societal loadcaring and can not
| be fixed in the short term without widespread chaos and
| lawlessness ensuing. There can be local optima of minimal
| suffering approached, but every flower throws a shade and kills
| another flower.
| bwestergard wrote:
| Did you mean "societally load-bearing"?
| rbanffy wrote:
| It all hinges on how far you are wiling to go. If you are OK with
| being a supervillain, you could use a radiotherapy machine and
| FMRI to nuke the specific neural paths that are creating your
| pesky people-related problems.
|
| The patients will object, of course, but that part of their
| brains can also be nuked.
| arminiusreturns wrote:
| As the sysadmin/ops dude who has always been on the practical end
| of things, most problems are leadership and not technical imho.
| fuzzfactor wrote:
| Exactly, there are tonnes of _technical_ problems that don 't
| have viable technical solutions for that reason.
|
| Or where solutions are simply standing by in readiness until
| there is a landscape free of leadership deficiencies and their
| accompanying obstacles, before deployment can commence.
| tonetegeatinst wrote:
| Sounds like a question for discrete math professors.
| javier_e06 wrote:
| I strong recommend the book The Wizard and The Prophet. We are
| all here enjoying over abundance of food thanks the third
| agricultural revolution. Technology defeated COVID. Our
| technology wizards keep scoring big points. The prophets claim
| that our wizards no only are not averting the global collapse of
| civilization, they are accelerating it.
|
| Nobody needs a microwave oven but who can wait a few minutes to
| warm up their food?
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