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Do All Problems Have Technical Fixes?

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Re: Do All Problems Have Technical Fixes?

#51

Post by HPsquared »

mettamage wrote: post #24

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 dat…

Dating falls under the sales and marketing department, which a lot of technical people neglect to their detriment.

Re: Do All Problems Have Technical Fixes?

#52

Post by chomskyole »

jillesvangurp wrote: post #17

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, y…

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?

Re: Do All Problems Have Technical Fixes?

#53

Post by Planktonne »

msla wrote: post #10

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 a…

> 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.

Re: Do All Problems Have Technical Fixes?

#54

Post by immibis »

kindkang2024 wrote: post #39
immibis wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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 matte…

If one hears another say "Heil Hitler" rarely do they stop to ask whether maybe it was about a different Hitler.

Re: Do All Problems Have Technical Fixes?

#55

Post by tomjen3 »

chomskyole wrote: post #52
jillesvangurp wrote: post #17

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, y…

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 inten…

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.

Re: Do All Problems Have Technical Fixes?

#56

Post by sameoldtune »

troaway56362 wrote: post #27
jillesvangurp wrote: post #17

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, y…

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…

It’s the trickle down theory all over again. If our toys are /extremely/ nice then surely global poverty will be relieved!?

Re: Do All Problems Have Technical Fixes?

#58

Post by tomjen3 »

Terr_ wrote: post #20
__MatrixMan__ wrote: post #7

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.

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.

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.

Re: Do All Problems Have Technical Fixes?

#59

Post by jmull »

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.)

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