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.

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.

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.

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.

To quote Hamlet, Act 3, Scene 3, Line 87: "No."

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...

All problems except the problem of too much abstraction

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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”?

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.

no