> The problem is, guys with guns will come to your door, beat you with a wrench, and put you in jail.
Counterpoint: guns, doors, wrenches and jails are tools as well. So, I don't buy this notion that technology can't solve societal issues.
It's like saying you can't fix a leaky faucet with a wrench because the real problem is that the pipes are old and rusty. Sure, the root cause may be a societal issue, but that doesn't mean we can't use technology to mitigate the problem. I mean, imagine telling a doctor not to prescribe medicine to a sick patient because the real issue is poor lifestyle choices.
> Counterpoint: guns, doors, wrenches and jails are tools as well. So, I don't buy this notion that technology can't solve societal issues.
I'd go as far as saying, technology is by far most likely to solve societal issues, but it usually happens indirectly, in ways not easily predicted.
To use your example:
> It's like saying you can't fix a leaky faucet with a wrench because the real problem is that the pipes are old and rusty.
Yes, and technological solution for this ends up being... all the metal pipes getting replaced with plastics, because plastics are that amazing and petroleum industry made them cheap as dirt. There are many "technological solutions" at play here, most of them have nothing to do with plumbing, but together they both make the plastic pipes possible, and through economics, make them suddenly appear in everyone's houses.
(The whole setup of course comes with new problems in other areas, but that's almost always the case with any solution to anything.)
> I mean, imagine telling a doctor not to prescribe medicine to a sick patient because the real issue is poor lifestyle choices.
This is what a good chunk of the world believes, and tries to tell the doctors and patients alike. I consider this to be "fuck you advice"; "poor lifestyle choices" are usually not actually choices, and lifestyle changes are much, much harder to implement (often impossible in practice) compared to a medical intervention.
Counterpoint: guns, doors, wrenches and jails are tools as well. So, I don't buy this notion that technology can't solve societal issues.
It's like saying you can't fix a leaky faucet with a wrench because the real problem is that the pipes are old and rusty. Sure, the root cause may be a societal issue, but that doesn't mean we can't use technology to mitigate the problem. I mean, imagine telling a doctor not to prescribe medicine to a sick patient because the real issue is poor lifestyle choices.