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Comment by unchocked | Hacker News Reader

I try to read these polemics to uncover the seams of my own techno-optimistic worldview.

This one, I think, centers around the idea that technological solutions don’t solve social problems (which has merit).

But at least superficially, I don’t understand why the author polemicizes against technological solutions for technological problems, and seems to argue that (unspecified) social solutions for technological problems are more appropriate.

On a deeper level, and more subjectively, I suspect that polemics like these are motivated by frustration about our relative powerlessness over social problems, as compared to the effectiveness of solving technological problems with technology.

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The argument is that techno-optimism is about pretending that social problems are technological problems so that we can fix them with technology - which is much more easy to deal with than solving the actual social problem.

An example would be trying to solve climate collapse with carbon sequestration technology while continuing to run the world on fossil fuel. The continued dependence on fossil fuel is a political problem, not a technological one - we have the tools to move beyond fossil fuel in most areas of application. We can't always invent our way out of problems that are borne of our misaligned incentives.

How is it pretending?

If we go back some time there might have been a parallel argument being made where one side was convinced that the solution to enable greater food stability and surplus was more farmers, and the other side was convinced that the solution was better technology.

Neither side is really wrong, they just have different perspectives. Most problems can be solved in a practically infinite number of ways.

Well for example, we are producing far too much CO2 and plastic, and slowly killing our planet. Renewable energy has already been invented, but we continue to do these things because it is profitable. Unless we can invent replacements for existing CO2- and plastic-producing processes that are even more profitable, the status quo will continue.

I don't have an issue with trying to do said inventing, but when we put all our eggs into the deus ex machina invention basket, we are ignoring the sociological roots of the pollution, the fact that we could realistically stop now if only we had the political will, and instead opting for a hail mary.

I also find it frustrating that many of the people holding out for a tech fix are libertarians, and will actively oppose political solutions in favour of their faith in the free market.

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