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Re:The Shut-In Economy (2015) by pjc50 on Tuesday March 07, 2017 @10:46AM (#13811224)
Social problems tend to require a different, fuzzier toolkit that involves emotional labour. Especially when you're working with areas that are not broadly understood. You're starting from the assumption that only those types of solution are valid, whereas most social change is neither scientific nor technological but word-driven and operating in the emotional domain.

Starting from the assumption that every worthwhile problem must have a scientific or technical solution is exactly the hammer looking for nail that comments here are complaining about.

Re:The Shut-In Economy (2015) by TeMPOraL on Tuesday March 07, 2017 @01:38PM (#13813239)
I'm not arguing that emotions are to be ignored, or that the area is understood. It's not. But still, science is literally, if broadly, defined as the method of figuring things out that actually works.

Maybe the OP was just meaning to criticize the app idea, but the way they wrote, it looks like a general criticism of technology as a problem solver - criticism I believe is naïve and unwarranted.

> most social change is neither scientific nor technological but word-driven and operating in the emotional domain

I disagree with that, but that's a longer discussion about technological determinism.