Hacker News Reader

Comment by Miraste | Hacker News Reader

This is an unconvincing article. If we look past the paragraphs of emotional appeals, the actual results for "technosolutionism" during the pandemic are this:

China created a technosolutionist fix. They implemented it widely with government backing. It was invasive but worked.

South Korea created a technosolutionist fix, which was less invasive than China's. It was implemented widely with government backing. It also worked.

Apple/Google created a technosolutionist fix. It was not implemented in the US and did not receive government backing. It did not work. The article claims this disparity is really because South Korea is "homogenous" and "trusting".

The US instead attempted to implement "proven measures" that "relied on the public . . . to adhere to them." This also did not work, for the reason technosolutionists said it wouldn't: the public didn't adhere to them.

What part of this is supposed to show that "technosolutionism isn't the fix?"

View on HN

The article uses Zoom as an example of a bad technical solution. But Zoom and similar video software is the only reason a lot of people still have jobs, or can see the faces of their family and friends. That's a lot more concrete and important than the "event boundaries" and other hand-wavy psychology theory the author complains about.

Imagine if this pandemic had happened in 1990, or even 2000. The web would have been nonexistent (in 1990) or quite young (in 2000). There was not much video conferencing software available, and most people didn't have broadband anyway. Many more people would have been unable to do their jobs from home than is the case today, so many more would have been unemployed.

Let's invert the article and talk about all the technological solutions that have improved life during the pandemic:

- Video conferencing saves jobs, make remote learning possible, and enables people to see the faces of their friends and family.

- Delivery services make it easier for people to quarantine at home and avoid risking exposure in grocery stores and restaurants. They also help keep many restaurants in business, as most restaurants do not have (and cannot afford) their own staff of drivers.

- Streaming services help people stay sane while cooped up at home.

Throughout the pandemic, a lot of tech products that people used to criticize as useless have proven very useful.

Vietnam created a technosolutionist fix, it was also implemented widely with government backing. It did also work.

And now its being used by police to crack down on specific groups and individuals that the government doesn't particularly like, even after that same government assured the Vietnamese people that this data wouldn't be used in such a way.

> The US instead attempted to implement "proven measures" that "relied on the public . . . to adhere to them." This also did not work, for the reason technosolutionists said it wouldn't: the public didn't adhere to them.

It didn't work because America is advanced freedom. Not freedom in the sense of, "You're free to eat sushi or have a burger instead," but freedom in the sense of, "You're free to make a cornucopia of bad choices... but you're going to be free to suffer from them too."

The best quote I've ever heard in regards to this: "The true price of freedom is having to endure what other people do with it."

I don't agree that being forced to suffer the consequences of other people's poor decisions is freedom. To counterquote: "Your right to swing your arm leaves off where my right not to have my nose struck begins."

Attributed to many famous people over the years, this originally comes from John B. Finch, a 19th century chair of the Prohibition National Committee. While Prohibition failed miserably in aggregate, its ongoing legacy of (American!) laws against drunk driving and public drunkenness are perfectly good examples of how this ethos works and why it's important.

Freedom vs. authoritarianism isn't quite the thing being pointed at here, but there is a concept that the GP's post is getting at: freedom vs. paternalism.

The difference between a paternalistic and non-paternalistic state, is basically that a paternalistic state tries to actively prevent you — i.e. render you incapable of doing — things it doesn't want you to do; while a non-paternalistic state merely punishes you for doing things, hoping you'll stop yourself from doing those things by considering the potential consequences.

In a non-paternalistic state, you do kind of have the right to strike people in the nose... once. Those other people just have the right to seek justice for you having done that, and the government has a right to put you in jail for having done that — whereupon you'll have your right to strike people in the nose taken away, by being led around in manacles. But once you've served your time and return to the outside world, you'll again have the right to strike people in the nose. Once.

A paternalistic state, meanwhile, looks like e.g. having people diagnosed with Intermittent Explosive Disorder involuntarily committed to a psychiatric hospital (despite never having yet actually attacked anyone) unless/until they agree to take drugs to "control" the disorder. Literally trying to ensure that such people never strike someone in the nose in the first place.

Americans don't actually fear authoritarianism (e.g. harsh punishments, for many different offenses); they mostly fear paternalism.

The Civil Rights Act literally prevents people from discriminating based on race amongst other criteria. ADA literally prevents people from living the disabled to fend for themselves. Curious what segment of Americans fear paternalism.

The segment who opposed the Civil Rights Act, including the senators who filibustered it for nearly 60 days to force a compromised version and the business owners who openly defied it for years in protest, seems like a good place to start.

> The difference between a paternalistic and non-paternalistic state, is basically that a paternalistic state tries to actively prevent you, while a non-paternalistic state merely punishes you

Paternalistic: I truely hate PC shit, but that seems like a terribly misogynistic word, I guess someone needs to discipline our forebears. And my own cultural stereotypes are that mothers have rules, and punishment is something a father does (in complete opposition to that definition?!).

> non-paternalistic

Now I wonder how often we think of a man as maternalistic, however not being maternalistic is mostly pretty bad: https://www.wordhippo.com/what-is/the-opposite-of/maternalis...

> they mostly fear paternalism.

This doesn't entirely ring true either. Lots of people are all for it as long as it is restricting behavior they themselves don't like, or enforcing ones' they do.

I think the quote isn't referring to somebody having a direct impact on you, but rather that you have to put up with their immoral behavior (in your view). In a free society a religious fundamentalist has to tolerate atheists.

Drunk driving and public drunkenness laws are mostly practical. They are a restriction on people's freedom before they've harmed other. The laws are preventative in nature and exist to preempt harm that reckless behavior could cause. They're not good for modeling the principles of a free society on, because you'd quickly arrive at a paternalistic surveillance state. The laws are a compromise between safety and freedom.

> I don't agree that being forced to suffer the consequences of other people's poor decisions is freedom.

You're not forced to suffer the consequences. You have the freedom to adopt countermeasures. You can drive defensively and stay alert when behind the wheel as a countermeasure against other drivers possibly being drunk. You can wear a mask (properly), social distance, avoid crowds, etc., as a countermeasure against other people possibly having an infectious disease. That's how it's supposed to work in a free society.

> While Prohibition failed miserably in aggregate, its ongoing legacy of (American!) laws against drunk driving and public drunkenness are perfectly good examples of how this ethos works and why it's important.

The reason why the laws you refer to work reasonably well in America is that they are only enforced when someone has already made a mistake. We don't have roadblocks everywhere with cops forcibly administering breathalyzers to all drivers to make sure none of them are drunk. We don't have cops going around cities forcibly administering breathalyzers to everyone walking on the streets to make sure none of them are drunk. We only enforce those laws when someone has already done something like cause an accident, or drive erratically enough to get a cop's attention, or behave in public in a way that is obviously due to drunkenness.

And that very method of enforcement means that you, the individual citizen, cannot depend on it to protect you individually. In other words, those laws are not shielding you, individually, from the consequences of other people's bad decisions. You still have to adopt your own countermeasures when you drive, because you can't assume that every other driver is sober. And, again, that's the way it's supposed to work in a free society.

> You're not forced to suffer the consequences.

I'm having trouble reading this in any way where it isn't obviously false.

Unless there's a secret source of hazmat suits I haven't heard about, other people's poor behavior in a pandemic creates a measurable, deadly risk to the people who follow the guidelines.

You can't see someone catch COVID-19. You can't see someone infected with COVID-19.

You can see someone drink a beer. You can see someone acting as though they were drunk.

You can't have a free society without assuming a high degree of risk, period. That's part of the deal. You want a large amount of freedom, you have to accept a large amount of risk. People who can't cope with that need to realize America is not the place for them. I will actively work against people who want to reduce freedoms in America - of all kinds. Freedom is hard, requires work, and sometimes sucks. That's part of the deal.

> You can't see someone catch COVID-19. You can't see someone infected with COVID-19.

This particular problem, though, seems like the kind of problem that is amenable to a techno-solution. If there were a quick way to scan someone to see if they were shedding SARS-CoV-2 virus particles, you could see who was infected, or at least who was contagious, which is the thing to be worried about. Attempts to, for example, take people's temperature before entering a hospital or nursing facility as a visitor are attempts at this sort of technical solution, though of course they are much less accurate than a hypothetical "who is shedding virus particles" detector would be.

So this case would seem to go against the point of the article that started this thread discussion; in a free society, technosolutionism is often the best fix.

> other people's poor behavior in a pandemic creates a measurable, deadly risk to the people who follow the guidelines.

How much of a risk, compared to all the other risks we all undergo every day?

Also, how much of the risk is not there if you really, truly follow the guidelines? I see a lot of people who might think they are, but they're not. They don't wear their masks properly, or they wear a loose weave cloth bandana or scarf instead of an actual mask. They don't actually social distance--for example, I routinely see people in the checkout line at the supermarket not even making use of the 6-feet-apart markings that the store has put on the floor. They don't avoid crowds. They don't minimize the time they spend in indoor spaces that aren't their home.

In other words, you don't need a hazmat suit to mitigate the risk. But you do need to pay attention to detail and understand what properly following the guidelines actually means.

> How much of a risk, compared to all the other risks we all undergo every day?

For a single didactic example-- someone with diabetes walking in to pick up a take-out salad from a bar filled with unmasked people is normally a very low risk activity.

That same activity in a pandemic where percentage positive is approaching uncontrolled spread is prohibitively risky.

Am I missing a hidden premise here that's causing you to dig in your heels? It feels legitimately odd to need to explicitly defend the idea that there exist inescapable negative consequences for the wider community when a critical mass of people actively shirk their responsibility to be safe during a pandemic.

Edit: clarification

> someone with diabetes walking in to pick up a take-out salad from a bar

Can simply not do that in the current high risk environment. There are plenty of places offering take out food that don't require you to go into a room full of unmasked people to pick it up. So voting with your wallet seems like a perfectly viable option to incentivize businesses to take proper precautions and ensure that their customers do.

Also, are you assuming this person with diabetes is properly following all the guidelines? Are they wearing an appropriate mask, and wearing it properly (covering both their mouth and nose with a good seal all around)? Are they washing their hands right afterwards? (Or wearing gloves--my wife and I do that in cases where we can't be sure about whatever we're going to have to touch.) Are they minimizing the time they spend in enclosed spaces that aren't their home? Those are all things you can do to mitigate risk in situations where you have to go somewhere, such as the grocery store.

> It feels legitimately odd to need to explicitly defend the idea that there exist inescapable negative consequences

They're not "inescapable". That's the point. If you know you live in a society where a lot of people are not taking proper precautions, then you can take that into account in planning your own life and taking your own precautions. My wife and I have been doing that since the end of February 2020. It's doable. And since it's doable, I don't buy the claim that there are "inescapable" negative consequences.

> You're not forced to suffer the consequences. You have the freedom to adopt countermeasures. You can drive defensively and stay alert when behind the wheel as a countermeasure against other drivers possibly being drunk. You can wear a mask (properly), social distance, avoid crowds, etc., as a countermeasure against other people possibly having an infectious disease. That's how it's supposed to work in a free society.

In this case, the consequences extend beyond merely contracting COVID-19. The consequences also include society-wide social and economic impacts that are amplified disproportionately by people who make "poor decisions".

> We don't have roadblocks everywhere with cops forcibly administering breathalyzers to all drivers to make sure none of them are drunk.

We absolutely do. You probably live in one of the minority of states in which they are not legal.

> The consequences also include society-wide social and economic impacts

Which are not the result of individual people's poor decisions, but of our society's extreme overreaction to any kind of risk.

> We absolutely do.

Where? Please point me at the states where cops are doing this routinely. I have driven in many states and have never seen it done except at particular special events.

> Where?

If you go to a tourist destination over the summer, there is a good chance you'll see it in a few states. Ive personally driven through them in California.

But, they are not "required" in the sense that you can technically make a (legal) U turn to avoid them and go a different direction.

Here is a link with a bit of info about them. https://dui.laws.com/checkpoint

> Here is a link with a bit of info about them

Thanks for the information. This is still only in certain places (I notice you mention tourist destinations--yes, that's the kind of place I would expect this to be done), not "everywhere", and it certainly doesn't mean that you or I as sober drivers can relax and believe that we are not still at risk from other drivers possibly being drunk. But I agree it does go beyond only enforcing the laws when someone has already made a mistake (unless you count "driving into a visible DUI checkpoint when you know you're drunk" as a mistake).

> The reason why the laws you refer to work reasonably well in America is that they are only enforced when someone has already made a mistake.

That depends on the law correctly defining a line that separates a “mistake” from everything else. All we have to do is look at 26 years of the 55 mph speed limit to shatter that naive view.

> That depends on the law correctly defining a line that separates a “mistake” from everything else

That line isn't defined by the law--that's my point. If you drive with a blood alcohol level over the legal limit, even if you don't cause an accident and don't do anything erratic that gets a cop's attention, you are still breaking the law, just as if you drive at 56 mph in a 55 mph zone. But everybody knows that the actual law is not enforced as it is written, because it can't be. Instead we rely on vague limits imposed by the resources available to the police and their individual judgment about what counts as behavior that is abnormal enough to get their attention. And we also have to put up with the fact that the cops can use the letter of the law as a revenue source if they want to; they can always post some extra cops with radar guns in places where they know people routinely speed, and harvest a bunch of tickets any time they feel like it.

Personally, I would prefer not having laws that can't be enforced as written in the first place. Everyone knows it's impossible to catch everyone who exceeds the speed limit on a highway--so the speed limit should not be a law in the first place. It should be advisory; the actual law should be something along the lines of "the posted speed limit is the government's best judgment of a maximum safe speed; just exceeding that speed, by itself, does not violate any law, but if you cause an accident and are found to be exceeding the posted speed limit, you are presumed to be at fault and face greater legal liability". A similar provision would apply to drunk driving: just driving with BAL over the limit would not break any law, but if you cause an accident, you are presumed to be at fault and face greater legal liability. That way the actual law could be enforced as written, and the vast majority of people who break the letter of the law as it is written now but never cause any actual harm wouldn't have to worry about playing cat and mouse games with cops.

I like that. Basically it puts meaning into prima facie provisions in laws, plus it focuses law enforcement on TARGETING ACTUAL UNSAFE BEHAVIOR, not simply raking it in with numbers-based enforcement.

Your analogies fall short when talking about a microscopic virus.

It's funny how many people underestimate this virus in terms of its ability to mutate and spread.

And it's laughable that people think this can be contained with 'contact tracing' and 'monitoring' the movements of private citizens. It is a force of nature.

Contact tracing simply gives the illusion of control while giving governments and excuse to spy.

How easily free citizens give up basic fundamental rights in the name of Fear.

And yet, China, Australia, New Zealand, South Korea, Thailand, and Vietnam have managed to stop the virus. Weird how that works.

Ah so they have cured themselves of the virus have they?

South Korea is 4 times smaller than California. And its population many times more homogeneous than any of the 50 states.

New Zealand is an island nation with half the population of New Jersey

Thailand has had several recent outbreaks and hotspots.

Also that you believe Chinas/Vietnam/Thailands reporting is making a lot of assumptions. Governments in SE Asia have a very strong hold on what gets reported. You absolutely cannot trust the numbers they are reporting. To do so is irresponsible at best.

Weird how you compare apples to oranges and expect it to be a fair comparison.

Fear is a great motivator for giving up individual freedoms. That much is clear. How easily we give up our fundamental rights in the name of security and fear.

I'd love to be in a situation with some recent outbreaks and hotspots instead of it being the entire country. Or even if New Jersey was free. Or even one city.

The only reason it's apples-to-oranges is this continued belief that America is somehow special. This has caused all countermeasures to be ineffectual, half-assed, and incomplete.

But America is special.

We are a melting pot of thousands of different cultures coming in and out all the time. There are not many other countries like America. Certainly not on our scale if they are similar.

Of course we were going to get a bad case of Covid.

Could the response have been better? Of course.

But we are uniquely special in this way. Our diversity is usually an asset. In this case it was a detriment.

Free as in the five eyes already mutually spy on each other and then share the data, that is pretty much as invasive as what Vietnam added, to get around the rules on not spying on their own citizens.

They are not free to violate my right to life by being unwilling to follow basic public health measures.

Yes they are.

You didn't lock people up for giving your Grandma the flu even though it may have killed her.

That you think you can enforce or shame people into giving up freedom of movement (what's more fundamental then being able to leave your house?) is beyond reasonable or rational.

You could extend this reasoning to all viruses that are deadly to some population of people, including the flu and the regular old cold virus.

Where do you draw the line? Even government officials can't keep to their own policies. Look at Newsom dining out.

"Do as I say. Not as I do" that's the message.

You are free to shut yourself in your basement for the next two years but you can never hope to force other humans inside and shame them into doing so.

It won't work. It's absolutely impractical in a democracy. And if you try to make it work you will do so at great costs.

Fear. What a great motivator.

Clearly they are. Maybe they shouldn't have that freedom, but they do.

In the United States, a lot of law enforcement agencies have announced that they will not enforce stay-at-home orders, curfews, or mandatory mask wearing. Businesses can call the police to kick people out if they don't wear masks, but not because of some new mask-related law -- businesses already had the legal right to kick people out if they refuse to leave. If you're seen on the street without a mask, the police might ask you to put one on, or they might say nothing at all, but they are very unlikely to fine you.

All of those things are true in California, which is considered to have some of the strictest restrictions in the country. Most other states are less strict.

Some states have abolished laws that made it a crime to knowingly give people AIDS because it is 'stigmatising'. Yet those same people harp on about people not wearing masks are 'murders'. The hypocrisy is staggering.

I don't believe that it simply boils down to "advanced freedom." Although this is a very fraught topic, most sociologists would say the East Asian countries you mentioned generally engage in more "collectivist" modes of decision-making. (To what extent the individuals themselves vs. their cultures are "collectivist" is hotly debated, but I won't wade into that here). To me this seems directly related to the problem at hand: individuals in Japan or Taiwan generally had the freedom to make bad choices, but instead chose not to; individuals in the United States or the UK had the same freedoms but as a whole made different choices.

> China created a technosolutionist fix.

China runs on an authoritarian regime. Whatever success they can claim against the pandemic is less about technology and more about the ability to enforce draconian rules.

Neither China or South Korea created technological solutions. The solutions in both countries are social.

China used some good old communist methods, mobilise the entire population in the fight against the virus. Virtually every apartment building had someone sitting in front of it taking temperature. Every restaurant had. When someone was sick, two others were checking in and ensuring that people comply with regulation and go shopping for them. When China had one case in a city they cordoned off half a million people and tested millions.

South Korea wasn't quite as stringent with lockdowns but it worked the same way, compliance of the population, quick testing and human tracing. Same in Taiwan. What worked there was giving you a phone, locking you in your apartment, having the health department call on you three times per day and fining you 10k bucks if you didn't listen.

The tracing apps did, to put it mildly, jack shit. The solution, which is why a lot of Asian countries, even relatively poor ones like Vietnam, made it out of this, was adherence to law and compliance and harsh measures for those who fell out of line.

Throwing some random Apple dongle at every problem fixes exactly nothing, you can install a hundred apps on your phone, if your entire population has lost the collective will to actually act in coordinated fashion you're in the dog house.

dunno about sk. but doesn't cn also have a contact tracing system where u have to "login" to physical buildings?

and use of cctv footage to help contact tracing?

its not just people and phone calls?

Well, it seems like the distinction in the cases is not the amount of technosolutionism but the amount of government backing, no?

Quoting the article on that precise point:

> Critics of the technosolutionist approach point out that contact tracing apps, which were quickly embraced in countries like China and South Korea, were effective only if public health services were also able to successfully test the majority of people at risk, something that has yet to occur in the United States.

Technology is a necessary component of many solutions, but is rarely per se the solution. The old internet saying "There are no technical solutions to social problems" comes to mind - it doesn't mean that technology can't contribute to the solution (many social problems have solutions that require statistical models, cookies, higher-performance internet connections, Spanner, whatever), it just means that the technology doesn't solve the problem on its own. Wikipedia, for instance, would not be what it is without the wiki, but it is certainly not simply the wiki - it's the decades of writing that happened on the wiki.

Many people set up their own wiki, in the wake of Wikipedia, hoping to see the same success. Very few of them ended up working.

Technical-component-of-a-social-solution-ism is not technosolutionism. The article defines technosolutionism as follows: "Technosolutionism is a way of understanding the world that assigns priority to engineered solutions to human problems. Its first principle is the notion that an app, a machine, a software program, or an algorithm offers the best solution to any complicated problem."

All the projects from March to build 3D-printed ventilators at home, for instance, were technosolutionism. There's a lack of a physical item; we have 3D printers. Obviously we can 3D print our way out of the problem!

I'd argue that https://www.vaccinateca.com/ , for instance, is not technosolutionism in the definition above, despite it relying on a website and Airtable (https://twitter.com/patio11/status/1350539166296100864), because they're not saying "We can build a platform for pharmacies to enter data," they're saying "We're going to call up pharmacists, ourselves, and type what they say into a spreadsheet." Of course there's a lot of technical work that went into Airtable. But the difference, I think, is that they set out to solve a problem, and along the way they found a place where technology can help; they didn't set out to find a use for technology.

Yes, and the ultimate technosolution by the west is a vaccine.

I agree, it's a nuanced issue. IMHO, the pandemic was heavily exacerbated by technosolutionism (air travel), which makes this sort of analysis difficult. At this stage in society, it's basically "is technology the solution for problems created by technology?" That's been a long-running debate with no clear answer.

It's always been like this, ever since our ancestors figured out how to use stones to smash things. Technology solves problems and reveals or creates new ones. Which are to be solved with more technology.

It's somewhat obvious point if one looks at what the word means - "the application of scientific knowledge for practical purposes".

Reply on news.ycombinator.com