Ask HN: Software Fallacy for Social Problems?

Today was a productive day. I traced down two complex problems that had been nagging me for the past week, down to their roots and implemented a solution.

These solutions were a few line diffs at best, but made all the difference in the world as they rippled up the dependency chain.

A colleague of mine had a problem with a certain biokit, with measurements defying all expectations, but with time she too traced it down to a single small flaw that she promptly fixed.

What I'm getting at:

- It seems that large difficult problems seem to have very tiny solutions

What I'm asking:

- In the case of science/engineering, the solutions to macro problems are easy to fix once known.

- Does this same principle apply to global social problems in the world? Or is this just a fallacy of the strong dependable and reproducible frameworks we are used to when debugging, and has no basis in reality whatsoever?