If you find someone with a solution looking for a problem - run. Run fast, and run far and keep running. Because what they’re doing is justifying investment in outmoded ideas and trying to recoup some money back instead of losing everything.
Tech issues are loaded with solutions looking for problems. New tech can look flashy and exciting, and can tread into realms of fiction that something like a new breakfast cereal can’t. So a few examples of solutions looking for problems.
A success story first, yes I’m fully aware that this goes contrary to my opening remark. The laser. Here’s a conversation about the origins of calling a laser a solution to a problem:
https://ask.metafilter.com/148055/Who-first-called-lasers-a-solution-in-search-of-a-problem/amp
Flying cars, self driving cars, whatever other weird car someone thinks of. Okay, we’ve got a self driving car. But how do we actually make it work on the current infrastructure? How do we fix the known problems of not attempting to murder people in crosswalks? How do we fund the necessary upgrades to make different companies cars work on universally working as expected at traffic lights and lift bridges? Do we really need to keep throwing money at Elon Musk for stuff that ends up being cool, but in terms of practical value is way in the future or even totally unrealistic?
Virtual reality. There’s a movie I’d like to bring up, and it’s a really bad one. Expect No Mercy. A martial arts action flick with a virtual reality gimmick because VR hype was big at the time. (If you need to know in case you might want to track it down, Laurie Holden who would go on to The Walking Dead later is in it.). The villain has an assassin training academy that trains with VR. It gets really silly where we are supposed to believe that bad guy fights in a VR world spill over into real life. A flimsy excuse to have cool looking kicking and punching going on, something a little different than actual humans kicking and punching each other.
In Expect No Mercy the villain has some unexplained phase shifting in the real world or a projected image or something where in one brief scene avoids getting punched by the hero. A true virtual reality with this going on was just a movie gimmick. A one time promotion for selling tickets, based on a lot of hype about what VR could do to change the world. Of course marketed that VR is a blessing with no limits and no downside. Other media (the movie Gamer, Star Trek TNG:The Game) explores the problems of snapping out of the game to do real life things. Things that should be considered like addiction to the fake world.
The same way that the Internet changed social interaction, a VR world would cause such upheaval that the downsides can and will spread. In a capitalist structure, gung ho attention seekers with solutions looking for a problem market the solution as it being assumed that there is unlimited growth potential. Biological systems with unlimited growth are called cancer. And yes, that’s a bad thing. Gung ho capitalists never want you to think about disposal of waste needs to be addressed or how blockchain uses a butt ton of electricity for some vague coinage.
The marketing of gematria doesn’t even offer a solution looking for a problem. It’s a problem looking for a problem. It’s all doom and gloom and waiting until the news stories show up and whining about it. That 90 year old died, not just from dementia from being old but he was murdered. That guerrilla attack in South America is going to be blamed on the Jesuits with no actual proof. There’s no offer of a solution to stop whoever your arbitrary scapegoat is from not doing it again. Asking for money that you are keeping doesn’t count.
Gematria is a problem looking for a problem. You should avoid solutions looking for a problem until you can make yourself more immune to confirmation bias. If you ever thought virtual reality was going somewhere important you fell for the scam. Unlike lasers it was always just a short term bubble for a grand sort of science based pump and dump scheme. Einstein’s work on quantum physics paved the way for lasers, and before the first one was created they were already working on practical applications with real value.
Now try to find what practical value there is to doing a sports decode the day after the game is over. If you think you can turn that into predictions you are a virtual reality fan. You can at least not interrupt the lives of us who live in the light of day and the light of lasers and not your fantasy world of being an expert at looking at yesterday’s problems.
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