I’m generally skeptical about claims of silver bullet solutions to complex problems.

Biological matters—our bodies aging, our brains not always functioning as optimally as we’d prefer—are foggy, multifaceted issues.

Social matters, likewise, are muddled at best, and anyone who claims to have a simple solution to poverty, to pollution, to powering the world is probably either not taking all the relevant variables and research and concerns into consideration and/or is trying to sell us something.

I do think there are opportunities to make various sorts of progress by making use of available and impending tools and techniques, provided they’re applied thoughtfully, properly, and consistently.

The trouble is that most such opportunities (and the approaches/technologies upon which they’re predicated) are fundamentally flawed, despite being genuinely interesting and packed with possibility.

For instance: there are chemicals that can demonstrably boost performance, and the most widely used of these chemicals—caffeine—is cheap and easy to integrate into one’s life.

Unfortunately, many people don’t use caffeine responsibly or healthily: its half-life can be something like 11 hours, so it’s ideally consumed only in the morning, in moderation, and without all the extras (additional sugars and fats and other decorations can cancel out its beneficial properties).

When used appropriately, caffeine has been shown to be generally safe, to boost mental and physical performance, and to help us stay awake and alert longer. When used inappropriately it can contribute to cardiovascular issues, mess with our sleep, and serve as a vehicle for unhealthful consumption.

Coffee and other caffeine-carrying substances, then, are far from silver bullets, despite offering many benefits.

Due to this dichotomous nature, I try to think about such tools in the context of negatives-neutralizing failsafes and stabilizing scaffoldings.

I wouldn’t want to use a table saw without the appropriate level of knowledge and safety measures in place, for instance.

Likewise, I’m not just going to swallow handfuls of random pills, even though a tiny dose of levothyroxine (taken first thing every morning) keeps an immune disorder I was born with at bay. Pills can be useful, but it’s prudent to have a sense of which ones to take, for how long, when to take them, and so on.

Accompanying tools, safety measures, relevant knowledge, thoughtful habits, and other enacted technologies can neutralize the negatives while amplifying the positives associated with all sorts of tools we might (properly bulwarked) safely and productively wield.

I’m generally skeptical about these sorts of solutions in part because I’m also generally optimistic about the possibilities and opportunities associated with them.

I want things to get better, and I believe (with reason, I think) that we have the capacity to make things better.

Lacking sufficient guardrails, though, our potentially potent upgrades could be used unethically, could be deployed unevenly, and could cause greater damage than they ameliorate.

There are many pitfalls along the way, but we have reason to think we are capable of learning, doing better next time, and developing heuristics and macro-scale frameworks that can help the next generation (and our future selves) avoid making the same errors again and again (though of course they’ll almost certainly discover plenty of new and exciting issues on their own).

One of the better ways I’ve found to maintain that sense of optimism while also avoiding repeat stumbles into gullibility and unnecessary risk is to always question, ask who benefits from what, look for concerns that are being ignored or insufficiently addressed, and to be open to experimentation and enthusiasm.

Also worth remembering is that critical feedback and thread-picking can be some of the most direct and impactful ways to iterate useful tools, while at the same time helping to weed out hucksters, victimizers, and well-meaning but misinformed (or deluded) salespeople.

If you found value in this essay, consider buying me a coffee :)