Your cellphone may not actually make your life better, but having your cancer detected and treated early certainly can.

May not make it better. It may. Could. Or maybe it can’t.

And more academic modeling has certainly improved lives with much less food scarcity throughout the world, and much improved healthcare.

You are just elaborately saying “we have soap now”. But have you quantified the subjective experience of suffering between people who live now and people who lived before soap?