Man, that's a concise, concise way to put it. And exactly true, and accurate, too. After all, he was able to engineer his way out of a fucking cave in the middle of the Afghani mountains. With scraps. Surely, he can figure his way around a few simple biological problems.

TO me this is the very key to his character. I was discussing this in an earlier post, in that if you took Tony Stark's realizations about accountability to their logical conclusion he'd have to realize he can't solve these problems by building a better suit, because the suit is still a weapon. And by taking out his munitions, he's really not solving any problems, because people will just buy weapons from some other manufacturer. How far does his accountability extend? Does his responsibility include looking at his own government, at the role of his best buddy's employer?

And he's got these huge control issues that won't quite let him reach this end point. Because that would mean admitting he can never have control, and being able to live with that.

Thing is, he wants control but he's provided yet another way that someone can take it away from him, by surrounding himself with totally hackable tech and AI, a la the comics. Which is my vote for the plot of the second movie. Wouldn't that rock?

anyway. sorry to meta all over your lj.