I find it strange that people talk about ray tracing as if it is the solution when in fact it's not even the best of the approximations to the rendering equatio

I find it strange that people talk about ray tracing as if it is the solution when in fact it's not even the best of the approximations to the rendering equation that we have. For example caustics can't be adequately represented with ray tracing. Photon mapping, radiosity, etc can give much closer to photorealistic results.