But you say “Look at how big those planes are getting! We’ve gone from small fighter planes, to bombers, to jets in a short amount of time. We’re on a double exponential of plane tech, and it’s just a matter of time before one of them will land on the moon!”
...And they were right? Humans did land on the moon roughly on that timeline (and as I recall, there were people before the moon landing at RAND and elsewhere who were extrapolating out the exponentials of speed, which was a major reason for such ill-fated projects like the supersonic interceptors for Soviet bombers), and it was a fairly seamless set of s-curves, as all of the aerospace technologies were so intertwined and shared similar missions of ‘make stuff go fast’ (eg. rocket engines could power a V-2, or it could power a Me 163 instead). What is a spy satellite but a spy plane which takes one very long reconnaissance flight? And I’m sure you recall what the profession was of almost all of the American moon landers were before they became astronauts—plane pilots, usually military.
And all of this happened with minimal intentionality up until not terribly long before the moon landing happened! Yes, people like von Braun absolutely intended to go to the moon (and beyond), but those were rare dreamers. Most people involved in building all of those capabilities that made a moon mission possible had not the slightest intent of going to the moon—right up until Kennedy made his famous speech, America turned on a dime, and, well, the rest is history.
It is said that in long-term forecasting, it is better to focus on capabilities than intentions… And intentions have never been more mutable, and more irrelevant on average, than with AIs.
(“If your solution to some problem relies on ‘If everyone would just…’ then you do not have a solution. Everyone is not going to just. At no time in the history of the universe has everyone just, and they’re not going to start now.”)
...And they were right? Humans did land on the moon roughly on that timeline (and as I recall, there were people before the moon landing at RAND and elsewhere who were extrapolating out the exponentials of speed, which was a major reason for such ill-fated projects like the supersonic interceptors for Soviet bombers), and it was a fairly seamless set of s-curves, as all of the aerospace technologies were so intertwined and shared similar missions of ‘make stuff go fast’ (eg. rocket engines could power a V-2, or it could power a Me 163 instead). What is a spy satellite but a spy plane which takes one very long reconnaissance flight? And I’m sure you recall what the profession was of almost all of the American moon landers were before they became astronauts—plane pilots, usually military.
And all of this happened with minimal intentionality up until not terribly long before the moon landing happened! Yes, people like von Braun absolutely intended to go to the moon (and beyond), but those were rare dreamers. Most people involved in building all of those capabilities that made a moon mission possible had not the slightest intent of going to the moon—right up until Kennedy made his famous speech, America turned on a dime, and, well, the rest is history.
It is said that in long-term forecasting, it is better to focus on capabilities than intentions… And intentions have never been more mutable, and more irrelevant on average, than with AIs.
(“If your solution to some problem relies on ‘If everyone would just…’ then you do not have a solution. Everyone is not going to just. At no time in the history of the universe has everyone just, and they’re not going to start now.”)