Even a century ago they had good reasons to think it was possible. Medicine was getting a lot better VERY quickly. They turned out to be wrong, but I wouldn’t say that they were utterly crazy for thinking that they could keep finding low-hanging fruit long enough to work out the underpinnings and solve the problem.
Now, we can see a lot more clearly how far we are from the ‘finish line’.
On the other hand, the number of people working on a problem, and the speed with which they are individually able to work, can’t be ignored. “Given enough eyes, all bugs are shallow”—Linus Torvalds, talking about something pretty similar (if much, much simpler).
A century ago there were scientists who said the same. Just because somebody is working on a problem doesn’t mean it will be solved.
Good thing that isn’t the argument, isn’t it?
Even a century ago they had good reasons to think it was possible. Medicine was getting a lot better VERY quickly. They turned out to be wrong, but I wouldn’t say that they were utterly crazy for thinking that they could keep finding low-hanging fruit long enough to work out the underpinnings and solve the problem.
Now, we can see a lot more clearly how far we are from the ‘finish line’.
On the other hand, the number of people working on a problem, and the speed with which they are individually able to work, can’t be ignored. “Given enough eyes, all bugs are shallow”—Linus Torvalds, talking about something pretty similar (if much, much simpler).