People who say that AI or fusion is impossible because we haven’t managed to do it yet after 50 or 60 years of trying — well, they are very ignorant of history.

A nearly two thousand year span separates the construction of the first primitive steam engines from the first industrial use.

Also the same vast span of time separates geometry and algebra from the concepts of analytic geometry.

There are dozens of examples if one cares to look.

Because something doesn’t happen the moment someone thinks it might be possible means nothing. For AI and fusion, I wouldn’t be surprised if they take one or two thousands years. I don’t expect that, but I wouldn’t be surprised.

That’s how history has moved in the past, after all.

Another way humans are maladapted to our current civilization is that we have a primal revulsion and disgust reaction to and against the desperate. Any form of desperation — it matters not.

When resources were scarce, this made sense. Nothing to share. No time nor ability to take care of someone who will be a drain while living on the edge of survival (emotional or physical).

But now, that reaction actually harms the entire society since we’re all so tightly enmeshed.