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Maybe think about the invention of nuclear weapons/energy rather than airplanes since that matches the type of concern. You can just choose not to take an airpl

Maybe think about the invention of nuclear weapons/energy rather than airplanes since that matches the type of concern. You can just choose not to take an airplane. If there was no manhattan project and work towards that goal had been done in the open over a long period of time, I don't think people with safety concerns would be laughed out of the building. In fact I think we got kinda lucky that it turns out to be so expensive to build nukes that only nation states can do it, and that the barriers are still prohibitive even then such that we can tell if a country is trying to gain that ability. I'm not sure we could have ruled out the possibility of individuals or small groups being in control of nukes.

flangola7 4y ago
>In fact I think we got kinda lucky that it turns out to be so expensive to build nukes that only nation states can do it, and that the barriers are still prohibitive even then such that we can tell if a country is trying to gain that ability. I'm not sure we could have ruled out the possibility of individuals or small groups being in control of nukes. This is something I've also realized. Nuclear weapons are undeniably an existential threat but they're in part mitigated because it's very very difficult to get the materials and assemble them. That was complete luck. We got lucky. That's all that saved(es) us. Imagine if making a nuke was as easy as making a steel sword. Or perhaps, as easy as running Make-Me-Global-Dictator.exe