> "The “best” had to be discovered and learned, and can be learned again in the future, even if the present chain of knowledge dies out." If the Boeing Effect

> "The “best” had to be discovered and learned, and can be learned again in the future, even if the present chain of knowledge dies out." If the Boeing Effect is anything to go by, I don't think that assumption can hold in the short/medium term. Yes, maybe a century from now we'd have some set of pressures and alignment of various incentives such that we rebuild/rediscover this lost knowledge. But it'll be bleak until then, and we can't rely on it to happen in our generation. But I'd go further and argue it's deeper. Sometimes it's not just about any one single "node" being lost. The network of nodes and the unique connections and weights between them will forever be gone. To borrow yet another saying/aphorism. "It's much easier to destroy something than to build it."