Whenever I read a news article where politicians congratulate themselves on almost balancing the budget after raising taxes a bit, I'm struck by just how low the bar is placed, even for important things.
I also keep thinking about the book childhood's end, where aliens land and basically force us to run our things properly, cleaning up the planet's problems in a matter of a few years. I always wonder if we got put to the challenge as a species, whether we could meet it.
Think about the bare minimum it would take a software developer not to get fired. It's actually quite low. Now realize how many people do the bare minimum at their job. Including politicians (bare minimum == get elected).
Enabling policy that helps citizens inside and outside his/her constituency in life-changing ways. Highly ethical, not afraid to make unpopular decisions if its for the greater good (gay marriage in a conservative region etc.).
It makes me wonder how much does the society suck, or what else could be achieved if more of the humanity's resources were managed the way they are at SpaceX. If Musk had decided to do fusion energy instead of rockets, would it be commercially viable by now? How about curing cancer?
While not to diminish what SpaceX has achieved it's really a far cry from "curing cancer".
While what they've done too allot of engineering it's not nearly as complex as identifying all of the biological pathways for even a single form of cancer and finding a reliable cure.
That said we do have good treatments for the vast majority of forms of cancer, the problem is that your survivability is directly tied to how early it's detected, surgical removal, radiation and more notably modern chemo regiments are very effective in early stages of detection.
Many type of cancer today have 90%+ survivability rates if they are detected early enough, detection isn't always easy allot of them can not turn symptomatic till later stages, and many of them won't show up in blood work / body scans clearly either.
They know what they are doing all right. For instance, ITER's managerial staff surely enjoys the jet-setting between Barcelona and the French Riviera. But their goals are not aligned with making progress.
That's a load of cynical and simplistic crock. Yes ITER is super expensive, and maybe it's not the best use of research money, and maybe it'll never get anywhere. But the project's aims are very ambitious, and potential payoff is huge. Saying the ITER management doesn't deserve the same perks as other management is just wrong.
Musk is doing several things apart from launching rockets. For instance he's trying to make electric cars more common and he has quite some success. His solar ventures is less convincing, though.
Having got the atoms into the right place, a surprisingly large amount of effort seems to then be involved in persuading the electrons to dance around in the right patterns. 'More energy' doesn't yet seem to help us solve that problem.
I also keep thinking about the book childhood's end, where aliens land and basically force us to run our things properly, cleaning up the planet's problems in a matter of a few years. I always wonder if we got put to the challenge as a species, whether we could meet it.