[greens]

I can't believe that you're talking about the mass-murder of civilians like it's some sort of triumph, especially since you could have made the exact same point citing the trinity test. And it's so weird that you use the term "toxic environment" right after that.

IMO AI progress in the last 10 years has drastically exceeded reasonable expectations.

You can buy a helicopter any time you want.

[misiti3780]

I dont think the "mass-murder of civilians like it's some sort of triumph", although I can see the way I wrote it sounds like that is what I mean (and I cannot edit it because of HN). Quit assuming bad faith in my comment. Why on earth would I think that ?

I meant that we discovered fission and then we built a bomb in under 6 years. Even if you disagree with the outcome of what happen in Japan, the Manhattan Project was an amazing scientific accomplishment, and there is no way the US could do something of that scale, scientifically in 2021.

[greens]

Ok, sorry for assuming bad faith and ranting.

Still, I think it's pretty hard to compare engineering achievements like this. Is it harder to make a fission bomb in 6 years with 1940s technology, or a COVID vaccine in 1 year with 2020s technology?

Also, I seems like we could be having this conversation in 1940 about an american battleship program.

[misiti3780]

No problem!

The COVID vaccine was an achievement, without a doubt, but i still think we need time to see how effective it will be as the virus mutates and make sure there are no long term side affects. If the vaccines achieve herd immunity ends the pandemic then history will be very kind to it and the scientists that created it.

One thought is the actual creating of the vaccine must have been considerable less complicated than the atom bombs if it was really created in one day.

[acdha]

It’s only less complicated if you exclude the years of research into the techniques and we’re seeing delays manufacturing because those are not easy to scale. This work started in the 2000s so I think it’d be closer to thinking of how long it took to build a bomb after you had developed the physics, built the mines and processing systems, etc. To me it really highlights how easy it is for us to forget how much science depends on less publicized work - there must have been hundreds of people whose careers went into the manufacturing techniques alone.