[mitthrowaway2]

I mean, a frenzy of talent was applied to breaking the sound barrier, and it broke, within a very short time. A frenzy of talent was applied to landing on the moon and that happened too, relatively quickly. Supersonic travel also happens to be physically possible under the laws of our universe. We know with confidence that human-level intelligence is also physically possible within the laws of our universe, and we can even estimate some reasonable upper bounds on the hardware requirements that implement it.

So in that sense, if we're playing reference class tennis, this looks a lot more like a project to break the sound barrier than a project to break the light barrier. Is there a stronger case you can make that these people, who are demonstrating quite tangible progress every month (if you follow the literature rather than just product launches), are working on a hopelessly unsolvable problem?

[CatWChainsaw]

I think it looks more like a speed of light than a speed of sound problem.