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Except understanding how a bird can fly had little bearing on building the Wright brothers flyer.

And most of the details of bird flight were not exactly discovered till well after commercial air travel was commonplace.



While the exact details were not understood, the mechanics were visible and explainable to some extent. The Wright brothers were at least inspired by birds. https://www.wright-brothers.org/History_Wing/Wright_Story/In...

We still don't know how cells in C. elegans work together. It's neither visible nor explainable on a satisfying level.


No but we observably do know that that the connections between cells are important, to the point that by mimicking that we've derived significant benefit.

The Wright flyer didn't flap, and the wings only superficially look like anything a bird has.


> No but we observably do know that that the connections between cells are important, to the point that by mimicking that we've derived significant benefit.

That is true and it shows even more how important observabilty is for science and engineering. That's also why a simulation that actually provides an accurate enough model of reality might help us so much. The problem with AI right now is, that we try or even claim to understand Unix by mimicking the functionality of transistors.

> The Wright flyer didn't flap, and the wings only superficially look like anything a bird has.

They tried to mimick bird wings when coming up with flight control mechanisms.




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