A major failing in futurism is not accounting for both quality and cost scaling, especially supra-linear.
If you'd told someone with one of the first automobiles that they'd eventually be massively personally-owned, have access the majority of countries via paved road networks, and be refillable along the way, they'd have laughed at you.
And yet, that's what we've all lived in.
It happened because automobiles were massively useful.
It's difficult to imagine a scenario where basic-level cognition doesn't also scale, because a lot of the mental tasks we do every day are dumb and low-value.
Nearly every example of futurism I’ve seen in my 40+ years of looking at future technology has been people over accounting for scaling rather than ignoring it.
For example they see a prototype and then assume in 10 years everyone will have one.
Or they look at a proof of concept and don’t realise that that last 10% of refinement actually takes 90% of the effort.
What people usually miss is that scaling is the problem, not the solution. Prototypes are easy in comparison.
If you'd told someone with one of the first automobiles that they'd eventually be massively personally-owned, have access the majority of countries via paved road networks, and be refillable along the way, they'd have laughed at you.
And yet, that's what we've all lived in.
It happened because automobiles were massively useful.
It's difficult to imagine a scenario where basic-level cognition doesn't also scale, because a lot of the mental tasks we do every day are dumb and low-value.