I listened to that podcast at the time. I remeber being surprised about one thing in particular. He was talking about predictions of when the first people will land on Mars. He said that we tend to underestimate many of the challenges involved and so we tend to think it will happen sooner than what it is reasonable to expect. He also recounted a time he was talking with other people about it but, since they decided to bet money on which prediction will be closest to the reality, the people involved started doing a more in-depth consideration of the challenges involved and being more cautious about claiming it will happen very soon. But then, he trew all of his arguments about the bias towards unrealistic optimism and the need for more nuanced analysis out of the window when they started talking about when we will have AGI.
If you fully watch it, or already know these issues, the notion of going to Mars any time soon seems outright foolish.
If you have a large enough platform, it might still be useful as fundraising campaign, a PR stunt, or as a way to rally the uninformed masses around a bold vision. But, that's about it.
