Sandberg dissects the 1940 argument that harnessing atomic energy was impossibly remote
anderssandberg · x · 2026-11-07
Continuing the thread, Sandberg breaks down the 1940 paper's reasoning: the author argued nuclear science was so young that harnessing atomic energy lay far in the future — "seeing the forces does not mean we have means of harnessing them." Sandberg notes the argument assumes cross sections cannot be deliberately altered, mirroring Smalley's "sticky fingers" case against nanotechnology, and that the author expected lunar settlement long before nuclear power. The shared page images show the original text predicting the problem would remain unsolved when a successor lectured holidaymakers on the moon.
More from AGI Musings
- Stanford's Anshul Kundaje: ML conference peer review is broken and unfixable — anshulkundaje · 2026-11-07
- Eric Drexler: AI options, not optimism — participants weigh options, not odds — sebkrier · 2026-11-07
- Musk lays out SpaceX vision of deploying up to 1 TW of space-based AI compute per year — XFreeze · 2026-11-07
- "AI media detection will become an arms race just like cybersecurity" — ZeroStateReflex · 2026-11-07
- tszzl: Nature destroyed itself five times — stop reading morality into it — tszzl · 2026-11-07
- Vitalik Buterin: 'Open weight is not open source' on AI models — wonderwomancode · 2026-11-07