Counterpoint: in December of 1903, the New York Times ran an opinion piece saying that Man wouldn’t unlock the secret of flight for at least a million years. 9 days later, the Wright brothers flew their first prototype airplane.

So, you know. Don’t count out those hidden breakthroughs.

AGI, nanobots, fully autonomous self driving cars, cancer cures and aging cures, significant life extension, etc are all a long way off.

Few of these have really been proven possible, much less an expected time-frame.

AGI: We are no nearer to artificial self-awareness with LLMs and other approaches than when AI research began in the 1950s.

nanobots: We have the ability to print parts at that scale but material properties are very, very different at that scale. Heat dissipation is a real problem.

Fully autonomous self driving cars: This is a subset of no self-awareness in AI.

Cancer cures: Here is where I disagree. The progress in combating the thousands of individual types of cancer in the past 50 years is astounding and the pace is increasing.
Also factor in that more people end up needed treatment for cancer because a: they live longer and b: the massive reductions in other causes of death means more people who would have died in past generations from other things live long enough for cancer to develop.

aging cures: Quality of life as we age has improved greatly but

significant life extension: yes, it seems 120ish is hard coded as the terminal age and we still don’t know if we can alter that.

SF is great in that it can show possible futures but it is not prediction.

Maybe that’s because we are heading more towards a dystopian future.

-We are heading towards a climate crisis where ecosystems will collapse, war will be fought for water sources, massive influx of refugees will head towards the north, food will be scarce, energy prices skyrocket and only the richest among us will be able to preserve their lifestyle.

-Liberty will be more restricted, technology allows surveillance on a massive scale and AI prediction of crime will make you think twice before jaywalking.

-Neo capitalism and profit extraction at all cost leads to people being sucked dry. Everything from housing, education, healthcare, energy become unaffordable for most yet profitable for the few. Who cares if no one lives in shiny condos as long as market prices keep rising. Who cares if most can’t afford an operation as long as the one who does spend million. Who cares if education is for the rich that will preserve the oligarchy.

-war is more dangerous than ever for civilians, robots and drones are controlled by AI. War crimes are not even noted, they would have died of hunger or thirst anyway.

-Authoritarism and small dominions rules over the world, any warlords can buy a swarm of deadly robots as long as you ship your primary resources.

I kind of wish there was more emphasis on making the best out of what is currently possible instead of waiting around for scientific and technological breakthroughs that will take an indeterminably long period to come to fruition, if they do at all.

I guess I’m so used to hearing about distant solutions to present-day problems and I never hear much about how these problems could be addressed today (although in some cases, like with climate change, this inevitably involves things like lifestyle changes and societal restructuring, which themselves can seem equally like hopium).

Cancer cures are coming thick and fast.

The HPC vaccine for instance has meant that anyone under about 25 in my country has an insanely low chance of getting cervical cancer and reduced risk of some other cancers.

More generally, in the past 40 years cancer ten year survival rates have doubled.

I think people still make the mistake of thinking of cancer like it’s a single condition. There are loads of different types of cancers, so loads of different ‘cancer cures’ are needed.