The problem with "it's hard to believe" is that this is an area where I'm not even sure how to effectively estimate the counterposition, I've seen things that I thought were interesting get cancelled or have no follow up all the time, and it makes sense, no idea if it will matter, or even work, and even if it does, how much will it cost to realise any value?

Who knows how often really impactful tech is gated behind some non-obvious thing which we never follow up on.

I mean Douglas Engelbart basically bet his entire career behind the Mother of All Demos[0], if it had flopped, modern computing as we know it would be fundamentally different, same with Hiroo Kinoshita and Extreme Ultraviolet Lithography[1][2], we just would have had Moore's law falling off a cliff.

-[0]: [The Mother of All Demos, presented by Douglas Engelbart (1968)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yJDv-zdhzMY)

-[1]: https://spie.org/news/photonics-focus/mayjune-2023/developin...

-[2]: [The Closest Thing We Have to Alien Technology by Veritasium](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MiUHjLxm3V0)