> We want people who don’t think about airplanes as a mode of transportation to start flying
It really depresses me that in 2024 we have some of the smartest, most privileged people in the world deciding that this is what they’re going to dedicate their life to
Shouldn’t we be doing exactly the opposite? Getting people to stop flying
There are good reasons to fly. Some places in the US are only accessible through flight (I'm looking at you, Alaska.) Some places require insane amounts of time to commute/manage because of a lack of infrastructure. Some common low-flight hour jobs (eg: pipeline monitoring) are only feasible through flight.
There are currently good reasons that most people don't fly. They usually come down to time, money and training (which is time, money and ability.) There is also significant risk (think: along the risk level of riding a motorcycle)
I guarantee that flying will not get so safe and cheap that the average Joe will just start hopping in a plane for a hamburger every other day.
I personally think the things we should be focusing on are making much more efficient GA aircraft. Also, getting rid of 100LL and gasoline would be nice. It's really hard to do though.
As for the smartest and most-privileged people, there are much worse things to devote time to as an engineer. There are also a lot of engineers these days. Don't despair too much :)
My thoughts exactly. It's depressing really. Even if i had an idea for a novel airplane that leads to more people flying, i would immediately conclude that it's not a good idea to chase after because our planet needs less CO₂ emissions, not more.
I agree. There are many more important issues that could be solved with this person's expertise and willingness to apply themselves. Unfortunately, you can only lead a horse to water.
The vastness of areas which could be studied, advanced, or challenged lends itself well to human curiosity. I feel it would be unwise and unreasonable to stop people from exploring their area of interest.
Consider all the academic papers written with 0 citations. Did they waste their time? Should they have picked from a centralised pool of "most important" issues? The breadth-first search approach benefits the scientific community long term, I'd imagine.
Do you work tirelessly to prevent climate change as your day job? If not, why?
you don't really clarify why people should stop flying, I'll assume it's due to global warming? Personally, I think this is a fantastic idea, to simplify the user experience of flying to make it accessible sounds incredible. Private jets are the ultimate luxury in life that so few have access to today. If it is global warming related, then I think that problem needs to be solved as well, but it's somewhat separate. EVs have become a reality, and there needs to be a lot more work done to solve global warming, not a reason to stop all progress.
Seeing the Earth from a bird’s eye view is a historically speaking very recent privilege only a tiniest fraction of humanity was able to enjoy. If you want to get society-wide shifts of perspective about the Earth, you want more people to experience flight (and even spaceflight), not fewer.
No. What we should be doing is encouraging smart, motivated people to address what they see as problems that they can make actual progress towards solving. As a natural consequence, many of those efforts will be things you find worthwhile and many others you won't.
If you think there's a problem more worthwhile of their efforts, why don't you dedicate your life to it?
It’s not a question of “worthwhile”, I’m not judging them for writing mobile minigames or whatever, it’s a question of pulling in the exact opposite direction to where we should be going. What’s the point of having people dedicating their lives to getting us out of this pickle, when others are saying “you know what we need more of? Private air flights”
We can use legislation to fix whatever we perceive adtech or fintech to be doing wrong. Try making a law that says you can't use this new convenient airplane that everyone is now using to hang out with friends every evening that live 200km away
I would think enabling this behavior is much worse than anything advertisers can do to us in the medium to long term
It really depresses me that in 2024 we have some of the smartest, most privileged people in the world deciding that this is what they’re going to dedicate their life to
Shouldn’t we be doing exactly the opposite? Getting people to stop flying