You're actually arguing those highly technical engineering projects provided nothing to humanity investing labor in them because they were not a financial success?

Just confirms my suspicion HN is not a forum for intellectual curiosity. It's been entirely subsumed by MBAs and wannabe billionaires.

> You're actually arguing those highly technical engineering projects provided nothing to humanity investing labor because they were not a financial success?

No. Re-read the comment.

I specifically say "No return on investment required" not "Has no return on investment". It didn't matter whether these projects earned back their money in the short term, or whether it takes the longer term of many decades.

The ISS hasn't earned back it's $150 billion, and it won't for a pretty long time yet. Doesn't mean it's not a good thing for humanity. Just means that it'd be a bad idea to have the project ran & funded by e.g. SpaceX. The project would've failed, you just can't get ROI on $150 billion within the timeframe required. SpaceX barely survived the cost of developing it's rockets. (And observe how AI spending is currently crushing the profitability of the newly-merged SpaceX-xAI.)

I'm not even saying "AI doesn't provide anything to humanity", I was saying that AI needs trillions of dollars in returns that do not appear to exist, and so it's likely to collapse.