I’m not sure that metaphor’s got legs here. The Donner Summit railroad tunnel was completed in 1868, for example, and blasting through solid granite in a (then-)remote mountainous area with harsh winters and little infrastructure doesn’t sound like low-hanging fruit to me, then or now.
On the other hand, that was one of the major engineering projects of the time, and reducing costs by a factor of five or ten still wouldn’t make it competitive with surface roads.
That particular tunnel in that particular place was worthwhile compared a surface route, which could only have been a long detour. By low hanging fruit, I mean a favourable cost to benefit ratio, not easy to do in absolute terms,
Isn’t that rather assuming the conclusion? I don’t actually buy Eliezer’s suggestion, but by making it he’s essentially saying that large-scale transit tunnels would have a favorable cost-to-benefit ratio after adjusting for overhead costs.
But the low hanging fruit have gone.
The low hanging fruit have gone … underground.
Adding ”… underground” improves any sentence … underground.
I’m not sure that metaphor’s got legs here. The Donner Summit railroad tunnel was completed in 1868, for example, and blasting through solid granite in a (then-)remote mountainous area with harsh winters and little infrastructure doesn’t sound like low-hanging fruit to me, then or now.
On the other hand, that was one of the major engineering projects of the time, and reducing costs by a factor of five or ten still wouldn’t make it competitive with surface roads.
That particular tunnel in that particular place was worthwhile compared a surface route, which could only have been a long detour. By low hanging fruit, I mean a favourable cost to benefit ratio, not easy to do in absolute terms,
Isn’t that rather assuming the conclusion? I don’t actually buy Eliezer’s suggestion, but by making it he’s essentially saying that large-scale transit tunnels would have a favorable cost-to-benefit ratio after adjusting for overhead costs.