The manhattan project wasn't incremental. Nor was the apollo program nor the hoover dam. It does seem like we (America) have moved into a mode of thinking where instead of asking, "what do we want to build?" we ask, "based on the advances at the edge of iterative academic or technical progress, what is now possible to build?"
In short, Thiel's argument that America has mostly transitioned from optimistic determinists to optimistic indeterminists seems like more than a matter of perspective bias.
Manhattan project, over half a million people working in cooperation to meet one end goal. The Apollo program, over half a million people working in cooperation to meet one end goal. How many people do Google, Apple, Microsoft, Oracle employ? Combined?
A single individual with a computer can be more productive than 100 individuals from any of those past projects. We walk around with more computer power in our pockets than the entire computer power that got mankind to walk on the moon.
But that is not the point.
The point is that a mooonshot is only a moonshot relative to its time.
In other words, we would need to imagine what a project, that could be accomplished with half-a-million (or more) people working in cooperation toward a single end goal, would look like today.
I can guarantee you that would look something along the lines of a partial terraforming of Mars.
Hacker news complains about the lack of innovation and invention, and yet continues to support a tech-world with a "solo founder" mentality, one man sitting alone in a room coding an app ... You'll never get a moonshot civilization pushing that attitude.
One of the main premises is that the impact of societies on other societies ("ruling" in the vernacular of the book, as this impact has often been military and brutal in the time scale the book covers) has a lot to do with the kind of social organization they are able to use. There's amplifiers to this of course -- you can either mobilize a huge number of people to build a pyramid, or mobilize a huge number of people to invent cranes and bulldozers and let a few people build the pyramid. But the bottom line, according to Morris, is that this kind of social goal-oriented organization is a key metric of a society's impact.
The author gave an talk to the Long Now Foundation a few years ago. Audio stream/download is at [1]. I found it interesting, and he was an engaging speaker.
You are definitely right,we have less of that spirit.
But we do have such projects that organize huge amounts of people(although the details of this organization differ - because it appears that networks of companies works better).
Curing cancer,green energy and keeping moore's law can be seen as such projects.
"In other words, we would need to imagine what a project, that could be accomplished with half-a-million (or more) people working in cooperation toward a single end goal, would look like today.
I can guarantee you that would look something along the lines of a partial terraforming of Mars."
A vastly more realistic projection of what "a half million or more people working in cooperation towards a single end goal" could accomplish, based on the AR(1) model, would be the rip roaring success the US has had in bringing freedom and democracy to Iraq and Afghanistan, and keeping the world safe from terrorists and evil doers.
Face it; you live in a declining civilization. The moon program was the last great accomplishment of the West: the end. Enjoy looking at HN on your iphone: that's about as much future as you're likely to get any time soon.
If the West was in decline, it wouldn't still be the engine of science and innovation, which is exactly what it still is. In fact, the West dominates both categories to an extreme, despite the rise of China, India and Japan since the moon landing.
The West still possesses by far and away the best universities and school systems. The US in particular, so dominates the top college rankings, others have a hard time getting a single school into the top ten list.
There's no aspect that we can consider regarding other competitors, that outshine the West. Manufacturing? The US and Germany are both better at it, cleaner at it, and more efficient at it than China. Science? Not even a real competition. Energy? The US and Europe have led and created a huge portion of the technology around pretty much every form of energy production. Information technology? The West leads, easily, again; with countries like China always copying and running five or ten years behind. Nobel laureates? The West wins again. Space? The West dominates again, with no sign of suddenly being bested by China or Japan or India. Quality of life? The West is doing extremely well overall, with Japan and South Korea being the sole countries in the East that are competitive - and it's worth pointing out, Japan is in a 30 year stagnation, and China is the world's fastest accumulator of debt. Medical / pharma / biotech? Again not even a real competition, with the US and Europe dominating in most every regard, from the science of it to the products and drugs.
I'd struggle to come up with any positive categories the West isn't still leading in. Your claim appears to have zero basis in reality.
You know, Rome around 300AD was top notch in science, technology, military achievements, art, political power and philosophy. It was also very obviously in decline. Just as we are. It's as obvious as a wart on a bald head.
For that matter, the Soviet Union was considered unstoppable by most people in the 1980; Samuelson predicted we'd soon be speaking Russian in that very year. Ever look at the ruins of the Soviet Union? The ones I looked at in Sevastopol look a lot like Detroit.
Read some history: it's good for you. You can start with the Kenneth Clark documentary on Western Civilization I linked above if you like.
It's not a great argument. The Manhattan Project wasn't incremental but it was a reaction to scientific advance. It started after Einstein's letter to Roosevelt warning that an atomic bomb was possible [1], not someone saying "hey, let's build a really big bomb because optimism."
The Apollo program was built on incremental advances in rocketry going back to von Braun (at least), mostly funded due to military competition.
The Hoover Dam was a high point in a long history of dam construction that was very much incremental.
But the incremental advances in rocketry all started with the dream of going to the stars. The Verein für Raumfahrt, the society for space flight, which von Braun joined when he was 28, was founded after Oberth's book on space travel using rockets. Oberth himself was inspired by Verne.
We just got lucky because the military thought of another use for rockets and provided the insane amounts of funding necessary for the development. We very nearly would have had space ships powered by nuclear bombs that would have been able to reach Jupiter in months, but unfortunately the military's interest in space waned and the test ban treaty precluded nuclear pulse propulsion for the foreseeable future.
One doesn't exclude the other. It's perfectly reasonable to claim that the world mostly move in incremental steps while there are some who take quantum leaps. In fact that seems fairly reasonable to be the case. PayPal was in many ways a quantum leap but only really after they merged with Elon. So even Thiel wasn't the only one building what no one else where.
All of those were government projects. And two were either completely or largely secret at that, because they were intended to address an "existential threat" on the horizon.
Good luck getting the government behind anything like that anymore. Unless we have some otherworldly threat or something that MIGHT challenge US dominance in short order I don't see any big projects coming out of the U.S. government.
The 21st century Manhattan project is pervasive surveillance. And just like the Manhattan project or Apollo, we'll all be getting something out of that for many years to come.
In short, Thiel's argument that America has mostly transitioned from optimistic determinists to optimistic indeterminists seems like more than a matter of perspective bias.