I think the difference between your perspective and Bostrom's is his thinking is, in as non-pejorative sense as I can spin it, childish. Most people, when they are children, tend to imagine that problems have simple solutions, and can be solved by commitment, faith, and good intentions.
When people grow up, through a process of disappointment, failure, and gradual acclimatization to the muddy vagaries of reality, they tend to get increasingly suspicious of grand goals and simple solutions. And that's because, like you point out, doing stuff is really fucking hard.
The problem is, of course, that sometimes really amazing, or really terrible things can be done. The Marshall plan, or the Manhattan project, the end of Smallpox. World hunger is manifestly solveable - the only thing we lack is the will - i.e., as a society, we consider malnutrition and starvation acceptable.
So people who are suspicious of grand goals tend to get lumped in with the people that opposed all the grand goals that have gone before us, universal literacy, political freedom, and so on. Bostrom is just taking this pattern to an absurd conclusion, by making the grandest of all possible goals, then casting himself as being in the tradition of the people who ended smallpox, and anybody who disagrees as being in the tradition of those who opposed the vaccination program.
Which is where the whole thing gets incredibly obnoxious. The thing about the Manhattan project is, it was a technical challenge, but not a political one. There were no political interests arrayed against it. Anything that affects who dies and who lives is a political challenge - like smallpox, or nuclear disarmament, for example. And that takes a vast amount more work, even if the technical challenge is very simple. And that shows - the only vast political challenges that have been overcome were ones where the technical portion was basically a done deal.
Ending death isn't a technical problem - or at least, isn't right now. There are lots of extremely low-hanging fruit that the Bostrom line-of-thought is basically ignoring - child mortality, and so on. It's primarily a political one. So pretending it is a technical challenge, and ignoring the low-hanging fruit, is a kind of fantasy, where Bostrom gets to play the role of revolutionary, without actually having to do anything, make any messy compromises, or actually say anything controversial, all the while burrowing the mantle of all the people who achieved great things, like ending smallpox, or winning universal suffrage.
When people grow up, through a process of disappointment, failure, and gradual acclimatization to the muddy vagaries of reality, they tend to get increasingly suspicious of grand goals and simple solutions. And that's because, like you point out, doing stuff is really fucking hard.
The problem is, of course, that sometimes really amazing, or really terrible things can be done. The Marshall plan, or the Manhattan project, the end of Smallpox. World hunger is manifestly solveable - the only thing we lack is the will - i.e., as a society, we consider malnutrition and starvation acceptable.
So people who are suspicious of grand goals tend to get lumped in with the people that opposed all the grand goals that have gone before us, universal literacy, political freedom, and so on. Bostrom is just taking this pattern to an absurd conclusion, by making the grandest of all possible goals, then casting himself as being in the tradition of the people who ended smallpox, and anybody who disagrees as being in the tradition of those who opposed the vaccination program.
Which is where the whole thing gets incredibly obnoxious. The thing about the Manhattan project is, it was a technical challenge, but not a political one. There were no political interests arrayed against it. Anything that affects who dies and who lives is a political challenge - like smallpox, or nuclear disarmament, for example. And that takes a vast amount more work, even if the technical challenge is very simple. And that shows - the only vast political challenges that have been overcome were ones where the technical portion was basically a done deal.
Ending death isn't a technical problem - or at least, isn't right now. There are lots of extremely low-hanging fruit that the Bostrom line-of-thought is basically ignoring - child mortality, and so on. It's primarily a political one. So pretending it is a technical challenge, and ignoring the low-hanging fruit, is a kind of fantasy, where Bostrom gets to play the role of revolutionary, without actually having to do anything, make any messy compromises, or actually say anything controversial, all the while burrowing the mantle of all the people who achieved great things, like ending smallpox, or winning universal suffrage.