> If a man has done it, a man can do it. [...] Just because a particular assembly has it's tasks divided up between a myriad of people does not mean it is impossible to unify those tasks into a single person.

I don't understand your argument, in particular, the linked article already refuted this point by saying the following, but you didn't provide a counterargument to that:

> But let’s imagine an extraordinarily talented man who started on the factory floor, worked his way through an engineering degree, moved up through the ranks to design the very thing he was building before, and knows the roles of everyone on his team so well that he could do all their jobs himself. Surely this brilliant person knows how to make a mouse. Or does he? He may understand circuits – but does he know every detail of how to build a diode from raw materials? He may understand plastics – but could he single-handedly synthesize a plastic from its constituent chemicals? Does he understand how to mine silicon out of the ground? Nobody in the world – not one single human being anywhere – knows how to make a mouse. It’s orders of magnitude too complex for a solitary mind.

I've written it about two times actually, but deletions have eaten it.

If we've done it before, we can do it again. The key is navigable access to the right information which is sadly dependent on A) willingness to document, and B) structuring of the set of data for navigable retrieval.

Both were problems we've got solved. Not in the Internet of course. Not anymore, but in libraries.

Also, I reject where the goalposts of the accomplishments of the person in question are stated to arbitrarily end. Nothing keeps one from diving into these secondary areas or specialties. Only perhaps the obstacle of having to be profittable while doing it. And that's what I reject. I do not hold the prevailing wisdom that knowing the Riddle of Mice is intractable to a singular human being. I hold it is intractable to a member of a social system wherein profitable engagement of every member as guided by some subpopulation might tend to make it seem intractable by any member of the governed group. That's a far cry from true ineffability however.

> If we've done it before, we can do it again.

But nobody has done it before. Even the very first computer mouse used off-the-shelf mechanical and electrical components, each of those involved at least one type of technology that took a scientist or engineer's entire lifetime to develop.

> The key is navigable access to the right information which is sadly dependent on A) willingness to document, and B) structuring of the set of data for navigable retrieval.

Now you mention the importance of documentation, it reminds me of Vannevar Bush's Memex and Ted Nelson's Project Xanadu. So it seems that there's a mutual misunderstanding of the actual topic in this debate. We understood the debate as:

* The all-knowing engineer: Whether it's possible for a single individual to learn and understand a technology entirely, down to its every aspect and detail.

Meanwhile, you're in fact debating about different problem, which is:

* The Engineering Library of Alexandria: Whether we can create sufficient documentation of all technical knowledge, the documentation is so complete about every aspect and detail that in principle, it would allow someone to open the "blackboxes" behind every technology for understanding or replication if they really want and need to. Whether or not it can be done in practice by a single physical person is unimportant, perhaps only one or a few blackboxes are opened at a time, not all simultaneously. The question is whether the preserved information is sufficient to allow that in theory. This is similar to the definition of falsifiability in science - impractical experiments still count.

If you're really arguing the second point rather than the first point, I would then say that I can finally understand some of your arguments. So much unproductive conversions can be avoided if you've expressed your points more clearly.