“but most people can see a rough line of overall progress.”
This idea is the core to my argument. That the bias of what can you see is creating a false sense of progress. I think my core argument would be progress is an asymptote, so you might say loosely I agree with you (yes of course there are always optimizations you can eke out) but at what cost, and is the asymptote approaching something that looks more like a thing that can solve all problems in theory but not in practice, getting better and better at solving problems in a laboratory, or getting better and better at solving problems we know the answer to, but never gets serious traction at solving novel problems or working in the real world(outside its core skill set; generating text)