By being maximally tuned to the problem, I mean that you have maximized your knowledge about the domain (you know the dead-ends) and your techniques and methods are sufficient in number and capability (your know all the tricks and have created some of your own); you lack nothing and can simply flow.
Extraordinary results require extraordinary effort? Not necessarily. You may achieve extraordinary results, effortlessly like water flowing around rocks. Don't consider the problem domain as outside of yourself. Become a part of the problem system, so that it effortlessly self-optimizes and develops as if by itself and you merely find yourself in the midst of it every day, feeling more like an observer than a participator. When it feels like an effort, you're not maximally tuned to the problem.
How long would it take for an AGI engineer from the (seemingly inevitable) future to explain it to you so you could build one? Is it humanly possible - is a single person capable of understanding and remembering all of it? It's been said there's not one person who understands a modern microcomputer in its totality - perhaps the last of the low hanging fruit was picked by people in the age of Steve Wozniak.
Attempting the "impossible": like chewing, chewing, and chewing, unable to swallow; it's not soft and small enough yet. When you do get to swallow a small bit, you will often regurgitate it. But some of it may remain in your system, enough to subsist on, just barely, and you may know not to take another bite of the same part of "impossible".
Science. Live a life with a purpose.
Science. Live a life worth living.
Science. Keepin' it real.
On the unfairness of existence:
Those who (want to) understand and are able, joyously create things that have always existed as potentials.
Those who don't (want to) understand and can't do anything real, make stuff up that never was possible and never will be.
The former last forever in eternal glory, spanning geological timescales and civilizations, for the patterns they create are compatible with the structure of the universe and sustained by it, while oblivion is reserved for the latter.
Science. The real stuff. Be all you can be.
Alice, can't tell crap from great? Don't worry, 90% of people share your inability. Why? Because 90% of everything is crap. (Sturgeon's law)
Lets fix the things that are obviously crap first. After that, well address the iffy things.
Towards less crappy greatness.
"Frankly it reeks of cultism and dogma,"
Oh, I wouldn't worry about that too much; that's a cunning project underway to enbias Eliezer with delusions-of-grandeur bias, smarter-than-thou bias and whatnot.
Anything to harden our master. :D
Though it does take a mature understanding to appreciate this impossibility, so it's not surprising that people go around proposing clever shortcuts.
"Shut up and do the impossible" isn't the same as expecting to find a cheap way out.
The Wright Brothers obviously proposed a clever shortcut - more clever than the other, failed shortcuts - a cheap way out, that ended the "Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible" era.
You need your fundamental breakthrough - the moment you can think, like the guys probably thought, "I'm pretty sure this will work." turning it from impossible to possible and from improbable to probable. After that final breakthrough, the anticipation leading up to the first flight must have been intense. And the feeling associated with finally being able to say "Yup, it worked." indescribable. Will there be such clearly-defined moments in AGI design?
These posts manage to convey the idea that this is really, really big and really, really difficult stuff. I sure hope that some wealthy people see that too - and realize that receiving commensurate funding would be more than justified.