There is an evil tendency underlying all our technology - the tendency to do what is reasonable even when it isn't any good.
Robert Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
All your comments are very self comforting, folks! Denial maybe? Or Using the Coué method for comforting yourself?
At the end of WW II, pilots were convinced airlines would never be allowed to fly across the desert or ocean without a navigator, at least not in their life time.
In 1960, the world aviation community scoffed at JFK who was day dreaming of sending people on the moon before the end of the decade.
"Not before next century" they all said.
In the mid sixties, pilots said, yelled, lobbyed that there would never be an airliner over 20 tons AUW flying without a Flight Engineer; at least not in their life time.
In the eighties, I heard pilots' credo that FANS and R/Tless ATC would never be implemented before a century at least.
For policy makers, pilotless aircraft is the "reasonable" thing to do, for the better of the world society, just like bombing Hiroshima, invading Viet Nam, Irak, and, who knows, one day, Canada. See quote above.
I do not say there shall be pilotless airliners in the near or distant future; but if I had to see one in the little of what's left of my life time, I wouldn't raise an eyebrow.
Today, kids are playing on computers 1000 times more powerfull than the ones that sent Armstrong on the moon. The 737 is doing well, and they even managed to fly the Caravelle and the A300 without FE. Pilots sleep so deep over the pacific, thanks to CPDLC and ADS, that they arrive in Seoul or Taipei fresher than when they left. Avoiding CB's: try this one: Morning Calm Airline doesn't need to turn their Wx Radar on for Cb's avoidance between Anchorage and Dallas, as their flight following ops control ACARS them directions and re-routings from Gimpo, before the clouds could even show on their screens.
The point? Putt's Law as here after.
Technology is dominated by two types of people: those who understand what they do not manage, and those who manage what they do not understand.
Choose your side comrades.