Good observation, inadequate reason
Comment from one of the Tesla skeptics on Elon's permanent habit of "inventing" things that have been perfectly common and ordinary for centuries:

Pardon me but I can't say this enough: Musk could never have got away with his schtick 25 or 30 years ago; it's all enabled by the collapse of science education and knowledge of popular history. We've entertained ourselves into suckerdom.

Partly right, partly open to question. For sure Elon couldn't have done it a few decades earlier. Nobody would have bought his shtick or his shtock.

But I wouldn't blame the collapse of science education. Science ed was HORRIBLE in 1970. I think it's slightly better today. It's certainly not worse or 'collapsed' today.

Science ed outside the classroom is BRILLIANTLY better today for students who take advantage of it. Beautiful and informative demonstrations and animations of every conceivable topic are easily available on Youtube. [And some of the animations are available right here in this blog!]

In 1970 you couldn't see those demonstrations or animations. Everything was text or still pictures. Even historical science events that had ALREADY HAPPENED weren't available in 1970. Physics classes watched filmstrips of the Tacoma Narrows bridge. Real films existed, but we didn't see them. Now you can see the real films. The same applies to medical topics and optical demonstrations and acoustic ... and everything you can imagine.

You can see all** of Elon's fake "inventions" in their original century-old forms. Electric cars, early pneumatic subways, solar roofs, all of it.

It's all there at your fingertips, with Youtube's "suggested" serving as a helpful librarian.

If you want text and still pics, you can read centuries of real science publications in Google Books and American Radio Library and dozens of other places. A tiny fraction of those publications would have been available to a 1970 university student who was willing to trudge up and down 10 flights of narrow stairs in the Old Stacks of the library carrying hefty volumes. Most would have been completely inaccessible in other libraries and other countries.

So the problem isn't in available education and available knowledge. The problem is that nobody WANTS to take advantage of the knowledge. Elon's cultists are just as blindly loyal as any apocalyptic cult. They cut out all sources of competing knowledge.

= = = = =

** Well, not all. Some of his fake "inventions" are so catastrophically stupid that nobody would have bothered with them before. Nobody invented a long metal tube for traveling through caves because everyone who had been in a cave knew how caves are arranged.

Labels: $TSLAQ, Sucker Filter

  ¶ 2:52 PM