[spaetzleesser]

“Newton was a genius, yet the man spent most of his life doing alchemy, trying to forecast the future with the help of the bible, and chasing dragons in the Swiss Alps, put simply, he was batshit insane”

I generally agree with your comment but this sentence doesn’t do justice to Newton. During his time alchemy, predicting things from the Bible were generally accepted. If Newton had published papers about his successes in alchemy you could call him crazy but he just probed the accepted wisdom of his time. I bet in few hundred years a lot of our current conceptions of reality will also sound crazy. That doesn’t mean that current scientists are insane. They are just trying to expand our current knowledge. Which is the same Newton did. He did all kinds of crazy looking stuff because he was curious.

[robertlagrant]

Exactly! In 200 years it'll be "why did they try all that cold fusion creation when you can just go to the dollar store and buy a self-contained gateway to an exploding sun to charge your Tesla for the next 1000 years?"

[mrpopo]

I think the first paradigm change will be "why did they let humans drive cars??"

[Gollapalli]

"safety uber alles" is a sure way for your society to stagnate, at the civilizational level, and a sure way to hate your life at the personal level.

[robertlagrant]

That's quite the non sequitur.