The Arrogance Of Science

A couple of years ago I watched this video in which simple math was used to extrapolate the fastest possible acceleration (0–60mph) a street car could ever achieved: 2.05s

Lo and behold last week Tesla presented their new Roadster which reportedly accelerate 0–60 in 1.9 Seconds. After a couple of days of fantasizing about driving it I went back to watch the video and confirmed my suspicion: Tesla proved science wrong. Very wrong.

This, of course, is not the first time that science or scientists have been proven incorrect, countless climate scientists have been reliably wrong in their predictions for decades. Yet, I promise you, something more fundamentally misguided is going on here.

Unlike technologists, scientists operate from inside a prison. The prison of arrogance. In the scientist world, science itself can never be wrong, sure it can be updated, of course it can be corrected, but wrong? Not a chance in hell. This is so true that even the guy who just proved science wrong, Elon Musk, tweeted