I still don't like sports culture, but I appreciate athleticism much more now. Intelligence, while important, is not the sole measure of a persons value, and its not a bad thing for a culture to value physicality. It's a very human thing, just like curiosity or creativity. Of course it would be nicer if we valued intellect to the same degree, but here we are.
Point is, its not just kicking a ball. Its a lifetime of work and passion. A scientist does not have greater moral worth than an athlete or artist. These aren't worthless pursuits only idiots focus on.
It would change science sure, but monogrammed Microscopes and signed stethoscopes are probably better than the equivalent in makeup and fast fashion.
- More money flowing into science
- More talent flowing into science
Science/engineering influencers are becoming more popular and doing a great job getting themselves funding and also generating very impressive content.
Look into -
https://www.veritasium.com/ - crazy science education and practical experiments to “prove new science”. Check out the series of videos on a sail powered car that moves faster than the wind that pushes it!!! It sounds impossible, and then Derek shows that it’s possible! Including all the debates with other scientists about it. Also check out the “how energy flows” and all the reaction videos - this topic hasn’t yet been explored further tho so be prepared to wait (if this type of conversation isn’t science I don’t know what is).
Mark Rober’s creative engineering classes, science based philanthropy with TeamSeas are meeting his goal of being effectively inspiring. This dude is going to generate a similar magnitude of new scientists and engineers as The Beatles have and keep generating new musicians.
https://youtube.com/c/K%C3%A1rolyZsolnai - People always wonder why I’m optimistic about the future. Karoly and his channel are a small but important part of why! Watching the pace of innovation here is the only way to truly understand the catch phrase “What a time to be alive!”. He curates scientific papers and gets them visibility better than the legacy science publications. This channel is the “new Nature magazine” and it’s funded by relevant/educational ads.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamilton_Morris - Hamilton’s work documenting the effects of narcotics and also the scientific pathways behind them is inspiring. His team and him haven't so much created videos or video essays as they have created the first audio-visual encyclopedia.
I’m sure there are many more I’m forgetting or haven’t yet heard of. You can also look into the Stanford/Harvard professors, the research doctors, the dermatologists, etc that are getting into YouTube/podcasts because it’s a better medium to have scientific information disseminated and hopefully draw more donations for their research.
Not all science influencers are doing “real science” yet. Some of them are “science news/educators” others “science documentarians” but many of them are already directly contributing to “real innovative science”. Pushing the boundaries of human knowledge and getting ”paid” to show it off!!!
Yes it takes a bit of curation to find the content creators that are also doing “real science” but for me it’s a no-brainer: in 100 years, because of the monetary incentives, more innovation will come from donation/ad based “science content creators” (on YouTube/podcasts/similar) than from legacy academic institutions.