There was a time that promised never to end, in which people would read popular science and have their batteries recharged by the order and discord in science working together encapsulated by a greater shared vision. Things were
progressing and that is comforting, especially at times individual lives and the common wellbeing were not. Science said there a future.
All of that is haemorrhaging away now. When I go to the once awe-inspiring public interface now....I'm trying to give it up......I come away depressed and fearful of the future. Or as lately, more and more just resigned.
There is no progress and physicists, because of the pressure to rationalize a productive contribution, that grants still flow are endorsing and affirmation when most likely they continue because the foundations that issue them, feel they have no alternative.
Right now a generation is retiring off that produced very little progress through no fault of its own, is retiring off or being kicked upstairs by the current generation, which Sean Carrol counts among, Sabine Hossenfelder, and the others about that age. They will increasingly now be the top table, able to speak as they see fit, with no higher seniority.
This is a generation of individuals with no significant accomplishments to decide between them or to order seniority in the event of discord as to the right course to take. The pecking order of seniority is the same as for non-science. The same, for the music industry. The boy-band domain within it.
This is a disaster. Not because of what it is, in itself, but because of the human nature component which inevitably and inexorably begins to act as a force in which hubris and politicking skills become selected, and courageous thinking and willingness to face scorn and social and academic shunning de-selected. Everyone is playing the game, and that means no one is going to face the problems that might have been soluable if they had.