I agree with you but the problem of dumbing down is much deeper than even scientists realise, imho. The commodification of education, to only dispense knowledge in narrow specialist bands, actually removes us from the reality we could see as kids, it seems to me. I've spent almost thirty years learning what I needed to learn to become reasonably proficient as a multidisciplinary Systems Engineer, but in doing so, can see now how the truth of many things has been disguised by what is systemically the actions of profit, carried out over long periods of time, and see pretty clearly now, this is the one thing behind everything bad we are seeing, including our addiction to energy extracted from Earth.

Visualising or conceptualsing Earth as just a kind of battery which is trickle charged by the sun, which we are systematically discharging by destroying everything nature created, is not very difficult after we've got used to it.

Then it is only a step further to analyse the energy flows in and out of Earth, and through society, translating those flows to money where appropriate, even putting numbers on and auditing, to ask whether things could be better, if we stopped using the energy of the Earth, and started using the energy of the sun.

We have batteries, and yet science has never considered Earth as a battery, far less assign mathematical signs to the input and output energies of Earth and all things living on it.

Why is this?

Because of profit.

Then when we look at the difference between accepting the energy of the sun and using it, vs extracting energy, we notice extraction always requires work. Even splitting an atom requires work. But the energy yielded is more than the energy put in. There we see the fundamental transaction at the root of all human activity.

Destruction requires work, whilst creation is effortless, all work of creation is done by the energy of the sun.

It makes no sense that we can't see this. It is bizarre that we can't see this.

We choose to do the work of extraction, rather than just accept energy for free, monetising that instead of debt, the promise to do work, which always has to become work of extraction, now we have the technology to do it, still we don't because it is too radical to get our heads round

The progress we think we made, has always been at the greater expense of the planet.

All the technology we have has been in spite of profit, never because of it. We have almost everything upside down.

Personally I am hoping Ai will get us out of this profit driven hole we are in, I really do, we have no other chance, as far as I can see.