Which is the other problem with science today: people are not only motivated by the wrong reasons; they are also no longer guided by evidence.
Evidence keeps you modest because you predict something, you test it, and the evidence sometimes shows you’re wrong.
----Right now you have many celebrated scientists doing mathematical gymnastics about lots of untestable things: string theory, the multiverse, even the theory of cosmic inflation.
*Once, in a public forum, I asked [physicist] Alan Guth, who originated the theory, “Is inflation falsifiable?” And he said it’s a silly question, because for whatever cosmological data an experiment gives us, a model of inflation can be found that accommodates it. And therefore, inflation is in a very strong position because it can explain anything! But I see this as a very weak position because a theory of everything is sometimes a theory of nothing. There may be no difference between the two.
To me, this bubble of imaginary stuff is like being high on drugs."