This incorrectly spelled science short on mistakes presents much food for thought, not just for the trivia buff, but for the science-fiction writer and reader. The video is about the prevalence of mistakes in human action. The ‘half-life’ of ideas is discussed, and is juxtaposed quite nicely by Michael when he reminds us of how firmly all human societies believe that they possess accurate knowledge, although this has always—with time—proven to have been untrue.

The profundity of our arrogant ignorance is illustrated with stories about Buffalo Springfield, The Beatles, Hitler, the lunar landings, a Mars probe, and Archimedes. The fact that the knowledge base in psychology is rendered unsupportable by new discoveries in five years is pretty disheartening. What was downright painful was the story of a medieval monastic manuscript being inscribed over an erased edition of Archimedes’ [circa 212 B.C.] manual on calculus, thus keeping Western science behind by roughly a thousand years!

But, as Michael points out, despite the ignorance that we fantasize is our all-knowing state of being, and the irreversible mistakes we make, if we keep trying, we will eventually evolve our ideas closer to whatever the truth is. On one hand, this brief video lets us know that we stand upon the shoulders of fools thinking that we know it all. On the other hand it was inspiring to think that our descendents may well be blessed with a clarity we lack, or at least a less darkly tinted looking glass on the world.