mircea_popescu: not entirely clear to me what you're saying here. so the idea is, that because random upstart / usurper of minor crown enobled anyone who could read/write and hadn't rean off a century ago, it therefore follows that a man who could power a whole city out of hot reactor waste today does not do so because mit graduates can't power a lightbulb with the battery in hand. something like that ?

mircea_popescu: there was a high level of pseudointellectual masturbation, sure, much like in today's us. similarly then, mit educated chitlins could not light a lightbulb, but could pseudointelligently discuss "the types" of feminism as if that were a thing, somehow.