Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : The Obama - Clinton Disaster -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: tntpal who wrote (7015)	2/17/2009 10:22:48 AM
From: DuckTapeSunroof	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 103300

Re: "You are mixing social studies with science....' I absolutely am NOT. Science is science --- regardless of the specific field of inquiry. All the sciences use the exact same rules for proof and logic, statistics is statistics and math is math. Makes NO DIFFERENCE what the scientific field is. Re: "- if human behavior is science then please, I beg you, tell me what is humanity going to do exactly in the next 1 year, 10 years, 20 years(ad nauseum)." Now you are confusing 'science' with 'fortune telling'.... I CANNOT tell you with absolute confidence what a SINGLE ATOM is 'going to do' (today, tomorrow, or 'in 20 years') and neither can any other person on the planet. Certainly can not with certainty 'tell you what humanity is going to do in the future' EITHER. That would be Science Fiction (see Heinlein's "Foundation Trilogy"... specifically all the stuff about the "Second Foundation' in his novels... where he fantasizes about just such a 'science', which does not exist yet, but which - in his sci-fi novels, can sorta predict and direct the future path of hunam societies across galaxies if there are enough 'multi-billions' of people to make his fantasy science's math work right....) But that is FICTION. Not Science. Now... if you were trying to ask "how will evolution continue to shape the future development of the human species?", well... science can not answer that question, far too many variables. HOWEVER, I'd be HAPPY to give you my personal 'educated guess', for whatever it may be worth.... My guess is that SINCE HUMANITY NOW IS BEGINNING TO UNDERSTAND AND USE THE TOOLS OF GENETICS, I'm pretty sure that we will very quickly place ourselves outside the reach of normal very-slow-moving natural evolution. (The Natural selection process which motivates natural evolution usually plays out over millions of years....) We will GRASP THE REINS of evolution and CONTROL and DIRECT it for our own purposes. The future of humanity (absent getting the entire species wiped-out by some Extinction Level Event such as a comet strike...) will be directed by humanity --- because we have the power and will use it, same as we always do. Humans will be whatever humans want to be. We will shape ourselves to that desired end.