There’s a big difference between explaining how things got to be how they are and predicting how they will be in the future, although evolution theory can even do a little bit of that too.

There is no way to predict the distant future, but I think understanding how evolution works may be the best tool we have for managing our here and now.

@skado I'm thinking a very very little bit. As for managing.....it's real funky. should we consider human evolution thus far to be in the more rudimentary of stages. we're stepping out of ourselves now it seems. I'm reading another book by that Harari fellow. "Homo Deus" might be messing with me.

@hankster
Harari will do that . For me, it’s not about where we are regarding stages, but just understanding the mechanisms, which, essentially, don’t change. That helps me understand who/what I am, and that helps me have some idea what kinds of things are possible.

@hankster
We are very much stepping out of ourselves now, in a way, but probably not in a way that will radically change life as we know it in our lifetime. Down the road - anything goes.

@hankster
To be honest, I suspect climate change will wipe us out, or knock us back to the stone age, before we evolve out of our shoes.

it's not out of our shoes I think about. it's past being in need of such things. before too awfully long. completely radically different.

@skado I'm wondering if Bananas or Dr. Strangelove is a better predictor. except for Hal 2001 seems out of the running.

@hankster
Completely radically different in your lifetime? You talking about WW3? or LaMDA? or climate collapse?

@skado any of that. maybe a combination. sitting around reving our engines with all this strife and technology makes no sense. patience is not our way. maybe not my lifetime, but 21st or 22nd century.

For years long ago, I followed SciAm’s monthly articles on mathematics. When those articles went away, so did I.

Recently, during a two-year period I counted SciAm’s articles on cosmology. Because those articles lacked evidence, on that subject SciAm has become a scifi publication.