Which Will Inform the Future of Humanity More, Science Fiction or History?

Started by mongers, August 13, 2022, 08:16:56 AM

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Which Will Inform the Future of Humanity More, Science Fiction or History?

History, almost exclusively
2 (15.4%)
History, mainly
3 (23.1%)
Even, about equal between them.
2 (15.4%)
Science Fiction, mainly
3 (23.1%)
Science Fiction, almost exclusively
0 (0%)
Neither - Something else will have the greater effect
2 (15.4%)
Jaron option.
1 (7.7%)

Total Members Voted: 13

mongers

In your opinion which of these, science Fiction or history will have the greater effect on the future of humanity?


Question posed as at times over the last year or two, it's felt like I'm living in the opening chapters of a dystopian novel.
"We have it in our power to begin the world over again"

garbon

"I've never been quite sure what the point of a eunuch is, if truth be told. It seems to me they're only men with the useful bits cut off."

I drank because I wanted to drown my sorrows, but now the damned things have learned to swim.

Tamas


grumbler

Quote from: Tamas on August 13, 2022, 08:31:27 PMI am not sure I understand the question.

I know that I don't.

My best guess is that this is an incredibly awkward way of asking which, between SF and history, we think is the better guide to predicting the future.  But that's just my guess.
The future is all around us, waiting, in moments of transition, to be born in moments of revelation. No one knows the shape of that future or where it will take us. We know only that it is always born in pain.   -G'Kar

Bayraktar!

Admiral Yi

There will always be technological change, so science fiction.

But human nature doesn't change, so history.

mongers

Quote from: grumbler on August 13, 2022, 10:10:37 PM
Quote from: Tamas on August 13, 2022, 08:31:27 PMI am not sure I understand the question.

I know that I don't.

My best guess is that this is an incredibly awkward way of asking which, between SF and history, we think is the better guide to predicting the future.  But that's just my guess.

Classy.
"We have it in our power to begin the world over again"

Josquius

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Razgovory

Neither.  In the future we will communicate in the language of flowers.
I've given it serious thought. I must scorn the ways of my family, and seek a Japanese woman to yield me my progeny. He shall live in the lands of the east, and be well tutored in his sacred trust to weave the best traditions of Japan and the Sacred South together, until such time as he (or, indeed his house, which will periodically require infusion of both Southern and Japanese bloodlines of note) can deliver to the South it's independence, either in this world or in space.  -Lettow April of 2011

Raz is right. -MadImmortalMan March of 2017

The Brain

I think there is a non-zero probability of one or more major transformative events in the future that will change fundamental aspects of the human experience, and that way make things harder to predict using history.
Women want me. Men want to be with me.

Jacob

Voted "even".

I think the answer depends on your timescale of reference. In the short term - history, but the further out we get - science-fiction.

... though that does suppose "history" being defined from the view of today. I expect that the future of humanity in the year 5,000 will probably be more informed by the history of the preceding centuries of 4,800 to 5,000 than will be the science-fiction of the times (whatever that may be). Though that future history surely would seem like science-fiction to us.

PDH

Youtube comments and "I heard from a friend" will still be the most critical sources of information in the future.
I have come to believe that the whole world is an enigma, a harmless enigma that is made terrible by our own mad attempt to interpret it as though it had an underlying truth.
-Umberto Eco

-------
"I'm pretty sure my level of depression has nothing to do with how much of a fucking asshole you are."

-CdM

crazy canuck

For history to inform our future people need to study/understand it, but our little enclave may be an outlier in that regard.  For scifi to inform our future people need to actually read, but again our little enclave may an outlier in that regard.

Voted niether.

Sheilbh

Quote from: PDH on August 15, 2022, 10:04:11 AMYoutube comments and "I heard from a friend" will still be the most critical sources of information in the future.
:lol:

Almost 100% history - but that's just my very crude materialism :blush: :ph34r:
Let's bomb Russia!

grumbler

In retrospect you can find speculative fiction that predicted the present, but there's no way to separate the accurate SF from the inaccurate, so it cannot serve as a guide.

As an extreme example, Edgar Allen Poe told a story in 1838 about a shipwreck in which the four survivors found themselves forced to murder one of them, Richard Parker, and eat him to survive long enough to be rescued.  Knowing that story would not have helped a man called Richard Parker, in 1884, avoid getting killed and eaten by his three co-survivors from a shipwreck so that they could survive long enough to be rescued.
The future is all around us, waiting, in moments of transition, to be born in moments of revelation. No one knows the shape of that future or where it will take us. We know only that it is always born in pain.   -G'Kar

Bayraktar!