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Comment by panic | Hacker News Reader

I'd say science makes the future more uncertain, not less, by giving us more tools to change it. It's easier to figure out how to change things than to understand the impact of those changes.

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I think this must be true. The greater our understanding of the world, and the greater our ability to manipulate the world, the greater the options available to humans and the more complex their interaction. The world has been significantly less predictable since the Enlightenment, and the rejection of the fixed socio-theological order that preceded it. Life in pre-modern Europe was very predictable - almost everyone was a peasant who followed the same seasonal cycle, and stood in deference to the same feudal and religious system.

If one's understanding of _part_ of a system increases to enable manipulation of that part of the system, but one's ignorance of the effects of that change in the broader system remains, meaning that the increase in understanding has led to an increase in unexpected effects in the broader system, has one's overall understanding increased, or decreased?

Not sure if that's too abstract, but your statement that "the world has been significantly less predictable since the Enlightenment" made me wonder, because you'd think "less predictable" means that understanding has gone down.

I would draw a sharp distinction between 'understanding' and 'predictability'. Understanding is about our knowledge of and ability to manipulate the world. Predictability is our ability to reliably forecast the future of the social world.

Of course our understanding has increased. But that has generated rapid and accelerating changes in society and a monumental increase in its complexity, which together, make it significantly harder to predict the future of the social world.

I am not saying that we don't have a better predictive grasp of the natural world. We obviously do.

Fundamental research or purely scientific research is not intended to solve a predetermined practical problem, but in the long run fundamental research eventually also results in practical applications. Like for example the internet and the weather report.

You can then say that, with science, God is the destination.

Well, some people are pretty certain that if there's one thing that will eventually destroy this planet, it must be science.

And what will save the planet? Maybe if we all pray hard enough...

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