Quote:
Originally Posted by jammies
I won't speak for anyone else, but I'm never trying to convince the believers - that's usually a lost cause. The hope is to make it harder for the believers to recruit more believers and to have the undecided but interested person think about what is being said, and make it easier for them to get into the habit of thinking critically and skeptically by giving tangible examples of those to ponder.
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You think you can influence people to not think irrationally, and exercise critical thought (or at least your definition of it) before deciding what side they'll take on an issue? Good luck with that. Not sure you've met people in the 21st century but... newsflash, people are highly irrational creatures. And they tend to side with their emotions and pre-existung values over cold hard logic. And you're calling those who entertain this subject unrealistic.. Unless you're a celebrity influencer IRL, good luck realizing this.. savior complex? And spoiler alert, but people tend to push back or resist when someone advises them on how they should think.
If everyone was of the school of Spock we wouldn't be the human race. And even Spock caved to his human instincts. Our ability to dream up possibilities and be inspired by our faith in an idea is part of what makes us what we are. But it doesn't mean it's all misguided fantasy. In this case, I think plenty of people are able to balance reason, science and possibility. At least a good portion of them.
It's actually important that we entertain possibilities, because this is also how we got to where we are today as a civilization. Someone had to think outside of the box and believe in something that wasn't yet proven to be possible in order to have all the gadgets, tools and conveniences we have today. Otherwise we would still be living in a primitive fashion by comparison. And at the time the same hard line realists probably didn't believe in their work or what they believed was possible. Show a smartphone, or the internet to someone 500 years, even 100 years ago and they'd chalk it up to magic or science fiction.
I think a true realist would also be able to consider this, and look at recent history to project 100 or 500 years into the future and acknowledge that there will be more many more groundbreaking discoveries, and more things we believe today aren't possible that we will solve at some point. We may discover a new form of propulsion or way to traverse the universe that will totally alter the currently impossible-seeming idea that the same couldn't be done by another species with thousands of years of progression on us to arrive here in some form or fashion.
The above is why only looking at things through the lens of what we know currently/thus far while discounting what the future will reveal is also shortsighted thinking in its own right.