Astrophysicist Carl Sagan wrote a depressingly accurate summary of 2017 twenty two years ago
In 1995 astrophysicist Carl Sagan published a book called The Demon-Haunted World, which warned against the dangers of pseudoscience and scientific illiteracy and encouraged critical and skeptical thinking. It all sounds spookily familiar.
Carl Sagan predicted 2017 on page 40 of The Demon Haunted World. Published in 1996. pic.twitter.com/lhR6HVFKHc
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Carl Sagan suggested our nation's weakness was the ability of a politician to stoke our fears. #page424 pic.twitter.com/cheaQxPwpq
— KStreetHipster (@KStreetHipster) August 9, 2017
"…[S]ooner or later this combustible mixture of ignorance and power is going to blow up in our faces." – Carl Sagan, 1996 pic.twitter.com/Cw8fmFkjBg
— KStreetHipster (@KStreetHipster) August 9, 2017
Here are the especially haunting final sentences of the book. pic.twitter.com/8XyP2JmHT4
— KStreetHipster (@KStreetHipster) August 9, 2017
Back in January Science Alert wrote about the way we interpret this kind of ‘prediction’ – it’s an evolutionary survival tactic similar to how we read horoscopes (which is ironic, as Sagan hated horoscopes).
Horoscopes have nothing to do with reality, but they owe their enormous success to the fact that humans tend to see what they want to see. So while we can be pessimistic about the future of society as a whole, humans are generally pretty optimistic about their individual future prospects – a concept known as optimism bias.
Also, Sagan was completely wrong about Beavis and Butthead.
