• Question: why have science to predict everything and live in fear when it would be better to live life as an adventure and take things as they come????

    Asked by Abbie' to Daniel, Freya, James, Miranda, Usman on 16 Jun 2015.
    • Photo: James Gilbert

      James Gilbert answered on 16 Jun 2015:

      Big question! Good 🙂 But I think you could be misunderstanding a few things…

      Science isn’t so much about predicting as *understanding* things. Sometimes this might make predictions easier if there is a good reason to try to predict something – a natural disaster, for example.

      If we didn’t *understand* how nature works, then there would be no modern day medicine, no electronics, no aeroplanes.. not much at all really. We would be limited to trying out random stuff that might work for some reason, which is a very slow process.

      Science doesn’t stop you ‘taking things as they come’, nor does it remove adventure or create fear (although it does dissolve ignorance). Science is just a way of deciding how things *areMATOMO_URL What you do with that information is up to you – you are free to live as you choose. The physical laws of the world will still be there whether you pay attention to them or not. It’s just that if you take the time to learn about them, you can use them to help humanity.

    • Photo: Freya Wilson

      Freya Wilson answered on 16 Jun 2015:

      So, I’m big on adventure. I love it. I like to live everything as an adventure and see where things take me.

      For me, science is part of that adventure. The best adventures come from being nosy, curious and trying things out. Which is what science is.

      From my experiences of science, we don’t really use it to predict things. More to understand stuff. And even when it does predict things it can be exhilarating to find out if it’s right.

    • Photo: Miranda Jackson

      Miranda Jackson answered on 16 Jun 2015:

      We can use science to understand things that were feared in the past, so, in my view, science allows us to do away with some of the fears that used to be commonplace.

      Of course it is fun to live life as an adventure, and I consider research one of the great adventures of life!

    • Photo: Usman Bashir

      Usman Bashir answered on 17 Jun 2015:

      Very philosophical! I predict you might become an explorer … jokes!

      Well when you say predict you confine the topic to science of predictions and that is statistics and forecasting. This allows us to predict things such as weather, hurricanes, will this treatment cure my cancer or not, if i try to climb mount everest in this weather will i die in an avalanche, and so on ..

      Some may say that information creates fear. Others may say it allows us to make ‘informed decisions’. Sometimes i want that prediction , e.g., if my daughter has a disease I want to know how likely her treatment is to succeed, so I may choose if its worth it or not.

      On the other hand, I totally agree that sometimes it sucks to know what may happen. For example, I always wanted to go hang-gliding. Last year, when I was going to sign-up it said on the form said that there is a chance i might die doing it. I backed out lol! I also backed out from bungie jumping when I read there was a small chance I may be paralyzed for life. I thought it wasnt worth the risk for a 30 sec thrill ! (Now am I a chicken or not!). While all that’s true, I will only knowingly risk my life if it’s for a noble cause.

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