There’s some weird opinions floating around the science intelligentsia all the time. It’s common knowledge and it usually comes down to ideas about how the universe works, until that idea is put to rigorous tests. That’s just the proper way to science. Sometimes though, someone gets a really weird opinion on a topic and this particular one honestly made me scratch my head.
One geneticist says we should stop human evolution.
This scientist states that evolution is a scourge on our species and we have to stop feeding our children to this evil monster of natural force. They go on about New Age lifestyles and science illiteracy. The article is interesting in its way and has a couple of good points. On the other hand, evolution is chaotic neutral and when my grandchildren ask me what the hell wisdom teeth are, I will thank evolution that they will never have to experience the painful extraction process because they probably won’t exist anymore.
But the article does give me ideas about worldbuilding, especially for speculative fiction. Maybe that side character is absolutely bent on a particular theory and won’t stop until they’ve proven it true. An authority figure having to listen to a complaint of a researcher so sure that such and such common life event should be stopped at all cost to avoid some other tangent thing.
The contrarian is very useful in storytelling. The more a common thing they are, the more fun the situation can get.
-T.A. Creech
Science in the pursuit of fiction.