Our job is not to predict the future. Rather, it's to suggest all the possible futures - so that society can make informed decisions about where we want to go.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the importance of exploring potential futures instead of attempting to predict one specific future.
In this quote, Robert J. Sawyer highlights the role of individuals and society in deliberating various possibilities rather than clinging to a singular vision of the future. By offering a spectrum of future scenarios, we empower ourselves to make well-informed choices that align with our collective goals and values, fostering a proactive approach to societal development.
In practice
This quote could be used in discussions about climate change to explore different scenarios and their implications.
People are looking for a simplicity in their fictional worlds where good and evil are clearly delineated, that you can't find in the real world, and that provides an enormous comfort - and that, I think, has an awful lot to do with the reason fantasy is so popular.
One of the things that science fiction gets to do is thought experiments about the human condition that would be impractical or unethical to conduct in real life.
No amounts of stone and bone could yield the kinds of information that the paintings gave so freely.
So far as physics is concerned, time's arrow is a property of entropy alone.
Let both sides seek to invoke the wonders of science instead of its terrors. Together let us explore the stars, conquer the deserts, eradicate disease, tap the ocean depths, and encourage the arts and commerce.
The future belongs to Science. More and more she will control the destinies of the nations. Already she has them in her crucible and on her balances.
If Watson and I had not discovered the [DNA] structure, instead of being revealed with a flourish it would have trickled out and that its impact would have been far less. For this sort of reason Stent had argued that a scientific discovery is more akin to a work of art than is generally admitted. Style, he argues, is as important as content. I am not completely convinced by this argument, at least in this case.
Do not imagine that mathematics is hard and crabbed, and repulsive to common sense. It is merely the etherealization of common sense.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.