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Watch the Star Trek series (with the exception of Voyager) in order to get a picture of Humanities potential (albeit in a Fantasy/Sci-Fi context). Then, turn on Cable TV and watch any given "reality" show (the Real World will work fine) to see how we are currently countless light-years away from where we could be/should be and are not even on the right track as a species (Homo Sapiens).
The trouble is, there have always been a rather extreme minority of Humans able to break free from Mammal Snow Globe World and ask deeper, fundamental questions about the nature of our existence, the Universe, and how to best use this information to lead more productive, happy, healthy, rational lives (who are really the ones pushing humanity slowly forward/onward). There are written records of this for as far into the past as we have written records; that is, a few people on the "outside" looking "in" at society/humanity at large and questioning (with their jaw dropped), "What is everyone doing?". For example, Socrates thousands of years ago, Jonathon Swift several hundred years ago, and countless others.
In the Modern World, astonishingly, this problem remains essentially the same even though just to sign on to one's email account, they must use a computer (created by Scientists/Engineers), log on to the World Wide Web (again, created by Scientists/Engineers), and on their homepage before they can even get to their email is filled with perhaps a dozen News headlines, of which every so often one may read something along the lines "New Early Homo Sapien Fossils Found Dating back 300,000 years", ect. which should be more than enough to at some "wake up" a half-way sane, healthy, functioning, mature/developed Human mind to deeper truths about our existence, thus causing a Domino effect that ultimately would lead one out of the Mammal Snow Globe. The fact that it does not "wake people up" in any significant numbers suggests that people such as Socrates thousands of years in Humanities past did not have even a infinitesimal hope of getting through to the people of his own time. Moreover, it suggests that a similar condition may be likely to proceed into the future even if we are able to become more rational, civilized, technologically/scientifically advanced, ect. ect. Currently, there are only approximately 10,000 Physicists in the World while an average D1 College Football game attracts an audience of 45,000 in attendance and many more watching at home (e.g. an estimated 91 million people watched the 2007 Super Bowl).
In brief, most people are simply following the "Tide of the Times" no matter how good or bad that "wave" may be and we have yet to find a way to overcome this dire predicament.
Debra AI Prediction
Arguments
You mentioned that there are very few physicists in the world, compared to the number of football fans, the implication being that doing research in physics is more important for the society than watching football. While this is true, this alone rarely affects how one acts.
I work as an astrophysicist - however, I do it simply because I like doing it, it pays well, and I adore the flexibility of the working schedule our profession offers. What if I liked, say, cooking more than working in physics? I probably would work as a cook then. My personal preference here dominates my profession selection, and altruistic motives barely, if at all, enter the equation.
It so happens that working as a physicist requires a lot of mental effort. Most people prefer to commit to activities that require as little effort as possible; us, people who like making mental or physical effort, are abnormalities, anomalies, outliers. There is probably something wrong with us, because our biological programming somehow went against the natural principle of least action (the nature prefers to work in a way that minimizes the energy required to achieve a given outcome). For the vast majority of people, this is not the case, and activities such as watching football, that do not require much effort, are more preferred in their eyes.
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Scientific method: noun; a method of procedure that has characterized natural science since the 17th century, consisting in systematic observation, measurement, and experiment, and the formulation, testing, and modification of hypotheses.
The highest form of ignorance is when you reject something you don't know anything about.
Wayne Dyer
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