We tend to hear so much doom and gloom when we talk about the future. Our planet, our one and only known home, is constantly making the headlines for the damage we are inflicting. AI has been marketed as the new fear factor of the future. The millenials are lazy and on and on...
What we don't openly discuss as much is the beauty of what we have done. While the above concerns are real and relevant discussions which require our utmost consideration and attention, we are at the same time opening the door to something very spectacular. I remember back in the late 90's taking psychology courses and being immensely drawn to the study of human behavior and the underpinnings of what makes us do what we do BUT, I just could not get past the looseness of the data which formed the constructs of psychological paradigms.
Increasingly, today, I come across a changing landscape of knowledge which fills the data void of early psychology. For example, the concept of neuro-plasticity has fundamentally changed the textbook teachings of cognitive psychology. No longer are we required to believe that we were born with a certain amount of intelligence which would lock into place when the brain stops growing in our early post adolescent years. No longer are we constrained by mysteries of the brain. Technological advances in brain imaging have opened the door to fill the gaps with the data set we need to understand ourselves.
This is largely a result of the specialization strategy our culture has been moving towards. The engineers whom collectively dialed in PET and MRI systems over the years were, for the most part, laser focused on solving the problem at hand. As a result of the specialization, we are seeing now, the ability to tie disciplines together and answer our most fundamental questions in very different ways.
The Large Hadron Collider is yielding an understanding of physics which will cascade across disciplines to further our mastery of the time we live in. Quantum computing will surely upgrade our current systems giving us even more control of our destiny. Blockchain technology can help decentralize the control of human value thus freeing a constraint to our happiness. As we realize these benefits of interdisciplinary advances, the metaphysician's societal value add will emerge.