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we might decide to hesitate, or even to take a step back until we can better evaluate the cliff.

Yet all too often, what passes for seeking understanding in this world is actually camouflaged justification. Even in the hard sciences, the goal now seems to be to show why this or that observed event does or does not have relevance to a particular outcome, and thus how it supports or opposes a particular policy direction; while other research often tries to demonstrate why a particular current situation could not have been predicted, based on the knowledge at hand at the time. And those results must be obtained within a single human working lifetime, preferably less, or they will be useless for the purpose.

We are sentient beings, capable of learning about our world, capable also of determining how to interact with our world. In the course of our learning, we are presented with a series of choices, many of which involve different levels of risk, all of which set foundations and precedents for further choices. At any point we can choose to proceed on our current path, or we can choose to set different priorities.

The sum of how we choose is also the sum of who we are as a species. In every way we have chosen our own identity - as we will have chosen our own future, whatever it should turn out to be. Let none speak of not having known, or of powerlessness. In this day and age, ignorance is willful ignorance; and powerlessness equally willful.

"Vizzini: He didn't fall? Inconceivable!
"Inigo Montoya: You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."
- from "The Princess Bride"

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