"These are articles and studies about human evolution. What separates us from other species that have been seen throughout history and how we have evolved."
"I've never taken much of an interest in human evolution, I was a political science major in undergrad. Whats the importance of evolution, it's all in the past anyways."
"Yes, it is all in the past but it can have the ability to shape our future. Knowing where we came from and how we evolved can give scientists clues as to how we might possibility evolve in the future. If more funding was put into the study of human evolution it gives us a better picture of the species we derived from and a clearer phylogenetic tree. These phylogenies show which traits died off and which kept moving throughout generations. With more information being discovered everyday about human evolution it is difficult to keep up with all of the information and many discoveries can go unpublished because of lack of funding. If you put in a good word and have more funding distributed to these research facilities they can publish more data for the world to have access to. I know it might not seem like the most important way to spend government money right now in a post-corona virus world where we are still trying to find a vaccine but more information about our past can give us ideas and predictions as how how we could evolve. Here, take my articles and read about how humans have evolved and transpired throughout the last 1000 years, I promise you will learn something and even inspired."
I made this elevator speech blog short because 4 minutes isn't as long as you would expect and hard data is difficult to relay onto someone without ample enough time. I know it's kinda silly but I think passing the articles onto the congressional leader is the best use of my time. I tried to appeal to logic here and little bit of emotion by persuading them, yes the data is great and all but I have found that people are more driven by emotional ties.
ReplyDeletethis is such a nice way of thinking about the topic. And yes, emotional facts are different than logical ones. And since everyone has at least some interest in where we come from, the facts of human origins are somewhat different from facts from other sciences. I woulnd't have thought of this take here, but it may work. SHowing how much we continue to learn, and the broader impacts of this research, are key to all of this. Great post
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