Okay -- quotes: "common sense takes experience and a broad understanding that takes time to build. Keep after it." -- "Your understanding is not broad, and so you lack the perspective that leads to that uncommon capacity called "common sense". But you are young and you are talking to weirdos like me who think differently, so your perspective is broadening by the minute."

I realize that's not exactly a character attack in the nasty sense, but it's still basically saying I'm wrong because of who I am rather than addressing what I said. Besides, I'm not *that* young compared to you (I'll be 30 next month -- maybe I just look younger than my age in my photos?)

I didn't intend them as proof. The future isn't something that can be proven, and the entry wasn't about proof, it was about educated guessing, and that we should expect the positive trends of human history (overall) to continue. I don't understand your position that past trends are a poor indicator of future trends. We can only know reality through experience (your "character attacks" as I called them even talk about the lack of experience I have), and if experience helps one make good judgments, isn't that exactly because the past is usually useful in predicting the future? Experience wouldn't be valuable if past events and experiences were useless in predicting future events and experiences.