I'm near Carl Sagan! Don't know if that's cool or scary...

So I was wandering through the internets a few weeks ago when I found this. It's a Worldview Quiz, which is supposed to give you an idea of where your beliefs and values fit in reference to some well known figures. According to their description:

Half of the questions deal with beliefs about how the world works; for instance, to what extent your worldview is based in faith, science, or both. The other half deal with opinions about what is important, especially as relates to humankind and the future; these values questions are outside of the realm of science.

As you can see, I mapped up in the top right corner, which I can only assume belongs to eternally optimistic science geeks. Some days I'd say I can fit in that category, but other days don't feel that way; other days I feel way too pessimistic about everything - including science - to ever think things will work out for humanity. My position on the chart reminds me of the transhumanists I've been reading about (for example here): they believe that we will transcend our current biology and technology and in so doing, transcend many of the problems in our world.

At the same time, I'm highly skeptical of such a project, since I doubt adding technology and changing human beings into posthumanity will solve the problems we already have. I suspect we'll drag them with us into the posthuman future, where they will simply be amplified (some of the texts I'm writing about in the dissertation explore this very question).

Maybe the day I took it I was feeling especially optimistic. Or maybe it outweighs my pessimism slightly. Either way, for what it's worth, I'm apparently a believer/valuer of progress and science.