One approach assumes that the resources of one’s own ego – prejudice and anecdote – are sufficient to settle a question. You know that home schooling is good (or bad), that there are no barriers to social mobility, that single parents are scroungers, that Israel (or Hamas) is right. And so on. So you just abuse the other side and wallow in your self-righteousness.

The other approach, though, is to ask: what exactly is the evidence? What would count as good evidence?

This latter approach, though, is a minority one. I suspect that we live not in an age of science and empiricism, but rather in an age of ego.

As writing is a fairly egotistical pursuit anyway ( though I have no empirical evidence for that ! ) I’d say SF writers can predict what they please: the problems emerge when you start taking hedgehog pundits seriously and ignore empirical evidence in making policy.