So you're just a troll. Noted.

"Meh... are those two statements not a teensy weensy bit contradictory? If objective reality was self evident then why would all those people rely on fantasy? Apparently it is not so self evident."

You'd evidently like them to be contradictory. Why? Does the idea of a political / ethical system based upon objective reality frighten you? Are you a collectivist, a whim worshiper?

Those people rely upon fantasy because they place their subjective feelings as superior to objective reality. Unlike their fantasies, objective reality can be reliably demonstrated.

Part of the collection of books known as the Christian bible refers to the "love of money" as the "root of all evil".

My premise: that famine, war, plague, poverty, ignorance and tyranny all arise from one primary source: overpopulation. Too many people chasing finite resources. That is the root of all evil.

I'm certainly familiar with the political theory that there are plenty of resources but that a tiny minority of the wealthy are hoarding / controlling them.
While that might be so at the moment, I don't think it acknowledges a basic fact of physics, more energy is lost than gained over time.

Malthus was famously "disproved", but his principle remains valid. Unless we prefer to allow the above-mentioned horrors to continue to correct it, population growth on a finite planet is a literal dead end. Eventually, no more oil, which means no more fertilizer, which means no more food....to cite only one example.

It's asinine to bank on technology pulling a rabbit out of it's hat to save us, much less economic pressure or even political attitudes. It doesn't matter how much you recycle, or economize, if population in the aggregate continues to grow.

Economic pressures, the covid plague, and to a small degree social change are pushing down population right now in the best educated / most capable / wealthiest parts of the world, the West. And guess what the birthrate is like elsewhere? Guess what? You can't make a statistical fact false by attempting to shame it or shout it down as "racist".

What is the point of humanity, of human existence? If you reject superstition, the answer used to be "for my kids to have a somewhat better material life than I did".

The liberals want to blame corporate welfare and military spending, the conservatives want to blame entitlements and taxes. And both want to blame Covid. Whatever their dodging and finger pointing, the economic reality of the present in the west is of a car racing to drive off a cliff. The ability of the majority of young people to afford a house, much less to afford to have children in America, is plummeting.

Democracy can't provide economic or environmental stability in the long term, because it is based on an election cycle that incentivizes damaging short term policies, and is populated by the lowest common denominator; not the wisest, but the most popular, and elected by people who use feelings to make their decisions, not logic. A strong case can be made that so called western democracy is nothing but a sham, really just an oligarchy at this point.

Capitalism is the very opposite of economic or environmental stability in the long term, because it is based on an inevitable boom and bust cycle, and predicated on continual growth, accelerating consumption of finite world resources.

The myth of capitalism as a concept is that it is a pure meritocracy, but as practiced now, nothing could be further from the truth. Those who got there first, cheated the most, exploited the most, rule. Not talent, but an ability to game the system of corporate welfare, lobbying, bribery, gained control of wealth, of power. Donald Trump is not John Galt.

So, what is the point of humanity, beyond your lifespan? If humanity is to survive it has to escape the boundaries of a finite system such as this little planet....but I'm getting ahead of myself.

If you don't accept the supernatural, it's clear that evolution got humanity just so far, and humanity now has a measure of control over it's own evolution.

So, where do we want to go from here? That's the first question. What do we want future mankind to be like, and how do we achieve that?

We can either improve the existing strain of humanity, or breed an entirely new one.

The entire history of religion has been a failed and horrific attempt to train humanity, with the chief result being war, fear and ignorance. Politics has failed in equally catastrophic measure to improve humanity.

There's a story from an ancient culture, perhaps Greece. The society wanted to evolve as a culture, but realized that each new generation was repeating the same mistakes, practicing the same vices, as the previous one. They decided that the only way for their children to create a better society was for them to be removed from the current corrupt one. They selected the wisest most virtuous adult among them, handed over all the children to this one man, and sent them all into the mountains to found a new culture, never to return. That's the end of that story / legend / myth.

Various colonies in America, such as Oneida, and too many other experiments to name, have overtly failed to produce any significant evolutionary improvement in mankind.

Just changing the field your cattle are raised in isn't enough. You can sing to them all you want, you won't get healthier cows.

So, why not do both at the same time? A better environment, and a better strain of genes.

I think we can all agree that congenital defects are a universally bad thing, nothing good about them. It's equally true that they can, reliably, be simply bred out of the human race.

Where things get tricky is improvement. Which traits do we want to breed IN to humanity?

Various methods through history have been used, and still are. In contemporary India, if an infant if born female, it's common for the mother to kill it upon birth......because being female is a burden in that economic environment.

A brief digression: A well meaning western organization decided to help stop the cycle of famine and poverty in India, to curb overpopulation by distributing millions of free condoms. They were dismayed when this did not work. It wasn't that Indian men didn't want to wear condoms, they did. It was that Western condoms are huge, they did not fit on Indian men. No one bothered to check.

Overpopulation, poverty and starvation in Mexico? Just American imperialism to blame? Yet given the option of birth control, similarly from well meaning western charities, it was rejected. Women who tried to go to clinics to get birth control pills or birth control implants were beaten and murdered by men. A man in that culture is not ashamed if his kid are dirty, barefoot, hungry, uneducated. All that matter is his machismo, his pride. A real man does not take care of kids, he breeds as many as he can, he thinks that is a sign of being a "real" man, a MACHISMO.....and the Catholic church of course plays right into this. Because, it used to be an agricultural muscle labor economy worldwide, with no sanitation, with high infant mortality....so they got locked into the insanity of "go forth and multiply".

Eugenics was the law of the land for many years in the United States. The Nazis made an enthusiastic if misguided attempt to breed better people and rid humanity of inferior ones. Communist China introduced a "one child per couple" policy to prevent famine. I mention all of these things to dispel the fallacy that "it cannot be done". It has been done, just not logically or with a coherent goal.

So, what does "superman" look like? A challenging question, but if we turn away from it in cowardice, we leave it to famine, poverty, war and every other historic horror to make the choice for us..

If you gathered a group of apes, and asked them to design the next step in evolution, what would emerge? A man? No. An ape with thicker fur, bigger muscles, stronger teeth. So, several prototypes will have to be tried to get a viable entity , a version of humanity that can outlive the lifespan of this overcrowded polluted starving plague infested planet.

Right now, anyone can have children, as many as they wish. Why? Do we want quantity, or quality?

In order to have a handgun, drive a vehicle, practice as a doctor or lawyer, you have to be licensed, you have to demonstrate some competence and trustworthiness......because doing these things irresponsibly has huge potential negative consequences. Yet the thing with the most potential for harm to the planet and the individual, is having a child......and having kids is a completely unregulated practice.

So, first step is to turn having a child into a PRIVILEGE THAT MUST BE EARNED, not a blank check, the more kids you pop out the more welfare money you get. The cultural shame of being an unwed mother has to come back. The cultural shame of being a deadbeat abandoning dad has to come back, and these have to come back with a VENGEANCE. I live in Washington DC. I know first hand what I am talking about.

Show that you are genetically sound, financially able to provide, not a criminal, not addicted to drugs.
These sound extreme to you? Yet these are only a few of the criteria that many adoption agencies use to filter out unsuitable parent candidates. Why not apply these standards, and more, to everyone?
Ever heard of having to get a blood test in order to get a marriage license? It was to help reduce the passage of sexually transmitted diseases.....in an era when people thought about and cared about fidelity and responsibility and dignity and honor, considered sex something more than just a recreation.

Next, provide incentives for desirable traits to be bred into the human race. We already do this on a small scale, Ivy League college boys paid to donate to sperm banks. On a larger scale, our entire economy is filtering.....if you're part of the One Percent, you can afford kids.....except most of the rich didn't get rich from merit or personal ability.

Well, there is so much more to say, but I'm fatigued. More later, perhaps.

Objective reality is self evident, and behaving in accordance to it leads to survival. Ignoring it leads to the horrors of history created by religions and subjective political philosophies.

Before the questions of ethics can be accurately answered, before moral and political rules can be established, the questions of ontology and epistemology have to be answered.

If reality is objective, not subjective, and men are capable of perceiving it, the rest follows logically.
This is better expressed in the essay "Philosophy: Who Needs It?" by Rand.

Despite these obvious things, millions do adhere to fantasy, religion, to guide their actions, rather than objective reality.

In what way doesn't science need to examine the "radical questions of philosophy" and what do you think those questions are? Isn't one of the essential questions of philosophy whether or not objective reality exists and can be reliably perceived? If reason is invalid, what is there to base science upon?

What do you mean by "better"? I suggest you read the essay "Philosophy: Who Needs It?"

PhilosophyRunner, the brief answer to your question is, reality is objective, not subjective. In order for humans to survive and have a moral life, their philosophy must be based upon objective reality and it's demands. Or, to paraphrase a slogan, "science doesn't care how you feel about it".
Do your words and actions support survival, or impede it, that is the criterion.
The essay "Philosophy: Who Needs It?" by Ayn Rand states this better than I can.

PhilosophyRunner, you state, "...coming from a science background" about yourself.

This causes me to wonder about your education. I have no formal education, so no knowledge of how schools are designed. I was under the impression that a person with a major in the hard sciences was still required to take several courses in the humanities in order to graduate.

That raises the question: Which of the humanities do architects, physicists, engineers, programmers, chemists, etc. most require to live good lives, to have a complete education? Do schools at least require all freshman to take classes in logic, learn how to recognize and refute logical fallacies, regardless of their major?

I think that some of the persons involved in the Manhattan Project devoted all their brainpower yet never exercised their moral consciences until after that genie was out of the bottle. I expect plenty of contemporary scientists say what many former Nazis did after WW2. "I was only following orders".....or perhaps, "If I don't build it, I'll get fired and someone else will build it anyway"
I am not a Marxist, but I think that Marx referred to the worker under capitalism as being "alienated" from the product of his labor. Not just that his work doesn't give him a fulfilling life, but that it makes him callous and apathetic in general, with no moral conscience.

Of course, I'm not advocating a technocracy. Far too many "known scientific facts" have been overturned after years of blind adhesion and indoctrination in precedent for me to have any confidence in just scientists running government.

First of all, why are you asking? Second, have you bothered to try to get answers from the horse's mouth, original authors, et al?
Third, a case can be made that much of the dystopian content is already here. Monoculture, Oligarchy, corporations more powerful than governments, dwindling resources.