Science Quote by Keith Henson

A line this short is either a shrug or a provocation; from a scientist, it reads as a quietly sharpened blade. "I much prefer the modern world" isn’t just a lifestyle preference. It’s an argument about evidence, comfort, and the moral arithmetic of progress, smuggled into a sentence that sounds like small talk.

The key word is "prefer". It dodges the triumphalist claim that modernity is unequivocally better, and instead frames the issue as a choice made after comparison. That’s a scientific posture: weigh outcomes, notice tradeoffs, decide anyway. The subtext is impatience with romantic nostalgia, especially the kind that treats the past as spiritually richer while ignoring its baseline realities: infant mortality, famine cycles, superstition as governance, pain as entertainment, limited mobility for anyone outside the favored few.

Coming from Keith Henson, the sentence also signals allegiance to a specific modern ethos: rationalism, technological problem-solving, and the idea that systems can be improved rather than merely endured. It’s a rebuttal to "we’ve lost something" narratives. Yes, we have lost certain simplicities, tighter communities, the illusion of stable identities. But the speaker is betting that antibiotics beat authenticity, that reliable information beats inherited certainty, that individual autonomy beats the sentimental comforts of hierarchy.

Its power is its understatement. No manifesto, no stats dump, just a crisp preference that dares you to name which pre-modern hardships you’d like to reintroduce.