Time Out

I've always enjoyed playing with the idea of predicting the future, especially the question of whether the future is fixed or mutable.  If we know what's about to happen, does that change things?

My favorite mental image is one of a bug climbing a tree.  Every branch we move onto eliminates a certain number of other choices (i.e. The Road Not Taken) and presents us with still more choices not available from that other limb.

In my personal picture though, sometimes those separate branches do cross over and occasionally even touch, enabling us to move from one branch to another, literally changing our fate.  Unfortunately, it's all hypothetical imaginings...

...except when it isn't.

I've often said that anyone can predict the future.  I do believe this...to a certain degree.  One of the lines I use to "get a laugh" is that every mother who looks out the kitchen window and sees her ten year old son climbing onto the trampoline with his skateboard KNOWS what's about to happen!

Shakespeare suggested that coming events cast their shadows before them.  I think "really sensitive" or attentive people can have an instinct about sweeping cultural or political changes.  These, and the boy with the skateboard, are things that impact lives in a very direct manner.

On the other hand, this very reasoning can be used to "explain" why psychics never win the lottery.  While a load of cash could effectively change someone's life, the money is a secondary effect.  What the psychic would be trying to predict in reality is the random tumblings of a number of small plastic balls bouncing on a current of air.  Not much impact at all in the "natural world".


Can I predict the future? Most resoundingly YES, and most unreservedly...no.

It's all still a thought experiment, and one not likely to be solved anytime soon.  I can watch for a few moments and know what's coming, but the quality of my predictions can only be as good as the thoroughness of my observations.

Until I win the Lottery!