Predicting the Future

My future is what I make of it.

Can you see the future, even a little bit? I make no claim to the authenticity of this, but it is interesting...

http://www.syfy.com/syfywire/scientists_find_first_real_evidence_you_can_see_the_future

Believe it or not, I and two of my sons have seen bits of the future on rare occasions. The presidential election was not one of them. When my daughter said she was moving to Alaska, one of my sons knew instantly that she would not come back alive, but kept it to himself. I don't always want to know what's coming but sometimes I do, but wanting has no effect on it happening AFAIK.

I'm sorry about your daughter. The trouble with anecdotal accounts is that it can always be coincidence. We often worry when someone moves away, and only remember when our worries are vindicated. One data point doesn't define a trend.

I kind of doubt that any of us can actually know the future, but we all calculate probabilities and realize when some endeavor is risky. The mind is adept at running scenarios based on past experiences, and I suppose that is sort of a way of seeing the future.

"I never think of the future. It comes soon enough."

--Albert Einstein

I would be cool with just knowing some winning lottery numbers or good investments.

• Would you want to know the outcome of a soccer game that you were planning to watch later?
• A: Soccer? Who cares!?
• Would you want to know what gifts you were going to receive for Christmas?
• A: No surprise, I buy them myself...
• Would you want to know if there was life after death?
• A: You mean the Zombie apocalypse? Well there is death after life...
• Would you want to know if your marriage was going to last?
• A: Too late that ship has sailed....
• Would you want to know the sex of your baby?
• A: Ha! a baby? that would be a miracle....

Anyone who's positive about what is going to happen in the far future, is crazy or a fool....Then again they may be manipulating events that lead to a predicted outcome....In any case I'm sure that won't dissuade anybody from trying to guess...

Why did you post a pic of Tcmtech's boiler?

What I would want to know is that if I am aware of a certain outcome can I willingly change it for the better knowing about it ahead of time? If that's possible then yes.

If it's not then yes anyways since if that's the fixed outcome regardless of what I do from when I find out about it up until it happens it's a no holds barred free for all on whatever I feel like doing until then!

Either way, either I have full free will to make things go my way or I am by default absolved of all responsibility for my actions (no matter how bad they may be) and thusly free to live my life and do as I wish until whatever event happens.

Either life goes the way I want it right to the end or life goes my way until the end stops me.

I think that the question of whether any definite future can exist boils down to whether the universe is deterministic. Free will is just one aspect of indeterminism. A lot of physical processes like radioactive decay appear to be non-deterministic.

Chaotic processes magnify minute differences over time. The famous "butterfly effect" is the well-known weather example. Tiny causes can have big effects. A non-deterministic decay of a radium atom can kill Schrodinger's cat.

So maybe we can't know the future until we get there.

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/determinism-causal/

Upon reading this article, one might believe that German scientists are required, to ask people simple questions. Whereas almost everywhere else, common everyday folks can ask people simple questions.

If you knew the future you could change it. Then the future would no longer be the future.

The future. You won't get out of it alive.

I've noticed at my age, that my future, is a lot of old memories.