Can We Predict The Future?
Posted Aug 09, 2011
Can we predict the future? Can we determine exactly what awaits in the forward portion of time? Can we make the unknown completely knowable? There are some who say we can not. They say the future is random, ever changing & unknowable.
The answer is:
The Future is written. We are simply illiterate.
Everything you need to understand is within that simple statement. However, I'll explain further.
To an extent, we already do predict the future.
- Will the sun rise tomorrow?
- When you pull ingredients from the pantry/fridge, do you already know the meal you'll make?
- When you enter a car, do you know the destination you'll reach? Do you know when?
These and countless other examples show us that we already can and do predict the future in many ways. In fact our entire human civilization is based on being able to predict the short-term future.
All of these and much more of our lives are only possible by being fairly sure of what will come soon.
Cause and Effect.
Again, so simple, yet so powerful.
But what happens when certain details of the cause are unknown? Then the effect is equally unknown.
- If you were unaware of damage in your stove reaching the breaking point and causing it to stop working, then your prediction of what your meal will be suddenly becomes wrong.
- If you were unaware of the drunk driver you were going to collide with, then you will reach a different destination than you predicted.
- If some tragedy stopped the Earth's rotation, or blotted the sun, then your prediction of another sunrise becomes inaccurate.
All these examples and more are not "fate" or some "unknowable future". They are simply the effects of causes you were unaware of.
Just as a child watching Mother work in the kitchen. The child doesn't have the knowledge to be able to predict what the results of her actions will be, but the mother can predict the near-term future with ease, having made this meal many times before. She's well aware of the usual events of cause & effect in this case. This future, she can read.
Pretend you are watching a recorded sports event. You are unaware of who will win, even though the event has already occurred. In essence, the "future" in this case, literally is written. In truth you are actually trying to predict the past, but the truth is you are trying to predict the future ending of a recording you are watching, not the game itself. They simply happen to be exactly the same.
And so the truth is the same for long-term predictions. They simply get harder in direct relation to the distance in the future.
The further out in the distance you are trying to predict, the more difficult the prediction.
This is true for a very simple reason: increasing quantities of cause and effect actions. And the slightest lack of knowledge of a single event can invalidate the prediction. But the better we are at understanding specific cause and effect, the better we become at predicting the future. However, the little trick is this: We'll never have enough knowledge to be able to completely predict everything.
The Future is written. We are simply illiterate.
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