bob_kark
Person of Hench
- Joined
- Oct 26, 2005
- Messages
- 4,488
I hate to add fuel to the fire and I may not be the first person to make this point. But, from the standpoint of a critical thinking exercise, how can you make specific predictions about the distant future without creating a paradox?
For example, let's say I'm Nostradamus and I predict that my next door neighbor's son, Pierre, kills 10 people, 20 years from now, August 3rd at 8:52pm. Now, let's say little Pierre thinks I'm an old dingy bat and forgets all about my amazing prophecy. He ends up killing 20 people of course, and now, people realize that I'm psychic due to my precice prediction. The problem now, is that any other prediction I make is now doomed to fail because everyone expects it to be true.
For example, let's say that I predict that Adolf Hitler writes Mein Kamf and invades Poland. Well, who in the Hitler family would want to name their child after a monster? In addition, even if Adolf is now named Jonny, would he want to take the risk of ending up dead, in a ditch, on fire after knowing that my predictions are accurate, even though his name may be different?
The case for natural disasters is a little bit more strange. Let's say I make a prediction about the Tsunami occuring just as it did. Now everyone knows that I can predict the future, they move away from the area or are evacuated weeks, months, years in advance. Now why would a natural disaster that claims no lives be important enough for me to forsee? Its not like I get visions about Joe Smith writing out his grocery list, I only see relatively important things. But by having the vision, I cause it to no longer be important or relative enough to recieve the vision.
So, it would seem that any large scale prediction, after an initial correct prediction, would have to be vague until after the predicted action occured to be able to remain true. Therefore, any successful prediction, after the first correct one that others recognize, would be completely useless.
