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When faced with different circumstances, people see to it they analyze possible outcomes and risks – an attempt at predicting the future and settling their worries.
The far future is unforeseeable unless the near future is known, and even in successfully identifying a pattern for this near future, the accuracy of any prediction can still be low.
However, with people’s desire for certainty and repulsion of matters that raise apprehension and doubt, predicting the future has always been a dream. This is why they’ve built mechanisms and devices that forecast different affairs like the weather, business movements, etc. They wish to see glimpses of the future to ease their nerves and prepare themselves for what’s to come.
But in measuring these probabilities, there needs to be heavy computations and consideration of numerous variables. It’s a long and rigorous process to arrive at an accurate and reasonable forecast. This poses the ultimate question of whether predicting the future is possible.
Can society build an intelligent enough system to make this happen, or is it plausible that people can become psychics?
People Have Been Finding Patterns to Foresee the Future
Unless people have the natural (and relatively fictional) ability for clairvoyance, predicting the future isn’t humanly possible. Sure, they can make good guesses from trends and experiences they’ve gathered, but to see the future play out in their minds is unfeasible.
This concept has been around in literature. For instance, it plays an integral role in Edward Lipinski’s Visions of Destiny, a book about predictions. However, while it’s a common theme across centuries, this doesn’t automatically make it a plausible occurrence.
Someone in the past has been believed to prophesize the future. But even without enough information or technology to debunk his claims, Nostradamus was still ridiculed, and his ability was subjected to debates. However, what made most of his words believable was due to its nature. His predictions were general, forecasting about disasters and conflicts that regularly occur. There is a trend. While deemed a seer, he still played around with existing data and patterns to develop his prophecies.
People spend most of their time thinking about what comes next.
From subtle affairs like what they’ll be eating for dinner or how their days will progress, most wonder and anticipate what happens in the future. Perhaps attempting to predict the future is engraved in human nature, a method of survival to protect themselves and overcome all possible events. This keen enthusiasm for predicting the future is why a chunk of society is dedicating their lives to this cause. For instance, futurists study trends that might reveal a possible future circumstance, and fortune tellers claim they can predict the future through cards or visions.
How to Make Predicting the Future Somehow Possible
These individuals thrive in their chosen careers because people continue believing them.
Regardless if their claims aren’t spot on, there will always be those wishing to see them in hopes of easing their anxiety for the future. They provide a good perspective of the possibilities, listing specific events that give people a glimpse or a vision of the far future. This gives them a sense of clarity through the uncertainty. Hence, it’s understandable why many choose to believe them.
Outside these professionals, there’s also a growing fuss around the cartoon series The Simpsons possibly predicting the future. In a series of broadcast episodes, the animation narrated events that had only recently occurred, raising people’s interest and wonder. While others pay no heed to this hearsay despite the multiple articles highlighting evidence, some genuinely believe and now refer to the animation for clues about the future.
Without closing windows about the possibility of predicting the future, but at the same time, not believing that The Simpson is prophetic, how is this parallelism possible?
As mentioned earlier, multiple factors and data can lead to a relatively accurate vision of the near future. Trends like asymmetry, generational transitions, and catalytic changes play roles in making these predictions possible. Most of the time, it’s not foreseeing the future but looking into the present and estimating what might come. With the multiple channels that can document and record societal progress and events, it now becomes easy to gather these and come up with an approximate future. Studying what’s happening today can be a good source of future predictions.