Prophesy today.

[Oneironaut]

Well... all i can say is that our minds are far more powerful than we acknowledge... have you ever thought about the amount of calculations that should be needed to throw, lets say, a knife and its tip enter nicely the target? Remember that we have to consider the movement of the knife, its rotation around itself, the air fricction, the gravity pull, and so... if we would put into a computer, im sure it would be a long calculation... and yet, the knife-throwers who works in circus does it without even think... and they throw the knives with such precision that sometimes they put a woman in the target, and she never is hurt.
Ok, maybe its not a very good example, but im sure you get the idea.

It's not the same. Knife-throwing is a skill. Through trial and error, you learn the right hand movements, the right wrist movements to get it where you want it to go. You don't actually sit down and think about the air friction and the acceleration due to gravity and so forth. Predicting earthquakes is a lot more complicated. A simple robot could probably throw a knife onto a target, if it was properly programmed or if it could experiment a little bit with trial and error. It could not analyze the geological movements of each part of each tectonic plate everywhere on the planet, and the movement of all the magma in the mantle. There is not enough computing power in a human brain, or even in our most powerful supercomputers, to perform those calculations. Just look at how accurate our weather predicting supercomputers are. Those things are capable of doing waaaaaaaaaaaay more calculations than your brain, yet they can't do a very good job of predicting the weather more than a week or so in advance.

And if you are determinist, why does you think previsions are so impossible?

Because according to Einsteinian relativity, information cannot travel faster than the speed of light, i.e. backwards in time. You can make reasonable predictions about the future if you know enough about the current universe and if you have the ability to calculate how things will change in the future. In principle, you could predict an earthquake, and even predict the reactions everybody would have to the earthquake. You'd just need a really powerful computer and really good observational tools for figuring out where all the particles are at one particular moment in time.

[Coelho]

Well... my example really was not good... now i see it.
Anyway, still our minds are far greater than any man-made computer... the dream of the computer scientists is create artificial intelligence... and for doing so they need very powerful computers. There is a lot of research in this area, and i did read that there was at least one supercomputer created specifically to mimic the behavior of the human brain. But still they are very behind it... How large should be a computer which were as intelligent as a human brain, who is capable of being conscious? If you consider our mind just like a machine, then you must agree that is a very powerful machine. If a computer could be conscious of itself, what else it couldnt calculate?
Thats why i think that making a prevision about a thing that is based upon physical laws is not so difficult for a human brain... as it does things far more difficult... the mere process of thinking is, computationally speaking, much more difficult than any calculations...

And previsions based upon the determinism doesnt violate the relativity, because if we know the present, we can calculate the future directly, without the need of "foresee" it. Any information that could come from the future is not any novelty, as it is already known in the present.

EDIT:Reaper, i only did see your post after i post mine. Anyway, if animals can "feel" earthquakes coming, then certainly people could do it also.

[onequestion]

I predict that tommorow...stuff will happen. Its about as specific and as obvious as that prediction.

[cacayjunasian]

Ok my friend Willow Earth did a channeling today of a being who when we asked who it was, it said "I am none but all, all but one" One prediction it made was that in about three weeks there will be an earthquake in china. Three weeks from now is August 5th, for the record today is July 15th 07. It also said that our government will release a tape that we will see in the news, and that it is fake..our government is lieing to us and not to trust them.

wow, a none but all and all but one being predicted an earthquake in one of the most active seismic parts of the world....congratulations :thumbsup:

[Coelho]

Ok... now the future has come.
Does any of this "predictions" really happened?

[Coelho]

One prediction it made was that in about three weeks there will be an earthquake in china. Three weeks from now is August 5th, for the record today is July 15th 07.

Well... after almost one year, actually there were an big earthquake in china. But it is an usual thing there, and surely the average interval between earthquakes there is smaller than one year, so this prediction was useless. Anyone can make predictions this way.

Ok my friend Willow Earth did a channeling today of a being who when we asked who it was, it said "I am none but all, all but one"

Beware of who you trust and in what you believe... anyone can give any name to itself... and anyone can say anything... but takes wisdom to discern the truth from the deceit.