Precognition - Would you still want to know the future if you could do nothing to change it?

[Wally]

If you had the ability to know the future, but once you knew it then you could do nothing to change it, would you you still want to know? The best possibility would likely be to know exactly what the outcomes of any choice you make would be, and then pick the one that has the best results, though I imagine we would all pick that option. But to know every unpleasant thing that will ever happen in your life and then be absolutely powerless to prevent these things from happening would be too much for me. However it would be nice to be able to know SOME future events (mostly relating to the world at large rather than anything personal) and I would still like to have answers to these questions even if they may not be the answers I would like to hear.

[calikid]

Nice one Wally. :cool:

I would want to know.

I may not be able to stop it from raining tomorrow, but I would want the opportunity to prepare by packing an umbrella.
Same thing with "the big things"... mitigation through preparation.

And if it's "the big one", take notice and spend my last hours with family and friends.
It was fun while it lasted.... hold me close for the time we have left, and I'll see you on the other side!

Many of us don't have noble, life fulfilling vocations.
How sad it would be to spend your last hours on earth at a banal job when you could have been in the company of loved ones.
Yes, precog for me.

[Wally]

The further I think on it I would rather not know some of the bad stuff that the future may bring, though knowing of good future events would be something nice to look forward to.

[Ebenmatter]

I would be interested in the future of planets and star systems but not any being in particular.

[Longeyes]

There may be some proof of precognition although the experiment doesn't seem to have been replicated I thought it was and was based on earlier research but Dr Daryl Bern s experiments are controversial. It may only be fractions of a sec or seconds in advance but if it stands it still contradicts any known scientific explanation

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn19712-is-this-evidence-that-we-can-see-the-future.html#.VX9JWoF4WK0

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daryl_Bem

[majicbar]

There may be some proof of precognition although the experiment doesn't seem to have been replicated I thought it was and was based on earlier research but Dr Daryl Bern s experiments are controversial. It may only be fractions of a sec or seconds in advance but if it stands it still contradicts any known scientific explanation

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn19712-is-this-evidence-that-we-can-see-the-future.html#.VX9JWoF4WK0

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daryl_Bem

My own experiences do indicate precognition of up to 20 seconds, I discovered this at work finding circuit defects under the microscope, I'd get into an almost meditative state and would sense what I would see seconds ahead, usually 10 seconds or so.

[Longeyes]

Me too I've noticed it on quite a few occasions, seeing stuff a few seconds in advance. After intense periods of meditaion it happens more frequently.

[Longeyes]

This is a very good article on Bern's work
http://hplusmagazine.com/2010/11/04/precognition-real-cornell-university-lab-releases-powerful-new-evidence-human-mind-can/

[Longeyes]

interestingly last year Daryl Bern published a new paper doing meta analysis of all the 90 retrials of his experiment from 30 labs in 14 countries. Which he showed proved a statistically positve result. I think if I'm reading the data right 1.4 to 1,000,000,000 chance that it's not a fluke.
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2423692

[Gwaihir57]

I believe the idea of precognition is more of a statistical analysis of events leading up to that point, at least from a scientific stand point. For someone to say they have/can see the future whether its months, days, milisec into future, i feel makes an even louder statement that there is a plan for everyone...or fate. possibly even the belief of a higher being setting our life in a linear pattern. However the scientific stand point, ive had my moments of pattern recognition, whether it be a conscience effort or sub, behavior of people...with this info i have on more than one occasion known how an event would go down b4 it actually happened...and on multiple occasions let things play out just to see if it did go down that way, and was usually always right.
With that being said, I feel precognition is something everyone can do with practive.

[southerncross]

Having done this all my life I find it useful. Mine come in dreams and have been quite far in the future. Many years.
Some say its the subconscious making logical deductions based on subconscious information but I don't buy it.
It's hard to explain, but when you know something's coming and it's bad sometimes you can interfere and alter it or stop it.
Now I do believe short term precog is deduction on current input, but seeing thing years even decades ahead isn't.
It's a burden and a blessing, and since one can't change it, one may as well just go with the flow.

[majicbar]

If you look to the work of Dr. Bruce Goldberg (Past Lives, Future Lives) one can see that while fate may be set in a particular timeline, one can "quantum jump" to different timelines going forward and choose a different fate. The only problem I have with this is questioning "do we still live all those timelines"? While we might change the timeline we experience, do we force fate upon the other lives being lived in those alternate timelines. It is like we choose the correct path in a maze but our other selves are doomed to fight there way to the end.

[whoknows]

If you look to the work of Dr. Bruce Goldberg (Past Lives, Future Lives) one can see that while fate may be set in a particular timeline, one can "quantum jump" to different timelines going forward and choose a different fate. The only problem I have with this is questioning "do we still live all those timelines"? While we might change the timeline we experience, do we force fate upon the other lives being lived in those alternate timelines. It is like we choose the correct path in a maze but our other selves are doomed to fight there way to the end.

I like your reply majicbar. I would posit that we can only act locally. How our local action effect all our other universal timelines would be predicated on our subjective experiences within those other universes, though I agree with Dr. Goldberg's hypothesis that we can "quantum jump," I think those jumps would be to alterverses that are close and would therefor share a great deal of commonality to the point of near indistinguishability.

[Doc]

I voted for the third choice, case by case, because some things I would just as soon not know. In a way that is gaming the survey a bit on my part because I think the future may not actually be knowable in detail and the future if it exists today may be subject to change as a result of choices that we make. I have never considered such things as do I exist in different timelines under various conditions in more than a passing way. I find that I'm comfortable as a more concrete thinker as opposed to an abstract thinker. Concrete thinking suggests less intelligence to some people, so to avoid the laughs and finger-pointing I'll say I can think in that abstract realm, I just don't like to dwell there for long. If I think about abstract things like The Future for too long I get a headache. I'm happy that other people like that sort of thinking and pleased to read what they write.
We never did get those flying commuter cars that the futurists have been predicting since I was a child. :biggrin2:

[atmjjc]

This is very good, for it exemplifies a philosophical point of view of pre-determinism and free will.

In a predetermined world there would be no free will to make choices for they were already pre-determined on what choices you make. Thought of occurrence to make a choice is just a commodity of the mind of an occurrence which was already pre-destined for the choices you have already made. Free will would be an illusion.

For arguments sake I would answer ‘no’ I would not want to know the happenings of the future. It would mean to me that there would be no purpose to life, there would be no surprises, no responsibility for action of the tough choices we would have to make in life. I would not want to stop the actions of any person outside of immediate time. To change things would have an impact on everything else. Every person we have touched in one way or the other has an impact on that person’s life and a continuation of the lives they touch and so forth.
“The second is this: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.' There is no commandment greater than these." Mark 12:31