Complete the following sequence…

2,4,6,8,?

Did you get the answer? 10 right? Congratulations, you just “predicted the future”. Predictions of the future are part of our every day lives, sometimes more than we realize. Horoscopes are nothing new to us, and most people read the daily horoscopes in the newspapers. But there’s also more complicated predictions in the newspaper than “you may or may not meet a stranger today”… For instance the financial section of the newspaper. Economists make accurate predictions about shares, the oil price, interest rates and so forth. No one frowns down on these predictions because we know that they are based on complex calculations using statistics, past trends, global influences and so forth. Same goes for the weather, “predictions” about the outcome of a football game, etc.

Yet most of us are a bit sceptical when someone says something like “UFOs will scatter our skies on the twenty-second of April”. Pfft. Riiiight! That one is a bit “cuckoo”. No one is surprised when the market shares go up as predicted by economists. Yet, everyone is extremely impressed when indeed on the twenty-second of April there is a UFO sighting or two. Was it spot luck? Did someone peer into a crystal ball and see the “event” through a thick cloud of mist? Was it the alignment of Mars and the moon that revealed the future? Who knows?

What I’m trying to say is that it’s more than paranormal abilities. It’s the ability to “read” the pattern. With the above example it was quite simple to predict that the answer will be 10. You saw the pattern and the answer came to you. Do some people have the ability to look at the world around them and read the patterns around them to “see” what is going to happen next?

All kinds of people have all kinds of gifts. Artists have the ability to create realistic images with a few simple strokes of a brush. Musicians can create an energetic tune by using a simple combination of musical notes. There are many more examples, but you get the idea. Is it then impossible that some people have the natural ability to “read” the future? Most of us have the ability in its most basic form. Your kid walks through a shop he bumps against a vase and you see that it is going to fall, and you stop it from falling over. Did you suddenly get supernatural powers to see into the future? No. There was a certain amount of information that came from your surroundings and you made a pre-emptive move to do something about it.

Did Nostradamus have wonderful predictions or did he just have a pretty good skill at reading situations. Nostradamus spent hours at end studying history. Was his “ability” really something more than looking at past and present patterns to “predict” the future? Nostradamus was quite clever to hide his “predictions” in poems. If you make a “prediction” today using only four lines of cryptic poetry, don’t you think your prediction would come true eventually in a period of 500 years, in one way or the other?

Should we really be so sceptic about supposed “psychics”? Or should we just applaud their ability to accurately read situations? Perhaps we shouldn’t see the “prediction of the future” as a paranormal science, but more as an undiscovered or rather untapped science of reading situations?

Try it just for one day. During your regular day-to-day chores try and focus on how many times you “predict the future”, or rather take pre-emptive actions or think anticipatory thoughts. At the end of the day, you may want to reconsider whether predicting the future really is such an amazing feat…

the two four six eight thing isn't predicting that's just common sense.

Yes, but technically it is predicting the future it is just common so you call it common sense.

So then why are people ridiculed for predicting the outcome of similar events and occurrences, only difference being that it is larger in scale and complexity?

......

That's what I thought.

[edit on 5-12-2008 by Trash can]


Oh yeah, and that thing you said about looking at the world around you and reading a pattern that's just called common sense.

Prediction is apparently reading the future with no particular lead or obvious signs that such a thing would happen.

Where as common sense is seeing given information in a pattern like the 2, 4, 6, 8 and using reason to come up with a guess as to the best possible answer to discern it's outcome.

[edit on 5-12-2008 by Trash can]

2,4,6,8,?

There is no guarentee on the next number. We can make an 'educated guess' based on what we've learned in our passed experiences but we can surely be wrong as surely as we could be right.

2, 4, 6, 8, 1, 3, 5, 7, 9

I was going 1-9 even, then 1-9 odd. It's all in how we've been programmed. I'd be careful about calling anything or anyone that doesn't follow your pattern of thinking as "cuckoo". Seek first to understand. You may find yourself predicting someone will turn in a turn lane and get into an accident. Such mistakes can be lethal.

[edit on 5-12-2008 by saint4God]