On predictions and attempts to prevent them

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

This is a preliminary article, the purpose of which is to outline my beliefs and personal experience in the matter of prediction and prevention of the predicted for a separately considered person.

When we talk about predictions (we will consider the word "prophecy" as a synonym here), a number of problems inevitably arise, the solutions of which are difficult, if not impossible, to work out within the framework of the established science. Among these are:

- the historically established scientific paradigm does not accept the phenomenon of predictors (fortune-tellers, prophets, etc.). In other words, in this paradigm they seem to have “no place”, and therefore there is no scientific direction that would allow working in the field of predicting the future (I’m not talking about the weather and other “calculated” predictions based on models and experience);

- the fact of the announcement of a certain prediction ALWAYS changes the future, which introduces a strong uncertainty in the issue of verifying the prediction. For example, if two countries are at war, and the commander-in-chief of one army predicted and announced the fact that the enemy will attack "tomorrow at 5 am", then the enemy will NOT attack "tomorrow at 5 am", because now he knows that his enemy is preparing precisely for this hour, and it makes no sense to come at the hour planned earlier. On the other hand, there may be a case of "programming" the future through prediction, which I wrote about in some detail in a series of articles about self-fulfilling prophecies;

- it is impossible to live the same time period twice in order to reliably find out the course of the development of events both in the case of the implementation of a certain decision, and in the case of its non-implementation. For example, we have successfully prevented a prophecy by making and putting into practice a decision. How do we know that this particular decision prevented the prediction? We do not know: it was a false prediction or it was we who, by our conscious volitional decision, prevented it.

From the last point, in particular, it follows that if you received (for example, in the language of life circumstances) a prophecy about some bad event, took action in advance, then you CANNOT determine AT ALL whether this prediction was false, or your protective the measures really worked.

Of course, I am not talking about obvious predictions, which are very reliably constructed on the basis of experience, some theory and calculation. For example, if you are moving at a speed of a little more than 7 km / h (the usual step of an adult), and there is a wall ten meters in front of you, then in about 5 seconds you will crash into it. It is not difficult to understand the truth of this prediction, just as it is not difficult to prevent it by simply turning to the side or slowing down to a stop. Here, the rich experience of working with rather obvious manifestations of the simplest physical laws in our life allows us to freely predict, prevent and implement any acceptable options for the future in short periods of time.

I'm talking about situations when predictions are “mystical” in nature and do not have a prerequisite visible or perceived by a person, that is, they appear as if from “nowhere”. For example, before an important trip you had an extremely realistic dream in which you get into trouble after leaving the house and, moreover, you can remember the whole dream in great detail. Many people in such a situation tend to consider the dream prophetic, they take steps to eliminate the danger and really leave the house without incident. For example, a man dreamed that his bag on wheels broke, which could not be carried with his hands, it fell apart at the seam and all things fell into the mud, along which he pulled it by the handle. Now there is no longer enough time to wash and transfer things to another bag. Taking this fact into account, the person either strengthens the seams in the bag, or even takes another one. The question is: would the bag really break if he left the house with it?.. And who knows?.. But how to check?..

Few people want to take the risk and test this situation in practice. As a rule, such predictions indicate some very unpleasant events that you don't want to check.

And if someone does check, try to act out the scene as close as possible to the circumstances of the dream, and it turns out that the prediction is false?

Unfortunately, this cannot be verified, because if the prophecy did not come true, then this may happen due to the fact that the logic of human behavior has changed in one way or another, while he was trying to reproduce exactly the picture that he saw in the prediction: the wrong foot came out from the entrance, drove through the wrong puddle, etc. In one way or another, the fact of the prophecy changed a person's behavior - and he did not succeed. This is an example of a self-canceling prophecy.

The opposite example is self-fulfilling prophecy, when an attempt to avoid prediction inevitably leads to its fulfillment. Remember how in the old unfunny joke? On the wall of the house it is written: “Do not approach! Ice may come off the roof … it is written in small letters like this, you need to come up to see …

What to do with all this information? How to respond to prophecy? If you are an atheist, then you can’t. And you don't even need to read further.

If you have already grown up, then I can recommend my own technique, which at the moment does not contradict my picture of the world. At the same time, it is impossible to check experimentally (in the classical scientific sense of the word) whether it works or not for the reasons indicated above. You can believe in her work, but such a belief will already be individual, for whatever reason it will not satisfy at least one of the six criteria of scientific character: intersubjective testability … Do you care?

So, if you were "given" (no matter how) this or that prediction of unpleasant events, then you should to start understand that it is accurate only if your actions and your logic of behavior in general DO NOT change by the time the prophecy comes true. In other words, if you generally act in the same way as if you did not know about the prediction. Treat prophecy as a good extrapolation of your life, provided that you do not significantly change the direction of its course.

Second step: just wish (mentally) that this did not happen, but instead something else would happen (you need to imagine in as much detail as possible what exactly). It will be easier and more useful for someone to enter into a dialogue with God in order to get some explanations and hints.

Third step: adjust your behavior so that what you want from the second step can, in principle, be achieved. But not more than that. If you overdo it, you can get into a vicious circle of self-fulfilling prophecy, the exit from which is quite difficult.

Let's say that shortly before the renovation, you dreamed that a trouble happened in your own house, but there was a kettle on the table (and he was a participant in the events), and the wallpaper was white (which also played a role in the dream). Then, during the repair, instead of white wallpaper, glue others for yourself, and do not put the kettle on the table. But this is just an example.

By the way, it is not a fact that such a departure from prophecy will not lead to more tragic consequences. Let's say you decided to put the kettle on a special shelf created for it. And so, he falls from this shelf on your feet … with boiling water. And if it were on the table, then only what you dreamed earlier would happen.

People usually fear uncertainty more than a harsh but understandable future. Therefore, they are often afraid to change the traditional course of things in their lives, believing that this will lead to trouble. This can happen, however, if you refuse to violate a certain tradition or simply from something desired, then it will be impossible to influence the prophecy, which shows a real version of the future in the event that a person does not take any measures.

These were preliminary sketches on this topic, undoubtedly, the thought will have its development, but now I am more interested in your opinion.