ravenest
There is an old story about a man on top of a building looking down at the street corner. Down one street, a truck is coming rather fast, a car coming on the other street, both toward the corner. On the footpath a little girl is playing with a ball, it rolls out on to the road ... from the high vantage point the man on the roof can see how all 3 will converge if the girl chases the ball on to the road but all 3 cannot yet see each other, nor have a clue what is about to happen.
On the street , no one can tell. The man on top of the building predicts an accident. If the man on the roof, knew more, and could see more; he might know the girl and know she is well-drilled on not going out onto the road, he might see the car has its indicator on and is going to turn off, the truck driver has just had a heart attack and is unconscious .. or any number of VARIABLES .
The man on the roof might take a guess and predict an accident and he might be right... or not.
The point is, the better your view point and the more you know about as many factors concerned as you can know, the greater are your chances of prediction. But you cant know everything and all the factors.
As some have pointed out ... the future is unknown - until it happens. Sometimes we guess right ... when we do guess wrong, sometimes the 'excuses' ('reasons') made (because some people want to claim they CAN read the future) are really bad ... and that just feeds the skeptics ... because sometimes the excuses and claims are quiet puerile .
Its all based on understanding ' Euclidean vectors' and 'Probability'.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Probability - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euclidean_vector
On the street , no one can tell. The man on top of the building predicts an accident. If the man on the roof, knew more, and could see more; he might know the girl and know she is well-drilled on not going out onto the road, he might see the car has its indicator on and is going to turn off, the truck driver has just had a heart attack and is unconscious .. or any number of VARIABLES .
The man on the roof might take a guess and predict an accident and he might be right... or not.
The point is, the better your view point and the more you know about as many factors concerned as you can know, the greater are your chances of prediction. But you cant know everything and all the factors.
As some have pointed out ... the future is unknown - until it happens. Sometimes we guess right ... when we do guess wrong, sometimes the 'excuses' ('reasons') made (because some people want to claim they CAN read the future) are really bad ... and that just feeds the skeptics ... because sometimes the excuses and claims are quiet puerile .
Its all based on understanding ' Euclidean vectors' and 'Probability'.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Probability - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euclidean_vector