If you could know Anything or Everything....would you want to? (1 Viewer)

[Mark Dill]

BrianW I like your clever little example of looking through both ends of the 5-minute wormhole, but I think you need to add an element to help everyone understand it.

You need to watch for 10 minutes, if you want to end up watching the same exact period of time in both ends of the portal.

Let's say you begin at minute 1. In the first five minutes you watch, you are seeing minutes 6-10. In the next five minutes, you are seeing 11-15. Then you switch your gaze to the right-side "past" portal. You are at minute 11, so you see 6-10 again. Keep watching and you will see 11-15 again. Now your present time has completed 20 minutes.

I think I agree with you that in both cases what you see would be unalterable.

 

[Clinton McClure]

All I would want to know is what those little silica packets are for.

 

[Jeff Cooper]

I would think that the more you watched the 'monitor' the harder it would be to complete accurately what you saw.

Say you watch yourself getting up and walking to another room, and reaching in a cupboard to make some cereal.

Now that you have this knowledge in your head, and are concious of what is going to happen, it would be next to impossible to re-create it perfectly.

Can you now walk to the other room, placing each foot in the exact same spot at the exact same time as you saw? Can you mimic your arm movements to match exactly what you saw? How about the exact timing you opened the cupboard, etc.

The simple fact that you now have the knowledge, and are concious of it as you try to replicate the future, means you will behave in a different manner, than if you weren't aware of what is going to happen.

I think that these future telling devices are only accurate as long as you never have knowledge of what the result is. Say the 'monitor' could record what happened. You could set it up to record the next 10 minutes of the future, and 11 minutes later come back and watch that recording, and say 'Hey! That's exactly what happened!' But if you looked at that recording before the 10 minutes were up, it would be changed.

 

[Charles J P]

WOW! I have one of these! It records what happened in the future as it happens in the present and then I watch it once its the past. Its called a TiVo or something. Amazing!!!!

 

[David McGough]

Need to know only one question.
What is the 6 Power Ball numbers for the 300 million lottery.
That would do it.

 

[Mark Dill]

No no no!

You have this backwards!

It is not a matter of trying to recreate what you saw. You don't have to try at all. The monitor shows you what you are going to do, whether you try or not. You can watch it for as long as you like. Then whatever you DO is what ends up getting shown on the monitor.

I think people are confusing themselves by reversing cause and effect when they think about this. What you see in the future is the EFFECT or the end result. What you choose to do is the CAUSE. So, if you watch yourself do a bunch of stuff, you've seen the effect. But that doesn't change the fact that there is still some cause (could be your choice - free will - or could be other factors, mistakes, etc) that is the true CAUSE of what you saw on the monitor. Just because the chronology of the cause and effect are reversed in this case does not change the identity of the cause event and the effect event.

I reread this paragraph and it seems very muddy. Let's try an example.

You check the future-screen and it shows you going to the fridge and getting a Coke. As your future self gets the Coke, he pulls out the gallon of milk and then leaves it on the counter after walking away. You think, "That was stupid, I shouldn't have left that milk out. I'll have to make sure I put it away." So a few minutes go by and you're feeling a little thirsty so you go to the fridge to get a Coke. Of course, the dumb milk is in the way, so you take that out and put it on the counter and then you grab your delicious, thirst-quenching Coke. You take a big drink and then you're just starting to think about how your future-screen is defective because there is no way you are going to forget to put that milk away before walking away, when suddenly the doorbell rings. Oooo, maybe it's your new subwoofer! You go to answer the door and then promptly smack yourself in the head when you realize that of course your future-screen showed you exactly what would happen.

Protesters might say "But what if you DID remember to put it away?" That is a meaningless question. You didn't. You saw in the future-screen that you wouldn't remember, so it was impossible that something different would occur. It is equally meaningless as saying, "But what if Lincoln didn't go to the play?" Well he did.

The effect was you forgetting about the milk. The cause was your excitement over the doorbell ringing.

I highly recommend the short story "By His Bootstraps" by Robert Heinlein, if you like thinking about this stuff. Totally a mind bender. I think you can even find it online.

 

[Charles J P]

Another good example would be how bill (or is it ted) forgets to wind his watch even though he reminds himself. He HAS to forget to wind it or he would have no reason to remind himself to wind it. He only tries to remind himself because he has already forgotten...

 

[Mark Dill]

Yes, because money will solve all our problems!

I know you were probably being facetious, but if you aren't happy already, no amount of money is going to make you happy. Money often just magnifies personal problems and leads to a quicker and more painful destruction. Be careful what you wish for.

Maybe a future-screen would help you spend that money wisely. No, wait, it wouldn't! I mean... Doh!

 

[Charles J P]

Money cant buy happiness, but it can buy you things that make you happy

 

[Mark Dill]

Couldn't disagree more - maybe you don't share my definition of "happy". Mine is similar to "content".

No amount of money will buy contentment. If you live in America and you work, and you are not content now, you will never be content.

 

[MarkHastings]

I just watched the Simpsons episode (Lisa's Wedding) where the fortune teller tells Lisa her future. I thought this line was appropriate for this thread:


Lisa: "Wow. Now that I know all this, isn't there any way to change the future?"
Fortune Teller: "No...but try to look surprised."

 

[Clinton McClure]

No, it's Money can't buy happiness, but it improves your bargaining position.

 

[Citizen87645]

That's great Mark.

 

[BrianW]

I think some of you are misunderstanding this "monitor" concept. These are not monitors. They don't predict the future. They are the future. (Or the past, depending on which way you look through it.) They are literal portals through time.

Take a painting, remove the picture frame, and hold the empty picture frame in front of you. Now imagine that everything you see through the picture frame is five minutes in the future. If the picture frame is large enough, you could even step through it and travel five minutes (or five years, or five million years, or any fixed time difference, depending on how the portal was configured) into the future.

That is your time portal that I so regret calling a "monitor." There is no predicting. There's not even a screen. One side of the picture frame is actually separated in time by five minutes from the other, so when you look through it, you look into the future. Flip it over, and you're looking into the past.

And yes, by definition (if this portal is really a wormhole construct), it is infallible, at least as far as our understanding of wormholes goes.


In contrast, our computer monitors recently showed the future of the Home Theater Forum, and it didn't look that good.

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

"Will she go out with me?" And if so, "Can she love me?" and if so, "Will I always love her?"

 

[Holadem]

--
H

 

[Edwin-S]

What absolute nonsense.

 

[MarkHastings]

But can anyone truly be content for the rest of their lives? I doubt it.

My friend always says "The day that you are truly at peace, is when you are dead". In other words, you should never settle, always reach for what's just out of reach.

Of course, not all the time...There may be times when you feel content, but it should never be permanent.