Always In Motion

Oracles and fortune tellers are nothing new. They've been around throughout recorded history, and I suspect for much longer than that. As humans, it's our nature to search for meaning. In a world where obtaining the basics of life is often a competition, it's also natural to look for an advantage wherever we can get one. Knowing how future events will unfold would certainly be a handy talent to possess, although the folks running Vegas casinos would probably take a dim view of such things.

It's my understanding from conversations with people far more educated than I am that part of the human cognitive process is dedicated to pattern matching. That seems pretty sensible to me. The sooner I realize that the object on the horizon approaching me at warp speed is in fact a hungry lion, the sooner I can make myself scarce. Preferably before the lion does.

Software projects involving big data and facial recognition are doing the same thing, looking for patterns and drawing conclusions based on a collection of known facts. So far we're on pretty solid ground from a logical perspective. Match patterns to known physical objects in order to identify what you're looking at and perhaps avoid becoming an afternoon snack.

In a sense this is what many types of fortune tellers are also doing. Tea leaves, Tarot cards and the relative positions of the stars are all patterns. To interpret them, they're not tapping into a big database hosted in the cloud by an even bigger corporation, but rather a different sort of cloud, their intuition. This, coupled with a base of knowledge specific to their particular practice, such as the meanings of each Tarot card, allows them to draw conclusions.

All software has bugs, so it's not shocking when facial recognition goes sideways. Human pattern recognition is also less than perfect, so from a distance that lion may look like a bunch of dry grass stalks swaying in the breeze, at least until it gets close enough for you to see the teeth. So why is it that psychics are often dismissed as little more than con artists?

There are a few significant differences that set fortune tellers apart from the logical. First, we're used to recognizing patterns with our own eyes, so we trust that. Software also tends to produce fairly repeatable results, at least once you've shaken out most of the bugs. Additionally, we know that at the lowest level software is just executing a bunch of simple logic statements. If this is true, do that. Otherwise, do the other thing. Psychics, on the other hand, employ the intuition, and that's a red flag to those who live in the world of logic. Perhaps more important is the fact that oracles are typically compensated for their services, which gives them motive to tell you whatever you want to hear in order to get paid.

To get to the heart of the matter, I'm willing to let the matter of ethics pass. It's hard to find a group of humans that doesn't contain a few willing to bend the rules to their own advantage. That certainly applies to the huge corporations controlling the big data. Like for-profit companies, some soothsayers are honest, some are not. That doesn't really tell us anything about predicting the future.

The trickier part of this equation is the mechanism used to draw conclusions. Intuition is difficult enough to define as it is, but that's made worse by the fact that it's not present in equal strengths in every person. This means we have no common point of reference. If software goes screwy on my computer, you can install it on yours and see the same thing. However, if I told you I had a premonition, you'd have no way of sharing that experience to validate it for yourself. At that point it comes down to trust. Either you believe I'm telling the truth, or you don't. Unfortunately, that has nothing to do with intuition. That same level of trust would apply if I told you a story about how big of a fish I caught.

Another difficulty with fortune telling is the current understanding of time. Our best scientific minds tell us that time runs in one direction, forward. If that's all there is to it, then I can't possibly know what's going to happen tomorrow because this is today and at this particular moment in time, tomorrow simply doesn't exist. How, then, could it be possible for anyone to tell you what will happen tomorrow? It seems pretty unlikely.

Oracles often add to their own credibility issues in the way that they convey information. In ancient times, the Oracle of Delphi was famous for speaking in vague, often incoherent language. There are two possible explanations for that. The first, favored by fortune tellers everywhere, is that the future often reveals itself in less than precise impressions, or that the deities want to make you work for it.

While I don't expect truth from Hollywood, I nonetheless get moments of inspiration from fiction. In the original Star Wars, Yoda was asked about upcoming events and said it was difficult to see because always in motion is the future. The endless possibilities of cause and effect would certainly point to that, so maybe that's just the way it is. Not being a psychic myself, I can't say.

The more cynical part of me, who likes to take naps in the logical part of my brain, points out the obvious. The more vague the answer, the easier it is to interpret so that the psychic is always right. This vagueness also feels like proof that psychics have no real abilities. If you truly want credibility, then offer future events in clear, precise and unambiguous language. When things happen exactly as you said they would, with zero wiggle room, there's no way to dispute the validity of your predictions. Since you don't hear much about that sort of precision, fortune telling is harder to take seriously.

Intuition, the linear nature of time, vague language and the potential for profit all paint a pretty sketchy picture of the crystal ball crowd. Even so, belief in this ability has persisted throughout the ages, including the present day. We live in a society of logic and high technology. Even the fortune tellers have cell phones and websites. With so many things pointing to soothsayers being nothing more than con artists, why are they still a part of so many cultures?

To a certain degree, people believe what they want to believe. There is also no shortage of folks who are easy to deceive. It would be much simpler for me if I could just write it all off as that and be done with it. I have little doubt that a lot of people who hang out a shingle as a psychic are in fact just running a game to make some money, and I've met more than a few of them.

The problem is that I've experienced small bits of intuition in my own life, and have heard stories both casual and compelling from people whose character I trust completely. It's rarely as dramatic as a detailed screenplay that comes to life the next day exactly as it was on the page. It's closer to the recurring line from Star Wars, where a character observes, “I've got a bad feeling about this…” I've had feelings like that, and have regretted the times when I ignored them. Maybe it's intuition. Maybe it's some form of primal instinct. Honestly, I don't know what it is. But it's something.

Many of my friends have also related tales of gut feelings that certain things were going to happen, with events playing out in support of their intuition. In my years as a musician I certainly ran with an interesting crowd, and some were exactly as crazy as you think they were. I've also spent decades in the corporate world interacting with what you'd consider normal, responsible adults. However, the stories I've heard have been sprinkled equally across every social group I've known. Taken individually I'm willing to write this stuff off as chance, but collectively it starts to bend the needle on my coincidence meter, especially since I've experienced some of these things myself.

My logical brain tells me that there's no such thing as predicting the future, because science. I've spent a lifetime exploring the inner mysteries, delving into the paranormal and contemplating the unseen. I'm looking for truth, not self-delusion, so I actively seek to eliminate anything that feels like nonsense in order to more clearly see the things that are really there. I figure if I write off something that's actually valid, it'll just keep showing up until I figure it out. The universe is pretty persistent in that regard. Otherwise, I see weeding the garden as a healthy pursuit.

There's a compelling case that the future can only be experienced when it becomes the present. And yet, the small experiences that I've had along with decades of tales from a variety of trusted friends make it harder for me to dismiss the notion that there's more to it than this, that the bits and pieces I see are clues encouraging me to look deeper. And so, deeper I look.

It would be the height of arrogance to pretend that I understand the complete inner workings of life on Earth, let alone the complexities of the universe. There are mornings when I have a hard enough time understanding my coffee machine. Maybe one day I'll gain some insight into what these experiences are. The only thing I know for certain is that if I don't look, I'll never find anything, so I keep looking.

Are the present and future somehow connected, wrapped up with us in some kind of electrical current like fish swimming in the sea? Is there a collective consciousness that allows us to tap into the experiences of others before they even happen? Is the sum of all human experience just a bunch of files on some universal computer's hard drive, allowing us to randomly access both present and future events? Or am I just barking at the moon?