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As time can be expressed in scientific terms, and our knowledge of time expands to the point where was can begin to change or influence changes in time, or move, as it were, around time, Time then becomes less of hurdle in Life, so to speak.

And what if Knowledge were not some sparks between synapses in the brain but actual objects of mass created by events passing through time. Leftover energies still in their primary form, accessible by brain and heart electromagnetic sensor nerve cells.

Then being able to manuever around time, even for a split second as measured in the present dimension, might enable one to truley develop a skill in what is commonly termed "Foreknowledge".

Have you ever had an undeniable sense that something was going to happen, and then it did?

Yes indeed! Several times a day I get these really weird feelings in my gut and I get lightheaded as if something has taken all my energy. Then I start thinking of food appearing in my mouth and suddenly it happens and the feelings end as fast as they came.

I have had experiences like that. Mostly, they happen after a particularly vivid dream. A lot of times it's something someone says in my dreams (usually the faceless friend, ever have those?) that then is said in RL. Usually to odd a statement to be coincidence. Stranger is the deja vu. I hate that stuff, creeps me out.

But your question does make me wonder, if one was able to know the future accurately and consistently, would you want to know? Specifically, if you could know of the time and manner of your own death, would you look?

Have you ever had an undeniable sense that something was going to happen, and then it did?

Yes, but my appreciation of the event comes from a deep seated belief in the causal nature of the Universe, and man's ability to perceive underlying order in the chaos of events.

Intuition, to give 'Foreknowledge' my preferred name, is simple the ability to see the final outcome of a set of falling dominos before they actually finish tipping over. You see events going forward, calculate cause and effect in your mind, and are able to predict an outcome before all the events unfold. The entire calculation occurs so fast that you are unconscious of it, and it appears, to some, to be a kind of magical sense of the future. In truth, you're just a really good calculator, with a couple of lucky guesses thrown in with regards to probabalistic outcomes.

Time is simple a measurement of the mind on a bounded space, containing within it all possible outcomes of the interactions of micro and macroscopic events. The real magic is training one's mind to calculate the most probable of those interactions quickly, and making use of them.

Arakasi Takeda

Time is a dimension. Not something in our head. We had a talk about time some time ago... God has forsight. And He can share this type of sight with ppl he wants to. My mother says she say my oldest brother when he was about to be born, as a grown man.

I think that I share Arakasi's take on this: 'foreknowledge' is really intuition which is really just the mind "connecting-the-dots" of a sequence of cause/effect interactions.

I picture the chessmaster: without having to consciously evaluate all of the possible iterations issuing forth from a particular move, the seasoned player can simply 'see' the end result. What the brain recognizes is a familiar pattern, and our brains are exceedingly good at seeing patterns. It knows what happens when it sees this pattern, and so can inform you of the outcome before such a time as you would be capable of consciously connecting the dots.

Time is a dimension. Not something in our head. We had a talk about time some time ago... God has forsight. And He can share this type of sight with ppl he wants to. My mother says she say my oldest brother when he was about to be born, as a grown man.

As an aetheist, I'll shy away from commentary on God....religion is just one of those subjects I've learned it's better left undiscussed. Suffice to say, I do not share this view, or any connotations arising from it.

And time, as a dimension of bounded space-time does exist, as you've stated, but the perception of time, like the perception of space, is a faculty of the mind.

Arakasi Takeda

picture the chessmaster: without having to consciously evaluate all of the possible iterations issuing forth from a particular move, the seasoned player can simply 'see' the end result.

This is a type of forsight. Ever read the Foundation series? Isaac Isomov. A character in the book comes up with a theory to predict human behavior, he puts theory into practice and is able to accurately predict and help his civilization for many many years after his death. Its one of my favorite books. A guy once tried to get into our corp using the name of a character in the story (also listed it as his fav. book) who infiltrated enemies HQ, and destroyed them using intelligence gathered from his position in the heart of the enemies army. Sorry to ruin the suprise at the end of the story!

I have been aware of my foreknowledge for the last 23 of my 34 years of life. It's frequent, common, and improves my life in many small ways. It has not, unfortunately, given me a single correct lottery number, regardless how or how many times I try.
My foreknowledge comes in three main way. First is the general knowledge of what's going to happen in the next half minute or so. This occurs frequently for me and usually is not tied to a single image but just a specific knowledge like that my cat is going to knock a book off of a table in the next few seconds, for example. This, in my opinion, is the most pointless of my foreknowledge because there is nothing I can do in time to stop the event (especially if you don't know where the cat is and you are too far from the table to get to the book when you get the idea) and now I get to experience this event before AND when it happens. How so un-useful! I've long ago stopped sharing the knowledge these unstoppable events with others because people find it disconcerting when you are pre-quoting the TV announcer's review of the live football game's next play before the play has run.
Second is general intuition. My intuition occasionally challenges my obvious choice and tries to tell me to choose the other one. Being faced with a simple trivial choice, say "stairs" or "elevator" in my place of work the choice is obvious. I've taken the stairs about 5000 times, the elevator about 20 (carting stuff or when I'm injured). I head to the stairs like usual and I get the strong "if you're smart, you'll take the elevator NOW" feeling. So, being that I seen the benefit of following my intuition many times before I take the elevator down from the second to the first floor sheepishly. I find out later I missed my boss who, coming into the building, went on a verbal rampage with the next employee of his that he saw. It wasn't me.
Now these first two can be explained with the "your brain is so good at drawing conclusions on subtle clues you picked-up" theory. Personally I don't care how it works, I'm just glad it does. It can't explain away #3, though.
Third, I rarely get a "forevision" of what is to be. It's like an ultra vivid daydream, but it is of a first-person freeze frame view as I will see it. It's in full color, contains full peripheral vision as well. It's always of an event usually later that day that will evoke an emotion from me at that time. When it actually happens later, when I get to see that freeze frame for real, it always freaks me out a little. It's hard to rationalize away foresight when you the vision matches reality exactly. I'm talking when hundreds of objects and dozens people in a busy room are in exactly the same position, angle, distance, lighting conditions and shadows for only one instant as you saw they were going to be, in IMAX level of detail.
What does this mean in a fate vs. free will context? Nothing. Whenever I vow to myself I'm going to prevent the next forevision from happening I completely stop having forevisions. I find that greatly annoying, but it makes perfect sense from a temporal causality standpoint. It also explains why I almost never have forevisions when I'm with someone who knows I have them and believes me. Because, I would very likely tell them what's going to happen and they often get that same "let's see if we can prevent it from happening" idea. I have never been able to avoid a forevision, intentionally or unintentionally, after I had one.

I relay my experiences not to challenge any of your beliefs, but merely because the start of this thread asked for them. I have also given-up long ago trying to convince anyone. Would I want to know the exact circumstances of my death beforehand? Sure. From what I've seen of grave injuries there's often a lot of confusion and panic for that person about what's going on. Not having that confusion and panic would be nice, but it would be even better if I could avoid the physical pain that is likely to happen. And I'd very much like it to be when I'm 140 years old and in perfect health.

Wow.

Very interesting. But I have another theory.

Deja Vu.

What is Deja Vu? It is a french phrase which directly translates to "Already Seen", hence the feeling that you have "already seen" said event.

A theoritical biological explanation is as follows; diffrent areas of your brain hold different types of memories. For example, synapses that form and stay formed for years are what you would call "long term memory", alternatively synapses that form and break with short intervals are "short term, concious memory". These diffrent types of memory are formed in different parts of your brain.

Seeing that the base of human thought and conciousness stems from bio-electric current flowing through these synapses, it can be hypothesised that this bio-electric current could randomly short and flow elsewhere, in a way, temporarily forming "short term concious" synapses in the area where long term synapses reside.

Since we as concious beings are used to experiencing "remembering" as time spent directing bio-electric current through those synapses in that area of the brain, we experience the phenomenon of "remembering" new formed concious memories. We have associated that feeling of "remembering" to long term memories that when we have Deja Vu, we could swear that we have experienced the event before. Even though we are simply "remembering" in realtime.

I think ZenWhispers "talent" might be nothing more than a regular onset of Deja Vu.

My 2 cents worth anyhow.

Nice forums by the way.

An excellent argument.

Where did you read of this?

Or is it your own theory?

Golda wrote:Have you ever had an undeniable sense that something was going to happen, and then it did?

Sometimes i will have a very vivid dreams. For instance, when i was much younger i had a dream that my mom was remarried to a stranger i didnt know and we moved to a lake cabin, on the beach where there was a large number of toy trucks, that i enjoyed playing with. About a month later we moved into a lake cabin, a family member and her son moved in with us and he has Lots of tonka trucks we played with on the beach, Several months later my mom met someone and remarried. In my dream, the lake house was one that i had been to alot when i was younger, but the lake was much different, The lake cabin we moved to was one i had never seen. I truelly believe that my mind was preparing me for events by using things i have seen and experianced so that i would understand what was happening. Also the starnger my mom married. The man she married in my dream was a shadow, never seen, only felt if that makes sense. The man my mom married in real life i didnt know, i had only met him a few times when they had married. I have had only a few dreams i believe fortold something. The one i just shared is one of the most profound i have had.

I think it's nothing more than silly memory bias. No matter how intricate and complex it may appear at first glance.

If we think of an event which, then, happens a finite amount of time later, we think of it as "foretelling the future".

If we think of an event which never, ever comes true, we disregard it and do not take it into consideration when we DO get 'true' "psychic" moment.

Gotta say I'm with dough here. Sceptic at heart...

Scientific proof, evidence, if you will. Certainly no one can deny the possibility of the existence of foreknowledge, or the possibility of the existence of the human spirit (or the mind, or soul or the energy that moves our material mass, in some others' words.)

The experiences that have been relayed here *could be* a slight indication that those possibilities are more probable than had they not occurred. Do we have scientific evidence to the contrary?

Forknowledge... is creepy.

Golda wrote:Scientific proof, evidence, if you will. Certainly no one can deny the possibility of the existence of foreknowledge, or the possibility of the existence of the human spirit (or the mind, or soul or the energy that moves our material mass, in some others' words.)

The experiences that have been relayed here *could be* a slight indication that those possibilities are more probable than had they not occurred. Do we have scientific evidence to the contrary?

Do you have scientific evidence to prove that they *are*? Besides.. those words: "could be" and "more probably" are not terribly quantifiable. Perhaps if you assigned a numerical value in the form of a percentile scale in relation to the events where you did not "foresee" correctly.

Memory bias happens all the time, and is a *very* good explanation for it. Will we ever be able to prove that people have shit memory? Probably not for a while, no. Nevertheless, it is a good explanation. I, too, have had those experiences. I, however, think they're just my memory acting up and only remembering parts where my "foreknolwedge" came true.