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Want to Know the Future? Most People Don't.


Claire.

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Want to Know the Future? Most People Don't, Study Suggests

Despite the popularity of horoscopes, most people don't really want to know their futures, a new study from Europe suggests. That's particularly true if future events are negative, such as the person's death, the study found.

The research, which surveyed more than 2,000 adults in Germany and Spain, found that 85 to 90 percent of participants said they wouldn't want to know about certain future negative events in their lives, and 40 to 70 percent said they wouldn't want to know about certain future positive events.

Just 1 percent of participants always said that they wanted to know what the future held for them.

Read more: Live Science

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I don't believe in horoscopes and the like, but if it were possible to know the future then I don't want to know mine. If there's something bad ahead I'd only spend all my time worrying about it so I'd rather not know.

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12 minutes ago, Still Waters said:

I don't believe in horoscopes and the like, but if it were possible to know the future then I don't want to know mine. If there's something bad ahead I'd only spend all my time worrying about it so I'd rather not know.

That's it exactly. Our entire focus shifts to changing something we might not be able to. But then again, there are those of us who might instead choose to sit in a comfy sofa and let everything play out. i don't believe in horoscopes and the like either. I also do not believe our future is preordained. Anything can happen at any time, and we're not the only players in the game. We can control out decisions, but cannot always control the decisions of others.

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If you were told of the future, and an event such as your own death, wouldn't you then have the ability to change that future through your actions in the present?

If someone asked me if I'd like to know the future, I'd ask "Which version?" B)

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14 minutes ago, LV-426 said:

If you were told of the future, and an event such as your own death, wouldn't you then have the ability to change that future through your actions in the present?

Not necessarily, it depends what the cause of death would be.

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I'd like to know when I am going to die so I can plan accordingly - If it's a year, 5 years or 35 years makes a big difference to what I do tomorrow :)

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38 minutes ago, Still Waters said:

Not necessarily, it depends what the cause of death would be.

You'd have some influence over any eventuality, be it knowing not to be in a given place at a given time, or simply improving your health to stave off a degenerative medical condition, even if it changed the outcome by mere seconds.

To be honest, Claire's OP poses a much bigger question, which has been discussed in other threads, as to the nature of time. Humans seem to have trouble seeing it as anything other than linear, whereas concepts such as the theory of a multiverse seem to provide a much more elegant solution in my opinion.

It's getting beyond the intent of Claire's post though I guess, so "Do I want to know the future?" Nope! ^_^

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50 minutes ago, Essan said:

I'd like to know when I am going to die so I can plan accordingly - If it's a year, 5 years or 35 years makes a big difference to what I do tomorrow :)

That's where we differ, I worry too much at the best of times.  I respect anyone who could deal with knowing but in my case ignorance would be bliss. 

37 minutes ago, LV-426 said:

You'd have some influence over any eventuality, be it knowing not to be in a given place at a given time, or simply improving your health to stave off a degenerative medical condition, even if it changed the outcome by mere seconds.

I agree with avoiding being in a certain place at any given time, but not the medical part. I feel that would depend on how old you are to start with, a younger person would stand a much better chance of making a difference than an older person would, but then again not necessarily.

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4 hours ago, Still Waters said:

I agree with avoiding being in a certain place at any given time, but not the medical part. I feel that would depend on how old you are to start with, a younger person would stand a much better chance of making a difference than an older person would, but then again not necessarily.

I think we'd need a clearer definition of "predicting the future."

For me, I'd say that means being able to pinpoint specific events to a precise point in spacetime, as far as we understand it. If you then start looking at concepts such as the butterfly effect, the most miniscule of changes could have far reaching effects that we couldn't predict.

A glass of OJ one morning instead of a coffee, taking the stairs one day instead of the elevator, deciding to wear the thermals one night rather than the leopard print G-string :D every single event, no matter how insignificant they seem, will effect the future in some way.

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^^ I can't top that :lol: but I guess I am one those people that believes in predestination. It's already been written, and so it shall be done.

Like why did I take this route to town and avoid a car accident that just happened seconds earlier that I missed.

Or if I hadn't have visited this or that place I wouldn't have met so-and-so.

I'd rather not know how the novel ends, I'll see soon enough.

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"40 to 70 percent said they wouldn't want to know about future positive events" 

Like I'm no mathematician but what in the world is with that spread lol. 

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7 minutes ago, spartan max2 said:

mathematician but what in the world is with that spread lol

"mathematician but what in the world is with that spread lol"  hahahaha! that's a cover your butt stat, very common today.

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5 hours ago, .ZZ. said:

but I guess I am one those people that believes in predestination. It's already been written, and so it shall be done.

 

5 hours ago, LV-426 said:

If you then start looking at concepts such as the butterfly effect

Not sure on those but I do know as one gets older you can "see things" ,(so to speak) i.e. was driving through a fairly clear area kind of fields, some trees here there some brushy spots, we'd drove it once before a while back, Oh an intersecting merge coming up, but there were small trees and brush on the road that was coming down to mine, I slowed down almost to a stop, cowboy with giant diesel pulling 4 horse horse trailer comes racing through right past us.  Kids are like "how did you know?"  I mentioned something like "I didn't, but I can out guess her just about everytime now, its a grown up thing.  You'll understand when you grow up."

Edited by MWoo7
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When I get up in the morning I like to know what I'm going to do today (my plans for the day). It's comforting.  If I have no plans, the day is a sort of void in my mind, I feel more uncomfortable about the day ahead. I usually have a sort of plan for the week ahead. So, knowing the short-term future I like.

I'm one who thinks the future has already happened, but I have free will, I have choices I can make. This sounds like a dichotomy, but it really isn't. It's the peculiarity of time.

Anyway, I wouldn't want to know my long-term particular future.It's more interesting stepping into the unknown every moment.

 

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On 2/18/2017 at 3:26 AM, Claire. said:

That's it exactly. Our entire focus shifts to changing something we might not be able to. But then again, there are those of us who might instead choose to sit in a comfy sofa and let everything play out. i don't believe in horoscopes and the like either. I also do not believe our future is preordained. Anything can happen at any time, and we're not the only players in the game. We can control out decisions, but cannot always control the decisions of others.

This is the repercussion of knowing the future that terrifies me the most; the belief that is is already written and inescapable.  That pretty much is the deathblow for free will.

 

1 hour ago, StarMountainKid said:

I'm one who thinks the future has already happened, but I have free will, I have choices I can make. This sounds like a dichotomy, but it really isn't. It's the peculiarity of time.

I don't know how to do that.  Right now I can't hold those two thoughts in my head simultaneously.  There is certainly a cadre of physicists that believe that if the current state of the universe is known to a sufficient degree that future states can be predicted in theory.  We don't have a fraction of the computational power to do that yet, but one could conceive of the possibility.  That would imply that brain function; personality, decision making, and free will, are the predictable results of particle interactions.  That is pretty heavy duty.  Then choice would imply the software changing the hardware, a thought changing the state of particles in the brain.  If a thought can change particles in the brain, can it change particles outside the brain; "scary action at a distance," as Einstein said about quantum entanglement?

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1 hour ago, Tatetopa said:

I don't know how to do that.  Right now I can't hold those two thoughts in my head simultaneously.  There is certainly a cadre of physicists that believe that if the current state of the universe is known to a sufficient degree that future states can be predicted in theory.  We don't have a fraction of the computational power to do that yet, but one could conceive of the possibility.  That would imply that brain function; personality, decision making, and free will, are the predictable results of particle interactions.  That is pretty heavy duty.  Then choice would imply the software changing the hardware, a thought changing the state of particles in the brain.  If a thought can change particles in the brain, can it change particles outside the brain; "scary action at a distance," as Einstein said about quantum entanglement?

About holding two opposing thoughts in the mind simultaneously, in a sense, what we do tomorrow has already happened, because that's what we're going to do tomorrow.  Today we don't know this yet, but what we do tomorrow will happen. So in this line of thinking, in this sense, tomorrow has already happened because it is a reality.

The day after tomorrow we look back at the past yesterday and think, that is what happened, but looking into the future, we can think in the same way, because tomorrow will happen as a reality, as well. Both yesterday and tomorrow actualize. There is no difference between the two except for psychological memory..

The theory of Relativity allows for your past to be in my future, and your future to be in my past. There is no universal present. This may be a trick of the finite speed of light, yet yet it is real. If you were standing just above the event horizon of a black hole, whizzing around it at nearly the speed of light, you could look up an watch the future of the universe evolve before your eyes.

From this perspective, you exist in your present and the future has already happened.  :) Your present and the future exist simultaneously.

There are other examples of this peculiarity. From this, my conclusions is, all time must exist as configurations of space-time. Each moment, past and future exists in its own eternal space-time configuration. What we call the past and future are not psychologically accessible to us, only our changing present,

We cannot define the present, because it is continually moving from what we call past to what we call future. Therefore, there is no static present moment.

In this way we are always living slightly in the future as time passes for us. If we are always living slightly in the future, this slight future must exist. Psychologically, we are only aware of this continual moving into the future one moment at a time  But, as this future moment exists in which we are living, all future moments must exist for us to live in. If the present only existed for us, we would be stuck in a static present moment.

I know this is a lot of stuff to read, and my conclusions. Oh, I don't want to know my future, it comes fast enough as it is!

Edited by StarMountainKid
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4 hours ago, StarMountainKid said:

In this way we are always living slightly in the future as time passes for us. If we are always living slightly in the future, this slight future must exist. Psychologically, we are only aware of this continual moving into the future one moment at a time  But, as this future moment exists in which we are living, all future moments must exist for us to live in. If the present only existed for us, we would be stuck in a static present moment.

In spacetime we are adept at traveling in the three orthogonal axes of space, yet on the axis of space, it appears we only move in one direction.  Any thoughts on that?

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24 minutes ago, Tatetopa said:

In spacetime we are adept at traveling in the three orthogonal axes of space, yet on the axis of space, it appears we only move in one direction.  Any thoughts on that?

Do you mean, "yet on the axis of 'time' it appears we only move in one direction"? Not sure I understand your question.

Edited by StarMountainKid
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On 2/18/2017 at 5:29 AM, LV-426 said:

If you were told of the future, and an event such as your own death, wouldn't you then have the ability to change that future through your actions in the present?

If someone asked me if I'd like to know the future, I'd ask "Which version?" B)

 

I'm late to the thread so apologies if anyone else mentioned this already.  You just described the premise for a movie called FINAL DESTINATION.  It was about teens that listened to a friend's vision of the crash of the flight they were on.  They got off, the plane DID crash and the rest of the movie was about death hunting them down one by one to settle accounts.  They were focused on trying to change that future.  It was a decent movie but H'wood got greedy and made a Franchise out of it.  

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35 minutes ago, and then said:

I'm late to the thread so apologies if anyone else mentioned this already.  You just described the premise for a movie called FINAL DESTINATION.  It was about teens that listened to a friend's vision of the crash of the flight they were on.  They got off, the plane DID crash and the rest of the movie was about death hunting them down one by one to settle accounts.  They were focused on trying to change that future.  It was a decent movie but H'wood got greedy and made a Franchise out of it.  

Yeah, I've seen all the Final Destination movies :)

If you want to watch a couple of decent films with future/time travel themes, I'd recommend:

The Butterfly Effect (2004) - Give the sequels a miss

MV5BMTI1ODkxNzg2N15BMl5BanBnXkFtZTYwMzQ2

Donnie Darko (2001)

MV5BZWQyN2ZkODktMTBkNS00OTBjLWJhOGYtNGU4

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