Doctor Strange, Raven-Symoné, and that one person you know who swears by their tarot cards all have one thing in common; Pre-cognition (or at least they believe they do). Pre-cognition put simply is the ability to see or to predict with certainty future events before they occur. Pre-cognition is not a new phenomenon though, it most likely predates religion. Not does it have incredibly ancient roots in our history, but it also is the driving force behind all science. A hypothesis is merely a prediction based on current and past observations.
Today the clearest example of our ambition to predict are weather forecasts. On your phone, computer, or most all internet-connected devices you can see the weekly forecast at your fingertips. This is an incredible achievement of radar systems and data interpretation that few people have the understanding to fully appreciate (I am most definitely not one). While observing a forecast you are inevitably going to notice a few things. First, there are percentages related to each weather "event" I will talk later about why the word event is rather humanistic in its definition later. The second is that the forecast gets less and less sure over time, usually declining at an exponential rate past the first few days until there are either no predictions or they are as good as guesses.
I am sorry if I am the first one to let you know but weathermen are not magic and thus they can perform no miracles. Weather itself is a complex system, even by excluding gravitational variance and pretending extraterrestrial phenomena (such as solar flares) have no effect on weather, although they most definitely do. Long-term weather patterns are still inconceivably difficult to predict.
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On Predicting the Future
Non-FictionA philosophical collection of ideas surrounding the idea of predicting the future.
