Philosophically Speaking, the Future Looks Hazy
In writing the other day about psychics who predict the future for money I observed that “There is no such thing as the foreseeable future,” an aphorism which, I predict, will stand the test of time.
I am challenged, however, on what I can only call philosophical grounds. I am speaking of that kind of philosophy which concerns itself with such questions as “Which came first, the chicken or the egg?” and “Does a tree falling in a forest make a sound if no one is there to hear it?”
Willard Olney of Hesperia asks me to imagine that I am in the path of “an oncoming kid on roller skates.” Do I not see far enough into the future to know that, unless I dodge, the kid will run me down?
As I say, a philosophical point. However, I would argue that my inertia and the kid’s motion are part of the same present. While I may hypothesize that, unless I jump out of his way, the kid will strike me--an event that would indeed be in the future--I don’t know it. In the millisecond between then and now, the kid may scare the wits out of me, then veer to one side or the other, missing me. They do it all the time.
(It is merely a technical point, and perhaps not worth mentioning, but I suggest that today the kid would more likely be on a skateboard than on roller skates.)
Also, Olney observes, a man working on his income tax must foresee the future--knowing that if he fails to make a return the Internal Revenue Service will exact certain penalties, perhaps including a term in jail.
Of course such an outcome to evading one’s income tax is not at all a certainty: Our evasion may go unnoticed; it may be forgiven; a change in the law may exonerate us; we may die. Of these, of course, the last is the most probable.
Among the several psychic predictions that I counterpredicted was one predicting that we will find aliens among us from another planet. I said, “We have never been visited by creatures from other planets and probably never will be.”
Comments Don Galloway: “Your sagacity is unquestioned; please do not lessen its purity by using qualifiers such as ‘probably.’ ”
Galloway says he has no opinion on whether we have been visited by such creatures in the past, but he wonders whether Random Chance wouldn’t render “future” visits inevitable.
Random Chance, of course, is unpredictable. RC evolved mankind. That event, according to the brilliant biologist Stephen Jay Gould, was an “awesome improbability.” Random Chance might yet put space aliens on Earth. But I still counterpredict, and no probably about it. Wait and see.
I am more disturbed by a note from John Degatina recalling that he once heard Ray Bradbury lecture at the Wilshire Temple and someone in the audience asked, “Do you think there are space aliens on Earth?” “Mr. Bradbury said (in effect),” Degatina goes on, “ ‘It’s very possible that we are aliens on Earth. It’s not too improbable that we came from somewhere else and settled here.’ ”
In their latest inquiries I believe our paleontologists and biologists have turned up no evidence that we came here from other planets, and most cosmologists doubt that any beings remotely like us could make the trip; but I am acquainted with that fountain of creativity, Ray Bradbury, and it may be that he is an exception.
There is always a chance, of course, that a prediction will hit the target. Anyone can win the lottery too.
But I am amazed by a prediction made 20 years ago by Dan Rowan on the TV comedy series, “Laugh-In.” I have this story from two sources, which inclines me to believe it.
Bernard Stalberg of Ventura and Jack Gattenio of Palm Desert report that they recently saw a rerun of a 1969 “Laugh-In” and that Rowan predicted, among other things, that in 1989 the Berlin Wall would come down.
So I was wrong in saying that no one had predicted that momentous event. Evidently a comedian predicted it 20 years ago.
I was also accused of sexism in counterpredicting a psychic’s prediction that in the 1990s a woman would become a star in major league baseball.
But that’s a subject in itself.
