Predicting the future?

I was watching the X-files (for the first time in years) last night and I know thats its a bit... well u know but none the less the Char Daina Scully was asked about the universe and its predictablility and where there it was possible to predict someones presonality on the basis of their numerology (u know numerology, that thing there your name and dob make a number between 1-9 and then it defines ur personalitym, anyways) and she said (not a direct quote word for word because I've not that good a memory but it's close):

"No, no because I don't belive that something as complicated as the universe can be defined in a single calculation or formula"

Thats what I belive. How can something as complicated and diverse as the universe be explained and predicted in a mathematical calculation. I dont doubt that some of the things that happen in the universe can but all?

I mean look and things like me making up before the phone rings, or thinking of someone that you hav enot seen in a long time and then they ring you. Day-ya-vie (or how ever it's spelt). Or even in my case where I used to wake up if someone wanted to get into my room with bad intentions (sounds strange but i'll explain). Years ago when all my family were at home my mother (as all mother's do) used to just come into my room when I was asleep (as I always was) and bump cloths and so on but when my sis wanted to rob cd's or other gadgets of mine I would wake up even before she was in the room. My mother could just walk in and out but when my sis tried to sneek in it woke up. She had to drop some cloths off once and just walked in and I did not wake up but when she realised I was not awake she tried to take my walkman and I was awake in a flash.
I have heard of stranger things that can't be esily explained and definetly not entirly explained.

This uncertainty princible doesn't mean "we" can't predict the future of whatever particle, it means that it cannot be predicted. Apparantly, every possible reality does happen. There are numerous paths a photon can take from one point to another. It takes them all. That's what the uncertainty princible is all about. Alternate realities are assumed to be in existence. Some evidence to go with this is that there are gravitational effects on certain galaxies, i.e. they're being pulled to some point. When the point is observed, there is nothing there.

It is thought that gravity is from other universes. Different quatum realities. They are being pulled by something and this is a possible explanation. Personally I found this really interesting.

That's what's weird about quantum mechanics. It seems completely illogical.

The dark matter theory could be true, but it would take a hell of a lot of dark matter to create the gravity to pull those galaxies. You'd have to have galaxies of dark matter which would be huge and they would be detectable if a "normal matter" galaxy were to pass the space behind it.

interesting read lads!

just a few thoughts, dont read into em too deeply, im tired enough as it is:)

personally i believe future predictions of the the afforementioned type will and could never exist. everything in the universe may not be random, but it does respond to certain forces, mostly gravitational, whether those forces can be predicted will always be to a degree of 'the unknown' and would always be theorised since every ounce of moving matter exherts forces on another in the universe it would be literally f&ckng impossible to take all that into account when trying to accurately predict the path of one single entity in the whole scope of things considering for eg. the hiss of tv static to this day, denotes radiation remnants that still lingers from the big bang!
what began was a universe with no stars, no galaxies and no light, just a mix of primordial gasses (mainly hydrogen/helium and smaller quantities of lithium) immersed in invisible matter, to the infinite sea of galaxies we know about today.

"The most persuasive theory about the origin of galaxies depends on the behavior of particles no one has ever seen. Known only by its gravitational force, mysterious dark matter pulls ordinary matter into its web, amassing enough gas for galaxies to form. Ordinary matter accounts for only 10% of the universe; the rest is dark matter." hawking pronounced the discovery of dark matter as "the discovery of the century, if not of all time".

even after the big bang it is thought the universe plunged into darkness for another half billion years before something happened to bring it all together. i envision that the universe is still growing, still evolving, still changing, creating more gases, more elements and even worlds with more diversified life than our own and so forth hence anything that continues to grow is not necessarily predictable is it?. even if you used the big bang as your point of reference, you would have approx 15billion years of chaos and creation to analyze, a computer would go insane trying to figure that one out!

all in all, as the human race progresses, i think we are getting more and more, probably unconsciously, in tune to our surroundings and that of the future. who knows, one day we might not even need to figure it all out:) a girl i know once told me a story, she said her mother had a dream about her boss dying and falling into her arms, around that time (they had just moved from the area) she got a phone call telling her that he had died suddenly. im sure there are plenty of people who have heard stranger tales but thats what makes life interesting for us all isnt it? i for one would hate to live in a world of predictability.

Originally posted by Zukustious
That's what's weird about quantum mechanics. It seems completely illogical.

Counter-intuitive, yes. Illogical, no.

I think free will is an illusion but, on the other hand, I don't see humans having the computational facilities to predict the future accurately anytime soon, if ever. I mean, even if you could overcome the uncertainty principle (and I'm not saying this is possible) you would need to make huge amounts of measurements and calculations and there would simply be too much data to tabulate to make any headway into predicting events at "our" level (i.e. our day to day world as opposed to predicting the movement of particles in a lab experiment).

But, just for fun, imagine what if would be like if you could sit down at a console and read all about what is going to happen to you/other ppl/the world in the next 5 minutes/next millenium, whatever.

I imagine the universe must maintain some sort of internal integrity i.e. the going back in time to kill your own grandfather paradox could not be realised as (apart from the trouble of inventing time-travel!) it would cause inconsistancy. So, even if you knew when you were going to die you could not prevent it from happening. You'd probably spend the afternoon at your console reading about all your attempts to avoid your unfortunate death caused by being crushed under a pile of cabbages rolling down a hill on May 3rd 2045 and then how this happened anyway. (Also assuming there would be a nice user-frinedly program that would translate all the data on this prediction computer to a more easily readable format). The universe would have "factored" in the effects of humans having developed the ability to predict future events, a bit like the plot of the film 12 Monkeys, I guess.

So, how would this affect people? I'm sure many would get depressed about it but as new generations grew up, future prediction would become banal and would be as obvious an idea as the earth being a sphere is to us. Going to find out the time of your death would be something people just get around to at some time or another, just like, say, losing one's virginity. Of course, there would probably be obscuritans who would reject this new technology just as these are those who reject evolution today. Possibly more worrying would be the issue of who has access to the data - the rich and powerful only? and the threat to privacy brought about by being able to predict people's thoughts.

Speculation is so much fun!

As for Donnie Darko, my interpretation of the film was that the universe was running in a patchy(well, more complicated than we imagine) manner, i.e. that determination worked in many different directions, not just straight ahead in time from the big bang, as we like to think of it. Like a drawing - you draw a picture of say, a city and after drawing say a sun in the sky, you decide you don't want it to be daytime so you erase the sun and put a moon or an airplane or whatever instead. Your sun would have existed for a while and then ceased to exist. I thought the film implied that the universe was constantly testing things out and modifying itself on all sides and that although we like to think of the past as being fixed, it is in fact also subject to change. Perhaps the universe will "decide" it no longer wants me in it and will go back and modify all aspects of itself relating to me. For some reason, in the film, it went wrong, as Donnie became aware of what was happening - the horror! He realises he is to the universe the equivalent of a page of an essay you consign to the bin!

If the above paragraph makes sense to you, please explain it to me:)!

Maybe our universe is just an emulator then:)

But, seriously, You couldn't even build a parallel universe to predict the future because the act of our observing it to see what happens would cause divergence with our own universe.