If you could know the future, would you want to?

And why?

So I could be a bazillionaire.

To look at naked women, of course. Who knows what kinds of advances in breast implants and plastic surgery humanity will make in the future?

Even if you could only see a few minutes into the future, you could become a billionaire through trading.

if l know l wont be able to change it

no l wouldnt want to know it.....

The future is not set. Or is it?

Peter Grimm said:

And why?

Click to expand...

Someone needs to read the "Dune" series.

Medusa said:

if l know l wont be able to change it

no l wouldnt want to know it.....

Click to expand...

Most of the time, the future is pretty benign. Knowing the future, even a few moments or a day, would be the basis of a huge fortune. You could clean up in the Lottery or Vegas. If you could see the future up to a month away, you'd control the world.

I'd win a few lotteries. and just chill the **** out.

ChunkySalsa said:

To look at naked women, of course. Who knows what kinds of advances in breast implants and plastic surgery humanity will make in the future?

Click to expand...

Do you mean breasts that do not look like rocks??

We have a local girl who has had a face transplant..after being badly burned..

Not being awful..but it is not a success..

Two words.

Kwizatz Haderach

Mythology includes many tales of persons who could see the future in some sense, and almost all of those tales end badly for the oracle/seer in some way. One theme was how bad it would suck to be able to see the future but not change it; another theme was how people would hate you for it if it became known.

Even so, I suppose that yes, I'd want to be able to see the future if it were possible to take action within that framework somehow. Maybe you could not change the larger sweep of events, but if you yourself could take action to personally prepare for changes, either protecting yourself and your family against bad changes and/or taking best advantage of good ones, it would be worth carrying that burden.

As always, the devil is in the details.

Change the past.

Canell said:

The future is not set. Or is it?

Click to expand...

Well, some physicists theorize that the Universe - capital U, everything, mass, energy, space, time, past, future, etc - already exists and that we are just experience part of it at each instant.

"Knowing" the future, as the OP asked, is a bit vague as a question, but "knowing" the future would require the complete breakdown of natural or universal laws (small "u") as we know them. Not to mention that the OP question makes several assumptions that are implied, like, knowing what lottery numbers will come up in 3 days, but still exist as a human being 3 days before that event.

Check out this great video: the Universe in two minutes (and 40 seconds):
What Is The Universe? - YouTube

Peter Grimm said:

And why?

Click to expand...

From Pope's Essay on Man:

Heav'n from all creatures hides the book of Fate,
All but the page prescribed, their present state;
From brutes what men, from men what spirits know;
Or who could suffer being here below?

The lamb thy riot dooms to bleed to-day,
Had he thy reason would he skip and play?
Pleas'd to the last he crops the flowery food,
And licks the hand just rais'd to shed his blood.

O blindness to the future! kindly giv'n,
That each may fill the circle mark'd by Heav'n;
Who sees with equal eye, as God of all,
A hero perish or a sparrow fall,
Atoms or systems into ruin hurl'd,
And now a bubble burst, and now a world.

Hope humbly then; with trembling pinions soar;
Wait the great teacher Death, and God adore.
What future bliss He gives not thee to know,
But gives that hope to be thy blessing now.

Hope springs eternal in the human breast:
Man never is, but always to be, blest.
The soul, uneasy and confin'd from home,
Rests and expatiates in a life to come.

Poets' Corner - Alexander Pope - Essay on Man

I wouldn't want to know the future.

Besides, if you could see into the future, it would only be a glimpse of what would become based on everyone making the same exact choices between now and that moment, which would be next to impossible.

Green Balls said:

I wouldn't want to know the future.

Besides, if you could see into the future, it would only be a glimpse of what would become based on everyone making the same exact choices between now and that moment, which would be next to impossible.

Click to expand...

Some would reckon its actually inevitable.

I'm wary of anything that carries the likelihood of advantage without struggle.

I'd have to decline, despite the allure.

Deuce said:

Some would reckon its actually inevitable.

Click to expand...

If we didn't have computers and technology, there would be a stronger argument for everything is predetermined.

One of my supporting arguments is this: creditors use automated phone calls to attempt to reach you. The phone calls might arrive during the same time frame each day, but never at the same exact time. Let's say on a Monday morning, the phone rings as you are leaving the house. You answer it, expecting it to be a call from someone else an simply not paying attention to the number on the caller ID. As you look out the door while you're on the phone, an SUV veers off the road and slams into the driver side of your vehicle. Had you not answered the phone, you would have been getting into your car at the moment and been hit.

Some people believe this is fate. The reality is, your phone could have rang a half hour earlier or later. Perhaps the person who sent a text message to the driver of the SUV (the reason why he veered off the road) could have sent it minutes earlier or later. My whole point is, there are too many factors that influence our decision making, and the decisions other people make. So, life is not predetermined and events are not predestined. It's impossible for the same outcome.

Green Balls said:

If we didn't have computers and technology, there would be a stronger argument for everything is predetermined.

One of my supporting arguments is this: creditors use automated phone calls to attempt to reach you. The phone calls might arrive during the same time frame each day, but never at the same exact time. Let's say on a Monday morning, the phone rings as you are leaving the house. You answer it, expecting it to be a call from someone else an simply not paying attention to the number on the caller ID. As you look out the door while you're on the phone, an SUV veers off the road and slams into the driver side of your vehicle. Had you not answered the phone, you would have been getting into your car at the moment and been hit.

Some people believe this is fate. The reality is, your phone could have rang a half hour earlier or later. Perhaps the person who sent a text message to the driver of the SUV (the reason why he veered off the road) could have sent it minutes earlier or later. My whole point is, there are too many factors that influence our decision making, and the decisions other people make. So, life is not predetermined and events are not predestined. It's impossible for the same outcome.

Click to expand...

Good afternoon, Green Balls.

Great post! The examples you give have probably happened, in some form or another, to many of us. My parents used to say "your guardian angel was looking after you." It is sobering in retrospect, and it does make you wonder....

NoC_T said:

I'm wary of anything that carries the likelihood of advantage without struggle.

I'd have to decline, despite the allure.

Click to expand...

Same here.

To those who talk about fortune if they could see into the future...money isn't everything and who knows what a person would be able to "see " to begin with.

I'm afraid it would be more of a curse than anything. I wouldn't want that 'gift '.

No I would not want to see in the future, first off I do not wish to be able to (accurately)foresee my death, or the deaths of any of those dear to me, nor would I want to know of misfortune in advance either - whether it be to myself or others around me. And before anyone thinks "you can see into the future you can avoid the misfortune" - no I do not think you could avoid all misfortune, you may be able to sidestep some, but there will be pitfalls no matter what path is took, and it would be even worse seeing it coming and having to live with the feeling of helplessness over the inevitable, in time this would become a crushing burden IMO. I do not wish to live my life counting down the days until negative event "x" occurs.

Also life would be extremely boring always knowing what would happen in advance, I will pass on a mundane boring life of knowing things in advance for the excitement of having to deal with and adapt and overcome obstacles as they arise. How much duller would life be if you knew in advance that on such and such day you would meet up with your future spouse (just as an example). IMO when that day came it would not feel so special, nor would the sense of elation be so exhilarating, it would be tempered, everything would seem dull with the veneer of freshness stripped away.

So go ahead those who wish to play the market and make the gazillion dollars, have at it, I don't care how much I have when the trade off is knowing when and how both good and bad are to play out for me ahead of time. Enjoy your money while you count down the days until the one which you know your mom will die, or your spouse, or your kids, or yourself. Take your money I will take the variety, the surprise, and the wide ranges of emotions both good and bad (without that bad the good is much less appreciable) that are to be experienced as a result.

If you strip the unknowable future away,IMO you strip away an essential component of the actual "experience" of life. I will take risk versus reward, and having to adapt to the unknown, I will take the excitement of life in the moment - to me it seems to be one which would be much more fulfilling tyvm. Being able to see into the future just seems like it would lead to a life of dread and monotony, life would be mundane