Scenario:

Man goes to a tarot card reader. The reader stated clearly that the man will have a motor bike accident in 10 days time.
The man then stays away from motor bikes for the next 10 days and on the eleventh day gets run over by a truck.

He goes back to the tarot reader and says that the reading was false as he didn't have a motor bike accident and instead on the 11th day he got hit by a truck.

The tarot reader says that she predicted his future and he tried to avoid it and the destiny of having an accident just simply changed from that which included a motor bike to that which included a truck.

The man asks the reader then why didn't you just simply predict that I would have an accident and not be so specific. The reader says that she is also a product of the mans destiny and what she told him was part of their destiny together.

So the question for the forum is asking about thoughts and ideas about how prediction often corrupts the predicted.

Say, you predict a horse is going to win a race, you then go to capitalise on the prediction and instead of winning the race the horse dies in the stalls. Could it be that the prediction was either wrong or was the horses destiny an attempt to defeat the predictor.....ha ha this gets soooo complicated.....

In physics we always rely on the ability to be able to predict experimental outcomes. When dealing with the material reality this seems quite capable but when dealing with life forms such as people etc it seems to fail nearly all the time.

I ask why is this so do you think?

In physics we always rely on the ability to be able to predict experimental outcomes. When dealing with the material reality this seems quite capable but when dealing with life forms such as people etc it seems to fail nearly all the time.

I ask why is this so do you think?

Because we're fucked.

Bringing up physics I wonder why you would even waste time on colorful coincidence, fancy happenstace.
You're in a science forum wondering how predictions corrupt the predictions of gypsies. Gypsies.

Maybe I shouldn't fingerpoint. I'm currently reading some crazy shit about superstring theory.
Ed Witten is said to be the next Einstein and he's predicted that not only are the current 5 crazy theories reflections of the same one but that we're living on a "brane" or an elastic membrane of spacetime that's right on top of another brane like sliced bread. And its the chaotic clashing of each slice against each other that caused the big bang.

And not just one, he predicts. Many big bangs.

And then he predicts that gravity is not the weakest force becuase of some quantum fluke we can't observe, but becuaes the graviton is looped onto intself and can't stick to the brane so flooooooooooooooooooooop and flop off it goes floating off into some other brane. So he predicts that gravity is weak because half of it is stolen by sister universes. And all his collegues think he's god.

But yet physics , and not tarot cards, is supposed to make sense.

I suppose it may be interesting to note that even our public trains are mostly unpredictable for one reason or another.

I think the point is that in physics we have narrowed down the margin for error and even though not significant in some instances we tend to disregard this error potential. (I am refering to commonly applied physics like power stations, telephone systems, optical fibre uses, space shuttles and even digital recording etc.)

With life forms such as people the margin for error in prediction is even greater because persons involved have an immediate impact on the prediction because of their prior knowledge of it.

There was a sci fi film that stared Tom Cruise "The Minority Report" about a legal system that relied on the predictions of dedicated pre-cogniscient persons. When they predicted a crime the police would swoop thus preventing the crime from occuring but jailing the person on the basis that is was predicted.

The paradox suggested of course is that if the crime was predicted then surely this would include the prevention of the crime as well. Thus no crime has been committed other that in thought and not action.