My Passive Superpower

I'm gifted with the ability to see the future. Nothing too far in the future anymore, those days are done. I used to be able to see months into my own future, through dreams. The first one I remember was me at a campsite with my family up in Vermont, when my two year old cousin went missing.
"Stella! Steall! Have you seen stella?"
"I don't know where she is, aunt Sue."
About two months later I was at that campsite, and my cousin went missing.
Same questions asked, same response given, but that time slower and with more of a sense of "I fucking KNEW it" added. Turns out, Stella was in my grandparents' camper.
Now, it seems my glimpses of the future are getting closer to the present. Most recently, in a dream last week, I was watching a show I had never really watched before;
The Whitest Kids You Know.
I didn't know this in the dream, I just recognized that what I was watching was exactly the kind of funny that tickles me. It was season four, and it actually started on the third episode and continued until episode eight. Just this tuesday I watched episodes one through eight and had a strange sense of deja vu starting on episode three, as I had literally seen every episode, up until 8 in the same manner I watched them in my dreams. Same movements through the house, same household chores done. I'm saving episode 9 for tomorrow, though I didn't have any precognition regarding that show.
Before that, I saw Futurama, Bender's Game. That was pretty crazy, because I knew it was futurama and I thought it was just a dream, until I watched it 5 days later.
Since I don't realize these events occur in the future, I act as I normally would in a dream;
Like myself.
I'm wondering if there'll be some groundbreaking event when my dreams get closer to me. It makes me believe that life is pre-scripted, and everything done in the present is pre-ordained by the future. A little bit of reverse causality to tickle the brain. Though, this could mean I also have the ability to fly, and various other dream powers if I do them in the right dream.
Wishful thinking.

 

Used to happen to me too. Kept getting closer and closer to the present until I died and it all stopped.

 

Your crazies have come back.

 

What, I have an experience with inevitability and you call me crazy? Look, I know I literally use the word "deja vu" but that's not really what my experience is. It's like that, sure, but a deja vu is simply when your mind confuses the past for the present. These are dreams I remember for days until I experience them in real life. It's not quite the same thing. I was using a word as an example to maybe help you guys understand. Though, I assume you feel that I must be crazy if I'm willing to say that free will is a lie. What we take to be free will is simply time running its course. I was predestined to say this, just as I was destined to watch futurama. All current events are determined by future events. The thing is, since I don't instantly recognize my dreams as the future, causality is preserved in the long run. Am I seeing raw time? Are all events simultaneous? God damn, it's late. I'm going to bed to see the future (probably not, those dreams are rare).

 

I just don't get it, Dan. It's like Jon has lost touch with normal human beings.

 

Free will is a lie.

Think about it like this:

Everything that happens, everything we do, is a reaction to something that has happened/is happening around us. And the event which triggered our reaction is also a reaction to a prior event, which is also a reaction to something else. This goes back all the way to the source, the first action, the event which happened not as a reaction to something else, but just because it did (if there indeed is such an event. Otherwise, it's an infinity loop with no beginning and no end). So, everything we do and will do in the future is always going to be a reaction to something that's happened around us. We could never have acted differently than we did in our past. We did what we did because everything we had experienced up until that point made us choose that specific course of action. The universe is nothing but a complex series of pre-determined events, unfolding across empty space.

 

Wolfsbane, I had a very long conversation about this theory with a guy in Blockbusters. The part of the theory of which I believe to be flawed is Random chance. If everytime I have to make a descision I roll a dice and my action (or lack of) is defined by whatever roll of the dice I make, does that make me an exception to the rule?
Gross, if you believe you can predict the future with your dreams, can I suggest not eating too much cheese before bed time?

 

So, what your saying is that there is no such thing as Random. However, your theory on life simply being a series of reactions suggests that everything that happens IS random.
Random: lacking any definite plan or order or purpose;

 

You should try to focus and force yourself to dream about lottery results.

Don't worry, my charge for giving you the idea is but a measly 10% of the income you will get from lotteries from now on, you won't even notice the difference.

 

We're talking determinism versus free will, yes? If so, free will doesn't necessarily mean that our choices are made completely free of outside influence or coercion. Statistical probability may be able to outline the most likely choices we will make, but narrowing the range of choice isn't the same as saying we have no choice at all.

Besides, determinism doesn't seem to jive with quantum mechanics and Heisenberg's uncertainty principle. If the universe cannot be precisely determined at a level as basic as measuring both the location and momentum of a particle, then why would we assume that far more complex systems like our brains would operate on deterministic principles?

 

True, in the basis of quantum mechanics anything can happen at any time for no reason. A subatomic particle inside of a nucleus may very well be inside of a distant star, despite being measured within local nuclei. However, how many times do we see results that we don't expect? It most often seems that the macroscopic world is predetermined, while the quantum world is truly random.
But the human brain is something else. It's so complex we don't entirely know how it works, and it may very well be that it follows a prescripted action that sits within what we'd consider to be free will. I may apparently be able to make choices on the interim, but I'm following a course of action that's ultimately defined as an end result. Time appears to be cyclical to me. This may be the latest universe in existence, but what if it follows the same plan every time?

 

You're making an awful lot of assumptions, but you aren't explaining what you've based any of them on. Care to elaborate?

 

I stopped listening when you started talking about quantum theory.

 

Nope. I know almost nothing of what I'm talking about.

 

Something we have in common Gross.

 

This thread reminds me of an anecdote a comedian told about a guy who was hit by a train while standing on the tracks. He was hit by a train because he believed he had psychic powers and could stop the train through psychokinesis. He believed he had this power because that morning he had glanced at his digital clock just as the time changed.

The comedian's punchline was, "try it on another clock first."