Precog and information processing

[CoyoteNature]

Okay this might be the wrong thread, but I was thinking about precognition. I was thinking that just for the sake of argument if precognition or prophesy existed, that there would be certain limits to how much a person would able to process information from the future.

I mean really how do you determine a probable future, which would be the one the precog senses? It would seem that there wouldn't be any special preference for one type of information to be preferred over another with regard to the future.

I mean I know you'd like the lottery numbers from the future, but how do you know which future's lottery numbers are right, and which are wrong?

Are you choosing, and upon which basis are you choosing?

If its a single timeline precog situation, how do you not enter into the same paradox as a conventional time machine does with regard to causality?

Of course it makes perfect sense if the future is completely unavoidable.

If its a multiple timeline thing, then which timeline's information is a person recieving?

Perhaps I'm wrong, but it would seem a precog's brain would choose the information most linked with the memory and information in that person's own head.

That is we would make sense of the information, through comparisons with our real world; that way we could filter out the information that is from nonuseful timelines.

And the crazier precog you are, the more information from nonuseful timelines you recieve, reinforcing information in your head that support nonuseful futures.

What do you think? I'm trying to write a story about precognition and prophesy?

[dworkin]

I generally veiw precog in the same vein as my ability to predict the future, eg tommorow I will go drinking with my mates, I will be late home and the wife will bawl me out for it.

For that matter does the nightly weather forecast require multiple futures?

Precogs in fiction are really, really good at this. Hari Seldon (Foundation) is an excellent example. Precognition is a science in the story.

Psychic precogs can be doing this whole predict the future based on what I sense about me now too. They just have extraordinary senses.

And of course, just as I can be in an accident on the way to the pub and so ruin my prediction so too can some hick farmboy from nowhere ruin that of say, an Emperor. It's the result of factors we both could not percieve.

There is no need to invoke multiple timelines and branching futures and all that mumbo jumbo. Precogs are just very good at extrapolating future events from the current knowledge they have.

[Darth Wong]

There is no "correct" way to write about precog and prophesy, because the idea is too problematic. Just make one up and make sure you stay consistent with it.