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Start From the Beginning
My innovations:
Adventures in future viewing
Cliff High has invented a
new method of forecasting future events that sends an army of web bots
out scanning the internet for what he calls dynamic postings.
This fresh new technique is based on something called radical
linguistics which gets reduced to an archetypical database that is then
converted to some sort of visual display that then gets interpreted by
Cliff and his team.
He only charges 10 bucks for each report, which I have yet to read any
of. I find his many interviews
out there to be fascinating all by themselves.
Cliff has also invented a new type of
software that allows one to read books at an incredible speed on a
computer screen and claims to have taken full advantage of this amazing
talent to fill his brain with all kinds of data normal folks never even
get close to.
I have mixed feelings about knowledge of future events. On one hand the
technology and methods presented here are nothing short of fantastic, but on the other
hand the quality of the present seems to lose a bit of its essence if
you know what's going to happen next. Sort of like seeing some of these
modern menu screens for new movies on DVD. Some of them divulge major
plot points within the half minute of image montage that usually loops
until you decide to press play. I feel like it sometimes spoils the
story to know what your main character will be doing towards the climax
of a film.
I'll be keeping an eye on Mr Cliff High in the future, and try to
catch his latest interviews, but his actual data reports seem almost
too close to real for my present state of mind. That being of a
perspective where the day to
day goal is balance and harmony with
nature, which seems to increase the more I decrease the media
chatter
of information and entertainment the modern world manages to throw at
us.
See older posts in the archives.
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The image towards the end of this post is of a machine called the "Omni" and was a hand held time travel device used in a televison show called voyagers from 1982 to 1983.
I still remember one of the episodes where the main characters come face to face with Thomas Edison, somehow lose track of the Omni, finally find it on Edison's desk taken apart into what seems like thousands of tiny pieces. Of course Thomas puts it back together just in time to send our time traveling duo into the next time frame for next weeks show.
Image can be found at http://io9.com/353812/how-to-travel-through-time-in-nine-easy-steps
Hmm, I can't decide if the people running the HalfPastHuman website are pulling our leg or if they are serious. In the latter case, they are firmly in snake oil territory.
I've been reading their "ALTA process page", and they know they're selling snake oil. Just look at the disclaimer;
It starts off with a doozie:
Just to be clear; astrology is bunk. Predictions from astrologers are so generic that they can apply to just about anybody, regardless of your star sign, birth date/hour, whatever. And they claim to derive their predictions from the positions of stars and planets in the sky at certain times. The thing is, the orbits of the planets and revolutions of the earth are well-known and easy to calculate thousands of years into the future with celestial mechanics. So why are their predictions so vague and general?
And there are lots of situations where predicting the future is very easy. Push a glass off the table and everyone can predict what will happen.
But any claims that one can make accurate and detailed predictions about future events that cannot be determined from the laws of physics should be treated with scepticism. In a universe that is ruled by probabilities, such claims are unlikely to be true.
First, they claim to use an 'archetypical database'. What the heck does that mean? I could understand a database of archetypes, but the word archetypical is in this case an adjective applied to the term database, which doesn't make sense.
Further, they claim to derive their predictions from changes in the language as recorded in their database. Words are coupled to numbers based on their 'emotional impact' by a self devised system. Their explanation is long in words but short of substance. And it just doesn't make much sense to me. Of course their data is then 'interpreted' in a way that is not explained.
A scientist would write a paper and submit it for peer review to see if others can replicate his results using the same method (repeatability is one of the cornerstones of the scientific method). Making claims while not documenting the method used to derive them is a good sign of snake oil salesmen.
They write: 'Even by our own rigorous standards, our forecasts are proving out better than mere chance would allow.'. My comment on this is that being better than mere chance allows is a very poor standard. They would need to be statiscically significantly better.
Most of the page is just plain nonsense.