Wisdom of the Idiots; part 27

Wisdom of the Idiots; part 27; Old Greeks; Current Affairs & To Be or Not To Be

The Delphic oracle always told the truth but never told it truthfully. The paradox of prediction, you see, is that if you know the future you can alter it. Thus the oracle never gave details but only cryptic allusions that a thinking man might interpret. What he got, then, was an image in the mind; a knowing; an end result without the knowledge of how that result was reached. He may know that Athens will burn, but he doesn't know how it will come about so he cannot prevent it and alter the future.

Probability theory deals with stochastic prediction based exclusively on random factors. No-one expects to get any kind of accuracy with this but it has its uses and is frequently employed. The more factors you can throw into the mix, and or identify, the greater the accuracy of any given prediction. Being in the ball park, as they say, is a good result with stochastic prediction. If we apply probability theory to today's current affairs we will have a great many known factors and only a handful of random factors. One of those will be the human factor, of course, – an entirely unpredictable joker in any pack. Any accurate prediction based on a high number of known facts might be better known as merely an extrapolation from known facts to reasonable conclusions.

If we look at current affairs, throw all the known factors into the mix and do a little bit of the devil's arithmetic, we can make be our own Delphic oracle and make our own truthful predictions with some degree of accuracy. We need not, however, utter cryptically to ourselves. Altering the future is critical to us because it seems that Athens will burn. Unlike our hypothetical Greek gentleman who consulted the oracle, however, we are in possession of the knowledge of how it comes about. Alas, that knowledge is useless because it is in the wrong hands.

In all human endeavours there are three factors which must be present in order to achieve success; right time, right place and right people. If any one of these is absent then failure is guaranteed. This is the right time; this is the right place but, alas and alack, oh woe are we, the right people are absent because the right people have no power. Right time, right place and wrong people with the power is a disaster unfolding with slow violence and the intricate order kaleidoscopes into a chaotic period of disorderly change until the eternal conflict of opposites produces a harmonious resolution. The only question is, to whose ear will the harmony sound euphonious? I'd say that that will be the ear of he who acts to alter the future. You know, the one who makes the tough decisions.
Musashi.

In Wisdom of the Idiots; part 28; Ten things to say if you find yourself Laughing at a Funeral; we speak to a victim of the new craze of Gang Tickling; we prove that the Devil is really the good guy, Melek Taus, in The Peacock Angel Cult; and we hear from Prometheus: Why he Regrets Stealing that Fire from the Gods – “It's just all gone tits up”, he says.