Sunday, June 13, 2010

equation for the future - part 1

in all things scientific, we have a rock solid explanation for everything. well i thought so till i read a very interesting book. it may be rock solid at the level of our observance / needs. but if we were to delve much deeper, chances are the same explanations might not hold true for similar behaviors. and these usually don't matter unless we really care about things at that level.

the book made me question could there be an equation to predict the future reasonably well? the reason for the question to occur is largely due to the book i am reading. to be succinct, if we aren't able to formulate an equation for a phenomenon, we aren't looking at it from a scale where we have enough information. put differently, all the participants required for the phenomenon are very chaotic to be represented as a formula. however if chaotic participants are looked at a level where their cumulative behavior is in order, that is when you can formulate an equation to represent the phenomenon ( which might be a level lower than we are currently looking at it).

this means that any idea can be represented as an equation. different ideas obviously will have a varying scale of observation for us to qualify an equation.

back to my original question? can we formulate an equation that will predict the future? notice, i modified my question, in it, i don't have reasonably the second time anymore. there are two reasons :

1. the equations are formulated to give out an exact value ( whilst formulating the equations, there might be certain assumptions made that introduce an error ).
2. if they introduce the error into the value, that means the system has not been examined well enough to adjust the error.

therefore, i can effectively say that since we formulate an equation, it should be able to predict the future with absolute accuracy.

so all this while, i have been circling the topic but have not actually addressed it. can we predict the future? lets talk it out on the factors affecting the system in the order of importance.

1. your actions - the main driving force for your
2. people around you who influence your decision.
3. other external factors (chaos theory).

notice that #3 can sometimes be really aggravated sometimes small enough to disqualify. this introduces the error into our equation.

enough for part 1. i hope this is going somewhere . i have no idea as to where it going as of now and what i type is something sort of an extempore.

cheers,