Kallisto Destiny

Well, Plinky, I am really drawing a blank with this one. I rarely remember any dreams so it's quite hard to tell whether they are prophetic. Furthermore I don't really subscribe to that kind of thing. I hold the rationalist view that we can probably predict a number of things from sub-conscious messages or probabilities, and doing so while sleeping is the best opportunity for our brains to engage in this activity. After all, what is sleep actually for anyway?

I'm really hoping the dreams I can remember are not prophetic; as the most vivid ones are those I had as a child 40 or more years ago, if they were prophetic, then they were incredibly long range.

Let me see: a white horse coming down the stairs – no. A witch on a broomstick chasing me and my friend through the woods – no, not that either. Dead grandpa – well, yes, except not in the way it was in the dream! Apparently my grandfather did not shuffle off this mortal coil doing a wheelie down the road on his moped. Nor did he run into a burning house to rescue my cat – which I never had in the first place. My garden is not mysteriously full of rabbits. My school is not under attack by men in wet suits – I might have seen that last year on Dr. Who actually, but I'm not sure predicting a TV story counts. I'm very pleased to say the one with the mad axe murderer hss definitely not come true – yet.

What with the nature of time being quantum and all, dreams might be as good a way as any of seeing future events. But I prefer to stick firmly to my logical interpretation here. Recently the paper ran a story about an algorithm developed by clever people at a large IT company (probably IBM) to predict criminal behaviour patterns. Not in a Philip K Dick “Minority Report” way, but more in a Tesco putting-the nappies-near-the-beer way based on complex statistical modelling of historical factors and detailed analysis of current trends. I'll bet our brains can do it too, and when we sleep we work through all the possibilities without the distractions of living to hold us back.

As the Bard said:

“What a piece of work is a man, how noble in reason, how
infinite in faculties, in form and moving how express and
admirable, in action how like an angel, in apprehension how like
a god!”

Did I mention the dream about the chocolate fountain and the rather athletic young man? Sadly not prophetic either, as it turned out.