Doom

Please do not feel that I'm leading you guys by the nose, by posting things that I've plucked out of thin air. I'm not smart enough to design such an elaborate system, but I'd like to believe that I'm scietifically well-trained enough to summarise the mechanism of a system into something that is understandable by the scientific community. Regardless of whether I'm picking ideas out of thin air, I do appeal that you indulge me for a little more, by telling me whether those 2 sets of interpretations are specific enough, or too general (like those astrological comments in the newspaper). No, I do not have a method for myself to test, what more for others to test. I think I mentioned earlier that I'm but a student of that discipline, and even I'm not fully convinced by it. The closest thing that I have to a test, more like a litmus test, are those 2 interpretations that I've posted. And I'm also very well aware that this is not the avenue to post my findings, if I indeed decide to try to reconcile such a system into the scientific world, I would probably write a paper on it and post it in a Statistical / Psychological journal. What I'm seeking are more of missing elements in my train of thought (if you can accept what I just posted in the postulates as something plausible) that would throw my arguments off track. Also, would like to obtain feedback on the 2 interpretations that I've posted. p/s: In case if you're wondering whether I'm trying to convert people into believing that such a system is actually real, that's not my intention. It is very difficult to convert people's core belief in real life, what more through a public forum. I'm really seeking flaws in my train of thought, as I would only be able to do so in a scientific community. And if you ask me why don't I ask someone I know in real life, my answer to that is "How many people that you know who dwelve into the Astrology / Numerology world actually has a solid scientific background (such as Physics, Mathematics, Statistics, etc) ?" And no, I probably won't share the source of those 2 interpretations, as there are privacy restrictions to them. So rest assured, I'm not trying to 'fish' forumers to another site, if that's your concern.

What about the theory of multiverse? In other universe, our 'time' has no bearing whatsover, to their sense of temporal separation. Or perhaps even if you argue that surely in their universe, there's a temporal factor in it, and with the existance of temporal dimension and surely separation has a meaning, the other universes could have dimensional structures so convoluted that our definition of temporal seperation makes no sense. Just some speculation on my part. Of course, I do sense an undercurrent of athiesm in your post, please do correct me if I'm wrong. But judging from your avatar, I'd put a wager that athiesm is what you're getting at.

Good to get some feedback, get's my mind thinking. Contextual referencing As mentioned in my first post, the snapshot would provide an interpretation that is contextually referenced. Hence, those who were born in the same moment as Hitler, due to the circumstances in which they were born in, and grew up in, did not achieve the 'grandeur' that Hitler did. Think of the snapshot as something like the first order derivative (I hope you guys are somewhat acquainted with Calculus and Statistics) of a stochastic process. Hence, the complete function of the stochastic process cannot be described without any reference points. Likewise, the comlete life of a person would not be able to be derived from the snapshot if we do not have some background. But what can be derived are the highs and lows, the mental psyche of the person at different stage of life (since mental psyche is often based on relative change in the environment affecting that person, not so much of absolute), the turning points such as marriages, family background, etc. As you can already guess, from the stochastic process, we would be able to tell with a degree of certainty where the particle would be after some time, or more accurately, where are the possible paths of the particle. And finally, since the process is Stochastic in nature, the randomness is actually free will, what a person decides to do would determine, to a certain extent, where he will be in the next moment. Pardon me for saying this, but your statement do seem to have a rather defeated tone to it. Well, let's just say that perhaps, if luck willing, that I'm able to find what you missed. I think this is the third time I'm saying this, but I don't mind restating what I've posted earlier. The possibility that I'm trying to posit is NOT something of which its causation is due to the position of any other heavenly bodies, apart from the Sun (since the orbit of Earth depends on the Sun, and our Year is defined by it). The causation is unknown, probably never discovered in my lifetime, or even my grandchildren's, and it is not something that I'm too concerned about. Let's try not to be too fixated on the cause, for at times, it can limit the boundaries of exploration. And if you ask my personal opinion, no, I don't think any other heavenly bodies other than the Sun and Moon can have any noticable causal effect to our lives. But let's try to leave that for discussion at another time. Oh, and I used the term Astrology in the title for a purpose, as people would be able to relate to Astrology as a predictive (albeit commonly seens as bogus) tool better. Anyway, just to give participants in this thread some feel to its predictive capacity, I've copied some interpretations made from in another forum. A few clarifications are needed: These interpretations were made in good faith and in the spirit of learning. Only the birth date, time, gender and location are provided. Nothing else was visible to the interpretor at the point of interpretation. Since it was made in a forum, it could be subjected to personal bias, i.e. the OP who posted the info might not view himself objectively. However, to me, that is a small hindrance. Not all predictions listed were accurate, but what I'm more interested to hear from you guys/gals is that, are these 2 set of predictions specific enough to warrant merit? Or are they too general that they could apply to more than half of the population? Please remember to take all of the predictions as a whole interpretation for a person, as it may be true that each statements in it could apply to more than half of the population, but taken together, they might not. Would like to hear honest opinions. Interpretation 1 Interpretation 2 Do keep the comments coming, as I might have missed out something in my thought process.

If we take the fourth dimension to be time, it's just a simple measure of Space-Time. Intuitively, we can say that how long does an object with volume V exist, and while in existance, how much space it takes up on average. If you want to get a more intuitive feel of the 4th dimension, and possibly higher ones, try Googling "Imagining the 10th Dimension". Not a completely scientific way, but it has merits to it.

Thanks for providing feedback. With regards to your latter statement, in the conventional sense, yes, there's not much correlation. I would argue that due to its simplistic classification into Gregorian months, there are only 12 possibilities in a year. And that alone would, by any logical standards, would not be able to account for the myraid possibilities in life, what more to make predictions with accuracies in the time dimension. Hence my point in my earlier post: Using the relative-relational mapping, 2 person born on different Days / Time (as long as there's a difference in the snapshot in the Hour / Day dial) would have different (possibly very different) lifepaths. Once one of the constituents in there are different, then things would have to be interpreted differently. A point that I missed out in my earlier post is that such a system would have an internally-consistent set of rules that forms that its core, and all interpretation would be derived from those set of rules. Of course, one can already see that for this to work, the set of rules has to be elaborate, but not too convoluted as nothing would be able to come out of it. I believe with this, your former statement has been answered. As I've said above, I would not be too concerned about the causation part. A counter-question to your causation question could be "Why does mass exert gravity?" or even "Why does massless particles travel at the speed of light?". For the second question, the attempt to provide an answer would invariably falls down to math, but the actual why is not really answered. See the parallels I'm trying to draw? So, coming back to my proposal, in my opinion, causation should not put a stop to the adoption of an astrological/numerical system if it can be shown that with its own internally consistent rules, sufficiently accurate predictive prowess can be derived. In fact, if we were to look at the history of science, often, the why is the last question in the equation to be answered. Discoveries are often made due to pressing needs, and how would often be worked out first, with sufficient practical use with the other Ws being answered as time passes. An additional comment is that all the worldly events would provide a stage for the happenings of life. Hence, if indeed in the snapshot, it is said that one would experience a bad time, going through a recession provides such a stage. To add to my earlier post, such a system does indeed exist. As I'm still a student of it, I am not able to provide proof. Heck, even I'm not fully convinced by it. Who knows, tomorrow I might abandon it once I've discovered that its predictive prowess is nowhere near useful. But I'm thinking, for those of us who came from a largely scientific background, and that we are living in a largely scientific age, most of us would not have given such a field of study (if I may call it as such) a living chance. I mean, we spend almost our entire life learning about Mathematics and the Sciences, from Year 1 to graduation perhaps. With possibly 20 years of education, we are finally able to understand General Relativity, Quantum Mechanics, Brownian Motian. How is it that we can be so patient with one and be so quick to dismiss the other? Just because it does not fit into our world view at first glance?

I can already feel the blood thirsty stares directed at this thread (and possibly at me too), ever ready to pounce and fire the stockpiles of accumulated arsenals for topics like these. The fact that this is my first post in this forum doesn't help very much, does it? I would like to state that this thread would require a bit of, for the lack of a better term, open-mindedness. Warning: This is going to be a very long starting post, and there are reasons for this. You've been warned! Before I proceed to the main body of the discussion, allow me to state a few qualifiers, and perhaps even set a few parameters for discussion, as a topic such as this can veer out of hand very quickly if the boundaries are not set: Qualifiers of discussion I'd like to believe that I'm not a crackpot (love this term that is used in Forum Rules thread), but I shall leave that to the forum to decide. The purpose of this thread is not so much as to prove that Astrology/Numerology is real, but more to open the gates of possibility to the statement "Astrology/Numerology could be real, and perhaps have some basis to it" Axiom of discussion Social Studies (e.g. Economics, Business Studies, Political Science, Psycology) are Sciences for the purpose of this discussion.I understand that there are quite many here that don't consider Social Studies as 'proper' science. That is understandable and fully appreciated by me. But for the purpose of this discussion, let's just accept this as an axiom. If you can accept the above qualifiers, please feel free to proceed to my post below which would contain the subject matter. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ I'm going to present 2 postulates which would be the grounds of which the rest of my arguments would be built upon. (On a side note, I'm just going to use the pronoun he, as typing he/she would be pedantic) Postulates: A person's life has a strong correlation to his/her time and date of birth. There exist (a) method(s) to read or interpret a person's possible life paths based on the time and date of birth. Explanation of postulates Suppose that both of the postulates above are true in the following sense, and one method of charting out a person's life path is as follow: There exist 4 (possibly more, but let's just stick to 4 for now) circular dials that spin in either counterclockwise or clockwise direction, each of the circular dials at different speed. To make things simple, let the 4 circular dials represent the Year, Month, Day and Time, and all of the dials have discrete units on them. This would aid in the visualisation process However, all of the circular dials travel at their respective independent speed. That is to say, 1 complete rotation of the Time / Day / Month dial does NOT constitute to an incremental movement in the Day / Month / Year dial. Hence, at any particular moment, one is able to capture a snapshot of the 4 circular dials. For every baby that is born, a snapshot corresponding to the time of birth could be obtained. Now, using the snapshot, the second postulate above states that we would then be able to map out a person's possible life path. All good so far? Further supporting statements Now, in the above explanation, I think there are many things that warrants further supporting descriptions. 1. Definition of possible life paths Notice that the term I used is possible life paths. This means that the snapshot at the time of birth (henceforth called snapshot) would spell out as to what extent the person's wealth, how pretty the wife/handsome the husband, when the person has a higher propensity to excel in career, when the person would most likely get married (if the person decides to get married), etc. Essentially, it sets out the upper bound and lower bound of things, so to speak. This would naturally brings us to the question of free will and human effort. If you have read my statement, I don't think this question would pose much of a problem to the posulates, since the snapshot only gives us the upper and lower bound. The question of interest could be, what if the snapshot reveals that he would get married in year 20xx, but after knowing that, decides to get married in year 20yy. My thoughts to this would be, it would not be possible, due to a variety of factors such as family/spouse pressure, work commitments coming in the future, etc. Of course, if he does not have a fiance in the first place, then marriage in year 20xx would not transpire. My main thrust here is that we as humans, do not have complete control over our life. We cannot decide that tomorrow, we will be a completely different person. Just as a smoker cannot quite smoking overnight or a mother cannot just walk out of the house to be a nun, all of us are bounded by, to varying degrees, our past. Although the aforementioned scenarios are theoretically possible, it is practically impossible. 2. Interpretation of snapshot derived from the 4 circular dials The interpretation of the snapshot and translation of what it means to the events of life would be a blend of both complex relative-relation mapping with a pivot point of reference and contextual referencing. Allow me to further explain: Complex relative-relation mapping with a pivot point of reference - This means that the interpretation process would not be a simple "If the month dial shows JK, it means that the person would come from a rich family" but more along the lines of: "If the Year dial shows JK, the Month dial shows MN, and the day dial shows XY then using the first M as the point of reference, interaction of M and Y, supported by the K would tell us that the person comes from a rich family" Notice that in the example, each of the dial's readings comes with 2 characters. This would provide additional layering and complexity needed to model real life predictions. It could of course, be extended to 3, 4, 5 or even more. Also, do remember that since all of the dials are moving independently at varying speed against each other, that itself would already give us a lot of permutations and combinations. Contextual referencing - Contextual referencing means that say, if the snapshot predicts that the person would have a vibrant love life in year 20xx, then: i) If the person is single, then the person would most likely found a girlfriend/boyfriend ii) If the person is dating, then the person would most likely get married iii) If the person is married, then the person might get into an affair that would damage the marriange I hope that you're still with me now. 3. The dials are circular The fact that the postulate states that the all of the dial is circular means that there will come a time that the entire cycle would repeat itself. This means that snapshots would only have a finite number of permutations (since the dial's units are discrete). Implicit in this is the statement that assuming that the entire cycle repeats itself every X years, the person born exactly at the moment of y and y + X would share similar life paths. If you accept the first 2 supporting statements above (1. Definition of possible life paths & 2. Interpretation of snapshot derived from the 4 circular dials), the concept in this third statement would not present any contradictions at all. 4. Lifepath's possibility (upper bound and lower bound), possible number of permutations of the snapshot and accuracy. Now, to provide a more concrete grasp on the whole idea, I would posit / suggest that the possible life paths at any point in time is limited to 2 or 3 or sometimes even, there's no choice. Due to the person's past, the person is bound to make that choice, so to speak. As for the possible number of permutations of the snapshot, may I suggest that the system would allow ~ 1-3 million permutations. The corollary to this is that ~2-7k people share the same possible life paths. To me, that's entire possible. Possible food for thought would be: i) How many people gets married in a particular month/year? ii) How many people have a child in a particular month/year? iii) How many people get into personal lawsuits every month/year? iv) .... the list goes on..... Regarding accuracy, if the predictions are accurate to the month of happening (May 2012) say, wouldn't that be good enough of a prediction power? This way, interpretation would be kept at a managable as the more accurate a system is, the more number of variables have to be present to account for the increased accuracy. Think of the accuracy are more statistical in nature, rather than mathematical. That should give you a general handle of what I'm trying to say. Well, there you have it, a possible conjecture. Please do pardon the wall of text, as I don't think it is optional for me to not make such a long post since this subject is very controversial, especially in this forum. Hence, it is natural that the burden-of-proof, or in this case, burden-of-explanation would fall on the one who brought up the idea, i.e. yours sincerely. Wrapping comments 1. How and why... Let's not worry about why does the system work. If the system does work, whether it is due to causal or correlational effect. In the social science field, what is often more important is whether it really works and how does it works, rather than why does it work. What I'm trying to draw up is to posit a place for it along side of social science rather than the more hardcore natural science (such as Physics and Mathematics). 2. Redundant elaborate system... To pre-empt some comments of why come up with such an elaborate system on something that the scientific community clearly rejects, my answer would be: "If such a system does exist and works, would it not be a folly to overlook it, just because current views does not take it seriously? Also, for any body of knowledge to be solid / credible, it is often complex. General Relativity's core concept is difficult to swallow, I mean, time is not a universal denominator? Who would have thought of that?" 3. More of numerology, and not so much of astrology... If you've come this far into my thread, you would have realised that the system that I proposed is more of a numerological system, and not so much of an astrological one. The only thing astrological about it is the movement of Earth around the Sun, and the rotation of Earth around its axis. As a closing comment, I would like to requote my earlier qualifier: Happy thinking and I would very much welcome thoughts/criticisms/support. Please do keep it civil, I will endeavour to do so in my part.