If you could only know one, which would you want to know: the future or the past?

I have heard a few versions of the story of Pandora’s box. My favorite is one where it was not Hope that was let out of the box, but the most terrible little creature was kept in the box. It was the creature that would whisper each and every misfortune that would to a person that day.

In short, I would want to know the past only, not the future.
kudos to your daughter for such a good question.

The past for me as well, though there are certainly things I’d like to forget! If I knew the future, I almost feel like there wouldn’t be a point in living the present, you know?

My past is very painful, I already know it and know it well. That said, my past is not what haunts me, but I am what haunts my past. The ghost trying to linger where I am no longer welcome. My past moved on without me. Ha.

I would not want to know my future either, so I suppose I’m stuck in the present.

Neither.

For me, it would be the past and for only one day too. That day would be November 22, 1963. I would like to know who really killed JFK, once and for all.

They’re the same. It doesn’t matter.

But remember the story of Cassandra, who was cursed to know only the future (by living time backward)—and to have no one believe her.

@Jeruba: If to know the past is also to know the future… Well, then, I’m royally screwed.

@DD: Me, too!

@drastic excellent first response… I couldn’t agree more..

The future. I want to see where this species is headed.

Sorry, ambiguous comment made in haste. I don’t think the past and the future are the same, although in some zenlike philosophical sense they probably are. I meant that knowing the past and knowing the future are essentially the same. The same principles, the same laws of cause and effect, the same lessons of experience and the same natural processes are at work. Both are mysteries; we can’t truly see the past any more than we can see the future, and this wise 12-year-old seems to sense that. But if we had the power to see the one, we would know how to see the other too.

If I had to choose one or the other I would lean more towards the future. Not my own future per say more-so the general future. What technologies will be invented? Cures to diseases?

Knowing the future seems more practical, not to mention lucrative.

Besides, I’m already studying the past through paleoanthropology. I might not ever learn everything but maybe in the future, we’ll know more anyway, then I get it both ways right?

If I just knew the past the future would still be a mystery.

The real question is, would I really want to know either.

I would want to know the future lottery numbers

The past.

well I already know the past. Or is it a case of forgetting the past in order to remember the future? Still, the past. I’m sure I’d be intrigued to know a couple of general things about my future, but that would spoil all the fun of actually experiencing them. Plus I have this tendency to see into the future anyway (no, not lottery numbers, but for example I can smell a crisis before it comes, or guess what someone I know well will do next).

What is that saying about forgetting the past and being doomed to repeat your mistakes? Still, if you don’t know the past, but you know the future, and you know the future is a repetition of the past, isn’t that close to knowing the past?

Similarly, if I know the past, but not the future, then I won’t repeat my mistakes, and so the future will continue to be opaque.

I think this question is about an attitude. Some people think the past doesn’t matter. All that matters is getting into the future and being as well off as possible. They might believe that it is safe to ignore the past, or forget it, because things are changing so rapidly, the past has nothing to say about the future we’re in now.

Other people think that the past is crucial for moving into the future. We need to stick with tradition and with the wisdom of the ages, because those are what is necessary for a good life, not all this flailing around, trying to become as wealthy as possible. Humans are what matter, and money only makes it more difficult to make healthy connections with other humans.

We all know that hindsight is 20/20. I.e., we can see perfectly in the past what has happened—at least the recent past. So what if we had 20/20 vision of the future? We’d know all the winning stocks and lottery numbers, and yet, if our vision was true, then we’d be locked into the path through life, knowing exactly what will happen, and being unable to change it.

If the future was a good future, would you want to live it, knowing exactly what is to happen?

I suppose we tweak the system a bit, and say the knowledge of the future is general, not specific. You know the trends, but not where you fit into them. Your love life, your family life, your financial life are all opaque, but you will know, generally, about trends in the stock market (no specific stocks), and the broad outlines of international relations (but not specific events), and the same on a more local level. I’ll even let you keep your knowledge of the past.

Is there anyone who would turn that deal down? If so, why? Would you feel any sense of impending doom—knowing, broadly, what will inevitably happen, even though you don’t know the role you play in it?

I guess the real question for me is whether or not other people know that I have knowledge of the past or future. I wouldn’t want to be exploited for knowledge about future events and would much rather be seen as an authority on the actual events of the past.

So much of where we are today is based on our interpretations and shared lessons from the past. But every country/culture has their own revisionist history that highlights the points they like and downplays the points they dislike.

Having an accurate knowledge of past events would allow me to offer a shared understanding of our history on this planet that would, hopefully, shape the way decisions are made in the future.

Knowing future events with no way of altering them or helping people to avoid their missteps because I can see how several missteps will actually lead to a major breakthrough; to me that would be insanity.

it’s hard enough to warn people close to me of things I see developing right now without feeling some kind of personal attachment to their actions. To actually know would probably drive me mad.

Post-cognitive or pre-cognitive? If I could see the past, I could solve every mystery, like who really created earth, and who killed who and when. Every time a child went missing, I would be able to see who took him/her and know where the child is now. It would be awesome! I am a little pre-cognitive and it hasn’t been all that helpful to me. I usually see things of little importance, which makes me wonder why I saw it at all. I can sometimes get a good feel of where a missing child is, if I concentrate on where the police will eventually find her, but can’t get any reading about how she got there, and if the child is never found at all, can’t pick up on a thing.

I would like to know the future, not my future but the future of mankind. We are living in very interesting times and it is not at all clear to me how things will turn out. Will we find sufficient alternative energy sources, will we stop global warming in time and what will life in the U.S. be like in general?

I actually take my original answer back…I choose neither. I’d probably end up doing something stupid and messing up the space time continuum.

I’d just like to type up a couple of quotes here for you guys, from The Dark Side of the Sun by Terry Pratchett. It’s a bit hard to explain but hopefully it will make a bit of sense to you smarties. At least to those who wonder if there would be any point in living if you knew the future.

Just a quick brief: There is this thing called probability math, which enables these people to be able to see the future correct to billion-to-one odds…

Korodore: “I can’t pretend to understand probablity math. But if the universe is so ordered, so – immutible – that the future can be told from a handful of numbers, then why need we go on living?”

Joan: “It’s obvious you do not understand p-math, then. We go on because to live is still better than to die. That has always been the choice of Humanity, even when we thought the future was a cauldron of possibilities.”

But wait, there’s more. A couple more quotes, and then I’ll explain.

“On either ‘side’ were ranged the alternate Universes, uncounted millions differing perhaps by the orbit of an electron. Further, the difference must be greater – until in the looming shadows on the edge of imagination came the universes that had never known time, stars, space or rationality. What p-math did was quantify the possible timelines of our datum universe.”

The character called Dom has been researched in probability math by his grandmother, and she sees that he is supposed to die on the day of is promotion. But he lives. An explanation from his father is as follows:

“Dom, you are my son, but as you are perhaps learning, I have many sons – untold millions. Have, I say, but ‘had’ I mean. For in those billions of universes that hedge us about on every side, they are dead as I predicted. You, who are flesh and blood, are also that one chance that lies a long trek behind the decimal point. That chance that I am wrong. But a student of probability soon realises that by its nature the billion-to-one chance crops up nine times out of ten, and that the greatest odds boil down to a double-sided statement: it will happen, or it will not.

“I have studied you, and the billion-to-one universe in which you now stand. It left the main-sequence universe at the point of your non-death. Universes are like the stars which some of them contain. Most follow the well-beaten path. But some, by the twist of a photon, career down strange histories which end in supernovae or impossible holes in space.”

OKAY. If you got through all of that, I’ll try to explain as best I can. At every moment, every single little moment, there are an infinite number of possibilities of the way the universe could have gone depending on someones actions, thoughts or just the orbit of an electron. I think, if you were to “know the future”, all you could do was as much as this probability math that Pratchett speaks of. I think maybe you could fine tune your ability to see things within the billion-to-one odds that it will happen, but still, there is that tiny little chance, that long trek behind the decimal point, that something different will happen. Because no matter what odds you’ve got, as is said above, it will happen or it will not. So I believe that you could research all you like and claim you see the future but one small thing could change everything, just like that, and therefore the future of the universe will change. I think that’s why you could go on living.

Maybe a different way of seeing the future could be to see all the possibilities all at once at every single moment…. that might be a bit hard and consuming though. Doctor Who anyone? :P

Or another way to know the future could be to see what someone has decided to do, but if they change their mind, your first vision will not come to fruition, but you may have another vision after they have decided again. Twilight anyone? Haha sorry.

Anyway, sorry for that ramble. I think the future can never be known with 100% accuracy, so maybe “knowing it” wouldn’t be too bad, as in you could change things. Then again, the past is pretty enticing to me. I love history, and I would love to just be able to know everything that ever happened. Would I know how Cleopatra felt about Alexander? Would I know if the battle of Troy ever happened? Would I know how the first men felt about death and the after-life? Would I know what was going through Adolf Hitler’s mind at the time of his dictatorship? If I could store all of these things in my mind and bring them up at will to study, then I think I would choose knowing the past, just for the pure curiosity.

disclaimer: just note that as of this moment I have been awake continuously for 35+ hours, and I am about to go straight to sleep without proof-reading my work very well. So if this makes no sense at all, I really really very muchly apologise.

@shrubbery: I got halfway through because it reminded me of Rose and Donna. Then I kept reading. :)

@shrubbery: it made sense to me (I know, scary thought). I’m glad you chose the past.

The past. I want to relive the past so badly. I am saying before I was even born—but only 20th century really. There are so many things I have heard of and so many events where I wish I could turn back time. But there’s no rewind button in life, except for Adam Sandler.

I am afraid to know the future. You might think that this is strange, but I am glad that I am living in this generation because extremely advanced technology scares me. I just like simple things. The world will become way too lazy with advanced technlogy. People may be saying “I actually had to ride a plane for seven hours just to get to Europe” or “I actually had to worry about snow”. I just think our world will fall apart, leading to the Apocalypse which will not be caused by God (maybe so because he can tell the future, but caused by Him because we did it on our own) but by US making some mistake in a lab causing the world to explode or something I don’t know. I count the blessings that I don’t have and I am happy with them. I have a fear of having too much money. I think it will make me sad and live a life of anger and depression. So many people get caught up in money, that they get greedy. I hate mansions. I pray and thank God every day that I am wealthy and not too wealthy. If I were extremely rich, I would give most of it away. Now I know that in a few years when I may end up with 100000000000 dollars I’ll be like “I can’t believe I actually said on Fluther to people that I would give some of this do’ , even a friggin dollar, away! What a stupid lie!! I’m a filthy stinkin’ rich asshole and there’s nothing those poor people in Africa are going to do about it! They’re unlucky HAHAHA!!!” That would be terrible!! Get me away from too much money NOW! I donate $1 every week to the poor at church (which I am trying to attend every week). When I grow up, if i have kids, I will tell them to donate money. It’s so terrible how our economy is like this. Say a prayer for the less fortunate and count your blessings.

@90s kid, I agree with everything you say, but I would still be curious to see how things work out. And I am also terrified of what the future holds. There is talk about genetic engineering and combining brains with computer chips. Not to mention climate change. But I would still like to know what happens. Hopefully, the scariest stuff is still a bit far off.

oh yeah! global warming!!
It scares the akdjkldjfsl out of me!

@shurbbery – the delirium was hardly apparent : P

The future…
What’s the point of learning about the past when it’s already happened?
That would certainly be less beneficial than knowing the future.
Imagine you knew next week’s lotto # ...

I dunno…I say the past…not my existence…just my relatives, basically geneology and that stuff…well thats what I get from that question…I am crazy about learning history… so yeah…