When I think of development dollars, there is a heavy concentration on the future. Medicine spends hundreds of billions on research to predict the future of health. Scientists do it to predict the future of materials and organisms. Banks do it to predict the future of money. Meteorologists do it to predict the weather. I’m guessing that humans have spent trillions in the pursuit of predicted outcomes.

Advancement in predictive results mostly comes down to computational power. The more computers become powerful, the more variables they can consider, all designed for a more accurate prediction. I sit on the board of Numerix, a company that predicts the value of assets. They spends tens of millions on that pursuit. They are one of millions of companies in pursuit of an accurate future. If we know the future, we can control every result imaginable. With more powerful computers comes more accurate financial models and thus more profits while lowering overall risk.

I was thinking of that concept alone. Real computational predictions haven’t been all that powerful until about the last fifty years. In our human existence, it’s the time equivalent of flipping a light switch. It’s nothing. It’s almost binary; on, off. Yet that “on” is now leading us in a whole new world.

Imagine a world that thousands of years more advanced than us, but a world that was solving all the same problems. By now, their computational power would be capable of predicting everything, right down to the sip of tea you just downed, or that you would even have tea, or that you would end up in that moment where you’re sitting down to have tea. If that’s the case, and you have the ability to predict even the smallest variance, from timing to stand up, or when you eat something, you’d be able to design any outcome you preferred, right down to the smallest distraction that will ultimately control everything without anyone or anything having the slightest awareness it’s even happening. It would be the ultimate manipulation.

I once had a doctor tell me that engineers are frustrated by biology because the outcomes were so difficult to predict. It’s not like you can take one medication and expect it to work every time. There are just too many variables. Yet, imagine if you could predict the outcome of everything for a moment. How would you have even the slightest awareness that you’re not being manipulated right now? Everything about your health could be predicted and solved before it happens.

It’s a weird concept. I keep thinking of all the UFO sightings lately, all of which I believe can be explained. The one video with the black thing circling, combined with the fuzziness around the object sure looks like a trapped fly behind a lens to me. Go watch it and see for yourself and think fly. Once you see that in your head, it’s hard to unsee. A great teacher told me to always rely on the simplest explanation for everything. It will usually be the one that’s most often correct. The best oracle is always the one with the most common sense. Yet, I can’t help but think about the future and this pursuit of predicted outcomes. Common sense won’t matter.