About

{margin-right: 50; padding-left 60px; text-align: justify;} p {style="text-indent:20px"; font: .9em Myriad Pro;} h1{font: bold; font size: 150%; "Helvetica";} h2{font: bold; font size: 200%; "Helvetica";} h5{font: bold; font size: 200%; "Helvetica";} Written in the Sand Dune, Book One, Chapter Three part 1 I see That I Am Blind   Prediction, prophecy, psychic knowledge…These form a central theme to the Dune series. This is the first chapter to bring it up, and it does so through Paul’s dreams and in Mohaim’s predictions regarding the fate of The Atreides Family and humanity itself. By what mechanism are these powers explained and is it possible for such a thing to happen? I believe that the explanation is possible, but the precision displayed relies on an idea that is unproven, possibly unprovable, but has some foundations in reality. In this episode we will discuss that premise, but also give a bit of a nod to a more reachable form of prediction. First off, we need to discuss what we mean by prophecy. Prophecy is not, for instance, saying that you have the docs appointment next Tuesday at 2 o’clock. That’s merely the knowledge that you have an appointment. Prophecy is saying that not only will you definitely make that appointment, you will arrive in the office at 1:42:37 and the receptionist will be wearing a green shirt, the doctor will arrive and not have died in a horrible accident at some time within the next week, as will you. Now, some of those predictions may seem a little obvious. Which ones, do you think, are obvious? Personally, I think none of them are. The number of factors that go into that prediction are astronomical. The receptionist’s green shirt would require you to know the receptionist, know that she has a green shirt, and how she decides what to wear. Your arrival, and the time of it, is the only thing with which you would be able to have any type of control, but that is only if you manage to avoid accidental interference in your schedule. For this prediction to come true all three people involved would have to avoid the chance of a serious accident. Again, you could lock yourself in a very safe room with pre-screened and analyzed water and food to help ensure your arrival, but chances are you won’t go through all that trouble and neither will the other two people. The ability to say that an event is definitely going to happen is not dependent as much on a set of events that occurs, rather it is also dependent on a set of events that does not occur. The best you can come up with in predicting that you will be at your doctor appointment is “probably”. Let’s make a thought experiment that is simpler, or at least has less movement. Two planets are in orbit around a star, and each is exactly 100 miles in diameter. The star is stable and does not have any indications that it will explode at any time in the near future, and for simplicity sake, entropy is not operating at all in this thought experiment. The orbits of the two planets are, at this moment, positioned so that one is directly in between the other planet and the star and orbit in opposite directions. Do you have that scenario? Good. Because we are going to add a complication. At one point in their orbits the paths of the planets coincide, meaning that both planets are located in the same place at that point. Both planets have an orbit of one of our Earth years, with one exception. One planet revolves to the same point every 365 days exactly, and I mean 24 hour days exactly. The other planet revolves to the same point every 365 days minus one second. I’ll explain the points at which these paths cross. Imagine the face of a clock and both planets are currently at 12 o’clock. The point at which the paths intersect is at 3 o’clock. Planet one, which is the planet that travels at 365 days exactly is traveling counterclockwise. Planet two, which is the slightly slower planet, travels in a clockwise direction.