is someone who can consider and work with all the variables. Or is it a gift?
What do you think?

It is impossible to see all the variables but I can guess it won't rain down gumdrops all over the world tomorrow. If you rule out the impossible then what ever is left no matter how improbable must be the truth. You just have to see the trends and cut through all the bs.

it would be very hard to work with any variables, even in alan's case of gumdrops raining down, because we don't completely understand ALL of the forces of this planet. its highly unlikely that gumdrops will raindown tomorrow, but not impossible. and when we DO completely understand all the forces on this planet, we will begin to tap the resources of foreign planets.

I agree with ikeray. Nothing....nothing is impossible. Simply because we are ignorant of it, does not mean that it cannot happen or does not exist. We are not as evolved as everyone likes to think. Neither do we rule this planet nor the universe. Sure, someone might think that they have worked out all of the variables in a given situation, but those are only the variables that that person was able to come up with. Even if every person on the planet came up with 10 different variables to the same situation, there just might be more out there that we haven't even discovered yet. I must say that ikeray's comment "when we DO completely understand..." is a statement that I believe will never come to pass. And "tapping" resources isn't what we do...we use them up and move on to the next. If we are able to move on to another habitable planet in the future, I'm willing to bet that we will use up all of the resources there too. We do not have a symbiotic relationship with our home planet, and it's unlikely, though not impossible, that we never will.

I find this topic to be very interesting indeed. The human mind alone was never able or made capable of comprehending everything and processing everything. Yes, I also beleive we are truly not fully evolved it is just human supiriority that allows us to think like this. Have any of you seen "What the Bleep do we Know"? It is a rather comprehensive movie that talk of probibility and human thought patterns. Besides that point, I most of our brilliant minds we find some form of disability. These genius individuals give up true mental normality for vast intelligence. You see the human mind was never meant to comprehend everything and collect all information. It is imossible to understand everything even though the processing power of the human mind is already vast indeed. We were never meant to understand forever or infinity or even how truly vast our time and galaxy truly is. THe human mind is a rather creative device which does help to slightly allow how to discern differences within truth, but it still does not us to totally comprehend everything for there will always be an infinate amount of information. Never will we know everything, if we did then we would be god himself! All this is truly hard to fathom though.

Being a neighbour of the United States I can predict, massive flooding, violent storms, just have to read the news.
Florida hit by a very violent tornado, then Katrina victims suffered natures wrath once again. Heavy snow falls as on records, record lows, freezing rains. What happens when you suddenly get the hot sun shine of spring, you get melting of snow, but the earth hasn't had the chance to unthaw from it all, so water will glisten all over with nowhere to go. And then you get all that warm weather meeting with this cold air, what does that produce, tornadoes! the reason I say this I felt the warmth of sun on me it felt much to warm for this time of year and I'm far North than most people here.

[quote]is someone who can consider and work with all the variables. Or is it a gift?[/quote]

i think it depends on the person with some it is more of a gift with others it is just the ability to thenk of almost all the variables

To know what a picture looks like actually, one needs to look at it from a distance. Being in the picture doesn't give us the correct perception. I believe we cannnot and neednot know all the variables..we all have this gift already, the gift to comprehend things and the desire to know.. eventually the mankind should be able to unfold the mysteries but alas we are still toys before the forces of nature ..

I think some of us were just blessed with certian intelect. Some can work with cars, other's with hair. But I think that if people work together there are numerous possibilities. Such as determining weather on other planets or making new technology. But I think us humans have such a curiousity of how things work that we are bound to find out new things such as how to make surgery easier,ect.

The best predictor of the future is the past.

Speaking of genius, whatever happened to the walking pants predicted in "Wallace and Gromet: The Wrong Trousers?" That was a cool idea.

Question for superConscious; how come your posts smell funny? Do you smoke whacky weed when you write them?

I once knew someone who called themselves superConscious. Turned out he platituded himself right into a mental institute. So be careful, okay?