Oracles

Every human culture on Earth has, until the advent of science, been obsessed with magic and the occult and a big part of that has always been divination by the means of oracles. There are very many diverse types of oracles and divination techniques from reading tea leaves to reading sheep's entrails to turning people's names into numbers to staring into a crystal sphere and an uncounted horde of others but the most popular over hundreds of years have been: The Mediterranean Horoscope, The Chinese Horoscope, Random Cards (inc The Tarot) and Random Coins (inc I-Ching).

There is no mechanism by which any of these can reliably predict the future so they are all, of course, nonsense. There have been numerous trials of these divination techniques and they have all failed to predict anything any better than a random variable. Sorry folks: There is no magic, there is only science and these traditional techniques include no science.

Is it possible to predict the future though? Well yes! Science does it all the time: We can predict the weather for a week in advance with mostly accurate results. We can predict the results of elections most of the time to within a few percent. We can predict the path of comets and asteroids very accurately indeed. We can even predict the result of sporting competitions most of the time...

Obviously people don't consult oracles to predict any of the above things. If you want a sporting prediction you consult the bookmaker's odds. If you want to predict the weather you go to a meteorological organisation. But what if you want to know whether to apply for a new job or change your partner? What if you want to know whether there are children or travel in your near future? Can such things be predicted?

Well the short answer is Yes! You CAN predict many things in your personal life better than a random variable but not by using random variables. If you wish to make these predictions you need to establish sets of rules that deal with everyday variables and you need to set up a factual database of these variables through time. Once you have done this you need only allow the rules to operate on the data over a given set of time slices and Voila! you will get your prediction!

Essentially you need to build a life simulator and set up the parameters to match yours. I don't believe there is any such simulator built for the purpose yet but it is certainly achievable. The obvious technique is to write a computer app to do the job but there are hardware solutions too. My "Pinball Oracle" is such a device.

But what of the famous and charismatic oracles of the past: Sure, they don't work as advertised but they remain a fun way to wile away some time and allow a little fantasy to creep into your dull, mundane existence. It's fun to read the horoscope on your way to work and to ask your friends what sign they are. So long as you don't allow it to alter your plans it's quite harmless. So is it worth doing just for fun? Sure!

My Tarot Deck and my I-Ching rewrite these ancient and ever popular oracles using mathematical techniques and modern theory to inject some more serendipity into them and allow you to get more fun and self discovery and even perhaps some useful advice from them.

My Thellid Horoscope re imagines the zodiacs of China and the Mediterranean using modern personality theory and mathematics to allow you to select your actual personality and assign it to a specific day of the year. There are numerous benefits to this reworking and reversing of an ancient idea.

So whether you want to play around with a harmless fantasy, make moderately accurate real life predictions, get some common sense advice or embark on a journey of self discovery and the understanding of others then I have an oracle for you!

Excelsior!