Sunday, April 18, 2004

In our culture, myths, legends, fairy tales and fantasy, we already have the idea of a prophet. A prophet is a person who can basically foresee and foretell what is going to happen in the future, and no matter how much mere mortals struggle to avoid their prophesied fate, they always end up fulfilling the prophecy because it is their destiny.

What we need to add to our stock of mythical characters is a different kind of pseudo-prophet who, instead of foreseeing what is destined to happen, causes things to happen by the act of foreseeing them. They don't use their magic to make things happen directly, they simply predict them and, by predicting them, cause those things to happen at an unspecified time on the future.

A prophet looks into the Fates and foresees that "You are going to fall off a cliff", and despite the fact that you make every effort to avoid cliffs, you do end up falling off a cliff because it has always been your destiny. A pseudo-prophet, in a moment of malice, says "You are going to fall off a cliff!", and, despite your best efforts to avoid cliffs, you eventually do fall off one because the pseudo-prophet said you would. With the prophet, it has always been your fate; with the pseudo-prophet it only became your fate because the pseudo-prophet said so.

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