A historic future

I think we all know that ability that some people have to “presume” or “guess” the future: this is what some people call precognition. In theory we can say that precognition is the ability to foresee events that are about to occur. In turn, we could speak of a large subdivision within precognition: those that extend over time (capable of knowing events that will occur well in advance) and those that occur in events that are about to occur or that will occur in a short space of time. We sometimes call the latter hunches. And I am sure that we have all had one at some time. But perhaps this phenomenon of the short-term hunch may be something physiological, and although you may not believe it, it is related to the integration of information that our brain makes from the data that is collected by the sensory organs. And if you allow me, I will try to explain it to you, because in reality, we constantly live in the past and exercise a certain ability to guess the future.

But to try to explain this apparent paradox, we first need to comment on something curious that happens to all of us, and that is the so-called reaction time. This is the time that elapses between the stimulation of a sensory organ and the beginning of a response, that is, as long as it is conscious (we will not consider reflexes, many of which are regulated by autonomous processes and therefore remain outside the realm of consciousness). In turn, this reaction time can be of various types:

• Simple reaction time, when a single stimulus is used and the time until the beginning of the response is measured.
• Choice reaction time, when two stimuli are presented, each with a specific response (for example, pressing with the left hand if we see a dot and with the right if we see a dash)
• Selection reaction time, when several stimuli are presented but only one is responded to (for example, pressing the right hand only if we hear a certain word)

Some factors affect this reaction time, such as the amount of data to be integrated to give a response, or the sensory modality that generates the response: the visual modality requires more time than the auditory one. Other factors that affect this time are drowsiness, illness, emotional or mood state or even the level of stress. In addition, it can be “trained” in a certain way, as happens with athletes who try to react as quickly as possible once they hear the starting shot.

The usual reaction time is around 0.75 seconds: this may seem like a short time, but this time is very important, for example when driving a vehicle, which in this case becomes the so-called reaction distance, which is the distance that the vehicle travels until we initiate an action, and which depends on the speed at which we are driving:

If we look at it carefully, we never really know the present moment, since we always react with a delay of ¾ of a second: and that means that our brain makes a continuous prediction exercise about our world, foreseeing how it will change and provoking our reaction, always in the past, what is happening in the now is not integrated until that time has passed, so in a certain way we live in the past. But I am sure you will be wondering, what does this have to do with consciousness and precognition? Well, as I always say, from now on we will talk about hypotheses and opinions, so if you allow me, I will put up the sign that warns that it is only my opinion:

If you allow me, let's go back to the beginning, when we were talking about the types of precognition, and to be exact, I mentioned that one of them would be the one that is capable of predicting a future event with a small margin of time: knowing what we know now about reaction time, could we come to think that these premonitions or hunches are the integration of certain information that is acquired by our consciousness but not through the senses that we could call classic? In fact, this type of sensations are usually associated with stomach disorders, or accelerations of the pulse. What if what we can anticipate is nothing more than a kind of reaction time but that is moving forward in time? This idea also opens up a possible model for experimentation: could we come to follow up on these hunches by altering certain biological markers? What we can say, if you have come this far, is that you should remember that you and I and all of us live in a historical future, because it has already been ¾ of a second since it happened. Thank you very much and see you next time.