It's not Magic...it's science

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Can a person really predict the future? How about knowing exactly what someone is going to say, and all the steps that will happen next? Rascal Holliday does them all. And while his mind may be much more advanced than the typical human, we actually use a small version of Holliday's skills every day. 

Studies have shown that social life actually requires us to "predict the future" in a way. People must anticipate others' feelings, thoughts, and actions in order to interact with them successfully. Our "social brain" automatically predicts others' future mental states. The theory of predictive coding suggests that our social brain may meet this need by automatically predicting others' social futures. 

Think of it like this. When you see a ball flying through the air, your brain starts calculating - not just the ball's appearance (size and shape), but also predict the ball's future trajectory. 

In the same way, a lot of how we behave towards other people depends on what we think they will do next. We intuitively know to tread gingerly around someone who's frustrated, to anticipate that a child will be scared of thunder and prepare ways to calm them, or that it's helpful to show up with some cozy comfort food for a friend who's been under a lot of stress. 

Humans have many ways of reading others' current thoughts and feelings. We listen to tone of voice, we read facial expressions, and we interpret context. Research shows that the brain may use an algorithm like predictive coding. Maybe we aren't so different from Rascal after all!

IARPA (the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity) is a research arm of the U.S. government Intelligence community whose mission is, for lack of a better phrase, "predicting the future." Using teams of human "forecasters" and artificial intelligence, they provide decision makers with accurate predictions of geopolitical events. 

Source credits: https://bigthink.com/the-present/secretive-agency-uses-ai-human-forecasters-to-predict-future/; https://www.jneurosci.org/content/39/1/140#:~:text=The%20theory%20of%20predictive%20coding%20suggests%20that%20the,brain%20should%20already%20start%20representing%20their%20future%20states.