So sayeth Albert Einstein.

And apparently a growing number of scientists believe that although the illusion is a rather persistent one people can and do see past it… into the future. Sometimes, maybe.

Full story in This is London.

I believe I’ve had experiences that at least appeared to be premonition as they describe it and know others who have also. And yet I remain skeptical to a degree. The brain is an incredible instrument with an uncanny ability to cherry pick and catalog seonsory data in support of whatever happens to be its current focus of identification. Further to that our memory is notoriously unreliable. And human beings have a hard-wired desire to believe in the extraordinary.

Self-deception is contagious and consensus hallucinations abound. So I’ll wait and see.

And now a word from the skeptics:

Research in this matter is subject to the element of selective recall, whereby individuals tend to remember when a dream or hunch turns out correctly and forget it if it fails. Therefore, anecdotal reports are not of much value.
In 1983, an examination was made of the evidence offered by 127 persons who responded to a U.K. newspaper feature on premonitions. A questionnaire was accompanied by a personality test. Most who answered were female, average age was forty-six years, and 80 percent of them said that they were correct 70 percent of the time. The personality test showed that these persons were significantly more neurotic than average and scored high on a “lie scale.” Some 85 percent of their predictions involved death or other tragedies. The investigator concluded that the ability to have premonitions is important since it warns females and thereby provides a “survival advantage to the species.” No comment.

Hey, maybe neurotic middle-aged women really can foretell the future better than everyone else. If I was persistently yanked into the future by visions and foreboding of impending catastrophes I’d probably be neurotic too.