[joncrocks]

I think what the parent is trying to say is that there's more than one way to ensure a given event occurs.

Imagine that I have a specialised piece of brain that deals with catching a ball in flight. That piece of the brain fires on the current input and makes adjustments to the position of my hand appropriately.

In the micro sense, in terms of the feedback loop involved, my brain might be predicting the path of the ball for the next tens of/hundreds of milliseconds. But there's no way to ask it "where is the ball going to be in 3 seconds time", only "what should my hand do next."

So in the macro sense, the brain isn't predicting the path of the ball, only what should be done in any given instant.

Or something like that....

[jamesrcole]

> the brain isn't predicting the path of the ball, only what should be done in any given instant.

"what should be done in any given instant" is a fantasy. Brain processing takes time, nerve signals take time to travel, muscles take time to contract.

Nothing is instantaneous. It all takes time.

It's actually "what should be done a number of moments in the future". And that is a kind of prediction.

I must admit I'm finding all this discussion pretty frustrating - this is really elementary stuff!