> If a human being can practice divination, then surely an AI can too, yes?

Very interesting question that. Would an AI be a person? Or just a
sculpture of a mind?

Divination is essentially a communion between the self and the Self (God,
Source, Universe, I don't want to presume upon your beliefs) so if we
succeeded in making a person somehow, then yes, I believe it would have a
relationship with God beyond that of its constituent matter.

If not, if we can only mimic our own minds without kindling the spark of
life, then no, it would just be an elaborate dowsing rod, eh?

I think it might be possible to make a tulpa and associate it with a
mechanical form (physical or virtual) and there are corners on the
internet where people experiment with that. The resulting entity would
be somewhat like a golem. FWIW, I would advise against all that kind of
thing.

> I don’t understand why you say it’s physics..and not mathematics.

Just that physics is the part of mathematics that maps to real world phenomenon.

> Example: when I want to mow my cover crop field in spring, I simply do
if I get a feel for it. I know it’s not going to rain..I know it’s before
they have flowered, I know how the soil ‘feels’ before I can disc it. I
just know. I pick up a handful of soil and then at the sky, in a split
second I can make a decision.

That is the kind of thing where intelligence and intuition blend. If you
keep going you'll reach the place where you could be sitting deep in a
cave and still know.

FWIW, Tom Brown hints at this in some of his books on tracking.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Brown_Jr.

> But for a machine to make that decision, mathematically..it needs weather
data, soil moisture data, leaf analysis, vision system data..put it all
together to say ‘yes, I will prep the field today’. The language is
mathematics.

> In a way, I forecasted and predicted intuitively from previous years
springs to determine when I can prep the field. I could be wrong. A farm
machine AI however ..with math can make a decision based on narrow
parameters but will almost never be wrong because it only has to be right
within those narrow parameters.

I'm not convinced that machine could be built, I think the variables
(including astrological influences) are too involved. On the other hand,
your physical body including your brain could be considered to be that
machine already. And that seems to bring up again the question of whether or
not you could make an artificial person with enough fidelity to the real
thing to develop intuition/divination, eh?

I think it would be much easier to make a machine that allowed the plants
and soil itself to communicate the optimal times for events.

Do you have a copy of "The Secret Life of Plants"?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Secret_Life_of_Plants

> Why can’t this be done with Astrology?

If you mean letting astronomical data be part of the inputs to your
Bayesian AI then by all means I think that might help. But
modern astrology is pretty much barren for the kind of thing you're
talking about.

> How can planets have an impact on humans..lets rephrase that..how can
planets not have an impact on humans? The sun does. The moon does. That’s
because we know heat and light are forms of energy. We acknowledge
gravitational force and tidal waves and electro magnetic forces. Does
this mean that there is nothing else? Perhaps there are forces we haven’t
even met yet and don’t know how it works.

I believe there are such "subtle forces" and that our periodic chart of the
elements is like a single octave of a much larger plenum of
matter/energy/frequency. I'm following Gurdjieff here more-or-less.
But I know almost nothing about them. There's no modern source of reliable information on such things.

The problem is that we can only make machines out of the matter
we can touch. You can't make an instrument that responds to these
"subtle energies". Unless of course that's exactly what these various
divination machines (Tarot, Astrology, Numerology, Dowsing, etc.) are
somehow doing. (But personally I don't think they are.) And
again, your physical body inducing your brain is already an instrument
that responds to these "subtle energies" (if they exist.)

In the context of farm automation I would try making simple machines that
let the farm life communicate to them to activate various programs, based
on some of the stuff in "The Secret Life of Plants".

Cheers! Happy New Year.