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Random Number Generator That Sees Into the Future
hackajar writes "Red Nova news has an interesting article about a random number generating black box that may be able to see into the future. From the article: "according to a growing band of top scientists, this box has quite extraordinary powers. It is, they claim, the 'eye' of a machine that appears capable of peering into the future and predicting major world events"."
If they can demonstrate a link between people thinking and a random number generator in a controlled environment, then they can go claim the Randi prize (randi.org)... It's a million dollars, should be worth their time.
I doubt they'll be collecting it.
Pat Niemeyer
BTW, how in the world is this NOT a "laugh, it's funny" article?
Because it's pseudo-science that's trying to be serious. Which can be a dangerous thing, although probably isn't in this case.
I stopped reading when I read this:
"The laws of chance dictate that the generators should churn out equal numbers of ones and zeros - which would be represented by a nearly flat line on the graph."
No, the laws of chance do not say any such thing. In fact, the laws of chance say exactly the opposite. If you have two choices chosen at random over a series (a 1 and a 0; or heads and tails on a coin), there is a high probability that one of the choices will be chosen a significantly higher number of times than the other. Over time, the percentage disparity will decrease to near zero, but the total numerical disparity is likely to increase.
Similarly and extending from that, there is no law of anything that says that if you have a long series of 1's that it's more likely that your next number will be a 0. The "law of averages" is commonly cited here but there's really no such law.
Wikipedia has a nice little article that explains this, though I highly recommend the book Innumeracy for a lot more detail and an entertaining read to boot (that's a straight Amazon link, not a referral - I don't care where you buy it, just read it.)
Geeks will appreciate that you can download the raw data from the Global Consciousness Project and analyze it yourself. They even provide you a head start in your programming with their C++ package. In addition, there is a realtime driven display coded in Java, and "data driven music."
;)
The entire premise behind the Global Consciousness Project is that the Noosphere exists, and that, when a large amount of people are focused on the same thing it effects things in ways that are difficult to measure. There are dozens of these eggs (64) all around the world returning truly random data to the princeton server, which is inside a special casing to protect it from any extraneous waves/radiation/youname it. Their data purport, and indeed seem, to show that during times when many people are focused on the same thing, this random data is suddenly "less random". This typically means that when people start hearing about a globally impacting event on the news, the data becomes less random.
Using current methods it is impossible to prove that this is what they are measuring. But the data goes to show that they are measuring something. If you don't believe me or the news article, download the data and analyze it yourself, and if you're feeling the tingling of those psychic wavelengths, you can even register a prediction of your own
python -c "x='python -c %sx=%s; print x%%(chr(34),repr(x),chr(34))%s'; print x%(chr(34),repr(x),chr(34))"
For more information on REGs, here's a link to Dr. Nelson's website: http://www.princeton.edu/~rdnelson/
Princeton has had an "alternative" sciences department for decades: PEAR, most often cited for their research into remote viewing. They consistantly veer on the side of quackery, preferring to dismiss any elements of their "science" that categorically refute their findings in favour of a more popular conclusion, albeit confused and absurd.
Ah ha. Look at the source at the bottom.
...' at the begining of the piece to make it more credible.
Source: Daily Mail; London (UK)
It may be that Red Nova is a valid news site, but they should really check the status of their sources. The Mail will run just about any sensational piece of b*ll*cks doing the rounds. They are not the sort of organ that would want to cloud the reader's faith in the paranormal with any of that cynical questioning. Please insert the phrase 'Top scientists believe
Click here and search for "Crop Circles", "MI6" or "UFO".
Here's what the Skeptic Report has to say about the "Global Consciousness Project".
Quite a few, according to this interesting, skeptical report
For those of you that have not spent some time reading Knuth's Vol.2, there is an extensive analysis of what "randomness" is and how to get it. Clearly, a deterministic machine (=chip) cannot produce really random sequences. I did not bother to check the actual working details of those machines, but I would say that the only truly random phenomena are quantum phenomena and only these would be acceptable in a serious scientific study. Sure, modern chips get away by generating random-like sequences that are good enough to simulate true randomness for most purposes. This applies to HW random generators in most PCs. However, they are not, in principle, acceptable as real random number generators (even if they are equally well suited for applications).
From a theoretical standpoint a truly random quantum system is immune to interference, while HW random number generators use an external (to the system) source of randomness, accepted to represent noise. This is the actual approach used in the kernel's /dev/random that draws data from various external events. It has been shown, under some circumstances to be less than reliable, because the event is external wrt to the kernel but still inside our frame of reference (e.g. we control the keyboard and the ethernet port and, potentially, the power fluctuations etc etc).
Another significant point to consider is this: a truly random sequence is by definition infinite and it contains all possible subsequences of finite length. In an infinite series of coin tosses we MUST get all finitely long sequences of heads-only or tails-only. This means that given a long enough random subsequence (like the one that is produced by this machine), we will always be able to choose parts of it that are highly unlikely and statistically significantly different. Given that (a) every day something "important" happens somewhere and (b) we can always choose non-random "looking" parts of the sequence the credibility of this experiment is quite doubtful.
A proper experimental design would not associate (chosen!) events with (chosen!) subsequences, but would instead prove that the source itself is systematically non-random due to an unknown cause of interference. When all reasonable measures have been taken to reduce traditional sources of interference, we would be open to creative speculation about its source.
Another way to approach this is to make "a priori" (very important!) choices of "trigger" events and then assign very specific, "a priori" defined, time limits to the analysis. E.g. violent death of more than 1000 people in less than 1 hour is accepted as a trigger and we only correlate this to a contiguous 2h of data surrounding and including the event. The prior choice of experimental trigger conditions and rules makes a world of difference to the reliability of the test.
P.
And there's plenty of stuff that people believed in, or still believe in, that are still wrong. Ether, the heart being the centre of emotion, the world being flat.
I haven't seen any convincing data, the people running this project pick and choose 'world' events as they decide it.
For example:
"Radin gave several examples of how GCP had detected 'global consciousness'. One was the day O.J. Simpson was acquitted of double-murder. We were shown a graph where - no doubt about that - the data formed a nice ascending curve in the minutes after the pre-show started, with cameras basically waiting for the verdict to be read.
And yes, there was a nice, ascending curve in the minutes after the verdict was read.
However, about half an hour before the verdict, there was a similar curve ascending for no apparent reason. Radin's quick explanation before moving on to the next slide?
'I don't know what happened there.'
It was not to be the last time we heard that answer."
And if upward curves start before the 'world' event taking place? It's collective pre-cognition folks! And how much before the event counts as pre-cognition? As much (or as little) as these 'experimeters' require.
Look, even the director of the project himself says: "...this idea is really an aesthetic speculation. I don't think we have real grounds to claim that the statistics and graphs representing the data prove the existence of a global consciousness. On the other hand, we do have strong evidence of anomalous structure in what should be random data..."
That's the real telling point: "...should be random data...". I bet some in-depth tests might show the 'eggs' are simply not entirely random.
Did he inhale?
What they claim: When lots of people think the same thing it makes "random event generators" give "less random" output.
When pressed about evidence working against his theories (e.g. assigning meaning to some data spies, but not others), global conciousness proponent Dan Radin replied: "I don't know what happened there."
This is the scientific thing to say -- if you don't know, say you don't know.
However, assigning meaning to some spikes, but not others, tends to erode one's confidence in the assignment of causality.
See Skeptic Report for critical analysis.
-kgj
-kgj
There is another very bizarre phenomenon being studied at Princeton that is related and apparently shares a lot of the same hardware. The Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research project was started to study the human machine interface, and quickly determined that humans, individually and collectively, can have a small influence on truly random events. The effect doesn't extend to pseudorandom events such as a PC's "random" number generator, which is actually deterministic. The magnitude of the effect varies with the individual(s) involved, but is on the order of one in ten thousand. However, this small result is statistically proved beyond any reasonable doubt. The experiments have been widely replicated by different researchers using different random events (Johnson noise in resistors, balls falling through a long sequence of pegs ala pachinko, etc.) Even more bizarre is the way the effect is not limited by time or space. People from the other side of the world have influenced random events, and if my memory is correct, random events in sealed experiments have been altered by human efforts in the future and the past.
I think this seems to be too widespread to be a hoax. There is apparently too much independent verification to dismiss it, regardless of how little correlation it has with our belief about how the universe works. The effect may be small, but any significantly valid effect is a huge step in advancing our understanding of the universe and consciousness. I think we'll need a better understanding of quantum physics to fully appreciate what is really happening. My personal favorite crackpot theory is that our brains operate at different levels, all the way down to quantum effects at the lowest levels.
It's probably too early to use this effect in any meaningful engineering devices, but I can't help myself. I want to buy some commercial time on a TV station that is broadcast at the same time as the live lotto drawing that's broadcast on a competing station. Then, I'd run a commercial that flashes "LOTTO" and a sequencial string of my lottery numbers, in high contrast, with each appearing for a tenth of a second. It'd look weird enough that people would watch to see what the heck it is, and the 100 ms strobing numbers would feed straight into their subconscious minds. Maybe I'd take a tip from subliminal advertisers and mix in words like "DEATH" or "SEX", or graphic images, to pump up the emotional level.
>> My ultraviolent Linux switch video.