Slashdot Mirror
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 it can sense future events, that would make it less random, right? To me, that almost sounds like pre-determined events (how far into the future this pre-determination is good for, you decide), so it really isn't "random".
"If you were plowing a field, which would you rather use? Two strong oxen or 1024 chickens?" --Seymour Cray
/. needs a "trivially debunked hogwash" category. This belongs with the "battery stickers" story from a few weeks ago.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
I predict you'll soon get modded down as overrated... :)
I also thought slashdot was fooled again, or at least this was a humor article.
It's not.
Red Nova appears to be a valid news site, and the Princeton University link at the bottom is the real thing, describing just what the article talked about.
You know, we all like to laugh at so called "psychic phenomena" or pseudoscience. I know, I do it too. But this is rather stunning...it's a Princeton University project, run by a group of scientists who respect the scientific method, who are trying to do their best at sounding humble while making extraordinary claims. The only question is if they actually have the data to back it up (some graphs would be nice).
Progress in science means shattering accepted theories. If this is what it seems to be, then the possibility of a scientific revolution, at the very least a whole new field of science, seems to be at hand.
Without a proper flamewar, Anonymous was undecided on what shell to run.
A Princeton professor doesn't need a million dollars?
Really smart people have been fooled before by turning the scientific method on its head and looking for causes that fit selected outcomes... Unless you can make a prediction before something happens you really don't have much to talk about.
Pat
Believing in superstitious quackery like this black box has serious ramifications.
Perhaps you've heard of the scientific method?
It sounds like quakery, but so did flight and travel to the moon 150 years ago.
The appropriate stance is "I'll believe it when they prove it", not "that can't be true." Rabid atheism is no more scientific than wicca.
Consider for a moment that there exists a god. He (she or it, whatever) is basically our caretaker, maybe even our creator. Here's the deal though, nobody really knows anything about him, and I'd wager to say anyone who thinks they know anything is pretty fscking arrogant. What if (yes, this is just a theory), god doesn't really have great influential power in the universe (i.e. can't make the moon fall out of the sky in one night, or hurl the earth at the sun, etc), but can only subtly manipulate it through chaotic interactions. If this were true, wouldn't that mean patterns in chaos could very well be the face of god? It might even make fortune telling by random chance (tarot, rune casting, coin flipping, etc) legitimate. Assuming it were true and provable to be true, really it's just an interesting idea. Something like this story though, assuming it's true, makes it a bit more plausible.
One thing that would be interesting to see is if location affects these Eggs. The article mentioned the Eggs notice global events. I wonder if you put an Egg in a small town whether or not it would detect something like a murder or a natural disaster local to the town. Might be something for these guys to try.
Red Nova usually has good articles, but every once in awhile, one shows up that belies evidence of lack of scientific rigour. This is the case here.
An example (from the article:)
It was a preposterous idea at the time. The results, however, were stunning and have never been satisfactorily explained.
This sentence is prejudicial because it biases the results as being "stunning", without describing who finds the results stunning.
"Never satisfactorily explained" also presumes that someone finds it worthy of needing explanation.
Again and again, entirely ordinary people proved that their minds could influence the machine and produce significant fluctuations on the graph, 'forcing it' to produce unequal numbers of 'heads' or 'tails'.
"Proved"? Pretty strong words with no supporting detail. Once I read sentences like this, I discount an article as being scientifically unfounded.
In response to the parent post:
No, the laws of chance do not say any such thing. In fact, the laws of chance say exactly the opposite.
I believe you're misinterpreting the laws of chance.
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.
Significant as a percentage? Unlikely.
Over time, the percentage disparity will decrease to near zero, but the total numerical disparity is likely to increase.
This is a trivial statement. If n flips has m total disparities, n+x flips will have between m and m+x disparities. It is therefore impossible for the total number of disparities to decrease, and almost guaranteed that it will increase.
The only significant measure of disparity is that of percentile disparity. And if you measure percentile disparity on a scale equivalent to the number of events being measured, it will in fact appear to be a nearly flat line on the graph.
The thing that bothers me about this "experiment" is that it presumes to assert that people can control a machine that generates random events, without describing the algorithm by which those random events are produced. Trying to simulate true randomness (indeed, what is random?) is a huge topic within math, statistics, and computer science; yet, it's not mentioned once within the article.
Classic case of weak correlation.
Worse, the correlation suggests the causation post-facto. Nobody even guesses there will be a correlation until there's an effect. And if there's no effect, nobody discounts the box's output.
Sad. Innumerate. Stupid.
The only question is if they actually have the data to back it up (some graphs would be nice).
I would like detailed instructions on how to construct a stream of random numbers with behaviors that correlate to outside events as they describe, so that I can repeat their experiments myself and see if I can reproduce the same effect. Tabletop reproduction isn't always possible in science (e.g. historical sciences like archaeology, paleontology, cosmology- remember that, you creationists) but in this case reproduction of results should be easy. (If this were real.)
At the very least I want to know how to generate a stream of random numbers that reproduces this effect, how to recognize a prediction when it arrives in the stream, and how to assign a P-value for associations between random stream events and real world events. Unless we move past the sort of ex post facto "predictions" of past events, there is nothing new here. It looks like a repetition of work already done by Nostradamus.
Try reading the papers of the people running the damn research program. They do have several websites on it.
You are passing judgement on their work only on the basis of a PopSCI level article written for a 9th grade audiance.
Most, if not all, of your issues are addresed on the project sites.
Whenever something mentions Diana as something that could be predicted as an event of the same importance as 9/11 I sort of tune out.
It is I think a paranormal defense mechanism employed to prevent bloodshed.
I'd do something interesting, but my server can't handle a slashdotting.
Perhaps you've never heard of quantum mechanics? I believe it was Einstein who coined the phrase 'spooky action at a distance' to describe quantum entanglement of particles.
Someone should seriously consider modding your post as flamebait. It's a FAR stretch from investigating a non-trivial co-incidence of recorded data and historic events to make the jump to witches and warlocks running the US (though they might do a better job than the current High Priest of Crawford)
While organizations like CSICOP can be valuable in verifying or debunking claims that seem unbelievable, it seems foolish (if one has RTFA) to insist right off that it is superstitious quackery fit for debunking.
A true scientist would remain open the possibility until it is proven or disproven. That is what we call a 'theory'. By insistently persecuting anything we don't yet understand, one lowers oneself to the level of certain residents of 17th Century Salem.
These people looked deep into my soul and assigned me a number based on the order in which I joined.
They don't have a theory as to this can happen, but let's ignore that.
It's really sad how people can ignore the roots of science. To use a simple example, man KNEW about gravity before he had a theory about how it works. That's how science operates. You draw conclusions based on experimental results.
I'm not sure what causes people to be so immediately defensive. Maybe it's fright that everything people think they know could be turned upside down. I'm reminded of a wonderful quote from Donald Knuth that kind of encapsulates this whole discussion: "The fact is that everything we learn reveals more things that we do not understand."
"Nature doesn't care how smart you are. You can still be wrong." - Richard Feynman
Except they shouldn't be straight lines at all. They should take random directions all the time. Sometimes even very big ones. A flat line is one of the least random things produced in the world. If GC existed according to how REGs worked, atomic clocks would randomly lose percision around major events.
I mean a scientist is quoted as saying "Our data shows clearly that the chances of getting these results by fluke are one million to one against." I would actually place the chance much much lower, I mean a million to one is nothing really. The odds of 30 coin flips in any order is a million to one. The real problem is prediction. The question is whether the model can predict into the future what events will cause blips and the magnitude of the event.
I'd do something interesting, but my server can't handle a slashdotting.
Just because something sounds crazy, doesn't mean it is. People from 100 years ago, if told about MRIs, CAT scans, GeoSyncSats, GPS, Sat Phones, Computers, the Internet, and Microwave ovens would say you are crazy and such things would never be possible.
Nobody plopped an MRI machine into a barber shop 100 years ago and said it would give a picture of your insides. X-rays did exist 100 years ago, were subjected to some high quality scientific inquiry and rapidly yielded their secrets (and some Nobel prizes). The same for those other devices - none of them came into existence before the physical principles they're based on were understood-- they're all products of engineering (application of known principles to produce something of use) and were developed well after the physical principles they depend on were discovered and explained.
I spend/have spent a fair bit of time surfing the crackpot line (that's where the fun is) and I'm pretty skeptical of this one. Sure, it deserves a good poking with a sharp stick (the foundation of good experimental science), but I doubt this will stand up to it.
I'd like to see how many "special" sequences they had which were NOT followed by an event they deemed special.
"Long run is a misleading guide to current affairs. In the long run we are all dead." (John Maynard Keynes)
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.
The article may very well be about pseudo-science. However trying to counter it with pseudo-reasoning and confusing distinct, well-defined statistical properties doesn't advance the cause of science. In fact it looks not only bad but desperate.
My professor in statisitics would probably have pitched an eraser at you for suggesting what amounts to an oxymoronic "high probability of the improbable." If the probability is 1:1,000,000, then in one million experiments there is a finite probability (1:1,000,000) that you may see the event once, and a lesser finite probability you would see it more than once. If something improbable turns up "significantly" as you phrase it then you check to see if the dice are honest.
In fact, the mean value of a normally distributed series of random numbers should trend toward a constant value. In the case of runs of 0s and 1s, it should trend toward 0.5 and approximate it more closely as the experiment runs.
The variance should tend to increase as less probable values fill the wings of the bell curve. The longer the series of random values the more nearly normal that trend should be and the greater the potential variance may be, since with a longer experiment you can actually acquire less probable runs that simply could not occur earlier. For instance you need to toss a coin a minimum of 20 times to have even the possibility of achieving 1:1,000,000 odds (1:1048576, actually 2^20). You would need to toss a good many more times than that before you could legitmately begin to worry of a 1:1,000,000 occurence did not show up.
That's how Los Vegas makes a living. The rubes always hope that the improbable will kiss them on the neck. In fact nothing you say actually contradicts the quote you are trying to criticize. They are discussing the mean results while you are talking about the variance.
The simplest explanation for their "correlation" is simply coincidence of highly improbable runs temporarily skewed the data. Remember that the experiment has been running for years so some really improbable runs are possible. They need a lot more disasters before they can actually test an argument based on a statistical improbability.
------ The only greater hazard to your liberty than n politicians is n+1 politicians.
Well, no. Occam's razor does not assume that the universe behaves simply.
Occam's razor states that you should not needlessly multiply entities. What does this mean? It means if you have a theory that "things move when you hit them", and you have another theory that needlessly states "things moves when you hit them and the moon is waning", and both theories are supported by experimental evidence, then you should throw away the needlessly complex version involving the moon. The extra complexity adds nothing to the value of the theory.
You cannot use Occam's razor to dismiss a complex theory. There is no assumption by Occam that complex theories are wrong, or that simpler theories are right. That's not what it means and anybody who attempts to use it that way is simply wrong.
"It sounds like quakery, but so did flight and travel to the moon 150 years ago."
I can always tell we've not evolved as a species and are still thinking at the baboon level when I hear comments like this.
Flight was not regarded as quakery by those who understood some simple science. It was regarded as quakery by the lay person who doesn't understand much of anything. It was obvious that if birds could fly then there must have been some method by which we could construct a machine to also do so. Birds don't fly by some strange unseen spiritual energy that we'll never figure out. No, flight was merely an engineering problem as are most all other things that science has "figured out". In the real world, if you can solve it, using logic and deductive reasoning, then you can do it. It will take work, in the form of many hours of labor and thought, something the common idiot seems not inclined to do, but can lead us places that we've never been before. It still amazes me to this day that many pseudo science freaks don't understand what energy is. They speak of this thing or that thing as having energy but are completely oblivious to the fact that energy is a "difference" between to opposites. They can't seem to name what those opposites are when they say something like "she seems to have much spiritual energy". You might as well say the sky is blue.
Going to the moon was also an engineering problem. There were material solutions to every problem encountered on our quest to fulfill that dream. If you understand how things work, then that knowledge is "enabling". The knowledge allows you to progress into the future. It gives you wings to fly with. Ordinary folk don't get it, so they continue to "believe" in fairy tails and pots of gold at the end of rainbows. To be constructive you must do work. You must work to generate order, be constructive, in the face of entropy, the disorder that flows and pushes you down stream. Don't let the stream carry you. It is harder to create, than it is to destroy, or go with the flow. Being lazy is a sign of the devil so to speak. Belief is lazyness because you aren't using your mind to figure things out, you are just accepting something that someone has told you is true. Only you can decide whether things are true or not based on your own experiences.
Be skeptical when people tell you things that you haven't a clue about. Go to school. Read science and engineering books.
Honestly, the line that spoke volumes to me was the line that Carl Sagan used in Cosmos... "We... accept the products of science, but reject its methods". If we could just make people who believe in crap live in the old world without science for a few years, I'm sure they would change their tune. Alas, hypocrisy is rampant these days. I'm sure I'll die before our species grows beyond such thinking.
> "Of course RF activity changes during 'significant > world events'."
You suggest that RF waves change after the event has happened. The story claims that RF waves change even before the event has happened. Which is a different story.
5 parts in 10000 is nothing. The probability theory guarantees that there are many experiements where such results are randomly produced. It's the same as with stock market. Many people use various insane trading schemes. Some of these randomly get rich. Those that consistently get rich claim that their schemes work, which is, of course, bogus.
Technical analysis is the same. 250 people go to a seminar, half of them decide to get an account, buy books and software and start trading on FOREX or commodity markets. After a year 64 of them are still in the black. After two years 30 of them have profits for two years. After six years there probably will still be 2 guys, with BMWs, Rolexes and stuff. Wait one more year - one of them will lose anything, but the lucky one will decide to give seminars on technical analysis or write 100$ books on trading.
Those guys in Princeton are idiots. They are wasting their time and university's money. Their claims are ridiculous and they deserve to be fired and sent to work in the trash sorting plant. That way we can put their skills in finding valuable stuff in random shit to good use.
Future Wiki -- If you don't think about the future, you cannot have one.
how we can compare the World Trade Center destruction to the tsunami disaster. After all, around 2,000 people died at the World Trade Center. Indonesia alone is reporting 241,687 dead and missing. Sri Lanka is reporting "more than 30,000" dead. India is reporting "over 14,000" dead, although this is from an old article and is most certainly out of date. A rough estimate, I would guess, is that approximately a third of million people died in the tsunami, making the death (and other devastation) from it have the same proportion to the WTC as the WTC has to Princess Diana's death. This does not in any way lessen the significance of the WTC, nor of the Princess Di's death.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
5 parts in 10000 is nothing. The probability theory guarantees that there are many experiements where such results are randomly produced.
It is not the scale of the deviation but its repeatability that counts here.
In other words if conscious concentration affects a random number generator then by how much the results differ could be viewed as the force of the effect. However, if the deviations repeatedly occur while a test subject concentrates on the generator but don't occur when no one does then that is a valid observation despite the effect observed being weak.
Cellular Automata can be used to generate almost perfectly random numbers (much more random than even some of the most tried-and-true methods), but that technique was not being used in the 70's, when this supposedly started.
.
My guess is that since they describe RNG's as "black boxes", they are using hardware RNG's, which use the fluctuations derived from an apparently random 'natural' process, like electric (resistor noise, by far the most common) and radioactive decay.
But I find it interesting and ironic that each of the events they have talked about predicting in many cases have associated electrical phenomenon!
They even mentioned it in the article. A billion people watching Princess Di's funeral, or 9/11 -- ok, so a billion tv sets around the world turn on, and if your RNG is plugged into the wall . . . is it going to affect it? I dunno, but if it's a resistor-based RNG . . . the OJ Simpson trial, ditto. People are gonna start tuning in before the verdict; this produces, at the very least, an ELECTRICAL EVENT that is likely detectable anywhere on the power grid.
With showing the person slides of pictures, and the random number fluctuations happening prior to the person seeing the picture . . . um . . . is there any electrical machinery plugged into the wall that takes an action to ready/display the next slide? Wouldn't that be funny, now . .
And, of course, a tsunami produces measurable electrical phenomena as well. I don't know if it produces electrical phenomena in advance, of course, and it would seem that if that was the case we would be able to use it to predict seismic events
I don't know anything about whether fluctuations in resistor/semiconductor-based RNG's can happen as a result of electrical phenomenon, but I think that the fact that the article makes no mention of attempts to screen for electrical interference, to detect correlating electrical/field events, or to isolate the RNG's in some way is a good indicator that these guys aren't trying very hard to play devil's advocate.