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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"."
You mean I don't need to subscribe to Slashdot to see the Mysterious Future?
Then maybe it can help me to win a few more Rock Paper Scissors games too.
Rock that crushes, Paper & Scissors that don't matter.
Or do you people not listen to Art Bell? You should. You'll learn a lot.
01010101011010111111000000000111110000000000000000 0000000000000000000
The force that blew the Big Bang continues to accelerate.
I predict a great writter will make a short story about a machine like that and Hollywood will turn it into an awful motion picture!
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
I predict that this post will hit +5 funny!!
:-(
No?
/. 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."
It just spit out the number 42. I guess there really is something to this little black box.
This just seems ridiculous. A normal random number generator predicting the future? Maybe Jesus was reborn into the form of a microprocessor. (Holy crap, that would be friggin' awesome!!!)
Seriously though, every single day somewhere something "amazing" happens and I don't see the black box picking up that. What about the day George Bush was re-elected? Or the day Saddam Hussein was found? Or the day I finally figured out how to make good macaroni and cheese? I think these scientists are just over-excited about an odd coincidence. So the numbers shot up a few hours before the events happen. What if they shot up a few days before? A few months before? Would they still make these claims? No, I see nothing interesting in this article no matter how hard I look. Maybe someone can convince me otherwise.
Hero of Allacrost, a FOSS RPG for *NIX/*BSD/OS X/Win
is this the machine Bush was using to predict terror alerts? not very accurate.
Enjoy Every Sandwich
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
That's why it's a black box. If we knew how it worked then it'd be a magic white box...
For the full story and project details, go here Global Consiousness Project
Elevators.
of the total perspective vortex
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.
So they have these big curves on days with major events... do they have the curves on days without major events? Are there many days without major events? Come on people, I've heard more stringent scientific methods applied on the Art Bell show than this article. Doesn't even say how the stupid random number generators work, for all we know flipping the light on in the room where the subjects are screws them up. Maybe they measure traffic at cnn.com (or ham radios back in the 70's and 80's).
And this right after the article where it's okay if you try to allocate memory at address -8134957, because a little uncertainty can be good.
Is Zonk taking his name too literally? Is this now "News for like... you know, dudes... and wow, look at the pretty colors... I can see relativity man..."
Join me in sending an e-mail to CSICOP and requesting that it investigate this supposed black box predicting the future.
Believing in superstitious quackery like this black box has serious ramifications. If enough people believed in this nonsense, then we would end up in setting national policy based on this block box. How would you like the USA to be guided by witches and warlocks?
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.)
Wow. I just dozed off there for a moment and the rest of February and March just zipped on by. I must be getting old or something...
I predict that this story will appear again on the front page of Slashdot within the next 48 hours.
Regards,
Karnak the Magnificent
"In spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart." - Anne Frank
Woops, my link was removed (damn, how many years have I been posting on this site, anyway?). Here's a link to the book that should make it through.
Could what they are trying to claim, be the root cause of deja-vue? That feeling you get that you've seen or done something already when you know that you haven't. Most people will admit to have had a deja-vue felling before, but would many sane people admit to being able to see the future, or communicate through thought? Mamby there is more to our minds than we care to admit.
Ride recklessly only when safe to do so.
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))"
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.
I can see into the future. You will get a 5, Informative for making this obvious mathematical observation.
The USA guided by witches and warlocks at least wouldn't be much worse.
Baldur
I feel a disturbance in the force. It's as if a million random number generators cried out all at once ... and became silent.
I would think that one could divine just about anything from a field of random data; events past, present and future will fit just fine. Seems a like the perfect machine to give you a glimpse of exactly what you want to see.
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.
That aside, you didn't read far enough, shame on you for commenting without reading the whole article. Apparently the REGs (also called EGGs) do produce straight lines normally, or nearly straight lines. They've seen it deviate only in controlled experiments (repeatedly), and before major world events (again repeatedly). We're also not talking just one REG here, the project curently has dozens of them located worldwide, and they are seeing these spikes occur before major events in tandem -- on every device.
Besides all the scientists they spoke to in the article all said basically the same thing -- they couldn't believe it when they saw these things occur, and kept repeating the experiments and getting the same results, over and over and over. It's more than just the REG boxes, it talks about studies that have examined the brain's responses of people shown a sequence of provacative cartoons, and they'll start seeing the brain react the same before the cartoon's ever shown to them. Again, they repeated the experiments multiple times, with different people, same results.
The article also points out a true oddity, nothing in the laws of physics say it's impossible to predict the future. In fact time may not be a constant, studies have shown it can flow backwards as well as forwards. So all this could be a weird sort of subconscious tapping into that, we're remembering things that haven't happened yet. Since we understand almost nothing about the brain (in terms of how it does what it does, we're not even sure _where_ or _how_ it really stores memories) I don't see this as anything that's impossible. Frankly it may be happening, we don't know enough yet to know either way what's really going on.
But if we don't read the full article and write things off by a few paragraphs, I can guarantee you we'll never know. You know this has happened multiple times in history, how many people thought it was impossible to make an airplane to fly in they sky? How many people thought the earth was the center of the universe? If we're unwilling to read, listen and be open minded about things one day we will end up proved wrong and made to look stupid in the process. Frankly I'm willing to give this the benefit of the doubt, since I read the whole article I can tell they're being very careful to say that they don't know what's causing this, only that something is happening. They also said it's not terribly useful for predictions as it is, they can tell you something will happen when they see these spikes, but they don't know what, when or where.
For more information on REGs, here's a link to Dr. Nelson's website: http://www.princeton.edu/~rdnelson/
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.
It turns out you can watch these eggs live over at the It's fascinating stuff, although it feels a bit overly dramatic. It keeps making heartbeat sounds, and whenever a statistical deviation exceeds a certain boundary it goes 'ping'.
So not only is it a website that predicts the future, it's a website that goes 'ping' that predicts the future. what more could a geek want?
I want the fire back.
...require extraordinary evidence.
I'm keeping my mind open (hey, it's a big universe out there), held together by a healthy dose of skepticism and intellectual honesty.
My first thought, upon reading the RedNova article, was to wonder what the article didn't say. Am I the only one who found it rather credulous?
Maybe this is legit, but I won't be rushing out to buy a random number generator to go along with my astrology charts and I Ching anytime soon.;)
Someday, you're going to die. Get over it.
Who knows, maybe this will be some sort of evidence of us existing in a simulated world. Perhaps one where the people running it wish to know how people perceive what everyone thinks up to a major disaster. The simulation might need to increase its recording rate of people's minds leading up the the event. Or whatever. Just a thought.
Wtf? Brownian motion, Bose-Einstein statistics, explanation of photoeffect, special and general relativity theories were developed and finished long before 1932 - the year Einstein accepted the offer from Princeton.
Anyone care to elabote what great discoveries he did while in Princeton, and how is his name even remotely related to this idiotic story? Who gives money to these lunatics? Next thing you know they will be studying astrology, alchemy and witchcraft in Princeton. Really sad, if this not a hoax.
Wow. I guess it's time to tell Princeton that "Capt'n Hector" says they're wrong so it must be true!
"Nature doesn't care how smart you are. You can still be wrong." - Richard Feynman
I stumbled across this project years ago as I was researching "real" random number generation for encryption work. I found a very peculiar disclaimer from some manufacturers that claimed that the output would not be random is used in Psi research.
From that I found multiple pointers to a book, Margins of Reality, by Jahn and Dunne. It details research done at the Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research lab. They basically run millions of RNG trials with people trying to influence the result, and they get pretty much statistically provable effects, but at a very low level (something like a 5 parts per 10,000 deviation from the norm.) What's freaky is it's so consistent they've gotten to the point that they can tell you which test subject is influencing things by the results. Very freaky stuff.
Anyway, even if you're a die-hard prove-it-to-me science buff, the research results described in the book will really make you ponder how well we understand things, particularly RNGs and rigorous test procedures, if nothing else.
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.
Perhaps you should consider that the way this machine supposedly predicts the future is entierly subjective. What is the cutoff point for when randomness becomes non-randomness? What is the cutoff point for what is a significant world event? What happens when the detecor goes off and nothing takes place? What predictions do the scientists make about what the machne will do before and during a significant world event, however they may define that? Most importanly however, why did the article fail to mention any of this? Perhaps you should consider the article for 5 minutes before accusing others of unfounded skepticism.
What the hell, it's being run by Princeton? No way I'm believing this now.
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.
Because this story is about on par with what I'd expect to see on the cover of that rag when I'm waiting in line at the supermarket.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
It took me all of 5 seconds to find this article which pretty much debunks the entire project:m
http://www.skepticreport.com/print/radin2002-p.ht
If I were this guy, I would claim that women's breasts get firmer right before big events, and ask for a million-dollar grant to study hundreds of women. If you are going to be a quack, then go allll the way.
Table-ized A.I.
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.
sqrt(192*0.05*0.95) = 3.02
So we're 5.4 events away from expectations with a standard deviation of 3.02 events. This translates (through the student t-distribution) to a probability of about 0.08. That's intriguing, although not a mind blowingly low probability.
Aside from the statistics, they've got a problem with the scientific method. They don't have any control days, so if their machines just produced unlikely streams of numbers more often than they should, the researchers could accidentally assume they are predicting the future. A better test would be to run the REGs for a year, collect the stream of data, and keep it secret. Then, at the end of the year, the scientists could pick out an equal number of "important" and "unimportant" days. If there's a statistically significant difference in the frequency of unlikely REG data on important and unimportant days, then you've got something. If not, they might just have a problem with their REGs.
(I'd link to a better explanation of how I calculated standard deviation here, but the page I fould was an ugly pdf. You may have better luck simply Googling for it.)
"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..."
I believe their algorithm for producing random numbers was sound - it was based on completely unpredictable world events of extreme importance. Oh, wait...
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.
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
Princeton is a country club. Apologies to their graduate math program... but come ON.
I may not like Princeton, but I respect them.
If a random number generator is not behaving perfectly randomly, it isn't a random number generator, now is it?
And what is causing this decided non-randomness? Hmm? That's the question here. They're looking for an answer. It's called science. Just because it sounds strange doesn't mean it's wrong. Don't think I'm saying the inverse of that either, that just because it sounds strange, it's right. I'm not. I'm merely saying give respected and credible researchers credit for trying to explain this behavior in a scientific manner.
"Nature doesn't care how smart you are. You can still be wrong." - Richard Feynman
what does this prove, other than that they just didn't build a very good random number generator?
once you go slack, you never go back
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.
Working for an infinite period, they'd eventually produce the works of Shakespeare, yeah?
You'd probably get the entire contents of Usenet too for free.
Cheers
Stor
"Yeah well there's a lot of stuff that should be, but isn't"
At the very least I want to know how to generate a stream of random numbers that reproduces this effect
Any stream of random numbers will work. If a *special* stream is required, then it's not random...
It may not be a "special" stream, but a specific way of implementing a generator that looks to be totally random. I'd like to see several years' worth of data, so that I can compare it with historical events beyond the scope that they've so far mentioned.
The point of science is to attempt to understand the universe that we inhabit. If there's some correlation between otherwise random events and specific events that can be reliably demonstrated then we'll have some piece of the universe newly discovered, and we can begin to explore it and its full implications. That doesn't mean that it's likely, or that even if it's true that everyone would immediately accept it, but it's still progress as long as the proper methods are used.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
Eh...not a very good debunking, IMHO.
The response to images makes sense - people would learn a response. If they really want to show the something significant, they'd have to show that people can either anticipate a correct strong response all of the time (by also showing images that would invoke no response), or show that they would invoke a strong response the first time after a series of no-responses.
The other part doesn't jive, though. The theory that this group of devices predicts disasters does not preclude the idea that it also produces false positives - or even that it also picks up something else of significance that has not been identified.
Still, I question how they go about producing these random numbers. That could be the culprit.
Oh, and as far as the straight line thing, and the curve - they're obviously talking about aggregated data. Unlike the "law of averages" as applied to a single number, the probability of getting a large number of the same values over and over can be calculated. It is very important to remember that what has happened in the past should have some weight in predicting what will happen in the future.
What if all scientists took your approach to science?
"Oh look, the apple fell from the tree, and I think it fell at the same accelaration as the last object I saw fall. I wonder if all objects fall with the same acceleration? Too bad I can't learn anything from that, since what happens in the past has no bearing at all on the future. I'm gonna go get some pie."
It is quite easy for someone versed in probability to calculate (and I'm hoping they have) the likelihood of occurance of the anomalies they have witnessed. And if they've gotten a significant result (as in - this possibility that has occured 4 times this month should only happen on average once every hundred years...), then it might be worth looking into. Of course, maybe they're just fooling themselves, or being fooled by someone else. That's an awful lot of highly educated people to not realize that an anomoly is actually normal.
Mod me down and I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine!
Yeah like slashdotting the "eggs".
OK, 65 eggs, so we'll use the extra one as a parity bit. Everyone concentrate on the following binary number really really hard:
1010011 1101100 1100001 1110011 1101000 1000100 1101111 1110100 1
Someone had to do it.
It took me all of 5 seconds to find this article which pretty much debunks the entire project:
The article you link to debunks nothing.
Basically, the argument of the article is this:
(1) He showed me that, coincidentally with such-and-such an event, the RNGs strayed significantly from 50/50.
(2) I showed him that they also did the day before.
(3) I asked him what happened the day before.
(4) He said he didn't know.
(5) Ergo, what a load.
While that argument is seemingly cogent from a simplistic point of view, a little thought reveals that it's basically irrelevant. Specifically, the argument merely debunks a claim that is not being made in the first place.
These spikes happen all the time. No one denies that. Pointing out that - which is all the supposed "debunking" article does - is neither here nor there.
The claim being made is that the spikes happen more frequently than predicted by random chance when "major" events happen. This supposed "debunking" article does not address that claim at all. At all.
Omigod..... I'm PSYCHIC!!!!
I think I'll just go to sleep now ... before I get more tired.
Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
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".
On the Princeton site (which now is down) they had 2 sections. One was "Scientific data" and the other was "Artistic and feeling".
The scientific side had a page mentioning the RNG capturing devices. All use a quantum-based RNG. They have a multitude of devices from either made themselves and company-prefab 'for the laboratory' RNG's.
The key here is they all use quantum-based randomness generators.
So yes. This experiment does as you say.
This quite possibly has a simple explanation if you make a couple of assumptions that have largely been proven:
The quantum states of subatomic particles are entwined with and affect the states of other particles. Essentially, entangled particles are the same particle existing in two or more places at once.
Space and time are relative and functions of each other. Therefore, if a quantum particle or more precisely a unique quantum state can coexist in multiple spatial locations, it most certainly can coexist in multiple temporal locations. The "information" of quantum state changes is transferred between entangled particles instantly and over infinite distances without the use of any matter or energy. Therefore, the domains and constraints of space and time do not apply to quantum information.
Ok, here comes the big assumption: If we assume consciousness is in part a function of quantum states, then consciousness can directly affect the universe without transfer of matter or energy and is not constrained by "real" space or time.
The fact that ordinary random number generators are detecting an anomaly vs. some kind of specialized instrument just contributes more evidence to this theory. "True" random number generators typically work by amplifying and digitizing the static produced in an intentionally noisy circuit. Random electromagnetic energy is essentially the product of random quantum states. If something is influencing those states it will produce a pattern in the randomness.
Any stream of random numbers will work. If a *special* stream is required, then it's not random...
No, this is incorrect. There exists an infinite variety of streams of random numbers, and not all of them have the same properties, nor are they of the same quality, nor would all random number sources normally be expected to react to outside events (like someone coming to the lab and "concentrating") in the same way. Random numbers can be gotten from a radioactive source (which might be one of thousands of different isotopes), rolling dice, unstable electronic circuits, dripping faucets, the weather, etc. All can map cleanly to a given range and can usually pass all tests used to determine whether or not a sequence is truly random. The pseudorandom numbers that are commonly used in computing (for example) are generated by linear congruential methods and they fail these tests; k-tuples of these numbers form a lattice structure when you plot them in k-dimensional space. If any stream of truly random numbers will work, then any of these sources can be used to predict the future!
Now granted, this is all solidly in the realm of nonsense, so this discussion is already a bit esoteric. But if you seriously think that these guys are right and that outside events are reflected in their random number streams, then the question arises, is there a connection between these human-world events and the random number generator they're using, or is the connection between those events and the random numbers themselves- just by virtue of their randomness?
I say it's between outside events and the particular generator being used, because that (although wildly implausible) is the weaker of these two claims- which are both whoppers. If the prediction comes from the numbers themselves, then the claim being made here is a much, much stronger claim- that any random process is somehow connected to major events in the human world. Now that's the sort of magic I stopped believing in by the time I was 4. (I don't buy the weaker claim either, but I have to acknowledge that it has an infinitely greater chance of being true than the stronger claim.)
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.
Here's what the Skeptic Report has to say about the "Global Consciousness Project".
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)
I'd like to see how many "special" sequences they had which were NOT followed by an event they deemed special.
Probably lots. Their numbers are apparently downloadable, but you can always derive ex post facto "predictions" from random crap.
Any stream of random numbers will work. If a *special* stream is required, then it's not random...
Say they have a random sequence r_1, r_2, r_3... which has subsequences {s_1}, {s_2}, {s_3}, {s_4} (mapping to portions of the r sequence) that are determined to be predictive of human-world events H_1, H_2, H_3...
I can then construct a modified sequence (call it "t", i.e. t_1, t_2, t_3...) where all the sequences have been removed (or have been exchanged by chunks of the r sequence that are way further down). The t sequence is a perfectly random sequence, just like r, and it predicts none of the events in the H series. Therefore, even if a random sequence exists with these properties, other random sequences exist that will not work, and the statement any stream of random numbers will work is false. QED.
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.
In taking an (excellent) economics course in college, I was assigned the de rigeur "follow a handful of stocks and explain their motion" project. We did it for, I believe, 12 weeks. I faithfully followed some financial stocks day to day and produced weeekly summaries, diligently comparing movement in the stocks to events in the financial and wider worlds.
:)
At the end of the paper I wrote, I had a disturbing flash of honesty and commented that, while I had successfully drawn connections between every movment and some event, I had no faith in my explanations. The world is too big and the connections between any event and my stocks was so tenuous, that I suspected random chance. Moreover, because there were so many events in the world on any given day -- some positive and some negative -- that one could always find something that moved the data "the right way".
This project sounds awfully similar to me.
BTW, the prof noted my reservations and commented (paraphrased) "That's what you were intended to learn from this exercise all along."
The Mongrel Dogs Who Teach
Listen, there are many causality based experiments in Quantum Mechanics relating to things like entanglement that change the outcome based on just the ability to observe the result. This doesn't really surprise me.
All we need to see if this experiment is valid is the experimental data and that can be checked against various statistical methods (like chi-squared maybe) and correlated against the mangitude of the event. Perhaps even geographical factors come into play. If it's science, it can be proven with science - and there's no real reason to believe it isn't science just because our present understanding is so limited.
All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain.
It sounds funny, I know,
But it really is so,
Oh, I'm my own grandpa.
I'm my own grandpa.
I'm my own grandpa.
It sounds funny, I know,
But it really is so,
Oh, I'm my own grandpa.
Now many, many years ago, when I was twenty-three,
I was married to a widow who was pretty as could be.
This widow had a grown-up daughter who had hair of red.
My father fell in love with her, and soon they, too, were wed.
This made my dad my son-in-law and changed my very life,
My daughter was my mother, cause she was my father's wife.
To complicate the matter, even though it brought me joy,
I soon became the father of a bouncing baby boy.
My little baby then became a brother-in-law to Dad,
And so became my uncle, though it made me very sad.
For if he was my uncle, then that also made him brother
Of the widow's grown-up daughter, who, of course, was my stepmother.
Father's wife then had a son who kept him on the run,
And he became my grandchild, for he was my daughter's son.
My wife is now my mother's mother, and it makes me blue,
Because, although she is my wife, she's my grandmother, too.
Now if my wife is my grandmother, then I'm her grandchild,
And everytime I think of it, it nearly drives me wild,
For now I have become the strangest case you ever saw
As husband of my grandmother, I am my own grandpa!
I'm my own grandpa.
I'm my own grandpa.
It sounds funny, I know, but it really is so,
Oh, I'm my own grandpa.
I want a new world. I think this one is broken.
From http://www.princeton.edu/~rdnelson/:
The PEAR program has used three generations of random event generators, with different primary sources of white noise, but important common features of design. The original "benchmark" experiment used a commercial random source developed by Elgenco, Inc., the core of which is proprietary. Elgenco's engineering staff describe the proprietary module as "solid state junctions with precision pre-amplifiers," implying processes that rely on quantum tunneling to produce an unpredictable, broad-spectrum white noise in the form of low-amplitude voltage fluctuations. The PEAR Portable REG uses Johnson noise in resistors, which is so-called "thermal noise" and is also a quantum level phenomenon that produces a well-behaved broad-spectrum fluctuation. The PEAR Micro-REG uses a field effect transistor (FET) for the primary noise source, again relying on quantum tunneling, and providing completely uncorrelated fundamental events that compound to an unpredictable voltage fluctuation.
At least it doesn't sound like a pseudo-random generator.
Don't whistle while you're pissing.
Quite a few, according to this interesting, skeptical report
Good -- because, as we all know...
"The generation of random numbers is too important to be left to chance"
-Robert R. Coveyou, Oak Bridge National Laboratory
David Gould
main(i){putchar(340056100>>(i-1)*5&31|!!(i<6)<< 6)&&main(++i);}
I'm doubtful that this is any kind of hoax. Do a little 'net research on the people involved in the project. They've been pouring effort into this and other things like it for decades. If it is a hoax, it's one hell of a long-term hoax. Also, if they're studying the gullibility of other scientists, you'd think they would have finished by now, since they've been criticized for about as long as they've been making claims.
In my opinion, it is likely that this is an example of good scientists who've fallen 'victim' to their own desire to believe in the paranormal. They're observing(creating) patterns that they want to see, because when they see something that catches their imaginations, they lose their ability to think critically about the data. I admit that my opinion is largely uninformed -- I haven't looked carefully at everything they've published. But a couple hours of studying their methods and hypotheses leads me to believe I'm right.
The plural of 'anecdote' is not 'data'. --Dan Kaminsky
"Random Number Generator". That is a very dubious statement. You see, computers can never be truly random. Whenever a computer generates anything random, it isn't truly random but pseudorandom. When a computer generates a sequence of random numbers, it is based on a random seed, which goes through several math processes. Eventually, this sequence will repeat itself. Even the most advanced so-called random number generators repeat themselves after millions of digits. Computer randomness is never true randomness, and that's why chaotic systems and quantum randomness is so applealing to computer security: Because these things are much more "truly" random. Example: LavaRnd (http://www.lavarnd.org/what/index.html) Considering that the article says that the machine 's chip is "no more complex than the ones found in modern pocket calculators", I find it hard to beleive that this machine is actually random, so even if you don't consider all the other evidence for why this is a hoax, you see that there is a fundemental flaw with this whole theory in the first place.
Yeah, and why do you think western media was saying so much about it? Because many westerners were spending their Christmas in Thailand. Otherwise, it would have been a small item on page 10 ...
Why Physicists Can't Fight
How we know is more important than what we know.
Suppose t still shows some tendencies to predict H_n, are you going to construct new ones until it doesn't?
FRA: STFU GTFO
Digital monkeys do a pretty reasonable job though (Java applet - simulates monkeys & keyboards, searches for Shakespeare)
Curiosity was framed. Ignorance killed the cat.
This sounds like a Jewish telegram
They read "start worrying, details to follow."
___
It's the end of my comment as I know it and I feel fine.
At the very least I want to know how to generate a stream of random numbers that reproduces this effect
That's really the problem, isn't it? To generate a true random stream of numbers is incredibly difficult, if not impossible. How are all these "eggs" creating random numbers? If they're using the same method of creating random numbers, of course they will find similar conclusions.
Once all these "eggs" discover a flucuation pattern, one need only read the newspapers and 'select the data' that these flucuations are responding to. They're simply selecting their data.
This isn't just bad science, this is stupid science.
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.
In terms of how people reacted to the event, they are quite similar. In both cases here was an outpourng of grief - internationally, even by people who weren't affected in any way at all.
In a greater view, the tsunami had far more effect, as it killed 100,000 more people than her accident. It'll change the economy of a few countries and more, but still, people are very moved by both events.
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.
What he meant is that these "predictors" seem to have a preference for events that have a mediatic impact on the West.
Did they "foresee" the earthquakes in Turkey, or in Bam (Iran), which killed many more people than the 09/11 attacks ? Also it seems that they were unable to predict the death of Diana, but for some reason "reacted" when her funerals were shown on TV. Hm. When the definition for "important event" is loose enough, any random number generator can be said predict "significant events" of some kind.
We're right into "Bible code" land.
Besides, the Red Nova article is simply ridiculous. The fact that some people have a spike in neural activity or stress a few seconds before being presented with items by the experimenter is presented as evidence of "seeing into the future" !
On the other hand, maybe these "eggs" are so efficient that they actually brought us an April's fool in February ?...
Thomas-
Seriously people, get a grip. Blondlot and N-rays story is repeating again and again. Someone, please, hit those Princeton morons with a clue stick.
Future Wiki -- If you don't think about the future, you cannot have one.
So what? Anybody can do bad science.
Argument from authority is a fallacy. An oft used case is "Einstein said/thought X" therefore by extension X must be true.
The reason Einstein's work was respected was for the thorough scientific work he did. It's valid to say "Einstein showed X to be true by providing proof Y gained from experiment Z", but when it comes down to baseless opinions Einstein carries as much weight as my granny.
Curiosity was framed. Ignorance killed the cat.
Lots of animals can hear a lot better than us, it is not unlikely they simply heard the waves comming.
As for the uneasyness it is not impossible for low frequency sounds to do some strange things with your stomach.
It might be curious, but you have to be a special kind of crackpot to drag in a global conscience.
Jeroen
Secure messaging: http://quickmsg.vreeken.net/
So they look for a major event.
Then they look on their graph for a spike at that time.
If there is a spike but not at the time the event took place then it is evidence that the machine is predicting the future.
If there is a spike and it is at the right time then the machine has detected a global conciousness
If there is no spike anywhere near the event then the machine must just not have registered that event.
I don't see how you can lose with a process like that.
I learned it under the axiom, "chance has no memory". Legions of would be lottery millionares are stung by this every day.
A goal is a dream with a deadline
http://www.skepticreport.com/print/radin2002-p.htm
After reading this, the Global Conscious Project does not seem to be too true.
the number of states the generator can be in is finite and we do have an infinity of world events ... so we have established that there cannot be a one to one correspondance between the states of the generator and future .... which implies that even if we can "predict" an event of world importance is to occour, we will never be able to pin point what event ... which bring us to square one and tells us "future is random" which is in agreement with chaos theory ....
-
http://www.jsasoc.com/docs/Sep1101.pdf
and
-
http://noosphere.princeton.edu/papers/jseScargle.
p df
for an independent and critical analysis of the original data of the Global Consciousness Project.and things become old VERY fast around here (american news).
the recovery, the continual crisis and tragedy, body counts still rising. it's all but a reflection of what people domestically care about, and for how long.
sorry to say, but most people just don't give a shit about the disaster (or other things) as much as they care to know which bachelor has been voted off some stupid show this week.
we haven't evolved in this country to care about other peoples tragedies that much, if they don't particularly affect us.
- I'd prefer not to.
I'm proposing that the generator is somehow tapping into the realm of probabilities. That it is detecting when probabilities are narrowing at certain times, allowing major world-changing events to come together. This kind of links in with participatory/final anthropic principle, and multiple universes (whether they are tied together by string theory's yet unseen dimensions).
From those articles, it seems the existence of our consciousness threatens reality itself in its current form. Then again, this could all be like Kepler's "six planets" theories, or describing the sun as Zeus's son on a sky chariot.
"Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart, he dreams himself your master."
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?
I studied under Prof. Chris French mentioned in the article during 93-95 (I'm a Psych/Comp BSc) and we looked at some of the earlier experiments that lead to the 'eggs'. Chris French at that time firmly disbelieved the claims being put forward and tried to show the results were influenced by the experimenter. However the experiments were re-made to eliminate any confounding design problems and still the positive results persisted. It was very strange. In the light of these new results and others it gradually became impossible to explain them other than the 'future effect' was happening somehow. I am amazed that Chris French (the most hardened sceptic there is - a friend of James Randi too) now accepts these results. It is as I thought 10 years ago, when it couldn't be explained away either, - there is something to this. A similar line of research using the internet as a source of liguistic data has revealed prediction abilities too. These results are so good and seemingly accurate there are now for sale at $250 per monthly run from www.halfpasthuman.com. This isn't spam on my part - the offer is now closed but was open nearly all of 2004. Free nuggets can be found from George Ure at UrbanSurvival.com as and when runs are complete. Personally, I have some small knowledge of the weird results of the quantum world and also have been influenced by Jung's work with 'synchronicity'. I've formed these things into some kind of half-baked theory - at least allowing my rational mind to accept these results may have basis in physical reality, but one that we do not understand at all well right now. This was my first post on /. - I never felt qualified before!
spoonerize "magic trackpad"
The flat line they are talking about is likely a rolling average. With a rolling average when the results are trully random the display will be flat. However when the results break away from randomness the average will tend away from the midline.
This would be the easiest way to graph deviations from true randomness.
The ultimate plays for Madden 2006
They *are* getting statistically signficant result. And these results are hard to refute scientifically (easy to ridicule though). I'm not thinking of the current "predict the future" effect, which I believe is hard to formulate scientifically, but the other similar experiment at PEAR.
However, all of these results live the same place, namely in what I call the borderland of statistics. Very small effects that get significant by huge numbers. Rather than making me believe in a huge future-pedicting global consciuesness, it makes me doubt these areas of statistics. We see a lot of such results from especially medicine. Like eating walnuts is bad for you. Based on a very small effect and a huge population. I tend to ignore these, and only go listen to those things that has a big effect. Like smoking is very unhealthy, you can see that effect with rather small samples.
I'd like to see them make a fortune on the stock market (stock prices should be subject to these effects) or some other practical application before I believe it.
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
No, but people who think Jung was espousing some new-age cosmic oneness are. Jung wasn't talking about a psychic link, he was saying that (to quote wikipedia) "Symbols have a certain similarity and fall into similar patterns in different places and times, simply because all human minds are basically similar." Essentially, we have a tendency to think basically alike for the same reason we all tend to look basically alike. The "collective unconcious" has more to do with genetics than parapsychology.
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
One of their pages says:
"...and the complete database at the end of 2001 occupies approximately 3 gigabytes of storage in a highly compressed form."
I'd love to get my hands on the compression algorithm they use to highly compress those random numbers.
There is a short description here, with links:
http://noosphere.princeton.edu/reg.html
Briefly, they are based on electronic fluctuations that get amplified and sampled. The algorithms themselves look quite basic, they just have to ensure that the statistical distribution of the outcome has the desired properties. For instance, XORing the data from two similar generators looks like a good way to get ones and zeroes with equal probability.
Gravitation is a theory, not a fact.
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.
Erm... 'less random'? Does this phrase ring alarm bells with anyone else too?
Either they mean 'random' in the information-theoretical sense, in which case they've clearly done a huge amount of work on various compression techniques and suchlike, or they're probably using it wrongly.
When most people use 'random', what they really mean is 'randomly-generated'. For example, here's a random number: 43. Is that really random? How could you tell??? Maybe I picked my house number, maybe I pressed keys at random, maybe that's my favourite number...
As books like The Bible Code, the work of Nostradamus, and umpteen others have shown: you can find significance and meaning in anything if you look hard enough! The knack is to find it when you don't know what results you're looking for; to make successful predictions. Without that, the whole project seems a bit 'random' to me...
Ceterum censeo subscriptionem esse delendam.
Carl Jung wrote about a collective unconscious. Was he a crack pot?
It depends on how you wish to interpret his works.
Jung, unlike Freud and his followers, was concerned about scientific rigor, and his work appears to be valuable both pragmatically and theoretically. Many perform a naive unscientific reading, and attempt to use his works to support the rankest forms of BS. I find these interpretation both distasteful and unfounded.
When Jung began his study, the majority of clinical observation produced data on abnormal patients, not healthy individuals. The richest source of data on normal psychology came from literature and mythology. Clearly, familiar plots and psychological patterns appear as themes in the worlds fables, religions, and written works.
Jung fits right in, when read alongside the most recent works in evolutionary psychology and related disciplines. Those in the related disciplines of Neurology, Evolutionary psychology, etc. currently explore subsystems of our brain and how their structure and functions map to our behaviors. These modern scientists alternately describe observed behavior and attempt to discover their underlying causes in our physical and genetic systems. Jung attempted find common threads in myth, religion, and literature and discover their underlying ground in the human mind.
When Jung began his career the vast majority of psychological was directed at abnormal or industrial psychology. Most discussion of normal psychology was philosophical. As a result Jung looked at archetypal themes which recurred throughout myth and literature, and still resonated with individuals of his day. By his reasoning, these archetypal themes owe their power and endurance to the psychological makeup of individuals.
These themes are both popular and powerful because people are moved by them, relate to them, or understand them intuitively without requiring reflection or study. Since they are basic and independent of rational focus, he termed them unconscious. Since they appeared shared by all people he called it "collective unconscious".
People are inclined to behave similarly to one another in certain circumstances and interpret the world in similar ways. It is logical to conclude that one reason we tend to do so could because our brains are so similar to one another. Jung wrote of mind and psychological tendency, a higher level of abstraction. These are no incommensurable.
In my reading of Jung (direct English translations, since I don't know German) I find no mystical or unscientific connotations. Unfortunately, many readers misread the term collective unconscious. They jump to the conclusion that it has mystical connotations and dismiss the work as unscientific. Alternatively they are unscientifically minded and eagerly attempt to use his work to justify pseudo-scientific or mystical hogwash.
I am not saying his work is all correct, just that a number of his theories and observations are both consistent with the latest scientific theories and informative.
So they're compressing something like:
98 zeros (so obviously 102 ones, that doesn't need to be stored)
90 zeros
103 zeros
The AACS key is NOT 0xF606EEFD628B1CA427BEA93A9CA9773F
From http://noosphere.princeton.edu/story.html
"The main GCP prediction was similar to that for the preceding New Year, namely that there would be an accumulation of deviant EGG data during a 10 minute period around midnight. The result in this case was positive but not very impressive compared to the year before. On the other hand, a striking outcome was generated with a different analytical approach applied by Dean Radin. He predicted that the variation among the individual eggs (we had 27 running by this time) would decrease near the transition to the new year, and become very small just as everyone's focus centered on the stroke of midnight. His analysis showed a spectacular confirmation of that idea, with a highly improbable spike in the data, registering its greatest deviation just a few seconds from 12:00. The probability for this outcome was very impressive, on the order of 1 in 1000, even with an appropriate adjustment for multiple tests. As in other cases, this strong result provoked a flurry of independent analyses, and again we found that the exact definition of terms is a strong determinant of the outcome; some apparently similar approaches showed little evidence of an effect at midnight. [Emphasis added. And yet still he goes on to say...] Nevertheless, several converging analytical efforts appear to give support for the conclusion that the data around midnight going from 1999 to 2000 differ quite remarkably from the random quality they should have according to theory. In other words, the EGG data aren't random at that time, but instead show signs of having been affected by global consciousness."
In other words: "If we look at the data after the fact in whatever ways make it appear meaningful, it appears meaningful."
There is nothing to see here. Move along, move along.
-Simon
Err, you mean Oak Ridge Natl Lab, I think?
Non, je ne veux pas coucher avec toi ce soir.