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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.
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."
It just spit out the number 42. I guess there really is something to this little black box.
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
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.)
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
Wow, you're good.
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.
I feel a disturbance in the force. It's as if a million random number generators cried out all at once ... and became silent.
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.
For more information on REGs, here's a link to Dr. Nelson's website: http://www.princeton.edu/~rdnelson/
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
"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...
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.
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.)
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.
Quite a few, according to this interesting, skeptical report
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.