Lebell

This is one of the more interesting articles I've read in a while.

Basically, there is evidence that random number generators can be influence by major world events...before such events occur.

This has major implications for philosophy and science (the nature of time) if true.

Anyway, enjoy

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http://www.rednova.com/news/display/?id=126649#121

Can This Black Box See Into the Future?


DEEP in the basement of a dusty university library in Edinburgh lies a small black box, roughly the size of two cigarette packets side by side, that churns out random numbers in an endless stream.

At first glance it is an unremarkable piece of equipment. Encased in metal, it contains at its heart a microchip no more complex than the ones found in modern pocket calculators.

But, 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.

The machine apparently sensed the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Centre four hours before they happened - but in the fevered mood of conspiracy theories of the time, the claims were swiftly knocked back by sceptics. But last December, it also appeared to forewarn of the Asian tsunami just before the deep sea earthquake that precipitated the epic tragedy.

Now, even the doubters are acknowledging that here is a small box with apparently inexplicable powers.

'It's Earth-shattering stuff,' says Dr Roger Nelson, emeritus researcher at Princeton University in the United States, who is heading the research project behind the 'black box' phenomenon.

'We're very early on in the process of trying to figure out what's going on here. At the moment we're stabbing in the dark.' Dr Nelson's investigations, called the Global Consciousness Project, were originally hosted by Princeton University and are centred on one of the most extraordinary experiments of all time. Its aim is to detect whether all of humanity shares a single subconscious mind that we can all tap into without realising.

And machines like the Edinburgh black box have thrown up a tantalising possibility: that scientists may have unwittingly discovered a way of predicting the future.

Although many would consider the project's aims to be little more than fools' gold, it has still attracted a roster of 75 respected scientists from 41 different nations. Researchers from Princeton - where Einstein spent much of his career - work alongside scientists from universities in Britain, the Netherlands, Switzerland and Germany. The project is also the most rigorous and longest-running investigation ever into the potential powers of the paranormal.

'Very often paranormal phenomena evaporate if you study them for long enough,' says physicist Dick Bierman of the University of Amsterdam. 'But this is not happening with the Global Consciousness Project. The effect is real. The only dispute is about what it means.' The project has its roots in the extraordinary work of Professor Robert Jahn of Princeton University during the late 1970s. He was one of the first modern scientists to take paranormal phenomena seriously. Intrigued by such things as telepathy, telekinesis - the supposed psychic power to move objects without the use of physical force - and extrasensory perception, he was determined to study the phenomena using the most up-to-date technology available.

One of these new technologies was a humble-looking black box known was a Random Event Generator (REG). This used computer technology to generate two numbers - a one and a zero - in a totally random sequence, rather like an electronic coin-flipper.

The pattern of ones and noughts - 'heads' and 'tails' as it were - could then be printed out as a graph. 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. Any deviation from this equal number shows up as a gently rising curve.

During the late 1970s, Prof Jahn decided to investigate whether the power of human thought alone could interfere in some way with the machine's usual readings. He hauled strangers off the street and asked them to concentrate their minds on his number generator. In effect, he was asking them to try to make it flip more heads than tails.

It was a preposterous idea at the time. The results, however, were stunning and have never been satisfactorily explained.

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'.

According to all of the known laws of science, this should not have happened - but it did. And it kept on happening.

Dr Nelson, also working at Princeton University, then extended Prof Jahn's work by taking random number machines to group meditations, which were very popular in America at the time. Again, the results were eyepopping. The groups were collectively able to cause dramatic shifts in the patterns of numbers.

From then on, Dr Nelson was hooked.

Using the internet, he connected up 40 random event generators from all over the world to his laboratory computer in Princeton. These ran constantly, day in day out, generating millions of different pieces of data. Most of the time, the resulting graph on his computer looked more or less like a flat line.

But then on September 6, 1997, something quite extraordinary happened: the graph shot upwards, recording a sudden and massive shift in the number sequence as his machines around the world started reporting huge deviations from the norm. The day was of historic importance for another reason, too.

For it was the same day that an estimated one billion people around the world watched the funeral of Diana, Princess of Wales at Westminster Abbey.

Dr Nelson was convinced that the two events must be related in some way.

Could he have detected a totally new phenomena? Could the concentrated emotional outpouring of millions of people be able to influence the output of his REGs. If so, how?

Dr Nelson was at a loss to explain it.

So, in 1998, he gathered together scientists from all over the world to analyse his findings. They, too, were stumped and resolved to extend and deepen the work of Prof Jahn and Dr Nelson. The Global Consciousness Project was born.

Since then, the project has expanded massively. A total of 65 Eggs (as the generators have been named) in 41 countries have now been recruited to act as the 'eyes' of the project.

And the results have been startling and inexplicable in equal measure.

For during the course of the experiment, the Eggs have 'sensed' a whole series of major world events as they were happening, from the Nato bombing of Yugoslavia to the Kursk submarine tragedy to America's hung election of 2000.

The Eggs also regularly detect huge global celebrations, such as New Year's Eve.

But the project threw up its greatest enigma on September 11, 2001.

As the world stood still and watched the horror of the terrorist attacks unfold across New York, something strange was happening to the Eggs.

Not only had they registered the attacks as they actually happened, but the characteristic shift in the pattern of numbers had begun four hours before the two planes even hit the Twin Towers.

They had, it appeared, detected that an event of historic importance was about to take place before the terrorists had even boarded their fateful flights. The implications, not least for the West's security services who constantly monitor electronic 'chatter', are clearly enormous.

'I knew then that we had a great deal of work ahead of us,' says Dr Nelson.

What could be happening? Was it a freak occurrence, perhaps?

Apparently not. For in the closing weeks of December last year, the machines went wild once more.

Twenty-four hours later, an earthquake deep beneath the Indian Ocean triggered the tsunami which devastated South-East Asia, and claimed the lives of an estimated quarter of a million people.

So could the Global Consciousness Project really be forecasting the future?

Cynics will quite rightly point out that there is always some global event that could be used to 'explain' the times when the Egg machines behaved erratically. After all, our world is full of wars, disasters and terrorist outrages, as well as the occasional global celebration. Are the scientists simply trying too hard to detect patterns in their raw data?

The team behind the project insist not. They claim that by using rigorous scientific techniques and powerful mathematics it is possible to exclude any such random connections.

'We're perfectly willing to discover that we've made mistakes,' says Dr Nelson. 'But we haven't been able to find any, and neither has anyone else.

Our data shows clearly that the chances of getting these results by fluke are one million to one against.

That's hugely significant.' But many remain sceptical.

Professor Chris French, a psychologist and noted sceptic at Goldsmiths College in London, says: 'The Global Consciousness Project has generated some very intriguing results that cannot be readily dismissed. I'm involved in similar work to see if we get the same results. We haven't managed to do so yet but it's only an early experiment. The jury's still out.' Strange as it may seem, though, there's nothing in the laws of physics that precludes the possibility of foreseeing the future.

It is possible - in theory - that time may not just move forwards but backwards, too. And if time ebbs and flows like the tides in the sea, it might just be possible to foretell major world events. We would, in effect, be 'remembering' things that had taken place in our future.

'There's plenty of evidence that time may run backwards,' says Prof Bierman at the University of Amsterdam.

'And if it's possible for it to happen in physics, then it can happen in our minds, too.' In other words, Prof Bierman believes that we are all capable of looking into the future, if only we could tap into the hidden power of our minds. And there is a tantalising body of evidence to support this theory.

Dr John Hartwell, working at the University of Utrecht in the Netherlands, was the first to uncover evidence that people could sense the future. In the mid-1970s he hooked people up to hospital scanning machines so that he could study their brainwave patterns.

He began by showing them a sequence of provocative cartoon drawings.

When the pictures were shown, the machines registered the subject's brainwaves as they reacted strongly to the images before them. This was to be expected.

Far less easy to explain was the fact that in many cases, these dramatic patterns began to register a few seconds before each of the pictures were even flashed up.

It was as though Dr Hartwell's case studies were somehow seeing into the future, and detecting when the next shocking image would be shown next.

It was extraordinary - and seemingly inexplicable.

But it was to be another 15 years before anyone else took Dr Hartwell's work further when Dean Radin, a researcher working in America, connected people up to a machine that measured their skin's resistance to electricity. This is known to fluctuate in tandem with our moods - indeed, it's this principle that underlies many lie detectors.

Radin repeated Dr Hartwell's 'image response' experiments while measuring skin resistance. Again, people began reacting a few seconds before they were shown the provocative pictures. This was clearly impossible, or so he thought, so he kept on repeating the experiments. And he kept getting the same results.

'I didn't believe it either,' says Prof Bierman. 'So I also repeated the experiment myself and got the same results. I was shocked. After this I started to think more deeply about the nature of time.' To make matters even more intriguing, Prof Bierman says that other mainstream labs have now produced similar results but are yet to go public.

'They don't want to be ridiculed so they won't release their findings,' he says. 'So I'm trying to persuade all of them to release their results at the same time. That would at least spread the ridicule a little more thinly!' If Prof Bierman is right, though, then the experiments are no laughing matter.

They might help provide a solid scientific grounding for such strange phenomena as 'deja vu', intuition and a host of other curiosities that we have all experienced from time to time.

They may also open up a far more interesting possibility - that one day we might be able to enhance psychic powers using machines that can 'tune in' to our subconscious mind, machines like the little black box in Edinburgh.

Just as we have built mechanical engines to replace muscle power, could we one day build a device to enhance and interpret our hidden psychic abilities?

Dr Nelson is optimistic - but not for the short term. 'We may be able to predict that a major world event is going to happen. But we won't know exactly what will happen or where it's going to happen,' he says.

'Put it this way - we haven't yet got a machine we could sell to the CIA.'

But for Dr Nelson, talk of such psychic machines - with the potential to detect global catastrophes or terrorist outrages - is of far less importance than the implications of his work in terms of the human race.

For what his experiments appear to demonstrate is that while we may all operate as individuals, we also appear to share something far, far greater - a global consciousness. Some might call it the mind of God.

'We're taught to be individualistic monsters,' he says. 'We're driven by society to separate ourselves from each other. That's not right.

We may be connected together far more intimately than we realise.'

__________________
"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience." – C. S. Lewis

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flstf

Thanks for the article. This is fascinating and I intend to do some more research into this phenomena.

Wouldn't it be interesting if the Egg machines from Asia reported higher readings than the rest of the world right before the tidal wave?

If families had their own Egg machines they could compare the results with the rest of the world and when their's shot up and the others didn't it would be time for everyone in the family to stay home and safe or else go out and buy lottery tickets.

CSflim

A common tactic among paranormalists is to claim that anamolous data that doesn't fit their theories is actually evidence of 'just how powerful' the effects in question really are.

An example of this is when a television 'psychic' asks his viewers at home to take a watch that has stopped working and to hold it between their hands. He would use his incredible 'psychic energy' to start the watches again.
Sure enough people are soon phoning in about re-started watches. (The effect works because of the heat generated by the person's hands, not because of 'psi energy'). This is to be expected. But even more interesting is when people phone in about things other that watches re-starting (My microwave which has been acting up lately is okay again, and it has a clock in it...so it's kind of a watch). Naturally the tv psychic takes the credit for this, using it as evidence that his powers are so great as to be able to do things even more impressive that re-start watches.


So what has this got to do with the GCP? Well the orignal claim of the GCP was that the emotional state of people all over the world has the ability to alter the outcome of random number generators. This was backed up with information showing correlations to certain notable public events. (Interestingly all false positives are to be duly ignored).

Now in the wake of a number of very major public events (Sept 11 and Asian Tsunami), we have good reason to want to show a further corellation. But it doesn't quite work out. The 'anamolies' don't fit - they simply don't occur at the correct time. But this is seen as a perfect opportunity to show 'just how incredible it is'. This is done by invoking time travel. We are all to gasp in awe, as the effect is even more amazing than we at first thought - not only can the psychic restart wrist watches, he can influence much larger things, microwaves and the like!

It is important to realise that statistic anamolies occuring at some unspeicified time before a significant global event is significantly less impressive, not more impressive, than ones which occur in synchrony with them.


Another thing which I would like to point out, something which is categorically ignored by the author of the quoted article is the existence of false positives. Statistical anamolies which simply do not correspond to any global event. Declining to mention these, while technically not outright lying, is extremely dishonest in my opinion.


I want to make it quite clear that these researchers aren't looking at their graphs and then being suddenly taken aback by a massive deviation from what is to be expected! (and low and behold - look at the date!) - they are actively searching for data to correspond to these events!

"I had the most remarkable experience this evening. While coming in here, I saw licence plate ANZ 912. Calculate for me, please, the odds that of all the licence plates in the state of Washington I should happen to see ANZ 912."
- Richard Feynman

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filtherton

I think something along the lines of this could help explain why animals supposedly knew to get out of the way of the tsunami before it happened. Or why many animals are seemingly better at interpreting the signs of an approaching storm than some meteorologists.

I don't know much about rednova, but i don't think they seem like paranormal shills.

1010011010

I want to scream "correlation is not causation" at these people. Let's accept as a given that they've demonstrated that humans can produce anomalies in RNGs... but not that all RNG anomalies are produced by humans.

I could see that it the RNGs could be responding to something produced by the physical processes leading up to the earthquake itself... and not the human reaction to the tsunami flowing backwards through time. Since we apparently can't measure whatever is affecting the RNGs, we have no way to determine if it's an exclusive to humans thing.

It might be interesting to cross reference the RNG anomalies with seismic and/or astronomical data, for example.

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Simple Machines in Higher Dimensions

Hain

I happen to agree with 1010011010 and CSFlim here. I am one for saying that coincidence in the world is both free will and fate but a random number generator predicting events..? Even outside my reach. If these random numbers weren't exactly random but based on something, anything, like fractals even, then why not? I believe that humans once had such incredible abilities out of fables like telepathy, telekinesis, and precognition. That we evolved them out of ourselves as we became more technologically advanced and did not need such things. A random number sequence predicting the future? Doubtful. And if it did... people on Wall Street are in trouble.

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////\\// IRONSKY.NET \\//\\\\

Master_Shake

Doubtful, but sure it's possible.

I also am not familliar with Rednova. When or if this phenomenum is published in a peer reviewed scientific journal I'll reconsider.

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You know something, I don't think the sun even... exists... in this place. 'Cause I've been up for hours, and hours, and hours, and the night never ends here.

CSflim

A third common tactic of those promoting paranormalism; Any abnormal result is to be taken of evidence of a specific phenomena.

Why, might I ask is this reffered to as the Global Consciousness Project? I see absolutely no relation to consciousness what-so-ever. I see random numbers (apparently) corresponding (poorly) to major global events.

Why not the Global Heart-Rate Project? Or the Global Tear-Duct Project? Or the Global TV-Ratings Project? These names seem just as accurate. Why specifically consciousness?

Of course, I would be stating the obvious in answering this question, but I shall do so anyway; Heart-Rates and Tear Ducts just don't conjure up the necessary mystical connotations. Also, making grand statements about consciousness is historically the staple of mysticism. Heart-Rates and Tear Ducts just seem so boring in comparison!


I want to reiterate what 1010011010 said: Even if it could be shown that these anomalies correspond to major global events (and at this stage it is far from clear that this is the case) it is simply not the case that anything significant about a 'global consciousness' follows. There are just so many other variables which have to be taken into account - to do this we would have to see how the random event generators work. Are they truely random? More importantly are the random events independant? Can we set up controls? Are the REGs shielded from physical influence? Could cell phone usage be interfering with them? There - I just made up a thoroughly compatible alternative hypothesis. Has this been controlled against? What about....And on and on and on...

This is what seperates science from pseudo-science.



A fourth common tactic of paranormalists is to claim the moral high ground: Just think how many times you have heard Creationists telling you that evolution is based on self-interested survival, and therefore anyone who believes in evoltion is an amoral heathen.

Yes. Of course. Because it just so obviously follows from the claim that since random number generators don't work properly during (or after? or before?) times of great tragedy, that therefore this will make everyone into better loving, caring, peaceful human beings.

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filtherton

As it stands, i doubt any of us know enough about the specifics from this one article to not be talking exclusively from the rectum.

I think someone concerned about the plausibility of the matter would at least admit that they don't know enough to be sure either way.

ratbastid

An interesting little factoid:

The Dr. John Hartwell from Utrecht, The Netherlands, that this article talks about is my former employer. He's not doing paranormal rresearch anymore, he's a half-retired electrical engineer and computer programmer in North Carolina. He's spent the last ten years of his life making e-commerce web sites.

When I read this article, I knew immediately it was MY John Hartwell they were talking about, so I shot him an email asking him his opinion about this.

While he knows most of the names mentioned in this article ("If Dick Bierman built that random number generator, I'm sure it's of the highest quality."), the report of his own research was fairly wanting. He said that while this article described his project in loose terms, it grossly mischaractarized his results.

His project found no significant incidence of subjects having a physical response in advance of the visual stimulus. He had one single subject who appeared to be a dramatic exception to that, but whose results were attributed to chance inside the strict parameters of the experimental hypothesis.

1010011010

The GCP site has a lot of information about how the project is run.

The hardware is pretty much three different types of basically off the shelf cryptographically secure random number generators. They do produce random output. Furthermore, they XOR the data coming out of the RNGs with a balanced mask (I.E. equal parts ones and zeros) to normalize the data. They also have cryptolevel pseudoRNGs operating as controls.

If you flip a coin (or a bit) over and over and keep tally, after a given number of flips there is a probability that you'll have X number of tails (or 1s) more than heads (or 0s). Over a long enough timescale, you expect them to keep parity, for the odds to remain 50:50, for it to be a fair coin. Over short timescales, though, in a long enough trial, you should expect there to be runs of all heads or all tails (Popular assignment in introductory CS classes is to tell the students to record a such a heads and Tails flip for 100 trials. You should expect to see a run of 6 all heads or all tails in a truly random trail of this sort. But that doesn't "look random" to most people. So the teacher collects the results, and gives failing grades to everyone that doesn't have the run for just writing down a bunch of Hs and Ts rather than really flipping the coin.).

What the project is basically noting when the RNGs start flipping more heads or more tails than they should, and try to correlate those events with something happening in world events.

There is a spooky "pure data" angle to it. The RNGs are showing significant departures from normal random behaviour... presumably for some reason. Whether it's global conciousness or something else is up for debate, but there is a real effect that has to be explained.

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Simple Machines in Higher Dimensions

Seer666

If this thing puts out a RANDOM stream of numbers, would the only true anomaly be if it NEVER devated from the flat line? If it didn't then it wouldn't really be random, would it?
Sounds like a bunch of hype to me.

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Bad spellers of the world untie!!!

I am the one you warned me of

I seem to have misplaced the bullet with your name on it, but I have a whole box addressed to occupant.

chickentribs

I just wanted to point out that filtherton has made a God out of the dual digit randomizer thingy! Every, and I mean e-v-e-r-y religous debate I have sat through ends just like that. "I want to believe, prove me wrong" or "There is nothing to believe, show me proof".

Now that I think about it, that bunk article is a good start for a Bible: from humble beginings The Three Princeton professors (wise men from Princeton?) brought forth a simple machine that was good, moral and all knowing. Humble with it's calculator heart, it taught us well and delivered us to a singular love.

I'm a practicing Boxtian.

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Oft expectation fails...
and most oft there Where most it promises
- Shakespeare, W.

filtherton

I think you missed my point. My point was not that the box is a god. My point was that not one of us, besides apparently ratbastid, has any intimate knowledge of what is actually going on with this experiment besides what we know from this article. Being overly skeptical about someone else's work when you really have no clear understanding of what is specifically going on with their work shows more of a commitment to skepticism than to science. Its akin to reading a short article about quantum physics and immediately writing it off as preposterous based on one's notion of newtonian physics. Unless you see the data, you can't pretend to be able to make conclusions one way or another.

chickentribs

I understand, filtherton - The religious parallels had struck me as I was reading through the article and your rational point read like a God/no God argument I had just read through, and well there I went. Too many hours alone on planes in the last week has made me punchy. I too am a confirmed skeptic and thought your point was very appropriate.

I was also struck that University Professors would allow conclusions like this released without supporting data. Seems a bit fishy...

__________________
Oft expectation fails...
and most oft there Where most it promises
- Shakespeare, W.

CSflim

I can only assume filtherton's comment was directed at me, and I would just like to say that my knowledge of the GCP is not due soley to this article. I have read some of the independant papers published on it, (though I lacked the mathematics to appreciate them fully). (esp. after sept 11)
My reason for pointing out the parallels with paranormalism was not to imply "therefore false", but to highlight the problems with it and to point out some of the methods of 'spin' that have been attempted to put on it.

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Astrocloud

This is weird. I have my own experience which is kinda strange but I attribute it to coincidence. On Sept 11 the tuesday that the planes crashed into the buildings -I overslept. This is not unusual. I had a dream prior to waking that there was a train crash in my backyard. I woke with a start. This happened about an hour (9 am) before the planes crashed into the buildings. I wouldn't have remembered it and it wouldn't be significant if nothing happened that day. Also if I always dreamed about crashes -it wouldn't be significant.

I'm not really a believer in the paranormal and I certainly don't think that I'm psychic. However I do believe in synchronicity. The reason is that we as human beings often look for patterns even within a-casual events. We can't help it. It's something we are made to do (not only in unconnected events but all events).