The Global Consciousness Project

[FrostyBoy]

A tiny machine that pumps out 1's and 0's randomly; you would expect to get an even number of 1's and 0's, but this machine seems to break that law when a major event happens in the world.

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

[DRoseDARs]

I just saw my first pop-up in months!

Anyway, voodoo science.

[Urban Ranger]

I read that. I will believe it when it actually starts making accurate predictions before something happens, instead of having a bunch of people trying to fit a pattern to facts afterwards.

[DaShi]

"Originally, all human beings were connected."

[FrostyBoy]

Originally posted by Urban Ranger
I read that. I will believe it when it actually starts making accurate predictions before something happens, instead of having a bunch of people trying to fit a pattern to facts afterwards.

You did read it, didn't you? If so, you may have missed a few bits.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by Sn00py
You did read it, didn't you? If so, you may have missed a few bits.

First of all, the article is clearly written sympathetically (e.g. "top band of scientists") instead of critically.

Second of all, statistically speaking, runs are often. That means if you flip a coin, heads and tails tend to cluster together instead of spaced evenly. When you have a bunch of machines that flip coins or generate 0's and 1's, it's not surprising that you will see a bunch of 0's or 1's all coming out at once.

Thirdly, this project has not made any predications. All these people have been doing were matching what they thought to be patterns in the output with real world events.

Forthly, serious scientific experiments - experiments that used proper controls - on paranormal phonomena have so far yielded no positive results. Speaking of controls, this project has none.

I can keep going, but there is no reason to do so.

[KrazyHorse]

What principle does the generator work off of?

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by KrazyHorse
What principle does the generator work off of?

From the article:

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.

The machine in question is called a "random event generator" (funny term to us RPG players ), which just randomly generates 1's and 0's.

[KrazyHorse]

Thanks, UR. I read the article.

My question was what method is used to generate "randomness"

[Combat Ingrid]

I found this part really intriguing, assuming the results are real:

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!'

[Urban Ranger]

Just for a lark, I searched for "doctor 'John Hartwell' University of Utrecht" and Google didn't return any results. Slightly different search terms resulted in exactly the same article - apparently it was posted to at least a few different sites.

[Combat Ingrid]

UR: that's hardly surprising as he made those experiments 30 years ago.

It would be interesting to know how they conducted those studies, if the results are just because of flaws in the method. If the effect is actually real, well

[Odin]

This sounds like psychic psudoscientific crap to me.

[Jon Miller]

so they get all surprised that there is anticipation?

JM

[Boris Godunov]

Originally posted by Jon Miller
so they get all surprised that there is anticipation?

JM

Exactly the point I was going to make. They know they are about to be shown something, so why wouldn't the brain have an increase in activity over such anticipation? What a ridiculous "experiment," if indeed the claim is even true (many claims of such things are just outright falsehoods, esp. ones that are claimed to have been made so long ago).

The random generator has all the markings of computerized numerology.