[CYBERIA] a story that might be of interest to cyberians

[SK]

Saw a posting on a blog on this -
http://silenteloquence.blogspot.com/2005/02/future-of-future-teller.html

Reproduced below:

Background: Rednova recently publised an article, 'Can This Black Box
See Into the Future' about a new machine developed by the scientists
at Princeton that can predict future events. It relies on two main
things : random number generation and the power of the collective
human conciousness to 'influence' that random number generation. This
is not your usual conspiracy theory kind of stuff, about 75 respected
scientists from 41 different nations have thrown their weight behind
this idea.I dont want to go into more details on what is already given
in the article, but heres my two cents to the noise that the article
has already generated:

(1)My own future:
One of the main criticisms about the Global Conciousness Project and
the use of the Black box to predict a world event is that there are so
many events happening in the world at any given time - so it must be
easy to relate a set of data points to some event. Now this is a very
valid argument. Moreover, the definition of a 'world event' or an
'event', for that matter, is very subjective. What maybe eventful to
me may not be eventful to someone living in Africa. I may not even
come to know about a major political turmoil that happened, say in
South America. So who is to decide what is an event? However, if the
researchers at Princeton want to argue that the human subconcious can
predict the future of the world, they should also be able to reproduce
it at an individual level. Along the same lines of logic they have
used, can I train my subconcious to predict my own future? In this
case, there is no ambiguity in the definition of an event. I
'influence' the egg. I decide what an event is. And if the egg can
read my thoughts (about the future) and show it to me now, the egg
works! Feels kinda sad that I need an egg to read my own mind! Hmm..
we have a new strain of shrinks? I am not a sceptic, but just couldn't
resist the dig.

(2) One global conciousness is not a new concept:
The central theme of the global conciousness is not a new concept.
This was exactly what was propounded centuries ago in the Bhagavad
Gita, which is a very revered book that many Hindus, including me,
still hold on to. The Gita is quite clear on what it wants to say (my
simplified interpretation): At the beginning of the world, all beings
are created from one central source. At the end of it, they go back to
that one source. If you die and you had understood the true meaning
during your lifetime, you attain nirvana and become one with the one
global conciousness. If you dont, you are reborn again and again, till
you eventually 'get it, duh'. But the point is, you share one
conciousness with everyone else around you. You are just one small
figment of the great collectivity ( as I write this I, am beginning to
wonder if the Gita had anything to do with the rise of communism).

(3) Data can lie, often very convincingly:
I am not a sceptic to this theory. As much as I am a logical person, I
intuitively believe that it is possible to predict the future. I have
had a few, very clear ( god forbid, I never want to experience them
ever again) deja vu's. Several astrologers (like a good Indian, I have
visited a fair share of astrologers, admittedly more because of
intellectual curiosity about the paranormal) have predicted events in
my life with amazing accuracy. And more importantly, they have
generally been accurate in predicting my state of mind, which has
never failed to surprise me. And from a physics perspective, if time
is the fourth dimension, shouldn't you be able to travel back and
forth like we can in the other three dimensions. It seems more
difficult to believe that the fourth dimension is different from the
other three, than to believe that it is similar. So, I dont have
problems believing the results per se. But I am a sceptic when it
comes to the methodology. A random number generator with 1s and 0s
over years - that is a lot of data points over a very small range. It
seems to me like data that is difficult to read - and data that can be
easily manipulated. Mind you, I am not accusing anyone of anything. I
have full faith in the integrity of all involved. But I used to work
as an analyst and one of the first things that I learned was that you
can always make the data say what you want it to. If you dont believe
me, read the book 'How to Lie with Statistics' by Darrell Huff. And
sometimes it is not a matter of intentional effort. When you want to
see a particular result, it is possible that your mind subconciously
picks on that trend and only that trend. This is nobody's fault - it
is just an extension of the saying 'The eyes can only see what the
mind wants it to'. I would be hard-pressed to believe that the people
who want to make us believe about the powers of human subconcious to
predict the future cannot believe that the same subconcious is
powerful enough to cloud an individual's and possibly several
individuals' judgement. And another issue is just how random is this
random number generator? Isnt it mathematically impossible to achieve
perfect randomness, in which case doesnt this methodology rely on
pseudo random numbers? So, this is one set of data I would be very
careful in analysing and interpreting and drawing conslusions from.

(4) The future of the future teller:
I think the future of the future teller depends on how open the human
race can be to new ideas. To a person who lived thousands of years
ago, travelling to the moon must have sounded as impossible, if not
more improbable, than predicting the future. But we humans have
achieved that land mark. So, why are our scientists still afraid of
being ridiculed? '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.' Now that I think is sad. I like to
believe that we have moved past the age of Coppernicus. Or havent we?
Human beings are sceptics by nature. But lets forget that for the
moment. May be the ideas are wrong. But lets not brand it that, till
we have proven so. So, lets be optimistic. Open minded. Ready to
listen. And slow to ridicule. And who knows, we may just be able to
read the future enough to know whether we will be able to read the
future in the future.


On Thu, 17 Feb 2005 09:36:28 -0500, R.A. Hettinga <rah at shipwright.com> wrote:
> --- begin forwarded text
> 
> User-Agent: Mozilla Thunderbird 0.8 (Windows/20040913)
> Date:         Thu, 17 Feb 2005 01:08:28 -0500
> Reply-To: Law & Policy of Computer Communications <CYBERIA-L at LISTSERV.AOL.COM>
> Sender: Law & Policy of Computer Communications <CYBERIA-L at LISTSERV.AOL.COM>
> From: Inna Barmash <ibarmash at ALUMNI.PRINCETON.EDU>
> Subject: Re: [CYBERIA] a story that might be of interest to cyberians
> To: CYBERIA-L at LISTSERV.AOL.COM
> 
> This is a really interesting project at Princeton, and it's been going
> on for decades. (see the book "Margins of Reality" -
> http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/015657246X/qid=1108619801/sr=8-1/ref=pd_csp_1/002-8298211-8744829?v=glance&s=books&n=507846)
> 
> I've taken the tour of the laboratory and participated in a couple of
> the experiments (as a guinea pig, that is).  The feeling there is quite
> surreal, and they have dramatized the setting in the lab itself quite
> well.  The random number generator is a huge machine with a downstream
> of little balls, which the subjects - through the power of immense
> consciuos concentration - make go one way or the other.  They also have
> a wave-simulating machine, which supposedly echoes the patterns of the
> Jersey shore waves.
> For at least some of the machines, the researchers have found a
> significant effect not only with people in the same room, but subjects
> as far as Australia, AND even in the future -  influencing the "random"
> outcome of the past ...
> 
> It'll be interesting to see if the significant effects are amplified
> with more and more subjects pitching in through this international project.
> 
> --Inna
> 
> Paul Gowder wrote:
> 
> >Check out this article re: random number generators
> >apparently influenced by consciousness:
> >http://www.rednova.com/news/display/?id=126649#121
> >
> >the Princeton project that this is connected with:
> >http://noosphere.princeton.edu/
> >
> >This is fascinating, and potentially groundbreakingly
> >huge stuff.
> >
> >God, how I want to go back to school and study math
> >and physics.  Maybe in a few years I will.