The Global Consciousness Project

nobody in Spirituality is paying attention so i cc'd it here.

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http://noosphere.princeton.edu/

"Global Correlations in Random Data

The Global Consciousness Project, also called the EGG Project, is an international and multidisciplinary collaboration of scientists, engineers, artists and others. This website introduces methods and technology and empirical results in one section, and presents interpretations and applications in another.

We have been collecting data from a global network of random event generators since August, 1998. The network has grown to about 65 host sites around the world running custom software that reads the output of physical random number generators and records a 200-bit trial sum once every second, continuously over months and years. The data are transmitted over the internet to a server in Princeton, NJ, USA, where they are archived for later analysis. ...

The purpose of this project is to examine subtle correlations that appear to reflect the presence and activity of consciousness in the world. The scientific work is careful, but it is at the margins of our understanding. We believe our view may be enriched by a creative and poetic perspective. Here we present various aspects of the project, including some insight into its scientific and philosophical implications.
"
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here are the results for the Sept. 11 event.

http://noosphere.princeton.edu/terror.html

"...

The following material shows the behavior of the Global Consciousness Project's network of 37 REG devices called "eggs" placed around the world as they responded during various periods of time surrounding September 11. A book chapter gives a compact summary. These eggs generate random data continuously and send it for archiving and analysis to a dedicated server in Princeton, New Jersey, USA. We analyse the data to determine whether the normally random array of values shows structure correlated with global events. This page shows a wide range of exploratory analyses that provide context for the formal hypothesis testing related to the events on September 11. A number of people have done supplementary and complementary analyses, as well as direct replications. Links to these are provided below. An especially interesting effort was undertaken by Bryan Williams, who used data in 15-minute blocks, to compare with the seconds resolution used in the formal analyses. To the extent his results are similar, this provides some response to the question whether a general, external influence is at work, as opposed to an "experimenter effect" operating via fortuitous (albeit anomalous) selection of the analysis specifications.

...

This is a report of what we see in the data recorded on September 11, 2001 and the surrounding period. It is the best description we can give of measurements and effects that are essentially mysterious. We do not know how the correlations that arise between electronic random event generators and human concerns come to be, and yet, the results of our analyses over the past three years repeatedly indicate such correlations. We cannot explain the presence of stark patterns in data that should be random, nor do we have any way of divining their ultimate meaning, yet there appears to be an important message here. When we ask why the disaster in New York and Washington and Pennsylvania should appear to be responsible for a strong signal in our world-wide network of instruments designed to generate random noise, there is no obvious answer. When we look carefully and discover that the eggs might reflect our shock and dismay even before our minds and hearts express it, we confront a still deeper mystery. This network, which we designed as a metaphoric EEG for the planet, responded as if it were measuring reactions on a planetary scale. We do not know if there is such a thing as a global consciousness, but if there is, it was moved by the events of September 11, 2001. It appears that the coherence and intensity of our common reaction created a sustained pulse of order in the random flow of numbers from our instruments. These patterns where there should be none look like reflections of our concentrated focus, as the riveting events drew us from our individual concerns and melded us into an extraordinary coherence. Maybe we became, briefly, a global consciousness.

...
"

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here are the top-level "primary results" (the Sept. 11 event is one out of many examined; scroll down to see the table).

http://noosphere.princeton.edu/results.html

(whistles tune from The Twilight Zone.)

There was a study like this done on ESP where groups of people would
participate in some ESP task, picking a correct color, the right picture,
cards, whatever. They seemed to show a correlation between the
number of people participating and scores going away from chance.

I would not be suprised at the results your article seems to show.
Religious people would of course tie this directly to the hand of god,
but my take is this: If real, it shows a depth to human (and maybe
even animal) conscienceness not deeply explored in science.

My wife is studying the Shaman ways and although I am agnostic
about all this, have seen some results which suggests something
deeper than just our neuron activity.

It touches on a subject that is downplayed in most religions:
self awareness, power in your own self. This would fly in the face
of Christianity and many other religions which state nothing comes
from individual humans in the search for personal power, it all
comes from interaction with god.

I am a humanist in this regard, I think there is untapped potential
inside each of us to achieve healing and activities formerly poo-pooed
by science, Ala Randy, etc., of ESP activity. So far, double blind
scientific studies have seen nothing outside the realm of chance
but there still may be something there not measurable by most
scientific standards.

This idea of group conscienceness effecting electronic random
number generators is a new test of these effects and the
correlations have to be proven and results confirmed by independent
workers to make a solid scientific case.

If it works out for humans, this could be like taking the pulse of
the group conscienceness and it would be interesting to see if animals
would give the same results. It seems to me this effect would not
be limited to humans if it is true. It might even be effected by
trees in the Amazon in response to the destruction of the rainforests,
and in other places on earth, maybe the near extinction of the
great apes. It would be a great study to show these things.
It would indicate, if true, what kind of effects might have shown for
REAL atrocities like the holocaust or the destruction of Kurds by
Saddam. There could be a gold mine of information to be had this
way. First it has to be independently verified, thats the bare minimum
of veracity. Only then do you extend the research. Great idea
if proven true. You could for instance, use a differing number of people
whose only task would be to try to mentally upset the chance results
of the random number generator. I have played with random number
generation and I know you can't use computers to generate truly
random numbers. You have to use other ways like the reverse diode
circuit which produces what is called 1/F noise which is then sent to
an analog to digital conversion and then to generate numbers based
on that. Simply using a comp to generate randomness is not enough.
You have to use analog techniques to generate true randomness.
Another way to generate random numbers is simply to take some
digit of PI and go from there but that is a deterministic randomness
that probably would not work for these kind of studies. It would
have to be some analog event like the diode circuit I mentioned or
maybe simply a scintillation counter counting background radiation
but that kind of thing would correlate to activity on the sun, nearby
novae and the like, unless it were buried deep underground.
Also a random generator would have to be shielded from electrical,
magnetic and siesmic activity to minimize simple interactions with
the earth. Don't know what they did in that regard. It could be on
9-11 there was some solar storm which effected things also, things
like that have to be taken into account when analyzing the data,
don't know what they did in that regard either.

It would be interesting to see if these results obeyed some kind
of inverse square law, that is to say the eggs closest to the
events of 9-11 having a higher correlation away from randomness than
ones say, in New Zealand. This is a huge task for sure.

I hope they have done all their scientific homework on this.
Great potential if true. It would be interesting to look for correlations
BEFORE the distaster strikes, as a sort of advance warning. That would
be where this kind of technology would shine. Simply showing effects
after the fact would not do much more than verify something deeper
going on in the subconscience minds of groups of people, animals
or whatever.

One thing I see from scanning the article is the analysis of data
only from short time periods. In order to convince scientists, one
thing would have to be done, showing the entire data set.
These people may be doing what a lot of people do in these kind
of studies: They may have a built in agenda and then sniff the
data looking for correlations that tend to prove their hypothesis.

They may overlook data that shows similar excursions from chance
because it doesn't fit their preconcieved ideas. Thats why a
dispassionate and independent study always has to be undertaken
to verify these results.

Originally posted by sonhouse
There was a study like this done on ESP where groups of people would
participate in some ESP task, picking a correct color, the right picture,
cards, whatever. They seemed to show a correlation between the
number of people participating and scores going away from chance.

I would not be suprised at the results your article seems to show.
Religious peo ...[text shortened]... hy a
dispassionate and independent study always has to be undertaken
to verify these results.