[Setekh]

Global Consciousness, eh? Yeah... we'll see if anything comes of it. Until then, I'm with Dark_4ce.

[IceFire]

Well I like the notion of shared consciousness but I'm not sure if it happens like they are starting to think it does or not.  Surely everyone has experienced a time where, amongst close friends and family, that everyone realizes or says roughly the same thing at the same time.  It may just be everyone following through the same thought process and it comes to the same conclusion but its odd when its with four or five people.  Of course, our brains take in far more information than we are aware of...so it may just be a matter of the brain feeding the conscious with an overall impression that leads to it.

Plus, shared consciousness in a more academic sense is at the heart of many communications theories.  But it has more to do with everyone watching TV at the same time....ya lazy couch potatoes

[Mongoose]

I'll cry BS on this one.  Smells like Nostradamus, and that smell ain't good.

[kasperl]

Is this on any more, err, respected news site?

And Ice: I've had that happen quite often, but it is generally on a subject where you've been working together for a long time, so your minds are drawing together somehow. More like the same way of thinking.

[IceFire]

Originally posted by kasperl
Is this on any more, err, respected news site?

And Ice: I've had that happen quite often, but it is generally on a subject where you've been working together for a long time, so your minds are drawing together somehow. More like the same way of thinking.

Its still bizzar when it happens to a group of people all at once.  Its probably more to do with brain patterns and subconscious information than anything else but one way or another people do end up with a "shared consciousness" it just may not be as fantastical as suggested in some places.

[Janos]

Originally posted by Dark_4ce
I wonder how many "signs" it gives out each day. And then when something horrible happens, they search for a sign that happened around then and go "SEEE!!! IT PREDICTED IT!"

This just seems too much like the bible code and Nostredamus thing to me. Each year printing out a new revised book of each that covers the latest tragedies. Meh...

You know, they would be guilty of murder and stuff times 50 if they predicted it and didn't tell anyone about it.

I'm calling bull****. The burden of proof is on to them anyways.

[Corsair]

It's The Force™!!

[Nico]

nah, it's psychohistory

[Rictor]

I don't think you get it. Its not like Minority Report where they can pinpoint a time and place and person etc. But I think that if the graph is usually flat, and at specific times spikes, and those times happen to correspond to major world events, then there's something to it.

[karajorma]

And it no doubt spikes loads of times which don't correspond to anything in particular and are as such discarded.

Remember that the whole "Memory of Water" thing managed to get itself publiushed in Nature before it was completely discredited (Not blaming Nature though. They accepted it only in return for being able to send the people who did discredit it to the lab).

All in all. I'll only think about believing it when I see it in an acredited peer reviewed journal.

Also. Why are they only using one machine? If this is a real phenomenon it should be duplicated on several different machines at the same time.

[Bobboau]

I only beleve it when I won one and can see it for my self, they never describe how the devices work in any great detail and truely random number genoration with computers is a supriseingly dificult thing to get working right

[Rictor]

kara: It says in the article they have over a hundred machines all over the world.

And what exactly is the "Memory of Water"??

[adwight]

Originally posted by Goober5000
Anyone see Paycheck?

Yes, that is a very good show/rendition of something that can see the future.

[IceFire]

Originally posted by Bobboau
I only beleve it when I won one and can see it for my self, they never describe how the devices work in any great detail and truely random number genoration with computers is a supriseingly dificult thing to get working right

Thats a good point too.  I'm not exactly sure how this is supposed to work.  I'd love for another party who is skeptical to get the "blueprints" (because several are apparently built and working) and then run it for a while and see what happens.

[Corsair]

In fact, they didn't explain at all how they work. They just described it as a black box and said that it makes random numbers. Not even if it prints them out or what. Just... numbersnumbersnumbers!!

[castor]

Random Event Generator

We begin with the easy part. The measurement relies on small changes in the behavior of an electronic device designed to produce a random output. A random event generator, or REG, as used for the GCP data collection, is essentially a high-speed electronic coin flipper. Instead of heads and tails, the REG produces + or - pulses relative to a mean value, and these pulses are converted into 1's and 0's, the bits that are the language of computers. The bits can be counted, and stored as samples from a well understood mathematical distribution of random numbers. The device also is often called a random number generator (RNG), which is a name given to computer programs that produce "pseudo" random numbers. The REG and RNG devices used in the GCP are hardware sources of "true" random events -- fundamentally unpredictable 1's and 0's.

There are three different random event or random number generators in use in the GCP network. They are all electronic and their different sources of "white noise" all depend on completely unpredictable quantum fluctuations. The PEAR REG is based on Johnson noise, the extremely low-level fluctuations in electron flow in a resistor due to thermal influences. It has a built-in logic transformation (XOR) of every other bit from 1 to 0 or vice versa, to eliminate in principle any bias of the mean output of the device. The MICROREG uses a Field-Effect Transistor (FET) for the white noise, and also has an XOR stage, in this case with a table of all bytes with equal numbers of 1 and 0. The ORION uses two diodes, each independently producing a random bitstream and in this case the two output signals are XOR'ed against each other. The Orions have no built-in protection against bias, so a computed XOR is imposed for this type in the egg software.

http://www.global-mind.org/measurement.html
http://noosphere.princeton.edu/

[Janos]

Originally posted by castor
http://www.global-mind.org/measurement.html
http://noosphere.princeton.edu/

Nice pseudoscience there.


They don't predict anything. They just take some numbersnumbersnumbers (how do they create a truly random number generator? It's not actually easy you know? some weirdo quantum stuff could be, i dunno), then see if it's weird. If it isn't, they analyze it until they find something - and they have no criteria for "something", so they can pull definiotions out of their ass as they go. What's the timeframe? They are also kinda doing "hey something happened that day, let's see if we... HELL YEAH A SPIKE", instead of actually PREDICTING stuff.

edit: sorry this was not directed at you, it kinda makes me angry and amused.
http://www.skepticreport.com/psychics/radin2002.htm

[Thrilla]

Umm...yeah sure.  I pity people who believe a box spitting out numbers can predict the future.  My Aunt thinks she can do it to with a box of sand.  Lets all talk about her now.

[castor]

Originally posted by Janos
(how do they create a truly random number generator? It's not actually easy you know? some weirdo quantum stuff could be, i dunno)

Well, I'm not a specialist here, but thermal noise generated in a transistor ought to be pretty random. Nothing like the pseudo-random stuff we get out from our PCs.  

edit: sorry this was not directed at you, it kinda makes me angry and amused.
http://www.skepticreport.com/psychics/radin2002.htm [/B]

No problem. That was just to fill in something regarding those "black boxes".
My stance on these things (and almost anything) is "let them try"