Originally Posted by shadowofwind
If you don't dream, that doesn't kill our experiment, because your thoughts would show up in my dreams as easily as mine would show up in yours. I don't dream anywhere near as vividly as I did a few years ago, but maybe its enough.
I did have my first substantial dream this morning since beginning my attempts. The issue is that it doesn't have that much to do with the question/topic I set for myself. That said, it's been enough days that I think I'll just post that dream anyway. I suspect it won't have much overlap with yours (since it seemed pretty run of the mill for my dreaming), but I guess it'll have to do for this attempt. (I'll post it in my dream journal later then link to it; then I'll go and read your first dream account)
Originally Posted by shadowofwind
A potential flaw in your software experiment is if the start and stop of the random number generation isn't completely isolated from the software execution. Your mouse use will subtly affect the run time. If your software triggers the hardware, then that seems to me to be a problem. Or if the software polls the hardware, that's a problem. But if the software has a buffer that stores the hardware output, so that the buffer content has nothing to do with the software timing, then that works. I guess you already thought of all that, but I couldn't tell from your description.
Yes, that possibility did definitely come to mind; even if the code path that runs one section is separate from another, they're still running on the same CPU, so it could cause micro-delays in the running of other instructions.
That said, I think the chance of such micro-delays causing significant effects is very small. There are a couple of reasons:
1) The software does, as you mention, have a buffer that stores the hardware output. More specifically, my experiment program launches another process which starts the device's generation, and begins receiving its output. Every couple seconds, that program outputs the new contents of that buffer to its "standard output", which my program then reads and uses as the new contents for its own buffer (a "currentCycle_unusedSamples" array). Whenever the timer in my experiment needs the next number, it then accesses the latest unused-value in that "unusedSamples" array.
2) The values from the device are "processed" in such a way that it greatly mitigates the potential for exploitation, even if the mouse movements were substantially disrupting the number generation. As mentioned earlier, this is the process used: "simplify each from-device 0-255 number to just a 1 or 0 (based on an alternating >=128/<128 mapping), sum it with 199 other such 1s/0s, and use the result as your actual number". What this means is that, even if you found a way to make the device start outputting only high numbers (>128), this would not cause the experiment to start receiving high values for use by the live experiment. This is because the filter used alternates between considering a >128 number to be a "1" or "0", and the results of 200 of these "simplify to 1 or 0, with alternating mapping" operations are then summed into a single output number, so that each individual 1/0 only contributes 1/200th of the final value of a number. (And if someone counters, "maybe you subconsciously managed to alternate your mouse movements so it makes it generate high then low then high to get past the alternating mappings", then they're not understanding how frequently these operations are occurring. We're talking about thousands of raw 0-255 numbers from the device per second. There's no way my hand muscles, not to mention my brain, are anywhere near fine-tuned enough to be able to synchronize with operations occurring thousands of times per second.)
Originally Posted by shadowofwind
In any case, I know I can affect 'random' events, so I'm not surprised for you to find this result. It would not surprise me if you fail to reproduce it though. The reason for a failure to reproduce, is the effect the experimental outcome has on your life is not the same for subsequent experiments as it was for the first experiment. The later outcomes don't "matter" as much because they don't affect your belief in psi as much, which affects choices you make which affect a lot of other things. I doubt your subconscious actually knows how to manipulate the random number generator, I don't think the manipulation is direct like that. What your subconscious does know how to do is select possible future life conditions out of a larger set of potential conditions and make them 'real' by making them more concrete at some level. The 'random' events that lead up to those conditions then fall into place as necessary, without any direct intervention. So for instance if you have a box that contains a superposition of a dead cat and a live cat, you have some way of selecting which one you want to become manifest when you open it, without needed to understand any of the complex interactions inside the box that led to those two states.
(Some people assume that quantum superposition exists only for coherent states, and collapses the moment that particles interact with a mass of other particles. In that view, the 'measurement' has already occurred inside the box before it is opened. I think that's wrong though, and that's the entire point of the cat thought experiment. The cat is not a metaphor for a system described by a single wavefunction, it is supposed to be an actual cat, both alive and dead.)
I also would not be surprised to find that my next attempt had weaker results, for a similar reason that you do. Based both on what I've read from the field, as well as my own experiences while doing the experiments, it seems that the "effectiveness of psi" varies depending on the state of mind of the experimenter. Because my second attempt will be less significant to me (since I already think psi is real now), the psychological/emotional investment I place in it will be a lot lower. (By the way, because of this consideration, I did my best during the experiments to keep a curious and upbeat psychological state -- having some of my favorite new music playing, and skipping the experiment on some days when I was feeling down or unmotivated.)
That said, I still will probably do additional experiments in the future. This is for a few reasons:
1) I'm curious to see how much this "weakening" effect occurs. It will be somewhat annoying, since then skeptics will jump upon it and assumes that means they're then justified in discarding previous data on the subject (if it doesn't work the second time, that proves the first time was a fluke, even if it reached a rarity-by-chance of 1 in 32,000, right?), but ultimately I care more about obtaining more data for those who are actually serious about investigating the subject than I do about "limiting the surface area" for dis-earnest criticisms.
2) I plan to expand the experiment to attempt to discern further findings. For example, I plan to try different numbers of targets, different number-generation speeds, with and without the mouse visualization, with and without performing the experiment from another room using a video feed, on days when I feel good vs days I feel bad, and perhaps most importantly, having the experiment be performed by other people on other computers and with other copies of the hardware number-generator device to see how much variation there is based on test subject.
3) I suspect that while later successes will on average be less intense, there will still be further successes -- particularly when I start variations of the experiment which I find fresh and interesting. This is helpful, because although overall it will reduce the average intensity of successes, it will still help ease concerns from some readers that my belief in psi is based on only one experiment. I'd argue that "only one experiment" is still a valid justification if that experiment is done correctly, and achieves highly significant results (and anyway, my belief is based on many others' experiments, not just my own) -- but nonetheless obtaining further successes would be helpful, if for no other reason that some people just don't seem to appreciate what a "rarity by chance of 1 in 32,000" means. (it means that, if there were no mechanism causing the intent and results to correlate (ie. if it were just due to random fluctuation), a correlation with the intensity obtained would only occur one out of 32,000 attempts)
Originally Posted by shadowofwind
Given that it is somehow possible for you to affect 'random' outcomes, and assuming that this ability isn't limited by physical distance, then it seems to me that what I call 'shared dreaming' follows as a necessary consequence.
I agree that shared dreaming becomes highly likely, if psi is real. However, the question is, how often would shared dreaming occur? Would it occur only when specifically intended, or would it also happen accidentally? And perhaps more importantly, how substantial would the correlations within those shared dreams be? For example, is the content-sharing significant enough that friends could discover major struggles someone is going through without even being told of it? Or does it only have minor correlations, like one person having a pleasant dream, and the other thereby becoming more likely to have a pleasant dream -- but with majorly different and unrelated content?
I'm of the opinion that both are plausible possibilities; I don't have enough data as of yet for thinking shared dreaming happens in a common/unintentional/substantial way, but I also don't have much data against it either.
Originally Posted by shadowofwind
When I said that I think you didn't "directly" manipulate the random number generator, that's a little bit misleading, because how 'direct' the manipulation is depends on the scope or granularity of your concern. If the general, long term determination of outcomes is possible, then it is also possible to narrow the focus of that. But I think its a lot easier to work at the 'big picture' level.
As I mentioned earlier, I think a key is to tie something into the experiment that you're really interested in at an emotional level. I read about one psi experiment where people were anticipating the appearance of random pornographic images in a sequence of images. That seems to me to be a lot more sensible than having people trying to guess numbers, for instance.
I agree that tying the experiments in with people's emotions increases the potential for psi to occur. There's quite a bit I've read on the idea, but I won't go into it due to time constraints (someone could talk about these things for hours, if they had the time -- sometimes I make time, but I'm already spending quite a bit on the other points, so not today ).
Originally Posted by shadowofwind
If you were really affecting the outcome moment by moment, as if you had a little demon putting particles back in a box, then if might be more easy to extend that, like hitting free throws over and over if you're good at free throws. But if your makes and misses are inherently 'random' except for some rough capability of finding and materializing a future global state among several, then your skill doesn't increase the number of 'makes' in the bundle of potential histories, and it might be a lot harder to skew the long-term statistics.
I agree. And I think this is actually a counter-argument to one of the criticisms some might make about my experiment: "You don't have perfect isolation between your physical body and the number generation; you might have just learned subconsciously how to impact the experiment through normal, physical means." If in fact I had learned subconsciously how to do this, you would expect the results to just continue to climb indefinitely, as I get better and better at it. Instead, you see a massive jump during the first two days (already past the traditional bar of significance), followed by a "doldrums" period, which slowly ramps up -- eventually reaching a peak of 1 in 32,258, at which point I feel emotional release at having finally surpassed the 1 in 10,000 mark (I'd gotten close but not quite made it the previous four runs), and the effectiveness then begins to subside.
By the way, an interesting side-note about that moment where it surpassed 1 in 32,000 deviance: While that session was occurring (just prior to the one marked in the last screenshot on this page), I specifically remember watching the number of hits rise and rise, and having a surreal moment where I felt like "This is it, this is the big one; it's staying so long around the target. How high will it go!?" In the end it reached a whopping 98 positive hits (the average was about 20), and only three negative hits (the average was about 16). That was the session just before the highest peak (which raised the total 1 further), which was exactly the 555th session, and the 15th session of that 30-session run. That's the point where it reached the 1 in 32,258 rarity (having a deviation percentile of 99.9969%; meaning that out of the one million Monte-Carlo simulations, exactly 30 of them reached that deviance or higher [and I confirmed this in the raw data files]). Does that mean anything? Perhaps not; I know people can find all sorts of things if they go fishing for patterns. But nonetheless I found it kinda cool.
Originally Posted by shadowofwind
So I think I predict a disappointing future for your random number generator experiment. I think the results are going to dwindle, notwithstanding that I believe your initial results were 'real'.
I'm glad at least someone believes the effect was real! Showing my friends as I went along, some of them already believed in psi, but the three who definitely didn't -- well they were certainly surprised by the results, but I don't think it actually converted any of them.
I'd asked what probability two of them gave it before starting (specifically, the ability for someone to influence a hardware random number generator just mentally), and one said "about 1%", while the other said, "less than 1%". I didn't ask them afterward what their new estimate was, I guess because I expect them to have the typical skeptic response of refusing to budge in their opinions, and it's kinda depressing to see that lack of open-mindedness when the work you've spent dozens of hours on, and actually had success with, is the subject. (to be fair, they were more open-minded and willing to listen than many others)
I will say that at least it did give them pause (I remember asking one what his opinion was, as the rarity values started exceeding 1 in 1000, and all he said was "It's interesting...", followed by a long pause), which is more than most discussions on the topic yield. They know me well enough to know I'm not lying or intentionally mishandling things (avoiding the deception criticism), and they know I don't have a backlog of many failed experiments (just the one experiment prior to it, as mentioned earlier, and various much-smaller-scales ones, like one where I lucid-dreamed to try to guess the color of some multi-colored balls I hid -- which by the way had six colors, and I got it right the first two times, but then got misses for the next two, which maybe you don't find surprising ), avoiding the selective reporting criticism. With those criticisms not being applicable, the main concern one had is just that I made a mistake somewhere, either in my code implementation or in the method used to determine the rarity-by-chance values (which, fair enough, are possibilities -- though I'm pretty sure I did get them right). Another was concerned that there wasn't 100% airtight separation between my physical presence and the number-generation device; but as explained above, I consider the possibility of that being subconsciously exploited very low.
Originally Posted by shadowofwind
On the upside, I think that this subtle power to affect outcomes works very easily over long distances and timescales. If a series of coincidences needs to happen years ago in order for something to happen, and I can't even know what those coincidences are because calculating the complex causal interactions leading up to the desired future state would be pretty much impossible, somehow that doesn't seem to be much of a problem. It just happens.
It's certainly expanded my ideas of what's possible, concerning how the world works behind the scenes. The idea is: If thoughts can influence real-world events at a distance, what actually is the basis of grounding for our world? Is it non-personal mechanistic objects operating apart from our thoughts and desires? (that seems kinda hard to fit with some of the experiment results) Or is it somehow intricately linked with our minds? Are our collective minds somehow the ground of all external objects rather than the other way around? Anyway, I'm not all that decided now on how I think the world is fundamentally structured, though I have some theories I'm more partial to than others.
Originally Posted by shadowofwind
For clarification, I should say that I don't believe that the past is more real than the future is. I think its a fog of possibilities, and that all histories which lead to the present state are equally real. I think that its also possible for the "present state" to drift or jump around, so that different incompatible histories lead up to it. But there's no way to prove that objectively provided that everything drifts or jumps consistently, since the historical record is part of the present. A reason I believe this is because I think that the 'jumps' don't have to be entirely consistent, I think that contradictions are possible. To the limited extent that I understand quantum theory, contradictions aren't prohibited by any of the math, they're just assumed not to occur. In other words, as different independent observers open up the box and observe different mutually exclusive states, those multiple results get reconciled in a consistent way when the observers communicate with each other. Its boxes inside of boxes, and nature prefers consistency as communication 'collapses' everything into a global state. But consistency isn't absolutely required, and sometimes it gets trumped if a particular outcome is inconsistent but is strongly favored for other reasons. I believe this based on personal experiences. I think that manipulating this sort of thing isn't essentially different from what makes your software experiment work.
That's a very intriguing view of the world, and it would, if true, explain a number of bizarre mismatches in first-hand accounts of some things (where both seem completely earnest, and have no ulterior motive or history of hallucinating or the like). It's also true that it's "slippery", in the sense that it's difficult to both verify and counter-verify (as you mention). That said, I don't take the view some take that if a theory is "slippery", then one ought to regard it as if it were completely false. Rather, I think one should take caution about how strongly they adhere to it, but I still view those theories as worth talking and thinking about, because even if they're hard to verify, and even if in the end some portions of it turn out overzealous, other parts may well still have truth to them. (and some have a lot of "subtle pointers" to them that are likely to go underappreciated, unless one is attuned to really taking note of how elegantly some things end up fitting)
Originally Posted by shadowofwind
Going back to your fading software result, what I'm suggesting is that if you designed it so success depended in part on past events that seem to be completely out of your control, the experiment would still work, provided that nothing else depends on those past events that's more substantial than your experiment. And it would also still work if it depended in part on future events, though off-hand I don't know how you would design that in, since there's no precognitive element to your setup.
I believe I understand what you are saying, and that's an interesting idea. It also fits with plenty of experimental results which I found during my reading. You might not be that motivated to look for them since you already believe in that model, but there are several very interesting results that have been obtained toward that end. (I won't list names here since then I have to defend them from people who will undoubtedly start looking for criticisms for the individual groups. ^_^ I believe their research is sound, but it takes a lot of time to explain why I think the criticisms lack weight.)
Originally Posted by shadowofwind
I've had a very large number of clear premonitions that aren't plausibly due to 'coincidence', externally self-fulfilling prophecy, confirmation bias, subjectivity in interpretation, or extrapolation from past experience. If my sense of how this works is at least vaguely correct, then these experiences must make some kind of long term difference, at least to myself. That might lend hope to the possibility of 'proving' some of it in the future. If proving it were impossible, maybe I wouldn't have bothered to waste a non-trivial portion of my life on this sort of thing. Or maybe I'm just having my humility strengthened through unfortunate events and farcical behavior.
Most people won't, but I believe you. It's probably not of the nature that is easily demonstrable to other readers, but from the thoughtfulness of what you've written so far (combined with my already believing psi is a thing now), I believe the examples you're thinking of (well, some of them) were indeed an application of the same system behind psi, and that you're not just engaging in statistical naivety, wishful thinking, etc.
Regarding proving it at some point in the future: I believe someday we will, and it will be widely accepted by society as just a matter of fact (however, I think it'll happen multiple decades if not centuries from now). I also think that it will be considered the next revolution in scientific knowledge and inquiry, and people will become more open-minded from that point, as we realize how much more connected the physical world is to our minds. I believe this will also cause an increase in life satisfaction, as it weakens the link between the certainty of bodily death and the end of one's mind/consciousness. (if the mind is the ground of being rather than the physical world, as is made more plausible by phenomenon of this sort, the mind may just end up reconstituting itself in some other form past the death of its linked physical avatar)
Originally Posted by shadowofwind
I'm quite confident in my belief in psychic phenomena, I think I've approached it with enough intelligence and skepticism and proved it to myself far beyond any reasonable doubt. The potentially farcical part is what to do with it, what it all amounts to in the end besides vanity.
What to do with it? For me, the biggest benefit is what I mentioned above: it means our physical bodies are much less certain to be our ultimate grounding, greatly increasing the probability of life past death. That's a world-changing perspective shift for many people, and is one of the main reasons I'm interested in potentially collecting more evidence for it.
Originally Posted by shadowofwind
I could give you a lot of examples that you might find compelling, but I'd rather not if we can skip it. I have a lot of other things going on that I need to deal with.
I understand; it can be a lot of work to provide the background for a story, explain the event itself, and then go through the various criticisms that people are going to have (along with their evaluations).
So I won't ask you for a long list of events you've had that support it. What I do ask is just that one case you mentioned earlier, about the "I have some e-mail evidence that I know I didn't fake". Email evidence is particularly interesting to me, because of how "distinct" it is. In other words, the email I'll be able to see is the *exact* email that the person received himself, meaning that -- although I lack some of the background -- at least the event content itself is clearly discernible. It's up to you how much background you want to add of course, but that's the one thing I'd really like to see.
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