The Global Consciousness Project

As for how these are supposed to account for the results is left totally unspecified by you (and anybody else, including malf), which indeed does leave us in "the state we frequently find ourselves in": opponents making vague claims which they refuse to substantiate.

Bancel clearly thought the "experiment" could be tightened up and made some suggestions. They seem common sense and good practice, do you agree with them? They aren't vague in any way (much less vague than any hypothesis or conclusion associated with this project). 

We can't know for sure the finer details of procedure in any study let alone an open ended data collection exercise like this. I'm reminded of the Hennacy-Powell fiasco. Despite that being more recognisable as a piece of science, were it not for the video that appeared, some skeptics somewhere on some forum would be, to this day, getting it in the neck for not accepting the results and conclusion as presented in the paper.

[Laird]

Bancel clearly thought the "experiment" could be tightened up and made some suggestions.

Why the scare-quotes around "experiment"?

Yes, he made some suggestions in the event there was a "future version of the experiment". What he didn't say is that the current lack of realisation of his suggestions could account for the results of the experiment as it is. If you think that the results can be explained via "flexible selection", then please make that case in detail. So far, you haven't seemed to be capable of doing that.

A quick (and very related) question for you: what did you understand the point of my magic show analogy to be?

They seem common sense and good practice, do you agree with them?

They do seem sensible, although I find it hard to imagine what an algorithm for event selection would look like.

They do seem sensible, although I find it hard to imagine what an algorithm for event selection would look like.

There's an old Skeptiko podcast with Chris French in which he expressed an interest in doing some work on that, or getting someone to do some work on it. As far as I know, nothing came of it, though. He did say he was very busy.
https://skeptiko.com/83-chris-french-psi-claims/

[Laird]

There's an old Skeptiko podcast with Chris French in which he expressed an interest in doing some work on that, or getting someone to do some work on it. As far as I know, nothing came of it, though. He did say he was very busy.
https://skeptiko.com/83-chris-french-psi-claims/

Interesting, although I didn't see anything specific to developing algorithms in that transcript. That seems to me to be tricky: embedding the qualitative aspect of event selection - that which, from a human perspective, defines a "globally significant event" - into an essentially quantitative process, which is (wouldn't you agree?) what characterises an algorithm.

Interesting, although I didn't see anything specific to developing algorithms in that transcript. That seems to me to be tricky: embedding the qualitative aspect of event selection - that which, from a human perspective, defines a "globally significant event" - into an essentially quantitative process, which is (wouldn't you agree?) what characterises an algorithm.

I think it would be quite a difficult problem to design a really objective algorithm.

On the other hand I don't think it would be too hard to come up with a set of rules that left only relatively small scope for subjectivity. Of course, the people applying the rules would still have to be blind to the data. In those circumstances, if the original results were something like a psi selection effect (or a fraudulent selection effect), the effect size would presumably plummet, probably to something undetectable.

Unless the formulation of the rules was itself influenced by psi, of course ...

A quick (and very related) question for you: what did you understand the point of my magic show analogy to be?

I didn’t think your analogy worked, but I’ll grant you that it’s not easy to find a perfect one.  How about this: There’s rabbits all over the place and someone is throwing top hats over some of them. It turns out the rabbits covered are special ones. But what makes them special is related to slightly louder (or softer) squawking by chickens on a bunch of distant, arbitrary chicken farms at the moment a special rabbit was covered by the top hat.

They do seem sensible, although I find it hard to imagine what an algorithm for event selection would look like.

Well I find it hard to imagine how they’ve been doing it (so fortuitously) for the last couple of decades.

[Laird]

How about this: There’s rabbits all over the place

But that avoids the key point which my analogy makes plain: that there shouldn't be any rabbits in these top hats in the first place! That is where the real "magic" is; not in the selection process (though there might be something anomalous going on there too, as Peter Bancel argues). I was hoping you'd get it but either you don't or you're pretending not to.

But that avoids the key point which my analogy makes plain: that there shouldn't be any rabbits in these top hats in the first place! That is where the real "magic" is; not in the selection process (though there might be something anomalous going on there too, as Peter Bancel argues). I was hoping you'd get it but either you don't or you're pretending not to.

From the GCP website:

But when a great event synchronizes the feelings of millions of people, our network of RNGs becomes subtly structured. We calculate one in a trillion odds that the effect is due to chance.

Are the rabbits or the hats or malf's chickens the RNG, the feelings of millions or the one-in-a trillion? In other words, how exactly do these analogies relate to the data?

But that avoids the key point which my analogy makes plain: that there shouldn't be any rabbits in these top hats in the first place! That is where the real "magic" is; not in the selection process (though there might be something anomalous going on there too, as Peter Bancel argues). I was hoping you'd get it but either you don't or you're pretending not to.

The rabbits are just events right? The top hats are put on the rabbits by the experimenters by some selection process that nobody has explained.

The fact that sometimes the chickens are squawking louder (or softer) than average at some times more than others is normal. 

The magic appears to be in aligning the correlations in a fortuitous way. 

I’ve lost track of what you’re arguing for... Are you supporting the researchers in their claim that ‘love’ is peaking (or troughing) these electronic devices?

If so, I need to quote the question posed by the contemporary philosopher Tina Turner: “What’s love got to do with it?”

[Laird]

Are the rabbits or the hats or malf's chickens the RNG, the feelings of millions or the one-in-a trillion? In other words, how exactly do these analogies relate to the data?

The hats are the events (defined by their start and end time and method of analysis). There's "a rabbit in the hat" when the outcome of the analysis of the RNG data (inter-RNG correlations) for the event is in the predicted direction and is either statistically significant or close to it.

It's not a perfect analogy in this respect because rabbits are discrete whereas statistical significance is continuous, and because whilst the cumulative one-in-a-trillion odds are obviously very significant, many of the individual events which contribute to those odds aren't significant in themselves or even go in the opposite direction than predicted. It's more like we find a bunch of "rabbit parts" in the hats that we select rather than full rabbits, if you'll pardon that grisly metaphor.

I'll leave it to malf to explain what he meant by the chicken analogy - it's not quite clear to me.