The Global Consciousness Project

I couldn't read both those papers in 14 minutes, never mind understand them.

Why do you keep saying this?

I said pretty clearly that I DIDN'T READ DEAN'S PAPER. There, is that clear enough?

BTW: I didn't read his paper because I am already familiar with it.

I was only looking for the material that you suggested was at Skeptiko,, you know- the posts where you apparently thoroughly explained your Zener diode and other power noise/RNG corruption theories?

Surprisingly I didn't find any of it though.  Nor answers or data relating to any of the the questions that I asked, in a real attempt to help discover whether there really IS a problem with RNGs that is attributable to power issues.

OK, as to the sections of papers you cite.

They also are not able to demonstrate divergence from randomness based on "non-random" noise impacting the system. They make a lot of statements seemly pointing to the obviousness of their assertion, but somehow they have forgotten or are (purposefully ignoring?) that a bit of empirical data would go a long way here.

They are also not willing (or able?) to explain in any detailed way HOW noise impacts the randomness of the system,,, that is, other than waving their arms and saying "noise=bad".

Also they seem to have a philosophical problem with digital post-processing. Not sure why. I have a hunch it is because they believe that if a "field" exists that would affect RNGs it must be a traditional Electro-Mag one, and as such, any post processing would disturb the effect we are trying to study. That is a reasonable concern, if the effect was based solely on EM fields.  And I would say that this might be an interesting thing to study to see if this is the case. 

Listen: of course there are more expense RNGs out there that could be used. But apart from the expense of them (which I assume is substantial) has anyone considered that perhaps all this "noise" that power systems are subject to may be a part of the way consciousness is effecting the RNGs in the first place?

A little of a tangent here but...
The way many devices work that have been used to "communicate with the other side" is based on subtly. Based on small/subtle forces.

A psychic would probably not be able to demonstrate any sort of behavior by placing a 50 lb rock in the middle of the room and ask "spirit" to move it. The physics of that situation seem to be hard to overcome. It seems however that if one were to devise an experiment that requires much less actual energy to cause in impact, interesting things can happen.

I'm talking about things like:
Ouija board
small object PK
Affecting coin flips
Interacting with electronics (EVP)
Or the ball drop on the peg-wall experiment that Radin sometimes uses

And in a similar way look at things that require human interpretation such as:
reading tea leaves
tarrot cards
astrology (don't laugh, there are studies that show correlation)
Reading palms

The common thread here is that things that require small physical forces, or cognitive interpretation, seem to be subject to many psi effects. 

Now before you just discard things like reading tea leave as too subject to fraud, I would say: OK so create an experiment that makes fraud impossible, and look at the data to see if it has results greater than chance. Stop being so fixated on how something might or might not work, and start looking at the data to see if it DOES. 

Then and only then attempt (if you like) to understand the physics of it. In my opinion, physics will never explain much of this stuff, and scientists will hopefully accept that fact at some point in the future, or modify the "rules" of physics to accommodate such behavior.

I should have explained a bit more about how the final outputs of the random number generators are calculated. 

In each case, 200 consecutive bits, to which an XOR mask has been applied, are sampled each second, and then added up. In theory that would produce a binomially distributed result, with mean 100 and variance 50. The XOR processing produces the right mean even if the input is biased, but the variance may be affected by bias or correlations between successive bits. Bias will tend to decrease the variance, but correlations may increase it. 

Unfortunately, one of the devices used,  the Mindsong, incorporated an elaborate 560-bit mask designed to minimise the effect of correlations. The purpose of that was to overcome any spurious change in variance due to correlations. But although the whole mask was balanced between 0s and 1s, for any given second the part of the mask coinciding with the 200 bits sampled, wasn't balanced, and the effect of that (if bias was present in the input) was actually to produce a spurious increase in variance. So in the output from the Mindsong devices, the variance was typically about 0.1% higher than it should have been. A renormalisation was periodically applied to the database to bring the variances into line with the theoretical values.

The upshot of all this is that the effect of any bias or correlations present in the raw bitstreams is just to change the variance of the final second-by-second output. That change is found to be only about a thousandth on average (and the data are renormalised to adjust for it). 

But the effect that's observed is essentially a correlation between these final outputs, for pairs of different RNGs in the network. The change in variance, even if it were left uncorrected, wouldn't tend to produce a correlation between the outputs of pairs of different RNGs.

There were 102 references in the larger of the two papers I linked to in that SF thread, and 40 odd pages of detailed information in the document itself - all related to RNG's. Great paper.

All that and still no data measuring deviation from randomness correlated to a noise event, etc etc.

You seem totally willing to just point to the papers, but you are unable to speak to the details.

I'll leave it alone because I can't get the answers I need from you to proceed, and I am honestly not interested enough to contact the folks who wrote the paper.

In terms of the electronics, you sound like a person who may have a little knowledge (as most do), and might be making comments that go beyond that limited understanding. 

In terms of getting a "nice output",, keep in mind: the idea is to get a random number. And we have the ability to quantify the amount of randomness we have a achieved. Whether the process requires heavy digital processing or not is immaterial. The only goal is randomness.

1- The data Max provided contains NO information about power quality, only load.
I am just trying to separate fact from fiction here.

jkmac,  I admit that I have little to no skill-set in electronics, but have worked in the industry and have a conversational background and limited understanding.  I am learning from your effort to bring Max back to the farm.  Help me put your position in context.

In quantifying randomness are you referring to a Bernoulli Distribution? 
In discussing "power quality"  are you referring to wave forms in the "flow" of the current?

I would comment that randomness is not a physical property but an informational property.  There are no SI units referring to randomness in materials or forces.   Probability distributions are abstract and based on informational relations.  Shannon's equations for mutual information can be seen as addressing any two variables, hence linking this to analysis as mutual information.

jkmac,  I admit that I have little to no skill-set in electronics, but have worked in the industry and have a conversational background and limited understanding.  I am learning from your effort to bring Max back to the farm.  Help me put your position in context.

In quantifying randomness are you referring to a Bernoulli Distribution? 
In discussing "power quality"  are you referring to wave forms in the "flow" of the current?

I would comment that randomness is not a physical property but an informational property.  There are no SI units referring to randomness in materials or forces.   Probability distributions are abstract and based on informational relations.  Shannon's equations for mutual information can be seen as addressing any two variables, hence linking this to analysis as mutual information.

In quantifying randomness I am referring to the properties that the tester are using to specify randomness. In other words, it is not for me to define randomness. I am using whatever definition the statisticians say is appropriate. They have a formulaic method of determining to their own satisfaction the level of randomness being exhibited at any point in time. I am satisfied that they are competent in making these determinations.

I am focusing on the hardware and software and it's ability to satisfy their needs for random numbers.

snip- In discussing "power quality"  are you referring to wave forms in the "flow" of the current?
I don't mean to be rude but your question is nonsensical. There is no such concept as "wave forms in the 'flow' of current". 

But let me try to guess at your meaning and attempt to answer.

I am saying that line current can be measured at the point of use. And this should have a smooth sinusoidal waveform at either 50 or 60 hz and either 120 or 240 volts, depending on country.

Nothing is perfect, so the waveform will have some distortion (AKA noise) on it. Also the waveform may not be exactly 120/240 volts.

So the assertion has been, that at peak load times of the day there is also an associated decrease in voltage and an increase in noise. And the assertion continues that this "messy power" condition is causing changes in the randomness of the RNG.

I am just asking for evidence of the messy power condition, the type of noise, and to see the associated change in randomness of the RNG. If we had some of this info we could characterize the amount and type of power distortion needed to produce a particular effect, and we could use this information to design a system with clean enough power for the job, assuming there is an effect to solve in the first place. I am doubtful of this.

I hope this answers your question.