The Global Consciousness Project

Is there any evidence that other digital/electronic devices malfunction at emotional moments?

Is there any evidence that other digital/electronic devices malfunction at emotional moments?

That's what I was thinking too... though I reckon it would be even more complicated to track down glitches in god knows how many different devices.

But yeah, it seems like if RNGs go bananas en masse during certain events we could expect similar behavior from computers of all sizes.

cheers.

I suppose we have to bear in mind that the effect is extremely weak - they're not so much going bananas, as displaying a very slight tendency to correlate with one another. And we can't say that there's a malfunction, because the numbers are random anyway, and are just deviating slightly from ideal behaviour. It's not as though they are doing a digital calculation and getting the wrong result.

Having said that, when I read Malf's question I couldn't help thinking of the common claim about clocks stopping when their owners die...

I suppose we have to bear in mind that the effect is extremely weak - they're not so much going bananas, as displaying a very slight tendency to correlate with one another. And we can't say that there's a malfunction, because the numbers are random anyway, and are just deviating slightly from ideal behaviour. It's not as though they are doing a digital calculation and getting the wrong result.

Having said that, when I read Malf's question I couldn't help thinking of the common claim about clocks stopping when their owners die...

Which brings up an odd event that happened to me a couple months ago- (a little off topic,,, maybe)

I have a grandfather's clock that I built in high school in 1973. It has been happily tick-tocking away continuously for all these years with occasional pauses where it needed to be cleaned, oiled etc.

A few months ago it stopped and I haven't gotten around to oiling it.

My 1 year old grandson was visiting a month ago and I was following along after him as he puttered around the house to make sure he didn't get into any trouble. He stopped at the grandfather's clock and looked at the big brass pendulum sitting still behind the glass door. He seemed curious. 

After 10-20 seconds of him standing there with his hands on the glass, I realized I could hear the ticking of the movement. I looked behind the glass and the pendulum was now swinging fully from side to side. A couple minutes later the chimes rang out which the do, every 15 minutes. 

For those who have no experience with a clock of this type, you must open the door of the case and physically push the pendulum to one side, like pushing a child on a swing, to get things started. It cannot be started by touching or tapping the exterior of the case. Anyway- my grandson, being only 1 year old, couldn't reach high enough on the case door to open it even if he wanted to. And I was standing there anyway, and wouldn't have allowed him to open it, even if he could.

Some other things to say about this are: my daughter has been stopped twice in the street by "sensitive" people, and told that her son is somehow "special". 

And a year ago, my wife and I were having a reading done and the medium made note of the fact that our second grandson (this boy) was actually my wife's mother (who passed about 15 years ago), and that he is "special" and that we should pay close attention to him.

All of this is of course completely anecdotal, and proves absolutely nothing, I realize that. But when a child who has been called special several times by multiple people, simply places his hands on a clock like this, and it spontaneously begins to work, it certainly is something of note.

That's what I was thinking too... though I reckon it would be even more complicated to track down glitches in god knows how many different devices.

But yeah, it seems like if RNGs go bananas en masse during certain events we could expect similar behavior from computers of all sizes.

cheers.

I don't follow the train of thought here. RNGs are intended to exhibit randomness. Computers are intended to exhibit predictability. Why would each be affected in a similar way?

Which brings up an odd event that happened to me a couple months ago- (a little off topic,,, maybe)

I have a grandfather's clock that I built in high school in 1973. It has been happily tick-tocking away continuously for all these years with occasional pauses where it needed to be cleaned, oiled etc.

A few months ago it stopped and I haven't gotten around to oiling it.

My 1 year old grandson was visiting a month ago and I was following along after him as he puttered around the house to make sure he didn't get into any trouble. He stopped at the grandfather's clock and looked at the big brass pendulum sitting still behind the glass door. He seemed curious. 

After 10-20 seconds of him standing there with his hands on the glass, I realized I could hear the ticking of the movement. I looked behind the glass and the pendulum was now swinging fully from side to side. A couple minutes later the chimes rang out which the do, every 15 minutes. 

For those who have no experience with a clock of this type, you must open the door of the case and physically push the pendulum to one side, like pushing a child on a swing, to get things started. It cannot be started by touching or tapping the exterior of the case. Anyway- my grandson, being only 1 year old, couldn't reach high enough on the case door to open it even if he wanted to. And I was standing there anyway, and wouldn't have allowed him to open it, even if he could.

Some other things to say about this are: my daughter has been stopped twice in the street by "sensitive" people, and told that her son is somehow "special". 

And a year ago, my wife and I were having a reading done and the medium made note of the fact that our second grandson (this boy) was actually my wife's mother (who passed about 15 years ago), and that he is "special" and that we should pay close attention to him.

All of this is of course completely anecdotal, and proves absolutely nothing, I realize that. But when a child who has been called special several times by multiple people, simply places his hands on a clock like this, and it spontaneously begins to work, it certainly is something of note.

Thanks for the anecdote Jkmac - will be intrigued to see if your grandson has anything interesting to say once he's old enough to talk.

Thanks for the anecdote Jkmac - will be intrigued to see if your grandson has anything intershing to say once he's old enough to talk.

Yes.

1- I'll be listening carefully
2- I will NOT be ignoring any stories about where he "used to live", or who his "other parents" are. 

Of course the trick is to be open and receptive and attentive, but not to encourage totally fanciful stuff. I haven't yet figured out how to walk that line.

I don't follow the train of thought here. RNGs are intended to exhibit randomness. Computers are intended to exhibit predictability. Why would each be affected in a similar way?

Well,
isn't the distribution of the numbers produced by an RNG also predictable? Otherwise the GCP wouldn't be able to say that something is afoot in their tests.

Generally speaking the idea is that consciousness messes around with matter, thus causing a change in the expected behaviour.
Surely it is difficult to say whether or not the effects can be noticed in other devices, but at least in principle I'd say it should be possible..

Makes sense?

Well,
isn't the distribution of the numbers produced by an RNG also predictable? Otherwise the GCP wouldn't be able to say that something is afoot in their tests.

Generally speaking the idea is that consciousness messes around with matter, thus causing a change in the expected behaviour.
Surely it is difficult to say whether or not the effects can be noticed in other devices, but at least in principle I'd say it should be possible..

Makes sense?

Not really, to me at least. I think you've introduced an additional idea, but the original point still remains.

Now I know the most common implementations of random-number generators don't use radioactive decay, it's a good starting point in this discussion. Here, if we consider any single atom of a radioactive isotope, there is no way of telling at what instant it might decay. It is as random as random gets. However, take a chunk of that material containing billions upon billions of atoms of the same material, and one can say with fairly high precision how much of it will decay in a given time period.

Here is the crux of the matter.

• One individual atom - unpredictable.
  
• Many, many atoms together = predictable.
  

Now true random-number generators make use of the first characteristic. Computers take advantage of the second characteristic.

Expecting some undefined psi factor to change the behaviour of highly predictable large-scale physical systems such as computers is a completely different matter to positing that it might affect tiny quantum events which by their nature are unpredictable .