Advertisement
If you have a new account but are having problems posting or verifying your account, please email us on hello@boards.ie for help. Thanks :)
Hello all! Please ensure that you are posting a new thread or question in the appropriate forum. The Feedback forum is overwhelmed with questions that are having to be moved elsewhere. If you need help to verify your account contact hello@boards.ie
Hi there,
There is an issue with role permissions that is being worked on at the moment.
If you are having trouble with access or permissions on regional forums please post here to get access: https://www.boards.ie/discussion/2058365403/you-do-not-have-permission-for-that#latest

Global Consciousness Project

  • 29-01-2007 11:06pm
    #1
    stevenmu
    Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 9,689 Mod ✭✭✭✭


    I think these guys have been mentioned here on the forum before, but I thought it would be an interesting topic to bring up to see what people of it.

    So what is it ?

    The Global Consciousness Project is an attempt to find correlations in the output physical random number generators with changes in the so called global conciousness. The project uses a global network of random number generators, also known as Electrogaiagrams or EGGs for short, to generate random 200-bit numbers once a second at 65 locations around the world. These numbers are transmitted back to the main server in Princeton for analysis. The principle of the project is that the numbers randomly generated can be analysed to see if they deviate from what would be expected by chance, these deviations can then be checked to see if they correspond with events which would be expected to cause a signifigant change in the global consciousness, such as earthquakes or other natural disasters. Probably the most well known example is that some of the largest deviations in the network occured in the hours before the 9/11 attacks.

    It's an interesting mechanism, the random numbers seem to generated by measuring background radiation. This background radiation permeates the whole universe and surrounds us all and can be seen as the static pattern on an untuned TV or heard as fuzz on a radio. It has long been used as a way of automatically machine generating truely random numbers without human interference, it would have been used for example by the CIA and KGB to generate random encryption keys for transmitting data.

    I'm not sure yet as to the mechanism by which consciousness is supposed to affect these random number generators, and from what I've seen the project itself makes no claims in this regard. The two potential mechanisms I can see are that consciousness itself is directly altering probability, which means that consciousness could somehow affect the generation of any random numbers, by any means they are generated. The other is that some unknown form of consciousness field is creating interference with the background radiation being measured by the EGGs, this then causes the EGGs to generate the numbers which deviate from standard chance.

    The project is being run by a combination of scientists from princeton, engineers, artists and more. They seem to be taking a bilateral approach, both scientific and more aesthetic, spiritual approach, which can be clearly seen on the projects home page, with links divided into right and left. The homepage is definitly worth a look and contains much more information about the project, including scientific data and analysis, and some lighter stuff, such as music and artwork generated by the EGG network.

    Global Consciousness Homepage

    Also worth reading:
    Damn Interesting Article
    Wikipedia Article


Advertisement