The Global Consciousness Project

 
What is the nature of Global Consciousness?

Brussels Airport and Train Attacks March 22 2016

32 people were killed and dozens more were injured after bombs which targeted the airport and a metro train on Tuesday, March 22nd 2016. The bombings were the deadliest act of terrorism in Belgium's history. Islamist terror group ISIS later claimed responsibility for the blasts.

ISIS terrorists behind Brussels bombings 'planned to attack Paris but targeted Belgium city after key suspects arrested' Belgium prosecutors said the terrorists took the decision to strike in Brussels after being left surprised by the speed of the police investigation

Specific Hypothesis and Results

The GCP event was set for 6 hours beginning 07:30, local time, to include the bombing at the airport, the train attack, and several hours for the news to develop. The result is Chisquare 21772.8 on 21600 df, for p = 0.2026 and Z = 0.832

Interpretation

The following graph is a visual display of the statistical result. It shows the second-by-second accumulation of small deviations of the data from what’s expected. Our prediction is that deviations will tend to be positive, and if this is so, the jagged line will tend to go upward. If the endpoint is positive, this is evidence for the general hypothesis and adds to the bottom line. If the endpoint is outside the smooth curve showing 0.05 probability, the deviation is nominally significant. If the trend of the cumulative deviation is downward, this is evidence against the hypothesis, and is subtracted from the bottom line. For more detail on how to interpret the results, see The Science and related pages, as well as the standard caveat below.

Brussels Bombings
Cumulative Deviation during event

Standard caveat

It is important to keep in mind that we have only a tiny statistical effect, so that it is always hard to distinguish signal from noise. This means that every success might be largely driven by chance, and every null might include a real signal overwhelmed by noise. In the long run, a real effect can be identified only by patiently accumulating replications of similar analyses.