How the Measurement Works

Elsewhere on the website, especially in the "About" and "Procedures" sections, we have given detailed descriptions and links to technical information on the methods and equipment used in the Global Consciousness Project. This is perhaps too spread out or otherwise inaccessible, and we have had requests for a better, more human-readable introduction to the basic technology. Here is a short correspondence which may be helpful.


From: rdnelson 
Subject: Re: GCP

On Wed, 29 Dec 1999, you wrote:


> Roger:  I think what you are attempting to do with this project is very 
> important....and I say "I think" because a 20 min. trip through your 
> website gives me very little information about what you are measuring, 
> what your data collectors are, what your data is, or even what your basic 
> premises are. (Definitions of REGS and EGGs would be useful.)
> If you want this idea to reach people, I think you're going to have to 
> make it read more accessibly.

Yes.  I appreciate your lucid complaints, and they are going to inspire some 
rewrites, or at least some new upfront material that is (intended to be) more 
accessible.  I have created a new page how_it_works.html, with your very
reasonable request in mind.  The next few days will be extremely busy since 
the Y2K transition is a major focus for the GCP project, but I will make some 
time to write about How It Works.  Thanks for the push.

> I'm going to make a wild guess that your data is newsblips on any subject 
> from numerous sources...around the world?...which are then correlated to 
> create a map ("structure"?) of the public awareness of any event.  But 

No.  The data come from electronic random sources (random event generators) 
which produce a steady stream of unpredictable bits.  They are the equivalent 
of high-speed electronic coin flippers.  We simply record the actual value 
of 200 coin flips every second at each device, expecting it will be about 
100 (50/50 chance for a bit to be 1 or 0).  This is a varying quantity, 
of course, depending on chance fluctuations.  

The idea that we can use the scale of those variations, in particular, 
deviations from the expected mean value, as a measure of some aspect of 
"consciousness" is derived from three decades of laboratory research 
indicating that conscious intention can affect the randomness of such 
devices in controlled experiments. What the GCP/EGG project is doing is 
a direct extension of such work.

> even if this is close, how you jump from there to "global csc." or 
> measuring the effect (newsblips?) of a meditation around the world 
> (especially one scheduled for noon at each timezone), escapes me.
> Sorry for the critical tone, but I think studies like this are important 
> and should be made more accessible.

In "field" studies with REGs we have found consistent deviations from expected 
random data sequences taken in situations where groups become integrated.  
During deeply engaging meetings, concerts, rituals, etc., the data tend to 
slightly greater order, and we are able to predict this deviation with small 
but significant success.  In the GCP case, exactly the same thing is done -- we 
predict a detectable ordering (in the form of slight meanshifts, or increases 
of the variability of the mean) in otherwise random data during world-class 
events that are likely to engage the attention of large numbers of us around 
the globe.  The continuous data streams registered by the EGG network have an 
expected statistical character, and we simply look at the empirical statistics 
to see whether our predictions are supported by the data, that is, we predict 
differences from expectation which are correlated with the events. 
(Well, I'm sure that is about as clear as mud :) but I will work on it.) 

> Thanks for listening.  

Thanks for your interest and for the valuable feedback. And Happy New Year!

Roger


Here is another brief exchange:


From: rdnelson 
Subject: RE: In case you're wondering...

On Wed, 6 Dec 2000, you wrote:

> I *have* wondered what exactly it is the devices are measuring, and
> how it's turned into 1s and 0s. I read all about the RPKP random number
> generator, but I'm not sure if these resemble that system or not. 
> If you could elaborate on how they work I'd greatly appreciate it. :)

I'm not sure you mean how do they work or what are they
measuring when in use?  How they work is straightforward;
what they do ... is not.  The links under "About" --> "REGs" 
which brought you to this page attempt to address both of these
questions.  There is some description of the basic design of
the Microreg under the "Equipment" section, but nothing
technical about the Orion.  Whereas the Microreg uses an FET
for the white noise, and an XOR with a table of all bytes
with equal numbers of 1 and 0, the Orion uses two diodes,
possibly avalanche diodes, and the two white-noise output
signals are XOR'ed against each other.  They have no
built-in protection against bias, so a software XOR is
imposed in the egg software for the Orion type, as you know.

Let me know if this is the sort of thing you are interested
in.  If it is "what are we measuring" that's another story,
and it remains largely unwritten, although we can talk about
information and entropy reduction and resonance and
coherence and models based on David Bohm's notion of active
information, etc.  I tend to be an empiricist, but I would
like to find some sesible explanatory framework.

Best,
Roger

This is a more recent exchange, with a new egg-host who is interested in the question whether a larger number of eggs might be much more effective in answering our basic questions.


From: rdnelson 
Subject: Re: Australian Egg

On Fri, 15 Dec 2000, you wrote:

> Well I'd still recommend increasing the order of magnitude of the number
> of eggs on this planet, because it's hard to determine whether you're
> measuring global consciousness or just a butterfly effect.  

I suspect that understanding the global consciousness effect 
may be more than just casually related to nonlinear dynamical 
system models.  Indeed in an early paper on closely related
research I used the butterfly effect you mention as an
analog for explanatory purposes.  However, increasing the
number of eggs doesn't obviously separate "global consciousness"
from "just a butterfly effect."  Can you be more explicit?
Maybe describe a formal comparison which might be made, and
which would require 350 eggs instead of 35?

> For instance, when Al Gore makes a concession speech or George W Bush 
> is at the inauguration, there's a helluva lot of unique satellite TV 
> activity going on, and a lot of TVs in the world showing almost the same 
> signal. This is over and above any consequences arising out of many
> people viewing the same spectacle.

Well, for what it is worth, the GCP activity during Gore's
speech was flat, and during Bush's had a slight positive
deviation (in our customary measure) that culminated with a
p-value of 0.15.  You can see the picture, along with a
selection of others concerning the election saga on the
results page of the GCP website.  There were three formal
predictions, accompanied by a number of other exploratory
analyses.  Only the announcement of the second US Supreme Court
remand showed significant deviation of the Chisquare.
 
> While I'm very open to following the theory that GOP is investigating,
> there are a lot of other good ideas (with slightly more "Ockham's Razor"
> to it, perhaps!) that could do with shifting fields in physics we don't
> know about.

GOP, eh?  You've been watching too much Election TV!  It is
GCP, in this case.  I am very much interested in any
theories -- or good ideas -- you may propose.  I'd be happy
to learn about any good explanation that is consistent with the
data.  My, or I should say, our "theory" is really more of a
hypothesis, and the project is an attempt to test it -- or
any other testable hypothesis to explain the frequent correlation
of the Egg activity (which is otherwise random) with certain
"Global" events.  

So, I welcome any clearly formulated, testable alternative 
hypotheses.  If they make sense, and there is someone in the 
GCP network who is able to do so, we will test them.  

Thanks for your interesting comments.  I will look forward
to more good ideas.

Roger

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