Spooky random number generators

http://www.rednova.com/news/display/?id=126649#121

I've been vaguely following research on the 'non-local effects of consciousness' using these little random number generator boxen... but this is a bit of a surprising result. Spoooooky.

oooh interesting. one thing i couldn't get from the article tho was whether the scientists who think it predicted 9/11 and the tsunamis looked at the results and thought it was a prediction before the events or after the events. it's easy to read stuff into "random" events after the fact. also, how often does it "predict" something big and nothing happens? they don't say.

i don't think it can really be sensing people watching Princess Di's funeral or celebrating new years because it's just a chip that generates numbers and doesn't have any sensors. if you want it to "know" something's going on it's going to have to be completely supernatural cause the chip isn't built to do that. and i'd believe in a real live psychic before i believed in a computer psychic.

I wouldn't say it's anything supernatural, really... just something not currently understood. Personally, I don't find such effects all that unlikely. After all, computers operate using microprocessors, which function by shifting around tiny currents of electrons. The human mind works in more-or-less a similar fashion, moving charges and potentials. All of this spits out electromagnetic fields that can interact with each other. I hope they're careful with their claims of prediction, though... and are rigorous in their scientific methods.

I'm not a terribly big believer in the supernatural (tho its a fun fantasy!), but I'm certainly not going to fall into the trap of believing we know everything that's possible, either. The universe is plenty weird, even without ghosts and stuff.