The Broken Dice

I've acquired quite a collection of obscure writings on chance, randomness, etc., and one of the most unique books I've come across on this subject is The Broken Dice by Ivar Ekeland (1993, English translation).

What I enjoy most about this book is that it is packed with excerpts and references to the role of chance in history. Perhaps I should be more clear... The casting of lots, the throwing of dice, the Urim and Thummin, etc. - used as tools to make major decisions or achieve justice.

Did they know something we've lost?

Admittedly, I am no historical scholar. And, in concession to the skeptics, it could be that these were just isolated instances of a favorable outcome told and retold to make the victor appear to be divinely favored or supernaturally gifted. Or they could reflect mass ignorance as to the nature of chance and randomness. But tools of chance were systematically employed across culture and history to make important decisions - why?

What if, at some time in ancient history, it was more widely know that there was a connection between 'chance' outcomes and human will? What if concepts like the strongest observer and the sum of the effect of multiple observers were blended into a ritual for the masses, which then became a custom whose origins were lost over time?

Like I said, I am no scholar in matters of history, but I do enjoy a good speculation. And occasionally I'll post said speculation. :)

Evan Harris Walker

This man gets his own blog entry because someone once suggested that what I was saying was no different than what he had said. Which, at the time, led me to purchase and devour the newly-published book The Physics of Consciousness (2000) and which led to me accumulating quite a file of EHW articles. According to web reports, he recently passed away.

The earliest EHW material I have concerns attempts to link quantum physics to psi phenomena. (I heard that groan.) Some of it is quite mathematical in nature, but the basic premise of his idea remains the same - he attempts to define the data rate of Consciousness (C) and posits a Will channel (W) that has a much smaller data rate capacity but which can still influence Consciousness in a way that would produce psychokinetic-like effects. He also speculated on ways to enhance the W/C signal-to-noise ratio to boost psi effects.

A reviewer of Walker's 1979 paper in Psychoenergetic Systems notes that while EHW suggests that the observer selects the state obtained, he did not convincingly address how this interaction was effected. I have been unable to find any specific attempts on his (EHW) part to address this issue in later work, though he concedes numerous times that "the conscious state experienced is correlated with the state into which the state vector collapses." (Journal of Indian Psychology, 1985)

My own work has always been attempting to breakdown the effects of different components of various types of cognitive representations and link them to contributions to state selection. At the time I was focused on the various ways and degrees of representing a point in time.

"The truth does exist, and when the truth is honestly sought, with a mind that is ready to accept the truth, whatever the truth turns out to be, then the answers do come, and the answers change people." - EHW, The Physics of Consciousness (2000), p. 13.

"We stand at the threshold of a revolution in thinking that transcends anything that has happened in a thousand years." - EHW, The Physics of Consciousness (2000), p. 137.

Quantum Shmantum

"But I would bet my bottom dollar that the new theory will either retain the parallel universes feature of quantum physics or it will contain something even more weird." - From an interview with David Deutsch in Discover, September 2001. (My emphasis.)

Hardly seems like this was 5 years ago.

Came across this quote in a notebook while sorting through a decade's worth of articles, presentations, and notebooks. (Bless Discover for freely archiving past issues online. If only all good articles were so easily accessible.)

Bear with me while I get organized...

Rapid Framework Shift

Rapid Framework Shift (RFS) : a tool designed to compensate for the decline in psychokinetic (PK) performance seen in standard repetitive PK tasks. Developed in response to speculation that standard PK tests began to bore or fatigue a subject because of their repetitive nature (repeated presentation of exactly the same stimuli, etc.), thereby causing subject to be less able to exhibit the desired PK effect.

A differential-based theory of outcome/state selection also predicts that a subject will have a successively more difficult time selecting the desired outcome in a series of tasks where the outcome choice set (event family) is the same. The subject is exposed to the same level, nature and quality of information again and again. Additonally, at the level of experience, the subject's expectations for future outcomes are altered with every subsequent success or failure to achieve the desired outcome. A differential-based theory (even one that cannot yet pinpoint the exact nature of the differentials) would predict that something that can be likened to a charge building up on a capacitor would build up after repeated activation of the same representations. It is entirely in line with existing experimental findings to speculate that such a build-up might require increasing attentional resources to overcome in an attempt to produce the specified target effect.

RFS allows the same parameters of the test (source of randomness, standard odds associated with target outcomes, etc.) to be expressed to the subject on a variety of perceptual levels. Boredom and fatigue are further overcome by rapidly shifting between these frames of perception, preventing the subject from further processing or generating expectations regarding future success or failure at the task (a process invoking additional cognitive resources and processing time).

Think of an RFS PK test as a video game where 'success' comes only from obtaining certain possible outcomes from the set of possible random outcomes. This video game engages the subject on several perceptual levels (visual, auditory, tactile) with varying degrees of information complexity, but the subject can only advance through the game with aid of a series of PK 'pushes' on the random generator to obtain the necessary outcome. And, like a standard video game, the pace of action can be as rapid as necessary to allow the subject to access her ability to respond with PK more instinctively.

And this would be just an example of what might be needed in order to more accurately capture the range of 'psi' abilities in the confines of a laboratory.

Critical Concepts

"Oh... neural linear decomposition of the state vector, followed by phase-shifting and preferential reinforcement of selected eigenstates. You're right: we'd better think of something catchier, or the whole thing will end up being grossly misreported."

Successful navigation of Smearland requires a firm grip on the idea that an event can be defined and observed in many ways and at many levels.

Ex: In following my favorite sports team, I can know the outcome of last night's game (win or lose) by reading about it in the next day's paper, or tuning in periodically throughout the game for updates, or watching the game in its entirety in person. Different amounts of information to answer the same question - win or lose? A different picture of the game. A different framework for the critical observation that answers my question about whether my team won or lost. Watching the whole game in person is a long series of observations, each of which contributes just a little to the final observation of a win or a loss. Reading about the game in the paper is a single observation that resolves the win/lose question.

Why is this important?

If you decide to try to steer yourself to a specific universe (outcome), you will have to select a framework in which to make the critical observations. In selecting a framework for your observation(s), you will want to consider the event family in each frame. Event family refers to the set of possible observations for a given set of timespace coordinates.

Ex: We are playing poker and I have a wicked hand that would be made better by any of the following cards - any club, any seven, and especially, the seven of clubs. According to standard odds calculation, the odds of drawing each of these cards gets progressively smaller as we move up the list. This is because the way the deck has been divided and classified has changed in each case. (Remember that classification is a cognitive function, not an inherent property of the deck.) I may choose to focus on pulling a club out of an event family where the possible observations are club, diamond, spade, and heart. Or I may choose the event family with 13 possible observations - Ace through King. Event family reflects, but is not completely defined by, the choice of sorting criteria. The other criteria by which the cards may be sorted once an event family is selected can become irrelevant because they are cognitive constructs. And since perception becomes observation only after cognitive filtering, a skillful inhabitant of Smearland directs himself to the final observation in part by controlling the influence of these filters.

I emphasize framework and event family here because it will take you awhile to break away from using standard odds calculation as a landmark in Smearland. In Randomness Isn't Random, I began to tell you why standard odds calculation becomes meaningless in Smearland. I'll come back to the topic of redefining probability in future posts. In the meantime, think about how why these concepts might have an impact on an unobserved outcome.

Science Is Thrilling Again

"True science teaches, above all, to doubt and be ignorant."

Once upon a time I was at a conference, attempting to present support for the idea that state selection was not a random occurrence and that there was solid evidence for looking at the brain/mind in an attempt to find the differentials that guide it.

While conversing with two gentlemen, I gave the illustration of a coin flip and being able to steer oneself into whichever outcome (Heads or Tails) one desired. Being the good scientists they were, they immediately asked for a demonstration and produced a coin. They chose the target outcome before the flip and they flipped the coin; we all observed the outcome. And we hit the target 6 times in a row before another gentleman walked up. At this point, beer was wagered on subsequent outcomes. (You still owe me that beer!) And we hit the target outcome 2 more times before my fellow observers became too freaked out to continue.

Now obviously I can't prove that I didn't just make that whole story up. But I have often wondered if that demonstration (and others like it) made any type of significant impact on the people who witnessed them. I never would have gotten to the point where I could have produced such a demonstration if I hadn't been willing to push science to tell me more.

Science is observation and experiment and deduction, not rationalization or comfort zones or excuses. How will science ever be thrilling to you if you aren't at the very edges of what is known? If you aren't struggling to find new methods and coax new secrets from experimental data?

If you can't even look at the borderlands of science without whining about how it can't be true, then you will have to be content with boring science. Just stay out of my way. ;)

Journal Club #1

Schmidt, H., Collapse of the State Vector and Psychokinetic Effect, Foundations of Physics, 12, 1982, pp 565-581.

Psychokinesis - the effect of the mind upon matter - is a well-studied phenomenon. Most studies of psychokinesis (PK) use random or quasi-random systems, as these systems are thought to be easier to influence with the mind than larger objects. Once you are dealing with random systems, it's not too much of a leap to the problem of state selection in quantum physics. This article attempts to bring together what was known about PK and what was known (or thought to be known) about the crux of quantum physics - the collapse of the state vector (and the selection of a single state from many possible states) by the observer.

The stated purpose of this article is to introduce equations for the collapse of the state vector that allow for the type of mental influence that PK represents, and the first part of the article rehashes some of the basic point of quantum physics and the role of the observer. I'm not really going to dwell on this, as the idea of a permanent collapse caused by a conscious observer is not the best model for understanding Smearland. What you do want from this article are the pieces of information about successful PK efforts that will help you understand what an inhabitant of Smearland needs to do in order to successfully select the outcome s/he wants.

Schmidt accepts the premise that "human will can under certain conditions affect the outcome of random processes", as do I (obviously) as this has repeatedly been shown to be true by many laboratory studies. Schmidt also acknowledges the major obstacles with this type of research - small effect sizes and the decline in subjects' interest in and motivation to complete the task. (More about overcoming these obstacles in future posts.)

The fact that decreasing interest in the task is a problem when studying these effects should indicate that mechanisms involved in attentional focus have a role to play in selecting the outcome... Keep this in mind.

Schmidt introduces two variables that he feels represent critical aspects of the PK effect - K, "the alertness parameter", which represents the idea that "a highly alert observer might produce a faster collapse of the state vector than a sleepy one"; and E, "the PK coefficient", which measures "the strength of the associated psychokinetic effect". The variable K has no corresponding role in Navigating. The difference between an alert observer and a sleepy observer is not the speed with which a state vector collapse is achieved, but the relevant level of encoding of the observation into memory. The strength of the memory will determine its influence in subsequent observations. The variable E needs to be recast as well; the strength of a psychokinetic effect can only truly be measured when the expectations and prior knowledge involved are measured as well. In summary, these variables, as defined by Schmidt, attempt to quantify key factors for achieving PK effects, but they fall short of capturing exactly what is going on.

Another point worth noting in this article is that "the combined PK effect from the two observers cannot be stronger than the effect from the 'better' PK subject alone." (More on the effects of multiple observers in future posts.)

And finally, Schmidt approaches the idea that an observation does not completely collapse the state vector when he hypothesizes about "incomplete reductions" and "half asleep or inattentive" observers. However he stills suggests that a permanent reduction takes place somewhere along the way, with speculations about cats and cockroaches as effective observers.

We'll end with Schmidt's question - "Could the singular role of the human subject as source of the PK effect be related to the controversial role of the observer in quantum theory, and does the reported PK effect on quantum jumps indicate some incompleteness in the current quantum formalism?" Yes, and yes.