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Retropsychokinesis

  
 
Sam T.
14:58 / 17.02.06
I'm aching to share something I've stumbled upon some time ago and experimented with. I'm utterly sorry to have written something that is quite dense and sooo long winded.

Short summary: I think that there is a way to test experimentally the effect of an observer upon a quantic system. It's the RetroPsychoKinesis Project. I think also that this could have a very interesting link with magic, both practically and in a theorical way.

First here are the cold, hard facts, as much as I understand them. Please bear with me. Won't hurt if you look around the web site first to know what I'm talking about.

*Some true random numbers are obtained, basically, a string of bits. In this case they are generated by timing a decaying radioactive source with a Geiger counter, automatically recording the result with a computer and storing it in a file.

*When an user decide to run a test, a Java applet download a copy of this file in the user computer, and start to display sequentially the string of bits. Take a mandatory look here to see how it goes.

The graphical display shows a pointer that goes right every times it encounters a 1, and left for a 0. So you find yourself looking at this moving line on your screen, and trying to make it go as far as possible from its starting point with yer mighty powers of the mind. At the end of the run, the ratio of zero and one is looked at, and from it is calculated what is called the z-score. What is that?

I don't want to understand the maths involved, so please correct me if I'm wrong. Roughly, it means that if you take any sequence of 2000 truly random bits, you're expecting to have something like about 1000 zero bits and 1000 one bits in there. Having 500 zero and 1500 one could happen, but only fairly infrequently. The z-score is a measure of that, and also relates to the number of run you should do to get this result by chance alone. This is all displayed at the end of the run.

Now, if you do a great number of run, in the long term you should average out zeros and ones. In fact, it's more complex than that. I refer you to the web site where you will find statistical explanations to your heart content. Not too heavy are this, and especially, this, which is related to the previous one.

Anyway, in a nutshell, what they say is that with data coming from selected 'gifted' subjects you usually have very meaningful results. When you add up all the experiments that were ever done in this field, you get something like a one chance in a thousand that those result were gotten by luck.

Some guy then decided to setup this web site to do a massive online experiment, where subjects can quietly test out things at home. The results so far seems to be conclusive, especially with one gifted subject that made a lot of successful experiments (it's not me!).

Now, what is interesting there from a magical point of view?

*Warning: wild speculations ahead, from someone who knows only pop quantum science*

First of all, it looks like you can influence the outcome of a quantic system by intent when looking at a macrocosmic representation of it.

From a Schrodinger's Cat perspective, those bit were in a quantic indeterminate state until somebody decided to observe them. The moment the observation *by a consciousness* is done, the indeterminate state is resolved: the wave collapse and you are left with either a 0 or a 1. But it looks like that if intent was applied properly during observation, the result is skewed towards what the observer wanted. In this case, the cat comes out alive if you're a kitty lover .

As a very interesting aside, time doesn't matter at all. The sequence of random bits could have been generated weeks, even months earlier, it works just the same, as long as nobody has looked at them before.

Now I'm feeling that this can hold a key to how magic works.

*Warning: even wilder speculations coming this time straight out of my magical arse*

When we are doing magic, in short, we model what we intend to change, unleash intent on it, and have the outcome skewed in our favor. If you add the butterfly effect to the retropsychokinesis, then you may imagine this:

The applied intent could very well manage to collapse a few unobserved quantum states in the past. They then cascade up until the desired effect is manifested in the macrocosm.

Of course, nothing proves that this is really the mechanism, but the idea is seducing. How exactly it is decided what states needs to be collapsed remains the mystery it always was. I have the intuition that this particular problem needs to be taken backwards.

Now, what is especially fascinating and interesting in a direct, practical way, is that you have direct, observable feedback of what you do, contrary to doing magic in the real world (although making traffic lights switch color is a favorite of mine

Here is my personal experience of it, for what it is worth:

You watch that line move, you become one with it first. Then gently, your pour intent on it. Whatever works for you, works. You really feel the faith doing its thing here.

For example, I will just blow my breath on the line from the side, to push it on the direction I want. While doing it, I'm firmly convinced that the air I'm blowing with my mouth will have an impact on it. I then sit back and empty my mind. Bam! the line suddenly jerks in the way I intended. Give you a shock usually. If I try again, but am thinking in the back of my mind: how stupid to blow on a monitor screen to influence the outcome of a RNG, it suddenly doesn't works so well

(Other things you can try: putting your finger on the screen, thinking it will magnetically attract the line, pushing at the line with the mouse pointer, whatever. Use your imagination to find something that is acceptable, in which you can believe)

Also, If I suddenly manage to do very well, I'm often taken aback and things goes awry after that. There's a subtle dance between believing and not believing, the concentration or lack of it, managing to get your awareness one pointed, and believing truly that what you are doing will have an effect... In fact it seems to me that this follows perfectly what is outlined in the 'Nuts and Bolts' section of this page. At least working with those ideas in mind seems to give the better results.

For me this is an invaluable tool to help me grok what works and what doesn't when doing magic. It has been very helpful in my magical practice to help me fine tune a state of mind where things can happen at will, effortlessly. It seems to me that moving this line is 'hard' compared to influencing outcomes in the real world.

After all, you may only have to change a few quantum states to get the desired result in reality, owing to the infamous butterfly effect, but here it is a consequent number you have to disrupt. On the other hand just doing a 'spell' beforehand for the run to score big does seems to quite work, if you manage to stay calm, that is.

Very interesting also are the beliefs you are holding when doing the experiment, and how they translate. I realized once that I had the 'background' belief that when I was puffing on the system, nature was going to put it back to equilibrium. The line then acted like it was elastically tied to its starting point: I managed to blow it off far on the side, only to have it come back to the middle. When I realized this and managed to change this belief, thinking instead that the line didn't have any 'memory', that it was just a random string of 0 and 1, and that once I got it blown off it should just stay at its new point of equilibrium, it did.

In short, my gut belief for all this is that it is the definitive training ground for doing result oriented magic. Exercising with this can tremendously improve your success ratio, and also can manage to get snap fingers results.

* GENERAL IMPORTANT DISCLAIMER*

Maybe it's just the Law of Fives at work and I'm totally deluded.

*THANKS FOR YOUR ATTENTION*

Still, the very first time I stumbled upon this and gave it a try, guess what was my final score?

Yep. 23.



Anyway, If you look at my log, it's not that impressive. There is a one chance in 451 in there for sure and a few over 100, but the overall z score is not very convincing (but not bad either, roughly a 1 in 3).

That said, I'm usually going with what I start with: if the line goes left, I'll keep it going left, even if I have stated 'right' as a goal. This violently decrease the total z. If you add all the z without counting the initial goal I think I'm quite good. If somebody with a love of all thing chi square wants to do it, I would love it.

I've been mostly toying around with it and didn't care much about the end result, more about the feeling and the feedback this give me. Maybe one day, I'll try to do some decent records logs.

Hope you found this interesting. I'll be very much interested in your take on that matter (Do you think it's just a 'psychic power' among others, or could it be a core mechanism of action of magic?), and of course in your practical experiments.

As a related side note, you should take a look at this Barbelith thread

In fact, I've stumbled upon the Global Consciousness project first, and tried some global telepathic broadcast to see if I could shake up the world consciousness (yes, I'm nuts). It looks like I managed to have their 'global coherence' dot going red bright ( meaning <1% that the result was gotten by chance) for a few hours. I'm convinced now that I very much managed to wreck havoc on their poor RNGs

By the way, the link to the experiment given here is a demo. It relies on the internal pseudo random number generator of your computer rather than fetching real quantic generated random bits. This is to preclude a sudden influx of people getting all the good crunchy bits. It doesn't mean that it won't work, I did have good results with it too, but the feel is very different. Dig around the RPKP site to find the real experiments.
 
 
Quantum
14:56 / 24.02.06
That's interesting, ta!
So if the point is to move the line with the power of your mind, I wonder if it needs to be a 'quantic system'? (Not sure what the correct phrase is there)
Wouldn't any sufficiently delicately balanced system work just the same?
 
 
c0nstant
16:31 / 24.02.06
as I understand it (from a basic pop physics point of view), the point isn't to "move it with your mind" as such. but rather that the random data that generates the image hasn't been viewed before EVER, meaning that it's waveform is still uncollapsed (it may be a one or it may be a zero, therefore until viewed it is functionally BOTH). The point of the test is to see whether or not your intentions and expectations can collapse the waveform into the form that you are expecting, thus altering the way that the pendulum moves, retroactively.

Although, if this is wrong, I'm happy to be corrected by someone more knowledgeable.
 
 
Professor Silly
18:31 / 24.02.06
One interesting aspect to these experiments (and I apologize if this was already mentioned--I didn't see it) is that when recorded in advance, and "played" for the subject it can still be affected...but ONLY IF NOBODY HAS "LISTENED" TO THE TAPE. If the scientist that records the random string of 1's and 0's and then looks at the distribution (and sees that it's balanced) nobody can then change the results. But if it's recorded and unobserved until the subject manipulated it, then these skewed results can manifest.

This implies that the subject is reaching back in time...but only if noone else has "set" the reality through observation. This is Schrodinger's Cat to a tee! One way to look at it: if I shuffle a deck of cards, the top card is all possibilities until I flip it over or show it to someone else. This really leads some scientific backing for divination--the power of the mind, or higher self, or whatever we call it manipulating the "randomized" element subconsciously to reach beyond our temporal limitations--whether it be through tarot, or tea leaves, I Ching....
 
 
Professor Silly
18:35 / 24.02.06
p.s.

as far as experimenting with shuffling a deck of cards and then trying to "guess" or predict the top card I can see too possible explanations: One is "seeing" into the deck (the psychic or clairvoyant hypothesis) OR one is changing the top card through will (the magical or pyschokinetic hypothesis)
 
 
Sam T.
06:43 / 01.03.06
Funny you should mention divination. Yes, I think it has quite a few applications in this area.

I do all my divinations on the computer, because, you know, yarrow stalks are just sooo not 21 century . I get great results this way.

For those on a Mac, I heartily recommend iChange, a I Ching hexagram generator, very neat, with, yes, yarrow stalks emulation! (not that it does matter, but a nice touch that the I seems to like).

An absolutely incredible little application is Eighthball. It is a Magic Eight Ball simulator. It's kind of a modern equivalent of a Ouija board. BUT, it doesn't have all the bad connections related to it. I use it mainly to contact Eris, and you can have some very funny and enlightening conversations using it. It's kind of an universal switchboard too, since I've used it successfully to contact Fotamecus and some Barbelith servitors.

Let's not forget the awesome Digitarot, a web site you can use to draw Thoth Tarot cards.

What is interesting there, in the case of the I Ching, is that it seems that it is not your 'power' that influence the RNG, but the 'power' of the I Ching. It absolutely acts like an independent entity. The EightBall took quite some time getting to work, and it didn't always function properly, especially when I had doubts about it.

Funny anecdote that will illustrate my point: I used EightBall for some time, then messed up and got unintelligible answers, turned back to the I Ching, and it gave me that moving line that says 'You let your magic tortoise go, And look at me with the corners of your mouth drooping.' (Turtle shells were used for divination it says somewhere else in the commentary).
 
 
Sam T.
07:02 / 01.03.06
Yep, nobody should have looked at the results before for this to work. What is funny is that it screw things up only when there is a fair analysis done.

For example, they tried with pseudo RNG (the ones you have in your computer), and made people inspect the seed of the RNG (a value that is used to then derive all the pseudo random numbers). It worked just fine anyway.

If you haven't stumbled on it already, I very much recommend this page to all, this are some general speculations about what could be happening here. I have the intuition that, in some ways, all of it is true, it just depends how you decide to look at it, bit like the dual wave-particle nature of the photon.

A few excerpts that seems particularly relevant when you have magic in mind:

"The "weak violation" of conventional physics: The model changes only the probabilities of world histories that were already possible in the frame of conventional physics. Therefore, psi effects do not violate the established conservation laws of physics (like symmetry laws and the laws for energy and momentum conservation). Only statistical laws are affected."

"The complexity independence of psi: In this model, psi appears "goal oriented." In a PK experiment, for example, the subject succeeds by aiming at the desired end result rather than by working on the intermediate steps that lead to the final goal. Accordingly, the formalism implies independence of the PK success from the internal structure or complexity of the random generator."
 
 
Kylark
02:41 / 02.03.06
This is super-fun, but I'm having trouble working out how it applies to the rest of my life. I'm pretty good at it so far; on one of my first tries I got a 1 in 4897 (!) chance. Subsequent tries have been less outrageous in terms of probability, but I've been having pretty good success at getting the line to move in the "goal" direction. Individually each one is nothing to sneeze at, but collectively it's pretty cool. Each small success ratchets up my z-score a little bit.

So I can push around a line on a screen. Cool. How can I use this talent in the rest of my life? How does knowing I can influence the rate of decay of a chunk of some isotope (cool) regardless of its position in space or time (cooler!) translate into something that will help me be a better magickian, or a better person?

My log is here, if anyone's curious.
 
 
Sam T.
07:37 / 02.03.06
(Hum, I read again that two excerpts, and I seriously doubt anybody will read that page based on that, they're just horrible taken out of context. They do make a lot of sense in the context, so, you know, trust me :-))

4897 in one? In your second try? Talk about beginner's luck :-p

Ok, so now, how it does translate. Well, here is how I do it:

1) Be one with the line. You must kind of empty your mind, let the line occupy all your thought. Like they say, get your awareness one pointed on it.

2) Feel you can make it move, that's the belief part, you must have this line occupy all your awareness, and held the firm belief your will will be able to move it. It kind of become an extension, a part of you. You are not separated from the line anymore.

3) Pour intent. Blow on the screen. Make it very gentle and consistent with your previously attained state of mind. It is natural and doesn't take any effort, you just believe that your action will make that line move. Or get as charged emotionally as you can and unleash that on it. Whatever works best.

4) Blank your mind. Don't lust after result. It doesn't matter if it moves or not. It may not move immediately. This doesn't have any kind of interest.

Hope I've been clear, this is kind of difficult to explain. Now, I think that if you look at any sigil manual, the parallels are pretty clear. It's like each time you move the line you casted a mini sigil to do so.

With repeated training, it will become easier and easier, and you will fine tune the process and your state of mind, to have something that works for you. In effect, you will maximize all the parameters that compose the Carroll equation that is described in the 'Nuts and Bolts' link in my first post.

Translation to real world application :

1) Apprehend the situation, make a model of it in your mind, view the possibilities inherent in it, let it soak your awareness, open you unconscious to any details of it. Blank out your mind so it will impress itself alone and forcefully.

2) Call your belief. I usually use the very fact that I can do this exercise, and thus, like you say, collapse quantum states in the past, whichever are needed to make my outcome happen. The complexity of it all doesn't have any kind of relevance, the universe takes care of that if I'm certain enough. I'm firmly certain that this is how magic works, so, it does. Kind of a bootstrap he?

3) Pour your intent to skew the outcome in the desired direction. Visualize the final situation as it will be. You can make there an instant sigil and throw it if you want (just call up any form or design in a split second from your subconscious, whatever comes is good and will be tied in a way to the outcome, then throw it then forget it). Or you can blow your breath, or chant or vibrate something related: like 'reeeeeed' for the traffic light to go red :-) stupid but it works for me. Don't do it too loud tough, especially if there are bystanders, you might get strange looks :-). You can also, plain and simple, unleash chaos on it and just try to disturb as much as you can. This can be destructive.

4) Forget it. As soon as you stop looking for it or caring, usually, results manifests. Results will be delayed as long as there are lust for them.

Probability of the result manifesting depends of course of the base probability of the result manifesting by chance... But it is kind of embarrassing how well it works, and if it doesn't works the first time you can always try again... After a while.

BEWARE: Large scale result are attainable. In fact, it look like the more complex the system you are trying to influence, the greater degrees of freedom there are. So... I remember getting that cool software that was displaying solar activity, and you know... It was all over the newspapers the day after that, the strong bursts... Oh well, believe me or not but DON'T DO ANYTHING YOU WOULD REGRET. Be very, very careful what you wish for. Mind very much what you are influencing. I've uploaded for you a Frank Herbert short story that kinds of sums up the situation. Read it now, Please. It's short and a good read by the way. It's mandatory. Fuck. Read it. Thanks.

BEWARE: Of entanglement. Pushing things in a way, then in another, then... You can get an hefty mess done in no time at all. Think before you leap.

Cast of the I Ching before posting this: I get Inner Truth (61) with moving lines 2 6 gives Birth Throes (3).

Kind of a mixed bag, he? So be it then
 
 
Sam T.
07:59 / 02.03.06
DISCLAIMER:

As usual, I may be totally deluded.

Please, prove me wrong.
 
 
Quantum
10:21 / 02.03.06
Jung explained divination by saying that each action at a particular time reflected the quality of the whole universe at that time. Entanglement, holographic universe theory, string and hyperstring theory etc. seem to make that more plausible now than it's ever been.
 
 
Dead Megatron
10:43 / 02.03.06
Not to mention good old fractals (in the sense that a single action at a time reflects the whole universe at that time)
 
 
Wombat
18:09 / 06.03.06
It would be interesting to see if the statistics jumped if there were many repetitions and many different people working towards the same result.
Also if the system became easier to influence if the entropy generator had more states. ( in the case of radioactive decay generating entropy ...a bigger lump)

Interesting. Thanks Messy.
 
  
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