Whats next in term of research on the REG? Some potential questions

[Kamarad]

Hi All,

One of the element Roger mentioned is that a friend of him understood the result but asked a very important question, What’s next if we accept the fact that mind can affect RDG. Roger mentioned that he has already plenty of idea for future research but that he was welcoming any thought in this regard.

Here is my shot at a few questions that can be interesting for future research.

1.      Maybe this is more metaphysic than useful thought for further research, but one question could be “is it a single consciousness distributed in many individual that is at work here?”. Or is it individual consciousness that is communicating in some way one with the others that trigger a REG response?

2.      The REG network react to what exactly? Consciousness is a broad term but is it possible that the REG network react more to one or another activity of the brain activity or the emotional response. For instance, is it possible that REG react more to people shared emotions? Mental activity? Or just the plain desire to communicate with each other when people are aware of an important event and want to reach out?

3.      What is exactly at work as mechanism? Is it something that is in the reach of physic or is it something totally new? For instance, in the physic word, we hear a lot of interesting development about the entangled state of matters which allows transmitting some form of “information” instantaneously over distance. And what about the implication of the Bell theorem which state that any event cannot be local? I’m not an expert on those matters but it seems that any findings from the fundamentals physic with implication on the communication of information may be of interest to understand what makes REG react?

4.      What is the critical mass of persons involved in an event that is required for the REG effect to take place? Is it possible to work on regional analysis of REG reaction to be able to see if events that will affect more directly people in a region of the world (e.g. Tsunami in Asia)? People in other region have just access to the information through the media (or through a shared consciousness) but are not as much involved.

5.      Is there time delay between response of persons in different continent to an event taking place in a specific portion of the world? If there is a time delay involved in a systematic way, this could point to an hypothesis where the information is diffused by traditional media and consciousness react to this information. If there is no time delay, this could point to an hypothesis where all individual consciousness are always connected and share in real time the same information.

6.      Is there other statistical methods that could provide clue about which factors affect the REG more than others? It could not be linear regression as this requires complete independence of all factors that we consider may trigger the REG response. What about using a Structured Equation Modeling or others tools that allows testing the response of a dependent variable to several interrelated variables? Side question, how to define in a consistent way those variables? Can we classify in a consistent way events by their characteristics? Some events can trigger compassion, some others pure hate. The reaction can be completely different for different individual?

This is just some questions, I’m sure we can find hundreds of others but identifying the good questions to ask to orient the next stage of research seems important. Maybe all this was discussed already at length during the Pearl project and those questions already exist somewhere in a more formal way.

Feedback, thought??

[Roger]

This is nice. I waited a day or two to see if others had responses. I'll make some comments inline, working toward the ideal of finding one or two of the most likely and viable suggestions to develop. I have a "To do" list on the website, but it has not been updated for a long time. This discussion could lead to a revised todo list, or to a new one. All suggestions of this nature ultimately require "more hands," which is to say, they require someone to do them. It is possible, even if a little unlikely, that some people on this list might decide to form a little team and go to work. Discussing and deciding what makes sense and arouses interest as projects to do is exactly the reason we put this list together.

On Sunday, August 5, 2012 7:06:52 PM UTC-4, Kamarad wrote:

Hi All,

One of the element Roger mentioned is that a friend of him understood the result but asked a very important question, What’s next if we accept the fact that mind can affect RDG. Roger mentioned that he has already plenty of idea for future research but that he was welcoming any thought in this regard.

Here is my shot at a few questions that can be interesting for future research.

1.      Maybe this is more metaphysic than useful thought for further research, but one question could be “is it a single consciousness distributed in many individual that is at work here?”. Or is it individual consciousness that is communicating in some way one with the others that trigger a REG response?

When a question is nicely formulated, it becomes possible for an answer to be found. This one needs a kind of scientific rigor, probably hypothesis tests in order to become more than just philosophical speculation. (For what it's worth, I personally think the second version is likely, but it might well be a combination). The best model, I think, is the consciousness produced by neurons in a brain. They don't know anything about creating consciousness, but just do their natural job of interconnecting. Voila, Mind happens. If humans come to the point of just being fully human, interconnections will support a global mind.

 

2.      The REG network react to what exactly? Consciousness is a broad term but is it possible that the REG network react more to one or another activity of the brain activity or the emotional response. For instance, is it possible that REG react more to people shared emotions? Mental activity? Or just the plain desire to communicate with each other when people are aware of an important event and want to reach out?

We do have some analysis using categorization of the events -- looking at number/size/importance, at positive/negative emotions, at particular emotions like fear and compassion, and so on. This work is preliminary and should be repeated, but it shows that emotion is essential, while ordinary mental activity is less potent. It is also clear that the interconnections are unconscious. There's a reference at the end of this post.

3.      What is exactly at work as mechanism? Is it something that is in the reach of physic or is it something totally new? For instance, in the physic word, we hear a lot of interesting development about the entangled state of matters which allows transmitting some form of “information” instantaneously over distance. And what about the implication of the Bell theorem which state that any event cannot be local? I’m not an expert on those matters but it seems that any findings from the fundamentals physic with implication on the communication of information may be of interest to understand what makes REG react?

These are good questions, with no clear answers yet. There are a few people working on models that may grow up into theories, but this work remains far from complete. I think, personally, that the evidence we and other researchers have generated points to an expansion of physical models. Not an overthrow, but what amounts to an extension that accommodates consciousness in general. One route toward that involves information fields. This is not a concept that is well developed, but the beginnings are visible in Bohm's work, in information theory, in Sheldrake's work, as well as in some of the edge topics you mention, including entanglement, and nonlocal particle interaction.

 

4.      What is the critical mass of persons involved in an event that is required for the REG effect to take place? Is it possible to work on regional analysis of REG reaction to be able to see if events that will affect more directly people in a region of the world (e.g. Tsunami in Asia)? People in other region have just access to the information through the media (or through a shared consciousness) but are not as much involved.

This is a question that we could proceed to answer. That is, it isn't philosophical or intractable. It isn't easy, however, and requires careful definitions and sharply focused questions. There are a number of other dimensions, and all may be important. For example, the number (critical mass) interacts with the type of event. The question of distance is definitely more complex than it seems. The event may not have a location -- as you suggest, the information about it spreads, and some events really are distributed by their nature -- like New Years, or Ramadan. Ultimately, we will need to understand psychological distance as more to the point than geographical distance.
 

5.      Is there time delay between response of persons in different continent to an event taking place in a specific portion of the world? If there is a time delay involved in a systematic way, this could point to an hypothesis where the information is diffused by traditional media and consciousness react to this information. If there is no time delay, this could point to an hypothesis where all individual consciousness are always connected and share in real time the same information.

Love the question/proposition. This has been an interest of mine from the beginning. But I have not made any real progress toward operationalizing the question, and I would love it if some group would take it up and figure out how to get a good answer. Your suggestion of possible time differences might be a good direction. One major problem is that the effect size is very small. Another is that the primary measure we use reflects correlation among the devices rather than deviations within the devices. So localization of the effect, and timing of it require huge amounts of data -- combinations across months and years of results from similar events.
 

6.      Is there other statistical methods that could provide clue about which factors affect the REG more than others? It could not be linear regression as this requires complete independence of all factors that we consider may trigger the REG response. What about using a Structured Equation Modeling or others tools that allows testing the response of a dependent variable to several interrelated variables? Side question, how to define in a consistent way those variables? Can we classify in a consistent way events by their characteristics? Some events can trigger compassion, some others pure hate. The reaction can be completely different for different individual?

I'm up for any kind of analysis, applied with care. Early posts included mention of data mining, and a combination of mining with sophisticated statistical applications should yield interesting material. Again, the hitch is that we need more hands, but with the question framed, perhaps the hands will appear.  I will append some references.
 

This is just some questions, I’m sure we can find hundreds of others but identifying the good questions to ask to orient the next stage of research seems important. Maybe all this was discussed already at length during the Pearl project and those questions already exist somewhere in a more formal way.

Feedback, thought??

Thanks for some thoughtful suggestions and questions. They certainly point to some useful work that could be done. Some of the issues have been touched, and I will put a short list of references here for those who want to get more detail.

General
http://192.168.1.43/papers/pdf/Explore.Mass.cons.feb2011.pdf
General
http://192.168.1.43/papers/pdf/GCP.JSE.B&N.2008.pdf
Timing
http://192.168.1.43/papers/pdf/GCP.AAAS.06.pdf
Emotions
http://192.168.1.43/papers/pdf/GCP.emotions.pdf
Distance
http://192.168.1.43/papers/pdf/DistanceNotes.pdf

[Venkat Shrinivas]

Hi Roger,

There is lot of info on the site and discussions here. What would be helpful for someone like me who is new to this project is:

1) a study plan to understand the theory/hypothesis and experimental data collected to date

2) a self assessment 

3) a list of projects that we volunteers can sign up for and specific skills that might be needed to effectively contribute to the effort 

Hoping to contribute more actively rather than being a mere spectator!

Thanks,

Venkat Shrinivas

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