[H Caulfield]

Hey guys,
Some good stuff brought up. To Hot Pastrami, I'm just going from what I remember, but I'll try to answer that. Keep in mind that I'm not by any means trying to communicate their methodology's particulars...scientific method and all of that; I'd be here for days and days! Rest assured that they're quite familiar with how the scientific method works, and how it's used. Anyway, here's my best answers from memory to your questions:

"1. Does the test work every time , or does it sometimes fail? If so, how often does it fail? What conditions (if any) are different when it fails?"

As far as I know, always a statistically significant deviation in the outcome. Usually it goes the way either the scientist or influencer says their going to try to make it go, before the experiment, though sometimes they'll be more of the other instead....not what they were trying to do, but still some affect in the face of incredibly high odds.

"2. Have the researchers directed a person to try to influence the random number generator's 1-0 preference without telling them which way to go? "Ok Sally, try to turn the generator's preference towards ones OR zeros, don't tell us which. We'll then check the results, and guess which one you were using, and have you verify our guess." If such tests have occurred, what were the outcomes?"

Yep. Either the scientist will tell them which way to shoot for, or the influencer (called an operator), will decide beforehand and let them know.

"3. Have they had people concentrate on NOT allowing the numbers to veer towards ones or zeros? If so, what were the results?"

More often than not, there's not much of an influence...but still, there's some, which again comes at great odds. This is the rub: it's generally agreed that conscious intent does affect physical systems...but no one knows how it works! It's too new. Since they don't know how it works, no one can really "decide" how their going to affect outcomes...there's just a demonstrated deviation in the data when the mind meets it. Odd, huh?

In posting this, I didn't mean to touch off a debate about it's validity, but I suppose the nature of it would make debate expected. No problem. You should make up your own minds, but only after doing some research yourself, and not that based off of my fallable descriptions made between classes in the library! I'd suggest the numerous scientific articles published in peer-reviewed journals you can search for, or a book published by the lab called "Margins of Reality."

What really interests me about all of this, however, is the possibility that maybe, just maybe, the mind is not the same thing as the brain. I think it is, and that "anomalous" functioning such as the above is only anomalous because it's new...it's no different than observing that light exists thousands of years before understanding that it's both a particle and a wave (weird, huh?), or that magnetic things attract each other, without yet knowing why. The research into consciousness, and philosophy, too, is probing these questions related to mind and brain, to the interfaces between them and reality. It's most facinating.

Consider how you managed to type a reply to this posting, the words comming from some where in your head, and your hands seemingly following without thinking about it. Your consciousness has formulated a reply in words, your hands responded, and made an affect upon the physical world. So, might consciousness be able to make an affect on the physical world through a mechanism other than your hands? Some research really suggests that the answer is yes--maybe the first empirical evidence validating what all those philosophers over the years have been saying.

What do you guys think: Is the mind something different than the brain?


Adam