February 13, 2005
A Random Number Generator Sees the Future
I'm incredibly skeptical of this, but it made slashdot and the research is being done at Princeton.
The basic premise is that human beings can affect random number generators. This in turn can be used to predict major world events.
My problems with the article are that it states at the random machine generator is influenced my major human influence, it mentions the death of Princess Diana and New Years Eve, but it also mentions that the machine prediced 9/11 4 hours before it happened and the Tsunami 24 hours before it happened.
9/11 was only known by a handfull of people 4 hours before it happened, and the Tsunami was known by no people 24 hours before it happened, so how could it predict these events?
Rather I think what is happening is that there are random spikes in this random number generator, which is probably a pseudo random number generator, and seeing how there is some sort of news on every night, they can say that on days that the machine exhibits "weird activity" it predicted the news for that night.
Plus what good is a device that predicts major events, but doesn't tell you what it is? It doesn't even tell you if its going to be good or bad?
Posted by Bryant at February 13, 2005 10:06 AM
Comments
It's not being financed by Princeton at all, it's simply a personal project by a retired staffer there and hosted on their webspace.
Posted by: Ron Atkinson at February 13, 2005 12:35 PM