RPKP Update No. 8
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Since its inception, the goal of The RetroPsychoKinesis
Project has been to make available, on the World-Wide Web,
experiments which explore whether
subjects can influence, with
statistical significance, prerecorded but unobserved streams of binary
data from a hardware random number generator. The Web is an ideal
medium for experiments of this kind since volunteer subjects with Web
access can participate from anywhere in the world, setting their own
schedule, without the need to transfer data on physical media such as
floppy discs. The experiment programs are written in
Java, which allows them to run on
any computer with a Web browser that supports Java applets.
Pilot Phase
The first experiments are now available on the Web in a "Pilot Phase"
release, announced only to RPKP mailing list subscribers;
they are not yet linked to the RPKP home page nor anywhere else at
this site. Experimental runs by subjects during this phase may have
to be excluded from subsequent statistical analysis should the pilot
phase reveal a defect in the design or interpretation of one or more
of the experiments. (In no case will data be destroyed--all data are
tagged with the version of the experiment which created them, allowing
analysis programs to exclude data from experiments later determined to
have been flawed.) Given the very simple experimental protocol, I
believe the probability of error is small, but genuine confidence
comes only after real-world testing and examination of the
implementation by others. The pilot phase is intended to build
confidence in the experiments before publicising them more widely.
Outline of the Experiments
Retropsychokinesis experiments are performed in the following
phases.
- Random Data Generation
- A stream of random bits is generated by the
HotBits radioactive random number generator
and stored in an inventory on the www.fourmilab.ch server.
Extensive precautions are taken to ensure data in the inventory
are not examined before being delivered to a client machine, and
to prevent a sequence of data being delivered to more than one
client. An inventory of up to two million random bits is
maintained, one million on the main server, and a second million
on the machine to which the Geiger tube is connected.
- Experiment Request
- A volunteer subject, visiting the RPKP Experiments
page, decides to perform an experimental run. The subject
chooses a visual feedback program, a goal (whether attempting
to maximise or minimise the number of one bits in the
sequence, expressed in terms of the display produced by the
visual feedback program), and whether the run is a Demo
(pseudorandom bits generated locally on the subject's computer
are used to demonstrate the visual feedback program), Practice
(data from the HotBits generator are used, but the run, though
recorded, is marked to be excluded from analysis of the
subject's results), or Record (the run is logged under the
subject's identity [E-mail address or an arbitrary "handle"
for subjects who wish to remain anonymous]).
- Experiment Delivery
- For Practice and Record runs, 1024 bits are withdrawn from the
HotBits server, and an entry is made in the
RPKP Experiment Log
recording the experiment request parameters and the random
bits withdrawn. (Demo runs use pseudorandom data generated on
the subject's machine and do not consume HotBits nor make
entries in the log.) An experiment Web page is dynamically generated and
returned to the subject, incorporating the chosen visual
feedback program (a Java applet)
and, for Practice and Record runs, the random bitstream, passed
to the applet as a parameter.
- The Subject Runs the Experiment
- In the absence of retropsychokinesis, the outcome of the
experiment was predetermined long before, when the random bits
were generated and placed into inventory, and will obey the
probabilistic expectations for a random bit stream. Claims of
retropsychokinesis assert, however, that certain subjects, by
attempting to influence a feedback display, even if driven by
prerecorded data, can create statistically significant
excursions from chance. Having received the random bits and
the Java applet to express them graphically, the subject
attempts to bias the data toward an excess of ones or zeroes
as indicated by the visual feedback program.
- Immediate Result Feedback
- At the end of the run, after all 1024 random bits have been
expressed by the visual feedback program, the subject is
shown the score (excess of one or zero bits, according to
the chosen goal), and the statistical significance of that
excess in a single run of 1024 bits, expressed as how often
frequently a run with the score obtained will occur due to
chance.
- Historical Result Feedback
- A subject can review the results of all runs made to date
in Record mode and in Practice mode if a user identity was
entered.
- Database Retrieval
- Anybody who wishes to analyse the results of the RPKP
experiments can retrieve the database of all experiments to
date, either as an interpreted HTML document or as a raw ASCII
file including the random bit streams in hexadecimal form.
Preserving the entire bit stream in the log permits others to
perform their own statistical tests on the raw data. To
preserve the privacy of subjects, their E-mail addresses or
"handles" are replaced with automatically assigned subject
numbers in these reports. Subjects can identify their own
experiments by entering their identity in the database
request, which will cause their own runs to receive a subject
identification of "Me".
Visual Feedback Programs
All RPKP experiments attempt to bias a sequence of 1024 prerecorded
random bits toward an excess of ones or zeroes. Three different
visual feedback programs present these data to the subject; others
can be implemented based on a template downloadable from this site.
Please visit the experiment selection page
to see the feedback programs currently available, and the
template experiment if you are
interested in developing your own visual (and audio) feedback
programs.
Experiment-Related Resources
All documents related to the RPKP experiments are linked to the
Experiments Table of Contents.
Included are an Introduction to Probability
and Statistics applicable to experiments such as these
(I'm not at all happy with the state of this document, and expect
to refine it over the next couple of weeks; reports of errors
and suggestions for improvement are welcome. After working on this
document for most of the last two weeks, I decided that since it is
presented solely for background and plays no part in the operation of
the experiments, there was no reason to delay the pilot phase of
testing the experiments pending its perfection.)
Also available is a JavaScript
Chi-Square Calculator
that numerically evaluates the chi-square probability distribution for
a given chi-square sum and degrees of freedom.
In any search for apparently anomalous phenomena, it is essential
that experimental error and fraud be excluded as causes of any
significant results which may occur. This can be done only by
allowing others to examine the experiment design and operation, and
to replicate the experiment themselves. All of the software
developed for the RPKP experiments has been placed in the
public domain and can be downloaded
in source code form by anybody. Experimenters can establish their
own RPKP Web sites, ideally using their own random bit generators
so as to be completely independent of the experiments run here.
RPKP Site Speedup Soon
In mid-January, the www.fourmilab.ch site which
hosts RPKP experienced a sudden doubling in the number of
accesses to about 38,000 per day, which rate has persisted. This
completely overloaded the 128 Kb Internet connection, and has resulted
in slow response even at non-peak periods. The Internet connection
will be upgraded to 256 Kb the week of February 3rd (unless something
unforeseen happens in the process of installing the new line), and I
expect the increased bandwidth to greatly reduce the delays and
attendant frustration.
In the longer term, this Spring or early Summer a mirror of
www.fourmilab.ch will be established in North
America, with a 1 megabit per second (T1) connection close
to the Internet backbone. When that site comes on line,
requests originating in the Western Hemisphere will
automatically be forwarded to the mirror site and follow-up
requests served directly from there. Given the geographical
distribution of Web accesses, I expect the mirror to
put a permanent end to slow response.
When running the experiment programs, you may encounter a long delay
the first time you try each experiment. A Java program is typically
broken up into a number of ".class" files, all of which
must be downloaded individually before the program can run. This
takes much longer than downloading a single file the sum of the
lengths of all the separate parts. The Java developers recognise this
problem and, in Java 1.1 provide a way to bundle all the pieces of a
program into a single compressed ".jar" file.
Unfortunately, the vast majority of Web browsers in users' hands today
do not accept Java applets in this form, so there is no alternative to
patience: in the short term as the applets download, and in the longer
term until ".jar"-aware browsers become the norm.
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