No, the title doesn’t refer to Barack Obama’s inner thoughts about the rest of the world, it’s about the latest data from the Global Consciousness Project (GCP): U.S. election night. We’ve mentioned the Global Consciousness Project before on TDG, but for those who don’t know about it, here’s a quick summary from the horse’s mouth:
We have been collecting data from a global network of random event generators since August, 1998. The network has grown to about 65 host sites around the world running custom software that reads the output of physical random number generators and records a 200-bit trial sum once every second, continuously over months and years… Our purpose is to examine subtle correlations that reflect the presence and activity of consciousness in the world. We have learned that when millions of us share intentions and emotions the GCP/EGG network shows correlations. We can interpret this as evidence for a growing global consciousness.
The GCP summary points out that while there does seem to be an effect, “given the powerful emotions aroused by Barack Obama’s success, and the feeling of wonder and joy generated in huge numbers of people around the world, we might expect a correspondingly powerful effect in the GCP data.” But instead while the data is positive, “it isn’t ‘off the charts’ and we are tempted to believe it should be”. Likely to be an aspect seized on by critics…
Nevertheless, the summary does then go on to discuss some of the other factors involved, such as the signal to noise ratio and also the various ways of analysing the data. Interesting in any case. Thanks Richard.
