A new lamp using quantum Random Event Generators changes color based on your thoughts and feelings:
I mentioned this Mind Lamp to a few people the other day, explained that it is a lamp that changes color based on your thoughts and feelings, and even explained a bit of the science behind it. . . they were just like, “oh, cool”. None of them asked me for a detailed explanation of how it works or was interested in talking about it.
Makes me wonder, how can the average person be exposed to something totally mind-blowing and shattering of their everyday paradigms and belief systems, and just shrug their shoulders? These people are not devoid of intellectual curiousity, but are educated and typically interested in many things.
So I wonder, is this just too far out there for most people to even feel engaged about? Does the mind simply shut down all attempt at serious consideration and interest in something with such a potential to shatter their preconceived beliefs? I mean c’mon, its a lamp that you can change the color of with your mind - and its scientifically based on proven technology (e.g. see Global Consciousness Project and REGs). I am completely stunned so far at the lack of astonishment I have seen in people I mention this to.
It’s no wonder why society is such a force of blind inertial mass, why drastic social change is possible only incrementally, with people so apathetic and unmotivated to get outside of their little boxes and see the world in new ways.
I read through the blurb and found it to be a little… twisty.
From the ‘research’ section:
and:
and etc.
The use of modals such as ‘can’ (six times) or other modifiers like ‘often’, ‘apparantly’ and ‘as though’ are classic “we ain’t actually guarrenteeing anything” get out of jail free clauses.
I also don’t think that true random event generators can actually be made. Nor that ‘true’ randomness - outcomes completely impossible to predict - are possible.
I think basically, it’s a nice lamp.
I disagree, in fact that’s precisely why quantum mechanics is such a slippery science.
Here’s an experiment that highlights why one cannot predict the outcomes of a system from local considerations of the possible state. The Bell’s thought experiment, carried out for real about ten years ago. It shows that no matter what state the photon is in at the end, you cannot work backwards to predict its initial state, and it is to all intents totally and completely random. Not pseudo random. Qbits with 2-2 states in superposition are capable of modelling true random events. Unlike bits and bytes.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell%27s_theorem
Read it and tell me quantum mechanics is deterministic. 
I know about concerns of fair sampling but until someone produces a result that explains the quantum entanglement in a framework of predictability then its just not relevant.
When even the greatest minds in quantum mechanics are stumped what hope is there for us mere mortals?
We don’t know what light is, we can only guess that it shares two seemingly contradictory properties in one corpuscle.
Oh and also they’ve been able to produce true random number generators from unpredictable natural events such as atomic decay for some time. Natural logs are based on their ability to predict decay but on a transcendental number, that does not have an exact value. It’s output should be truly random. And only a statistical average can be produced with a margin of error we call the half life.
That is just standard legal business speak.
From what I understand of quantum experiments true randomness is exactly what these things do generate, in the sense of total unpredictability and lack of any pattern. But even if such randomness is not quite true and is only a very close approximation, the point is that our consciousness can affect the outcomes of these REGs. Look up the Global Consciousness Project out of Princeton. There are other such experimental projects as well which show patterns in the data, predicted by the event’s being acted upon by strong conscious intent.
The main point is that human consciousness can influence external events in the world, which has been demonstrated in other ways as well. There is a growing amount of scientific experimental evidence for the effects of human consciousness on physical matter, whether through plant growth, water crystalization or statistically significant patterns within an otherwise random series of numbers. Here, regardless of whether or not the REGs are truly random or not (I believe that they are) it is enough to show a significant deviation from the normal background data, which I believe has been done. The results are a bit less impressive if the randomness itself is in dispute, but even so the fact that correlations can be shown is still noteworthy.
Hey guys, I’ll do some digging (or have it done for me 
) and get back to you. If it is true, then you are right, things could get very interesting.
I’m still not buying the lamp though. 189 dollars, not exactly a quantum price. 
Type in bells and Dr Chinese for a more simple version. Should hit it through google.
drchinese.com/Bells_Theorem.htm
drchinese.com/David/Bell_Theorem_Easy_Math.htm
Energy saving light bulb £6 everything else is a waste atm. 
I’m hitting it. Platonically of course.
That’s a nice end line.
It assumes fair sampling which basically means that the statistical mean represents all of the events and there are no discrepancy results that agree with both .250 and .333…
At least that’s what I took it to mean.
I know this company because I bought a Mind Lamp from them a few months ago and was just looking to see how it was doing on Google after hearing about the Twine article. Here are my two cents:
Their CEO is very conservative in how he speaks about topics related to the lamp, but definitely believes in the science himself and the whole group seems to be quite serious about the phenomena in question.
In that regard, I wouldn’t worry about the “can” statements because that is just how they talk. I’ve also heard them make a big deal out of the idea that this stuff is very dependent on the users, which many skeptics regard as a cop-out, but which I am also sure contributes thoroughly to their ways of representing the product. They seem to believe that even people who are “good” at influencing the lamp don’t fully know what they are doing.
As far as the physics go, unless one takes a philosophical approach that denies quantum uncertainty (which would seem to be an ideological position that goes against most empirical evidence in QM, if you ask me), these things are about as random as random gets.
Look at the company’s SyncTXT product and some of the interviews on the main page to get a sense of how these guys relate to it, and for a less expensive product.
Many disagree with the premises of the science behind this, but the experiments at the PEAR lab (princeton.edu/~pear) are straightforward enough that I think open minded people can come to their own conclusions about it.
One could argue that they cheated (which is a claim that could be said about all science), but I think the people involved in this are very sincere in trying to figure out what they consider to be a very important effect.
I’m glad they are doing it, and I think it’d be great if they “got to the bottom of it” and found something important. In the mean time, I’ve definitely had a lot of fun with the lamp!
Lumos, so in your opinion does the lamp actually respond to your state of mind and moods? Have you noticed patterns or times when your mood or thoughts cause noticeable changes in the lamp, or do you just think it randomly changes colors once in awhile?
I think it responds to your electromagnetic signals in your head and that is all, more brain activity more change. Emotional states are very noisy, simple as that. But then they don’t claim it changes when you whistle the national anthem although there’s no reason you couldn’t make it that specific to a specific person with an EEG attached to their head because that happens in a specific area of the brain.
I had the same thought - what the mind lamp is is actually a system of extreme sensitivity to external conditions.
I think I read once that if you want to predict/model the path of a pool ball over more than a couple of collisions, you have to start figuring in the gravitic effects of those spectating nearby, for example.
Good analogy.
It’s called the three body problem and no one has solved it.
It can’t be anything but wave interaction of quantum energy if it was it would be deterministic.
If you can make it do the same thing all the time its not random though.
If you know what and how eigenvalues work then this should be self explanatory.
It’s solved problem only in some limited classical systems, its an open philosophical discussion in wave mechanics.
Simply an eigen vector is a scalar product of orthogonal and by implication non orthogonal state in a vector system.
In plain English if you mltiply a co-ordinate by a finite number it produces an eigen vector, which you can then extend infinitely to explain a motional direction of travel that is entirely predictable. If not then it is non classical and there is no solution. A Gaussian has a certain predictability but it is a trick of mathematics and only applies to limited solutions.
And in plainer English QED is weirdly not deterministic but it is able to provide predictions.
Classical projections of shapes:
upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/c … ection.svg
You’ll do well in physics if you can quickly imagine shapes, if you can imagine them in four dimensions your a genius in 5 and you are a physics God. Hawking said famously he has enough trouble with 3. Most of us struggle with 2.
3 directions of motion is beyond almost anyone at the world of the nano scale.
Maths gibberish saying much the same thing about orthoganal eigenvalues.
I had to wiki:
eigenvalues
stochastic
orthogonal
Anyway, learning new words is always good.
As far as I understand quantum theory - at least at the macro/predictive level - is that though all paths/trajectories have a possibility of being travelled, the probabilites collapse (most of the time I suppose) into a singular, predictable outcome.
An interesting philosophical issue is defining what all possible means, does that mean all possible according to energy or since quantum events are non local does that mean a man appearing spontaneously on Mars is a quantum event?
Also since everything can be in any possible configuration and is in superposition until we open the box, what then is in the box if anything definable? Also is it possible to open the box and then find the cat neither alive or dead but not even there? And can you then cause this to happen spontaneously? Has it ever, can you throw a tennis ball through a brick wall? If not why not?
George Hammond has proven God by proving the mind is a sort of hive eigenvector system.
Oh George come back we miss you.
Probability, probability, probability.
And also anthropomorphic principle. The box that when opened displayed a cat turned crystal, or a box empty except a single rose, would be a hard universe to live in.
Why is no one thinking about the dead guy on Mars, bummer eh?
Last Man,
I definitely believe that it responds to my states of mind and moods ... but it is a very delicate/experiential process and I certainly don't have any great ability to control it.
I have, however, come to believe that either in the right state of mind, or over the long-haul I could probably make the color that I want to come out do so more often than it would if the lamp were left by itself. This is pretty much what the PEAR Lab discusses on its PEAR Proposition DVD and what Psyleron seems to get at on its web page.
The reason I believe that it does respond is because there have been a few occasions where I felt like I things were going well with respect to my work projects and activities, and I went over to the lamp to try to make it change to a particular color, it seemed to almost immediately go from white to the color that I wanted. Can I replicate this over and over again? I doubt it; but across many different separated experiences I have found this similar pattern.
I have also had some interesting experiences with groups of friends coming over to attempt to influence it and some of them being pretty put off by how (well) it seemed to be working. Sometimes it will do things that at first glance do not seem all that meaningful, but which are actually quite improbable and seem to be elusive but recurring patterns.
In one case, a group of about 5 or 6 of us must've sat there for about 25 minutes to try to get it to go to a color and it would not go anywhere at all. The lamp would sit on white and then start to shift to a color but then go right back to white without changing. This process went on and on until, finally, after we quit out of frustration, it *immediately* went to the color we had been aiming for all of it.
The thing that was particularly odd about this was that the lamp did nothing for a very long period of time as we were trying to affect it (usually the lamp will shift around randomly at least once every 2 to 3 minutes), and then it went to the color that we wanted almost at the EXACT instance where we clearly and visibly quit. I am not saying that we forgot bout it for a while and then it just happened to go to the color, but rather that literally, as I was shifting my attention and turning towards someone else, and as another guy stood up to go into the kitchen to get a drink, it just jumped right to our color.
It was one of those things that does not seem at all like a coincidence, and we all took note. Later, I found out that this was apparently a common user report with the lamp; and though I could never find a really satisfactory explanation as to "why," interviews and discussions with Psyleron reps talk about "letting go" and users "getting in their own way" and things like that. When pressed, they've said that one needs to exist in a very rare state of non-attachment to outcomes but also having an intention. I don't know that I would believe it without the direct experience, but after observing my own interactions with the lamp for a while and how it behaves, it starts to really make some sense.
So, my verdict is that there is something going on here, but it is elusive and takes an investment of time and experience to realize. Having the lamp sitting in my house running all of the time made it possible for me. I also certainly wouldn't expect others to believe in this stuff without having had the experience themselves, but if you are interested, I think you should definitely read further into it. Most people waste time on much less productive activities!
– C.
I can not vouch for the lamp itself because I do not know exactly how it works except that it is built with a random event generator inside – but the key premise of the research at PEAR is that the devices are shielded from external influences (specifically electromagnetic) and tested in different ways to ensure that the output doesn’t change based on the environment. One of the reasons they pursued it for so long and why people have such problems with the work is because they are essentially claiming that whatever is going on here is NOT a traditional physical process and can not be explained by current scientific principles.