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Early in March, 2007, Maike Pollmann requested an email
interview, and agreed to provide a copy of the article she
was preparing for the online edition of Die Zeit
before its publication. Since her questions are interesting
and well-formed, and represent an intelligent
skepticism, this page makes them available on the GCP
website, where they constitute useful additions to the FAQ
collection. After negotiating the conditions (most
importantly an opportunity to vet the article before
publication) I provided responses to the interview questions.
On Wed, 7 Mar 2007, Pollmann, Maike wrote:
Enclosed herewith you will find the questions on your Global Consciousness
Project.
Thank you for your time and effort.
Sincerely yours,
Maike Pollmann
On your homepage you say that you find something like a circumstantial
evidence for the existence of a "consciousness field" and that intentions or
emotional states which structure the field are conveyed as information that
is absorbed into the distribution of output values of labile physical
systems.
You make a statement here rather than a question, but I can
address it. The remarks about a "consciousness field" are
speculative, and are tentative first steps in efforts to
develop useful models to help shape our research questions.
This material is found not on the homepage, but in pages like
"Theory and Speculations" where we introduce several approaches,
and discuss their fit to the data, as well as their implications
for good questions in our research and analysis.
Does the global consciousness change the values of a random process or does
it just rearrange the natural peak-values into the time of an event?
To the extent I understand this question, both of these
options are far ahead of our understanding of the data.
All we have are correlations of deviations in statistical
measures with major events in the world. What we can say
is that there is converging evidence that the departures
from expectation we see are related to something about human
consciousness. For example, deviations are correlated with major
earthquakes occuring on land, but not when they occur in the
oceans (where humans are not affected).
You say that your usage of consciousness is more general, that is it implies
also the unconscious and subconscious aspects. I cannot really imagine what
that means. Can you shortly explain your definition of a global
consciousness?
The term "global consciousness" can have many interpretations.
Informally, I regard it as a growing integration of thought
and feeling across the world, fostered by communication and
travel, and becoming especially strong when great events
focus attention. I also see it as possible that a direct,
albeit weak, interaction of individual consciousnesses might
support a collective consciousness like that which many people
report experiencing in groups. In any case, for scientific
purposes we use operational definitions -- that is, we specify
the operations used to set a hypothesis for test. The start and
end of a period of time when we think a global event may engage
attention is specified, along with the analysis protocol. The
hypothesis is registered, and when the data become available, the
analysis is completed and entered into the formal results database.
What makes you sure that the global consciousness is the reason for your
findings and not any other global effect? Cosmic rays for example? And why
can the signal of the global consciousness pass your shieldings?
We actually do not claim that "the global consciousness is
the reason for [our] findings". What we have found and what
we show in our reports is structure in our data, correlated
with pre-specified events in the world. The data should be
random, and they are random in the aggregate, but when we
look only at the data corresponding to global events, the
data are not random. We address cosmic rays and other
physical influences such as electromagnetic fields,
temperature changes, etc., by instrument design and by
logical operations that exclude them, and we assess the data
analytically to determine whether there is evidence for
physical effects. As for why or how the correlations (not
signals) we see can occur while physical influences cannot
affect our instruments, this is one of our research questions.
We don't yet know how to explain or define a mechanism for the
departures from expectation in the data.
Granted that there is such an effect of our consciousness, why does it
remain unnoticed in all physics experiments so far, but affects our brain?
Unlike to our ordinary senses there is no practice to encode and decode the
signal.
I think the answer may be that we don't notice much that we
are not looking for. The effects we see in the GCP data are very
small (the average Z is about 0.3) and we therefore cannot
expect to observe them in a single experiment. Reliable statistics
require the accumulation of 30 to 50 replications of the
basic hypothesis test. This means that if we were not
actively looking for evidence of a correlation between
consciousness and the statistics, we would not see it. Of
course physics experiments have a different focus, so there
is little chance of seeing tiny aberrations that might
correlate to consciousness states. (I should note that this
story is much more complex, and there are some observations
in mainstream science that are consistent with consciousness
effects.)
All features of the purported signal seems to be completely uncharacteristic
for all physical phenomena. What makes you believe in it?
As I have said, we are talking about correlations, not
signals. We are looking at data, not at interpretations, and
we are reporting statistically significant correlations, not
beliefs. But to answer your question, independent and very
thorough assessments of the data show strong evidence that
there is something to be explained. There are non-chance
deviations from expected behavior, and they are not mistakes.
While the deviations are tiny, and the immediate practical
consequences are minimal, the scientific and philosophical
implications are substantial.
Do you have any idea of the effect that allows information to be transmitted
in this novel ways?
I have only speculations and metaphors at this point. My work
is primarily empirical, and I give my attention to making sure
the data are sound and the analyses correct.
Why does the time of the signal vary in its occurance? Sometimes it even
seems to know the future, like on 9/11.
Again, I, or we, have only speculations. There could be
something happening in the world at the apparently "early"
time (like 50 or 100 terrorist conspirators intensely committing
themselves, some to die a few hours hence.) But I am open
to the possibility of a precursor or premonitory effect,
metaphorically like an advanced wave interpretation in physics.
Some physicists (e.g. May & Spottiswoode) find that your results do not hold
under close inspection. What do you think about such analysis?
They confused explorations with formal analysis. If you look
at their paper, you will see that the complaints are about
data-snooping, where an analyst tries various things and
then picks out something impressive. I agree with them that
this is not good science. But that is not what we do. Our
evidence and any claims we make are based on a strict formal
protocol. Each event in the formal series (now 223 events)
is a fully specified replication of the basic hypothesis test,
with the parameters set before the data are examined.
What about the effect size with numbers of people potentially involved is
there a correlation?
Yes. Using best estimates for the numbers of people engaged,
a recent analysis has determined that large events (more
people) have a significantly larger effect size.
Do you rule out that the reported events are due to chance coincidences?
There is no chance to replicate an event.
Yes, we can rule out chance as an explanation for the
results in the formal series of over 200 replications of the
basic hypothesis test. The current overall summary includes
223 events, which cumulatively differ by 4.7 sigma (standard
deviations) from chance. This corresponds to a probability
of 1.13 x 10e-6, or about 1 in 1 million.
What is the social meaning of the correlation of such patterns with events
of importance to humans? Is there any application of this knowledge?
The most obvious implication, or social meaning, is that humans
are interconnected in subtle but important ways, both with
each other and with the physical world more generally. The
evidence is good, but the effects are so small that we may
be tempted to say they don't matter. But it is possible to
interpret these implications more generously to suggest that
what we think and feel is important, and can change the way
our world develops into the future. This is, of course, also
trivially true because we are creative and industrious
animals (with some unfortunate bad habits like a disposition
to violence) and we build things. But the research suggests
another aspect, in which the visions and expectations we
have actually make a difference, and the more so when the
visions are shared.
What do you wish for the future of the GCP?
I'd like to stabilize our understanding, and find satisfactory
theoretical explanations for how this works. More importantly,
I think the GCP findings have profound implications for
understanding consciousness, and for defining our creative
role in determining our own future. Given more clarity about
the science and its meaning, I think the GCP's future should have
an educational focus. We need to get our act together to create
and maintain a healthy and peaceful home on this planet. I
can think of no better way to accomplish that than to foster
the development of a global consciousness.
--
Roger D. Nelson In Lak'ech
Director, Global Consciousness Project
rdnelson@princeton.edu http://teilhard.global-mind.org
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