h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I've heard there is a computer somewhere in the world that spends all day churning out binary code randomly. On some occasions one of the digits outnumbers the other in a way that should not happen through pure chance. When one digit is outnumbered significant world events have happened. Apparently before 9/11 one outnumbered the other by a very high amount.
Has anyone heard about this? And does anyone know where I can find it on the net?

Ooh.

*interested*

Computers *can't* do *anything* truly randomly, there *has* to be some pattern...

This pattern can be very very very obscure, such as taking the current time (to within the nano-second) and dividing it by the number of parking fines outstanding for blue Cortinas , yet there *is* a pattern, so it's not *random*

I paid that fine, and I've got the reciept.

My old school calculator could generate 'random' three digit numbers, but we could never work out how, we suspected it just had a massive bank of pre-programmed numbers, individual to each calculator, or perhaps used the true value of pi in someway.

I cannot believe a random set of binary data can influence world events.
However, I do believe this 'random' data is the basis for the 'Dance Anthems' Dave Pearce plays on Radio 1

Sneijder

But but...more information about the thing first! Who cares whether it is believable or not!

I`ve heard there`s a monster in Loch Ness. Is it important if its believeable? Yes-If its been made up why talk about it at all?
It sounds like all the rubbish that was floated after 9/11.

Oh no. Not you and your sceptical dismissiveness again.

*makes a point of ignoring it*

Saturnine, I've never heard of this 'binary' theory before.
However, there has been a book out for a while called 'The Bible Code', which uses patterns in the original hebrew text or something, to make nostrodamus style predictions. A275320 should give an insight.

IMHO it's all a load of crap. Since that entry was written September 11th unfortunately took place, and a new revised book was released including all kinds of Bin Laden predictions. This begs the question if it was predicted, why did nobody pick up on it ?

One of my favorite artists, Armand van Helden, released his album 'Killing Puritans', before 09/11, one track entitled 'Conscience' (sic) featured lyrics describing modern life, and the chorus repeating the phrase 'Skyscrapers are like tombstones'

There is another example of a September 11th 'prediction', where if you (incorrectly, according to snopes.com) type one of the american airlines flightnumbers into m****soft word using the font 'wingdings', the resulting symbols show an aeroplane crashing into two towers, a bomb and a skull and crossbones, or something similar.

All a bit horrible really, but strangely intresting ?

S

I've heard of the Bible code. I find this kind of stuff interesting - even if it isn't completely bone-dry logical.

Strangely interesting that such a hoax has spread so well, Q33NY Bin Laden in Google yields 693 hits ...

It's true that *Q33NY* in Wingdings makes a plane, two document type icons (the twin towers, at a stretch), a skull and crossbones and the Star of David

Only thing is, Q33NY wasn't involved... the two planes that hit the twin towers were United Airlines Flight 175 and American Airlines Flight 11

Warning, ...

How computers generate random numbers... well, there are lots of methods. Sometimes they use special hardware to amplify electric inteference or some such, in which case they might be 'truly' random. The vast majority, however, are only 'pseudo-random'.

This includes calculators...

The simplest sort make it possible to work out each number from the one before... removing the need for a large store of random numbers, or indeed any large amount of memory at all.

One method is to multiply by some large number, add a second number, then divide by a third number and take the remainder. This last action -- known as working with a particular modulus -- means that the result 'wraps around' lots of times after the multiplication, making it seem rather random.

These are known as linear congruential random number generators... there's a good page on 'em here:

http://probabilitynet.com/lincong.htm

Other pseudo-random number generators are more complicated, but they don't get *much* more complicated -- because computer scientists like to be able to prove results about them, and that quickly becomes impossible if they get too complicated. Some will have a history of the last 100 or so numbers they've generated, and generate each new one using that.

For a full treatment of the topic, read Knuth's 'The Art of Computer Programming', volume two: seminumerical algorithms...

Believe it or not, random number generation is quite a big topic

Exactly, and it shouldn't be too long before the Colombia disaster is 'predicted', Saddam ?, Bin Laden ?, Aliens ?, Elvis ?

Just in case anyone's interested,

UA175 in WingDings is crucifix, V for Victory hand gesture, folder, keyboard, filing cabinet

while AA11 is V for victory hand gesture, V for victory hand gesture, folder, folder.

strangely my brain isn't hurting yet!

Nor mine.

Regardless of whether they are right or not, conspiracy theories and predictions ARE interesting. At least, to me they are...!

Saturnine, none of us are real, you've been talking to a computer all along, it's all a BBC conspiricy to distract you from writing THE BOOK (as it's known in the future), that changes everything.

S

....Including the spelling of 'conspiracy' by the looks of it.

But.. to get back to the original topic.

I remember reading something very similar in a German (pseudo-)scientific, i.e. popular science, magazine. It was about the power to change reality by thoughts / mental processes / whatever. It didn't involve computers, since, as has been quite clearly explained by others in the forum, their sequences of numbers aren't affected by anything but the underlying rule. But apparently there is a network of "true" random number generators all around the world - I can't quite remember what exactly was used, probably some device relying on the (truly) random decay of slightly radioactive material or something similar, www.random.org use lavalamps to create true random numbers -, and this network is used by this mad who came up with the theory to prove that mental processes can affect reality.

The result was that whenever there was an event of global proportions, so that many people's minds were turned to the same thing, the actual numbers that were generated deviated strongly from the expected distribution - or so he claimed. So after the attacks of september 11th, people all around the world had similar thought patterns - and thus the numbers generated seemed to "favour" a certain distribution. There were quite a few examples of big events and their effects all around the world. Local events only affected the generators in the country/region that was affected etc.

Needless to say, it was presented in a very serious fashion.

Hope this helps - I don't know if I can find a weblink, but I will look into it.

(ahh, the things one reads in a doctor's waiting room... )

My thoughts: I'm afraid I can't see this being anything other than pure coincidence. Because the events happen to coincide, people start to think that maybe something was real. But I'm sure these strange numbers happen fairly regularly- well, given that that whole thing is random, of course- and I doubt that a major world event happened every time one of thse abnormal numbers get generated.

Maybe I'm just boring.

Humans are very good at seeing patterns in nothing ... or rather, random nothing...

It's a survival trait, really.