If somebody mentions the word "quantum" they're almost certain to have no idea what it means. The number of times I've read somebody writing about quantum physics correctly are overwhelmingly outnumbered by the times I've read it used to "prove" all kinds of magic. Votes: +16

What is it, if you think you understand quantum theory you do not understand quantum theory.

Usually, when I hear the q word I brace myself for the downpour of hyperbole and jibberish that usually follows Votes: +8

Perhaps the ultimate refutation to this is the simple reality that the person who did all of this 'work' didn't actually have the winning lottery ticket. He seems to have concluded, essentially, that someone won the lottery. Judging by lack of relative exposure, he was unable to replicate the success. Votes: +4

Nothing this incoherent would have appeared in a newspaper, even a community weekly. Votes: +3

This is an example of post-hoc fitting of facts to a story. Unfortunately even some of my ex-colleagues, supposed scientists, engage in the same behavior. In the case of my ex-colleagues their lies will immediately be exposed by anyone who demands proof of the claims via a blinded experiment.
Votes: +4

I re-read the rambling article three times and still couldn't make sense of it Votes: +2

The 'lab manager' Brenda Dunne was the head of PEAR back in '93. As I recall this was a group that thought they could change a pendulum swing with their thoughts. So Dunne going along with this is hardly a suprise. Votes: +3

The trend of people claiming reality is like television or movies is creepin me right out. As a writer i can say that if i see something interesting that a lot of people probably havn't seen ( newspaper article, not like ripping off a good short story) You can believe its getting put into what i am writing. The simple answer is that the writers saw the article.

Votes: +1

Agreed, hucksters use the word, "quantum" the way they used to use the word, "occult".

You don't even need to ask a scientist about such phenomena. Any accountant can tell you that mysterious number patterns form naturally, and will only arouse suspicion when they don't occur. Ever had your checking account balance be $1234.56? Random chance makes these things happen. Votes: +2

Yesterday, my number at Panera Bread was 666 -- I'm not kidding! --, and I'll be damned if everyday I don't experience 12:34 at least twice! (...at most, too!) So, obviously extra-dimensional beings have a plan for me. Votes: +2

Oh, I forgot to mention that this is all because of a quantum shift in an alternate, acausal reality intersecting with our space-time continuum. Votes: +1

...is something I don't claim to come close to doing. This makes it difficult to see, sometimes, where the science and woo part company. Obviously, I don't think lottery numbers are being transmitted from alternate realities but should I reject all of the mathematical models of so-called "string theory" because they posit 9-12 dimensions? What about the Many-Worlds Interpretation?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M...rpretation
As a skeptic, I tend to rely on common sense when I lack direct knowledge but common sense fails me when I have to come to terms with ideas like light is both a wave and a particle. While common sense tells me time travel is impossible, some physicists seem to make a good case that it is. I'm not saying we should give any credence to the article, just that it's easy to see how people can get carried away. Books like A Brief History of Time and The Tao of Physics make science interesting to us laypeople but perhaps they oversimplify - or overmystify their subject. Votes: +3

Goodness me, what are the odds? Pretty good actually. Dream up any set of numbers and you can probably find some significance to them. Matching lotto numbers, GPS co-ords of a significant location, the date of a significant event, exact dimensions of a significant object, you name it. Votes: +3

"Converting the dream symbols into number, they appear as: 4-6-32-15-31-27."

I must be ignorant, since I don't see how female teacher-astronomy-field-romping bears-duck translates to 4-6-32-15-31-27.

"There are seven messages in these numbers; one need not be a genius to figure them out."

Arrghh!! Further proof I'm not a genius...



"Perhaps one of you will understand this message:...7-16-18-21-26...1080..."

Sadly, I'm not "the one." Votes: +5

The heading from the old csicop page....

CSICOP encourages the critical investigation
of paranormal and fringe-science claims from
a responsible, scientific point of view and
disseminates factual information about the
results of such inquiries to the scientific
community and the public.

*Does not reject claims on a priori grounds,
antecedent to inquiry, but
examines them objectively and carefully....

The observations of Jung and Pauli regarding
the natural numbers....

Since the remotest times men have used number to establish meaningful coincidences, that is, coincidences that can be interpreted.

There is something peculiar, one might even say mysterious about numbers. They have never been entirely robbed of their numinous aura. If, so a textbook of mathematics tell us, a group of objects is deprived of every single one of its properties or characteristics, there still remains, at the end, its number, which seems to indicate that number is something irreducible.

The sequence of natural numbers turns out to be unexpectedly more than a mere stringing together of identical units; it contains the whole of mathematics and everything yet to be discovered in this field.

Number, therefore, is in one sense an unpredictable entity.

It is generally believed that numbers were invented, or thought out by man, and are therefore nothing but concepts of quantities containing nothing that was not previously put into them by the human intellect. But it is equally possible that numbers were found or discovered.. In that case they are not only concepts but something more-autonomous entities which somehow contain more than just quantities.

Unlike concepts, they are based not on any conditions - but on the quality of being themselves, on a "so-ness" that cannot be expressed by an intellectual concept.

Under these conditions they might easily be endowed with qualities that have still to be discovered. I must confess that I incline to the view that numbers were as much found as invented, and that in consequence they possess a relative autonomy analogous to that of the archetypes.

They would then have in common with the latter, the quality of being pre-existent to consciousness, and hence, on occasion, of conditioning it, rather than being conditioned by it.

The concept of natural numbers rests on an archetypal foundation. It represents a preconscious pattern of thought common to all human psyches, and therefore constitutes the basis for transmitting knowledge to a greater degree than mythological images." ....Carl Jung....

"our primary mathematical intuitions can be arranged
before we become conscious of them." Pauli....

Chaldean numerology:
http://www.crystalinks.com/numerology.html

"such is the nature of reality, that anyone can
experience that which is least understood." TDL






Votes: -2

It is generally believed that numbers were invented, or thought out by man,

By whom? We knew how many berries were on a bush even before we were humans. Votes: +0

"By whom? We knew how many berries were on a bush even before we were humans."

Agreed. Chimpanzees and even ravens have been observed to understand numbers, at least up to five or six of something.

The human brain is brilliant at finding patterns, whether they exist or not. I'm not impressed by numerology, Bible-codes, etc. It's not hard to find apparent matches to significant events after the fact. If somebody analyses the Bible and predicts things that have not yet happened, and does so more than once, then I'll be impressed. Votes: +2