RE: Sociological approach

From: Lee Corbin <lcorbin.domain.name.hidden>
Date: Tue, 24 May 2005 05:15:36 -0700

Richard M writes

> I remember Plaga's original post on the Los Alamos
> archives way back when the server there was a 386.
> Most of the methods I've seen--Plaga's, Fred Alan
> Wolf's, and others involve tweaking the mortar, so
> to speak---prying apart the wallboard to obtain
> evidence of the next room over.

> Since all I'm interested in is whether behavior systems
> incorporate knowledge of clearly defined probabilities
> that may exist in the next lane over (so to speak)--I
> would like to make a modest proposal---

> Assemble a hundred college students...in a double-blind
> experiment to determine their awareness of occult but
> clearly defined probabilities.

> Here's how: set up a random number generator that will
> return a value on a screen--say 1 through 50 (or whatever
> object set you'd like). Tell the students it's a random
> number generator that will return a perfectly random
> result, and you'd like to see how good they are at
> guessing a value just before it appears. Pay the
> student a nominal sum each time she gets the value
> correct. Debit the student a small amount each time
> she gets it incorrect--so they'll have something
> invested in the outcome.

How, essentially, does this differ from the casino game of
roulette?

As for the latter, roulette has been played so very much
that by now there would have been almost enough time to
evolve people who were good at it.

Lee
Received on Tue May 24 2005 - 08:20:43 PDT