General Chat

Prof, Richard Wiseman PhD of the Psychology Dept. of Hertfordshire University postulates that “with random, unpredictable events such as scratch cards and lotteries, the expectation of consistently being a winner is meaningless; what psychologists call a positive delusion”. But is he such a wise man? Luck so often seems to play a part in all aspects of living – living. loving. competitions, gambling – there always seem to be those who are born winners and their counterparts the born losers. Some people seem to have a knack of making businesses work whilst others, equally intelligent, go from one failed venture to another

Wiseman says that his research shows differences in the psychology and behaviour of lucky and unlucky people. “Lucky people have positive expectations and things tend to go their way”. Is this a chicken and egg syndrome?

Could he be not quite up to date with scientific knowledge? Refer to the findings of The Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research team under the leadership of Professor Robert Jahn . Is it not more probable that “lucky” people are that way because of (I quote) “….certain aspects of these human/machine interactions are found to yield anomalous effects currently inexplicable on the basis of established physical concepts and statistical theory”. In other words, the mind/consciousness of humans can influence the operation of low-level random operating systems ( ERNIE ? ). Most of us seem to know someone who always wins the raffle the club.

In case you are not familiar with ERNIE, its the computer which randomly selects the National Lottery winning numbers...... the sort of machine that Jahn exposes as being susceptible to influence of distant human minds

I regularly suffer from LOTTERY DISAPOINTMENT SYNDROME !


how much money went into his research ?

I suffer from exactly the same syndrome Lindsey - it must be contageous!!!

I vaguely know the prof from when I was at uni (same building as the biology dept) And he's a bit of a press wh**e he does like to get his name bandied about but at the same time I've never really seen him say anything ground breaking.

That said, I can't believe that human's can influence a machine like ERNIE. Not sure about born lucky, perhaps some people have a low level ESP for picking numbers etc.

The late Professor Jahn was Dean Emeritus of the School of Engineering and Applied Science. He was a Fellow of the American Physical Society and of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, and has been chairman of the AIAA Electric Propulsion Technical Committee, associate editor of the AIAA Journal, and a member of the NASA Space Science and Technology Advisory Committee. He was vice President of the Society for Scientific Exploration and Chairman of the Board of the International Consciousness Research Laboratories consortium. He had been a long-term member of the Board of Directors of Hercules, Inc. and chairman of its Technology Committee, and a member and chairman of the Board of Trustees of Associated Universities, Inc. He had received the Curtis W. McGraw Research Award of the American Society of Engineering Education and an honorary Doctor of Science degree from Andrha University.

Research Projects: Electric Propulsion and Plasma Dynamics
Investigators: R.G. Jahn and E.Y. Choueiri
Support: National Aeronautics and Space Administration, U. S. Air Force

High-power electrical discharges are used to accelerate a variety of working fluids to very high velocities. These intense discharges and the plasma streams they produce are configured into several types of magnetoplasmadynamic thrusters which offer a desirable combination of high specific impulse and high thrust density for advanced space propulsion applications. The research emphasis is on the physical processes by which the electrical input is converted to useful thrust, and on those which limit the operational lifetime of such thrusters. Most of the studies are conducted in the Electric Propulsion and Plasma Dynamics Laboratory, which features a number of space-simulating vacuum facilities, a variety of specialized diagnostic devices, and sophisticated computational equipment.
Publications: Plasma Propulsion, Physics of Electric Propulsion. McGraw-Hill Series in Missile and Space Technology, New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company (1968). “Electric Propulsion.” In Encyclopedia of Physical Science and Technology, 3rd Edition. R.A. Myers, ed. San Diego: Academic Press, Vol. 5, pp. 125–141 (2002).

Engineering Anomalies Research:
Investigators: R.G. Jahn and B.J. Dunne
Support: Several philanthropic organizations and individuals
The interaction of human operators with sensitive information processing devices and systems is studied by combining appropriate engineering facilities and techniques with a selection of protocols and insights drawn from modern cognitive science. In this work, premium is placed on extraordinarily precise yet robust instrumentation, tight environmental and quality control, multiply redundant on-line data collection and processing, rapid accumulation of large data bases, and sensitive analytical measures to facilitate extraction of small systematic trends from high levels of background noise, while rejecting spurious artifacts. Under these rigorous conditions, certain aspects of these human/machine interactions are found to yield anomalous effects currently inexplicable on the basis of established physical concepts and statistical theory.

Over its 25-year history, the program has produced immense databases generated under highly controlled laboratory conditions, indicating the existence of small but replicable and statistically significant correlations between operator intention and the output characteristics of a variety of random digital and analogue processors. Current experiments involve several microelectronic, mechanical, fluid dynamical, acoustical, and optical devices, and a complementary program of remote perception research, from which a number of technical, psychological, and environmental correlates have been identified. Complementary analytical studies and theoretical models have been developed to facilitate the extraction of the most salient correlations from the empirical data, and to help explicate the basic phenomena in fundamental terms.

Hello again, Len! Long time, no meet.

Totally baffling, but obviously well researched. I think that I can say that I am totally luck-less; I rarely, if ever, have good luck, but, on the plus side, I have no bad luck.

Btw, ERNIE is the random number generator for the Premium Bonds, not the Lottery. (For those non-Brits reading this, Premium Bonds are numbers that you buy and hold in perpetuity; it draws every week, with a range of prizes from 1 million GBP to 50 GBP.)