Science Experiment: Chaos Magic

[LMNO]

My problem here is that we're looking for Correlation, not Causation.

Basically, if we don't have a hypothesis about the mechanics of the process, then all we're looking for is long-tail coincidence, and calling it evidence.

Basically, how can we remove our own Law Of Fives goggles if we don't really have an idea of what's actually happening?

[Cramulus]

but we're not studying mechanics, we're studying efficacy. Sigils could work because invisible cosmic angels carry out your will when given gnosis-charged instructions. I don't think that's relevant if the process works. If we show significant correlation, we don't really need to worry about causation. We'll have shown that a lot of internet spags jerking off over a sigil is somehow related to some obviously unrelated variable.

and if it doesn't work, we'll have some DATA to shout at pagans we're trolling

[Bebek Sincap Ratatosk]

see that's what I'm curious about.

I follow the psychological model. But there's tons of anecdotal stuff (like that story) which gives credence to any number of other models. Phil Hine lists a few of 'em in Prime Chaos - the spritual model, the energy model, etc..

Here on PD, we've often bandied about the psychological model being the only "real" one... well I say let's SEE. Let's DO the reseach that no one else is doing and see if we can measurably, scientifically effect the external world by force of will.

I know the Amazing Randi has offered good money if you can prove that you can do magic. But he's looking for individuals with powers - to my knowledge, he's not investigating this angle.

Well, sure. I think there are definately events which we can't really fit on  the psychological model (at least not as of yet). However, sigil 'magic' in particular seems quite nicely tucked in there. I wonder if we couldn't either perform an experiment that is more closely aligned with what mosbunal people tie to Sigil 'magic' or find a set of tools more 'theoretically' likely to come up with results.

Right now, I feel like this particular experiment is trying to test a tool in a way its not designed to function... lack of data would result in "you're doing it wrong" conclusion rather than "See it Din't Werk!" Of coure, if we got some kind of strange correlation, then that would be very interesting. Antero Alli called me a couple days ago, I could shoot him a quick query and get his opinion... out of the crazy bastards I've learned from, he seems the most willing to go WAY Out on a limb, Peter tends to hold the psychological model pretty closely, Phil leaves a lot of space for Questions, but Antero seems willing to just go for whatever. I think that probably makes sense, as he also tends to be the most 'discordian' of the three as well. LOL.

(If Phil or Peter read this... I didn't mean it HONEST... DO Not Send Egrigores after me!!! Fnord)

So, maybe we should modify the plan, either to more accurately represent what mosbunal people think sigils do, OR use a different mechanism to play with Google.

So, Sigil ties to idea... should it be the idea "The Google Search Term "ijdsaoncsokncow" will get higher rankings" or "I will that more people search google using the term "njxchsocnso"." or "*Insert Google Search Term Here*?

The first and second fit more with traditional sigil magical statements, but they're also focusing on I and Will, both internal mechanisms. The third, would rely on the sigil carrying the meaning to the user in a memetic sense. So for the search term "His Majesty's Orbital Bombardment Squad" a sigil created/inspired by the term, could (in crazy madman theory) carry the full meme, implant it in the mind of the observer... and hopefully inspire them to search on that term.

But again, we're limited by the precise term (would a search on "Bombardment Squad" or "Majesty's Bombardment Squad" count in the final tally? What happens if they use a search engine other than google? Maybe the statement would have to be something like "Google *Foo*!!" where FOO = your search criteria. This would be a direct command, and if memes can be carried in sigils, then maybe it would work. We could still explain this kinda on a psychological model... but it would provide some evidence, that sigils can be used to invoke action, which is pretty damned impressive, I think.

Of course, we'd need a control, so maybe we need 10 people to make sigils and do rituals with 10 separate search terms. We need another 10 people to select a random search term, not create a sigil and see what happens. If the ratio of increased hits are average across all 20, then we've got nothing. If the increase in hits is overwhelmingly on the side of the sigil terms, then we have at least some circumstantial evidence and maybe some correlation. We'd need to have that as a base, I think, before we could even begin to create tests to understand causation, if causation actually exists.

I dunno... the migraine medication makes me loopy so maybe this is drivel.

[Cain]

Ask Iason, Vene and Kai to design the test.

They're all scientists, I'm sure they can come up with something rigourous and controlled.  Maybe Cram and Richter, being our psych people and thus more used to discreete variables, can help and give input too.

[Cramulus]

Triple Zero and I were talking about this the other day..

he was talking about creating an audio sigil by cutting up the statement of intent and mixing into his electronica jogging mix. He figured the exhaustion / runner's high is a psychically suggestable state, adequate for lodging a suggestion in your subconscious.

and I pondered - I wonder if that's more effective than the  method.

He also mentioned reading somewhere about chanting the statement of intent - which goes against what some of the traditional literature suggests, that you want to obfuscate the statement of intent because your conscious mind will handle it differently from your unconscious mind.

But we have no method of testing this.

Let's step away for a second from my previous proposal, that we're trying to basically challenge nearly every model except the psychological one. What about different levels of efficacy within the psychological model? Is there a methodology for creating a sigil which works better than the others? Is doodling a sigil in your notebook better or worse than the fap and forget method?

Being results-oriented, that angle might be a bit more useful.



Triple Zero's response to this was that measuring results would be hard, as sigils are most useful for kind of personal, internal things. It'd be challenging to design an operational measure of success.

Counterpoint: if you listen to Phil Hine and Grant Morrison, they suggest that sigils works for everything - winning the lottery is a common example which can't be explained by the psychological model. Surely there's a way to measure the effect.


Lemme keep brainstorming....

Group A: wanks to a sigil which with a statement "I will see Oscar the Grouch today." (or whatever)
Group B: wanks to a random symbol that looks like a sigil. But it's a placebo.

Group 1: is told their sigil means "I will see Oscar the Grouch today."
Group 2: is not told what their sigil means

So we have a 2x2 array of participants. Basically, everyone's in one of four groups, A1, A2, B1, B2.

Then, a day later, we have people fill out a survey:
It asks a number of questions about what their day was like. One of the questions is "Did you see Oscar the Grouch?"

I hypothesize we'll see a significant difference between group 1 and group 2. But not a significant difference between group A and group B.





-experimental note: best to pick a variable with countable, rather than boolean results. The results of the question "Did you see Oscar y/n" will be harder to prove significant than "How many times did you see <whatever>"

[Cain]

I think that structure is good.

I'd also suggest two tests, in total.  One external (as described above) and perhaps one more internal, for the sake of science.  Same methods would apply, but it would be interesting to see the results.

[Cramulus]

the cool thing is that if we actually do find significant results -- which will support the idea that sigils are a functional way to hack your unconscious mind -- we can retrial with all sorts of interesting variations.

like - are audio sigils more effective than visual ones?


also: for good data, we should have at least 16 participants. Which might be hard to come by without recruiting elsewhere.

[Cain]

Get everyone on IRC involved.  That has to bring us pretty close to 16.  Plus we could ask the few #irreality spags hanging around to participate.

[Cramulus]

oh good call

[Bebek Sincap Ratatosk]

I like that test Cram, though I don't know if the time period would fit with what most systems would claim... that is, not a simple glance at the sigil and then later that day guaranteed results. The individuals would need to have some sort of recurring interacting with the sigil, or at least some level or ritual/gnosis while focusing on the sigil.

The audio sigil is a good idea, but I wonder if it would appear more like subliminal messages?

I'd add multiple thresholds maybe... check results in 1 day, 2 days, 3 days... though I dunno how to check results without indicating the goal to the participant.

Also, I wonder if we should have another set of testers that we trick... that is we say "The Sigil means "I will see Big Bird today"... at the end we could check their results against both group 1 and 2...

[Vene]

Also, I wonder if we should have another set of testers that we trick... that is we say "The Sigil means "I will see Big Bird today"... at the end we could check their results against both group 1 and 2...

I had that same thought, but I'm a little more concerned that the sample size is so low.  If Cain's number of 16 people is accurate that is just not enough to remove random chance.  Without a decent sample size adding new groups would make the data generated even less reliable.

[Triple Zero]

these are awesome ideas.

except one thing, i think these experiments are super interesting, BUT i'm srsly not going to fap to any symbol or whatever (or at least, post about it on the internets afterwards :-P ). it's ... a religious thing, maybe.

so, different method of gnosis, please.

[Bebek Sincap Ratatosk]

these are awesome ideas.

except one thing, i think these experiments are super interesting, BUT i'm srsly not going to fap to any symbol or whatever (or at least, post about it on the internets afterwards :-P ). it's ... a religious thing, maybe.

so, different method of gnosis, please.

Laughter, Meditation, High Ritual, Repetitive Copy, sex and/or drugs mixed with and and all of the above

Basically, sleight of mind, force your focus to something else (or in the case of meditation... that to the exclusion of everything until it loses meaning). In Carrolls model it's the variable used to overcomes 'conscious awareness'.

[Bu🤠ns]

FUCK IT! i'll be your MAN!    gimme the sigil!    (give it a little makeup and those knee high stockings [in red], plzkthnx)


Pics start at $5.00
Vids start at $20.00

overseas: http://www.xe.com/ucc/

[Triple Zero]

these are awesome ideas.

except one thing, i think these experiments are super interesting, BUT i'm srsly not going to fap to any symbol or whatever (or at least, post about it on the internets afterwards :-P ). it's ... a religious thing, maybe.

so, different method of gnosis, please.

Laughter, Meditation, High Ritual, Repetitive Copy, sex and/or drugs mixed with and and all of the above

Basically, sleight of mind, force your focus to something else (or in the case of meditation... that to the exclusion of everything until it loses meaning). In Carrolls model it's the variable used to overcomes 'conscious awareness'.

yeah i know, it's just, if we're going to make this into an experiment, it's one variable we need to keep constant (for most experiments), if everybody picks their own different method, any results might vary wildly. at least in my (psychological) model of these things, you use it to somehow imprint the intent on your mind when it's in a vulnerable/receptive state (seems plausible to me, right?), but what exactly gets imprinted (and what not) would IMO depend a lot on exactly what kind of state you're in.

to carry out this experiment, we'd need to make sure to pin down as much variables as possible, highly controlled conditions. basically a detailed step-by-step guide, so people can easily participate.

what do you mean by "repetitive copy"? as in repeating a mantra? or a movement? or something else?

other ways of gnosis i've read about are physical exhaustion (i like this one, esp if you include the runner's high) and hyperventilation/forced loss of consciousness (doesn't sound too healthy to me, oxygen deprivation, brain damage, much?).

personally i could incorporate the physical exhaustion thing in my exercise routine, but that might not be for everybody.

i would guess that for the average forumite/discordian that might join this experiment, the Gnosis by Laughter and Gnosis by Meditation methods might appeal to most, wouldn't you think?

* so let's pick either Laughter or Meditation or a combination of those two (got any practical ideas on how to combine them? you said "all of the above" which is nice, but in practice?)

another thing, i'd like Netaungrot's input on this. he came up a couple times earlier with these short questionnaires things, that cut right to the heart of the matter, with questions like "what is your goal?", "how are you going to go about achieving this" and "what do you expect to happen?" and afterwards "how did it turn out for you, what would you change?", stuff like that. having people fill out these questionnaires before during and after the experiment would greatly facilitate our drawing of conclusions, or at least guide us to design an improved experiment for round two.

second difficulty, apart from "testing out chaos magic", what IS our goal? what should the Statement of Intent be? if we're going to do Cram's 2x2 grid, or per cain's suggestion, that twice, we cannot publically brainstorm on the Statement of Intent because part of the group isn't supposed to know it.

On the other hand, if we do agree publically on a Statement of Intent, and then, as soon as everybody crafted their Sigils, delete it from the thread (as part of the ritual), I somehow have the idea we'd get better results. but in that case we cannot vary the variables "knows the SoI/doesn't know/real Sigil/fake Sigil" etc.

BUT, is that really necessary right away? Shouldnt we measure the success of the ritual without varying the personal method too much?

How about varying the SoI? We'd need to pick 4 Statements of Intent, all of them of roughly equal "difficulty" (so, some strict unoriginal variations of them), with an objective method of measuring Success afterwards (I think hits on some kind of search engine thing varying keywords may be a good idea):

(public SoI / public Sigil) SoI-A will be publically brainstormed, in this thread, the Sigil will be constructed as part of a group effort also in this thread (let's use Gliffy for that), then it will be frozen, the Statement of Intent itself will be edited/deleted from the thread, and everybody in group A will use the same method of gnosis (say, Laughter) to charge and fire the sigil for themselves. after that, the Sigil will also be deleted from the thread (and destroyed, and wiped and such).

(public SoI / private Sigil) SoI-B will also be publically brainstormed in this thread, as a strict variation of SoI-A (same challenge, different keywords), but in this case, everybody who is part of group B will craft their own personal sigil, following a strict step-by-step procedure that still allows for personal involvement/creativity (say, that letter/word method that you read everywhere about), then charge, fire and destroy it. Also all following the same method of gnosis, same as group A.

(private SoI / public Sigil) SoI-C will be made up by one person, again, same challenge, different keywords. S/he will construct a Sigil for this SoI that s/he will pass around privately to all the participants in group C, who will then independently charge, fire and destroy the sigil according to a set step-by-step procedure.

(private SoI / private Sigil) This would be the test-group, null-hypothesis, of some sorts. Not entirely certain about it, but I suppose everybody in group D could pick their own keyword, craft a sigil, charge it, fire it and destroy it all by themselves. Alternatively, somebody could think of a bunch of related SoIs, put them in a sealed envelope (see below), tell everybody in group D they're part of the experiment but they won't get a SoI or Sigil, and are instructed to carry out the charge/fire/destroy ritual with a doodle they made by themselves without any particular special meaning.

i just realized btw that instead of completely destroying the SoIs, they should be kept in a sealed envelope or something, because otherwise you cannot measure the level of success afterwards

so we need a way to generate reasonably "equal difficulty" SoIs. in scientific wording that means that the a priori probability of success must be reasonably equal.

the easiest type of target would be "number of google hits on keywords X and Y", which can easily be tracked with Google Trends and a bunch of other SEO tools.

However, in order to level the playing field a bit, i'd like to narrow it down somewhat more. So, not just any keyword X and Y, but selected from a particular criterium using dice or coins (people might be biased to pick easy or harder targets on purpose, so leave it to the dice). Ideas:

- sports teams, preferably selected randomly with dice, together with perhaps the word "wins" or "loses" (coinflip)
- random picks of three words from a "good" wordlists [i have a few, but you cannot pick just any random combo from a huge default wordlist, because research has shown that, on average, a google query for 2-3 truly random words is so uncommon that it usually yields nothing but hits for the wordlist they were picked from in the first place ]
- like the above, except you do it three times, and look at the ratio of the number of hits relative to the numbers at the start of the experiment. the SoI can then be picked randomly with a coinflip for each of these queries to go up or down, yielding another 2x2x2=8 possibilities.

i like the last one best, because the a-priori probability of success seems reasonably leveled to me, while still allowing for a good focus of intent (because the words have meaning).
though the SoI may become a bit too complex? any ideas?
In the last idea, it would become something like

"IT IS MY WILL THAT THE GOOGLE QUERY FOR APPLE+YELLOW GOES UP, ZEBRA+EXPLODES GOES DOWN AND TWILIGHT+FOUR DOWN ALSO"

.. and that kinda brings me to what i don't like about the word-method. if you remove all duplicate letters to make the sigil, before you even get to "IT IS MY WILL THAT THE GOOGLE QUERY FOR", half of the alphabet is already used up, but it's the same for each SoI! I never quite understood what's the deal with that, and something inside me really wants to "fix" this by leaving out or separating the letters that are always the same. thoughts anyone?