My Mind Over Matter Experiment

[Alien Being]

Hi All

This is quite tricky to explain to people so I'm going to try my best to make you guys realise that the mind does have an influence over the outcome of events.

Enjoy

Alien

Mountain Rescue

Thats right folks I'm going to use a mountain rescue scenario to show you reality isnt quite as fixed as you would believe. Now, you are sat in your rescue office one afternoon and the phone rings. Its one of the hotels calling from the bottom of your mountain because a couple of their guests went hiking in the morning but its now late evening and they havent returned. Because its starting to snow and because the hotel manager says they left lightly dressed it is decided to put together a search and rescure team.

To begin with you have no idea where they are on the mountain so you get out your statistics from many years of rescues, a map of the area and then using the statistics you assign a probably to each map square of finding the two guests. At this point I think we can all agree that if we go off and find them and then add this rescue to our statistics we'll find it fits in pretty well with the probability we assigned to the map square we find them in.

Okay that sounds pretty logical so whats wrong?

The problems start if we gain some extra information. You see if our guests have a mobile phone on them and call the emergency services telling them they've slipped over a cliff and are stuck on a ledge our probability map made from our statistics is now completely wrong. This is because the guests can now only be found in a map square with a cliff in it and as such most map squares now have a zero probability of having the guests in it.

So what does this mean?

It means our guests behave one way unless we gain extra information on them in which case they behave in another way. Think about that for a second because it has some far out implications for reality. How can the outcome of an event change if we gain extra information? If you think the outcome doesnt change then how can the guests rescue in the unaltered scenario match the probability map?

Experiment you can try

I want you all to go off to the bookies and place a bet on your favourite football team winning. Note the probability the bookies give you and the outcome. Do it for the next ten matches and access for yourself if the bookies odds work. It is important while doing this that you make sure you gain no extra information on the football teams after the bet is placed. You must avoid it all and simply look on Sky Sports or something at the end of the day to find out what the outcome was. You will be amazed that the bookies odds are pretty close.

Now alter the experiment. After each bet go on the internet before the match starts and read the prematch report for your team. Note any negative or positive news such as Roonie spraining his ankle in training. If you find some go onto the bookies website and have a look at the new odds they give you. Notice how they have changed. Notice how the outcome of the match now matches the new probability.

Conclusion

Now I'm not one for promoting 'the secret' or anything else for that matter but I think the information we gain alters probabilities. As we have free will and can be selective in the information we gain in the world either by choice (deciding not to read about something on the internet) or simply by focusing your mind to exclude information (blocking out your surroundings like when you get absorbed into a decent movie) I think we have a certain ability to influence the outcome of events. The example of positive thinking is used in 'the secret' and I agree if your mindset is totally setup so you're only aware of positive stuff you can infact bend the outcome of probabilities.

Edited April 25, 2010 by Alien Being