Post by nowhammies on Jun 13, 2008 5:26:09 GMT -11
Some time ago, I became interested in something called the Web-bot project (aphroditeastrology.com/2007/05/web-bot-project-and-2012.html), which is really kind of interesting. It started out as a way to predcit the stock market - but now some believe that it can also predict other future events, oracle-style. Basically, it is a bunch of web spiders that crawl the web searching keywords, and then taking a snapshot of words surrounding those keywords. Then some program filters all of this data to define its meaning - essentially, what it is aimed at is to tap into the collective 'consciousness' of what everyone who is using the web is thinking and doing.
Apparently, the architects of the project began to notice that it wasn't only accurately predicting the stock market, but that it was predicting other things, as well - and they feel that it accurately predicted the events of September 11, 2001. I am skeptical about the accuracy of this prediction - it was fairly general - "The program predicted that a life altering event would take place within the next 60-90 days. An occurrence of such proportion that it's effects would be felt worldwide."
Anyway - the bot program is also "predicting" a world-wide calamity in the year 2012. Of course, there are other "oracles" that predict just this type of thing - the ending of the Mayan calendar and the I-ching to name a few.
Here are some other web-bot predictions: aphroditeastrology.com/2007/05/web-bot-predictions.html .
I'm fairly skeptical because I believe that interpretation after the fact always makes it easy to see something there that might not be there - still, the accuracy in the stock market predictions is pretty amazing.
Some more information I was able to find:
The project was developed in the 1990s...I haven't been able to zero in on who it was initially - there is some innuendo that it might have been Microsoft - but I don't know that for a fact. It is pretty hard to find information - seems rather shrouded in secrecy. Here is another link that describes the technology: urbansurvival.com/simplebots.htm
It is technology developed and run entirely by these two guys who only go by Cliff and Igor. They sell what they call Alta Reports at their website, halfpasthuman.com - where they run cycles of their web-bot searchy-thingy (I believe that's a technical term) and then sell the reports for the coming cycle. The reports are breath-takingly expensive, and the language is difficult to make out (I didn't buy one, but I've gone back and read some that they say predicted the New York blackout a few years ago).
Part of their science is based on research by Dr. Dean Radin, who had evidence that people begin to react to an event as early as six seconds before it takes place. So, as far as I can understand, they believe that perhaps there is an emotional foreshadowing that precedes that in people's language usage - the more emotional impact a coming event is to have, the longer the emotional language usage will predate the event - which gives them the ability to use the computer to search forums and chat rooms like this from all across the Internet to take snapshots of words and make predictions.
Cliff (if that is, indeed, his real name) developed this when he was developing some speed-reading software, I think. Contact info I have found seems to lead back to my neck of the woods.
I am unable to find a success rate of their predictive abilities - but here are some of the things they feel they have accurately predicted:
9/11
Katrina and Rita
The Tsunami
the East Coast blackouts
VP Cheney shooting his buddy
Here is an excerpt that I found of their process written on a blog:
On July 2, 2003, we reported on a then current ALTA report which predicted a "terrorist event" for the August timeframe (2003). What we got was a nearly perfect description of the Northeast Power Outage. (All documented here, if you're interested.) While one might argue that we were incorrect in our forecast at the time, because we viewed the event in terms of a terrorist attack, I would argue that we got even that right because what was the first thing that went through people's minds in the affected area? You got it: terrorist attack.
And we keep getting better at the technology - although we're all sort of making up this new science as we go along - it's not the stuff of "normal" study even for mystical C (not C# or C++ folks, but the get down and dirty in the predicate calculus C) guys like Cliff. For example, in the ALTA 406 report (as well as the 106) there are lots of descriptors going to the idea of the West Virginia mine disaster (January) and the echo of the event in February. You may have noticed that the governor of West Virginia has shut down coal mining now because of danger. No surprise to us there.
So, could the technology have prevented 9/11? Who knows. If you read the piece we published on July 29, 2001, you'll see that we were looking for some kind of "military accident" going to the idea of "sky" and some other words as forming a 2001 "tipping point" which is is still interesting to read in retrospect. We mistakenly looked for that because the word "terrorist" was not in the general lexicon - so as we were waiting for the huge tipping point which was 9/11 we were framing it in pre-event terms, trying to find some precursor event that would fit.
We've got a few other caveats along the way: For example, we seem to find that the size of the emotional impact determines how far into the future we can "read" it. For small events, like the accident involving a couple of athletes at the Olympics, it was a "small" event so we were able to get only 4-5 days of lead time on it. yet, it had enough emotional impact in regards to its short-term immediacy values that we were able to pick it up.
Although the descriptions of the future are sometimes vague-sounding, when actual events happen (like the price of silver ascending since we advised you of that in July 2005, and repeated throughout the fall of last year) it's like a mind blowing event to realize that you actually knew something about the future before it happened. We do get things wrong, however. We had "13-million people walking North" out of the "city sinking into the mud" instead of the 1.3-million out of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. Decimal points are a -bee yatch-. And, we were off by a few thousands when we picked up the "300-thousand dead, land driven back to a previous age" in August 2004, prior to the December 2004 Sumatra tsunami.
Pretty interesting, huh? If you read the language that they use in the predictions, essentially there is a lot of cross referencing of words and strong causal relationships - things like that. Pretty tough reading - but if you go back and read it and then correlate it with an event after the fact, it certainly could be seen to tie up neatly with a bow. Of course, it could just as easily be seen not to, I would imagine.
Here is a link to the "prediction" of the East Coast blackout www.urbansurvival.com/bothit5.htm, along with their notations of how they felt they hit the mark with their prediction. As you can see, the language can get pretty convoluted.
My theory about this is that perception affects reality - and this is an example of this at work. A bunch of people are believing something is going to happen and there is a lot of emotion surrounding that. The computers merely pick up on this in their language and therefore "predict" it. Their perception and emotion leads to "self-fulfilling" type of prophecy - because fear and belief leads people to behave in certain ways that leads to those events - or similar events coming about.
Whatever it is, it is really fascinating to me - and I'd be interested in hearing others' takes on it.
Apparently, the architects of the project began to notice that it wasn't only accurately predicting the stock market, but that it was predicting other things, as well - and they feel that it accurately predicted the events of September 11, 2001. I am skeptical about the accuracy of this prediction - it was fairly general - "The program predicted that a life altering event would take place within the next 60-90 days. An occurrence of such proportion that it's effects would be felt worldwide."
Anyway - the bot program is also "predicting" a world-wide calamity in the year 2012. Of course, there are other "oracles" that predict just this type of thing - the ending of the Mayan calendar and the I-ching to name a few.
Here are some other web-bot predictions: aphroditeastrology.com/2007/05/web-bot-predictions.html .
I'm fairly skeptical because I believe that interpretation after the fact always makes it easy to see something there that might not be there - still, the accuracy in the stock market predictions is pretty amazing.
Some more information I was able to find:
The project was developed in the 1990s...I haven't been able to zero in on who it was initially - there is some innuendo that it might have been Microsoft - but I don't know that for a fact. It is pretty hard to find information - seems rather shrouded in secrecy. Here is another link that describes the technology: urbansurvival.com/simplebots.htm
It is technology developed and run entirely by these two guys who only go by Cliff and Igor. They sell what they call Alta Reports at their website, halfpasthuman.com - where they run cycles of their web-bot searchy-thingy (I believe that's a technical term) and then sell the reports for the coming cycle. The reports are breath-takingly expensive, and the language is difficult to make out (I didn't buy one, but I've gone back and read some that they say predicted the New York blackout a few years ago).
Part of their science is based on research by Dr. Dean Radin, who had evidence that people begin to react to an event as early as six seconds before it takes place. So, as far as I can understand, they believe that perhaps there is an emotional foreshadowing that precedes that in people's language usage - the more emotional impact a coming event is to have, the longer the emotional language usage will predate the event - which gives them the ability to use the computer to search forums and chat rooms like this from all across the Internet to take snapshots of words and make predictions.
Cliff (if that is, indeed, his real name) developed this when he was developing some speed-reading software, I think. Contact info I have found seems to lead back to my neck of the woods.
I am unable to find a success rate of their predictive abilities - but here are some of the things they feel they have accurately predicted:
9/11
Katrina and Rita
The Tsunami
the East Coast blackouts
VP Cheney shooting his buddy
Here is an excerpt that I found of their process written on a blog:
On July 2, 2003, we reported on a then current ALTA report which predicted a "terrorist event" for the August timeframe (2003). What we got was a nearly perfect description of the Northeast Power Outage. (All documented here, if you're interested.) While one might argue that we were incorrect in our forecast at the time, because we viewed the event in terms of a terrorist attack, I would argue that we got even that right because what was the first thing that went through people's minds in the affected area? You got it: terrorist attack.
And we keep getting better at the technology - although we're all sort of making up this new science as we go along - it's not the stuff of "normal" study even for mystical C (not C# or C++ folks, but the get down and dirty in the predicate calculus C) guys like Cliff. For example, in the ALTA 406 report (as well as the 106) there are lots of descriptors going to the idea of the West Virginia mine disaster (January) and the echo of the event in February. You may have noticed that the governor of West Virginia has shut down coal mining now because of danger. No surprise to us there.
So, could the technology have prevented 9/11? Who knows. If you read the piece we published on July 29, 2001, you'll see that we were looking for some kind of "military accident" going to the idea of "sky" and some other words as forming a 2001 "tipping point" which is is still interesting to read in retrospect. We mistakenly looked for that because the word "terrorist" was not in the general lexicon - so as we were waiting for the huge tipping point which was 9/11 we were framing it in pre-event terms, trying to find some precursor event that would fit.
We've got a few other caveats along the way: For example, we seem to find that the size of the emotional impact determines how far into the future we can "read" it. For small events, like the accident involving a couple of athletes at the Olympics, it was a "small" event so we were able to get only 4-5 days of lead time on it. yet, it had enough emotional impact in regards to its short-term immediacy values that we were able to pick it up.
Although the descriptions of the future are sometimes vague-sounding, when actual events happen (like the price of silver ascending since we advised you of that in July 2005, and repeated throughout the fall of last year) it's like a mind blowing event to realize that you actually knew something about the future before it happened. We do get things wrong, however. We had "13-million people walking North" out of the "city sinking into the mud" instead of the 1.3-million out of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. Decimal points are a -bee yatch-. And, we were off by a few thousands when we picked up the "300-thousand dead, land driven back to a previous age" in August 2004, prior to the December 2004 Sumatra tsunami.
Pretty interesting, huh? If you read the language that they use in the predictions, essentially there is a lot of cross referencing of words and strong causal relationships - things like that. Pretty tough reading - but if you go back and read it and then correlate it with an event after the fact, it certainly could be seen to tie up neatly with a bow. Of course, it could just as easily be seen not to, I would imagine.
Here is a link to the "prediction" of the East Coast blackout www.urbansurvival.com/bothit5.htm, along with their notations of how they felt they hit the mark with their prediction. As you can see, the language can get pretty convoluted.
My theory about this is that perception affects reality - and this is an example of this at work. A bunch of people are believing something is going to happen and there is a lot of emotion surrounding that. The computers merely pick up on this in their language and therefore "predict" it. Their perception and emotion leads to "self-fulfilling" type of prophecy - because fear and belief leads people to behave in certain ways that leads to those events - or similar events coming about.
Whatever it is, it is really fascinating to me - and I'd be interested in hearing others' takes on it.