Collective ESP
experiment
In 1906 an
English Scientist called Francis Galton visited a livestock fair
where a contest was being held. Visitors to the fair were invited to
guess the weight of an Ox and out of around 800 guesses not a single
one correctly guessed the weight (1,198 lbs) however when an average
(or mean) was taken of all the guesses the number was 1,197 lbs.
This is believed to be due to collective wisdom, a phenomenon used
widely in research (e.g. opinion polls) and is thought to provide a
better estimate then any single expert ever could.
The first time
I heard of this was on Derren Brown's "How to predict the lottery"
TV show
and after further research I decided to conduct an experiment based
on this phenomenon. At an event where there was a large number of
people they would be asked try to predict the same five randomly
selected cards. The cards were to be drawn from a deck of twenty
five
which contains five of each shape, then using only their clairvoyant
(seeing without using your eyes) ability the participants were asked
to make their predictions as to which shapes were on which cards.
There is one
major difference between this experiment and the collective wisdom
theory. ESP cards are a series of shapes which means you can't
simply take an average to find a mean shape, so for the experiment
we would be looking for the mode shape or the most frequent shape
predicted by the participants for each card.
The first time
this was attempted was on November 13th 2009 at an event called
Experience The Sixth Sense. The cards were selected and in total 45
people took part in the experiment and made their predictions. On
the night their group prediction was calculated and was as follows.
Three lines, Circle, Cross, Square, Circle
At the end of the event the prediction above was
announced and then the cards were removed from their places and revealed
as follows;
Three lines, Circle, Square, Cross, Square
So the audience, using their collective ESP managed
to correctly predict the first two cards correctly. Four possible
reasons why all 5 cards were not correctly predicted include;
- Only 45 people took part in this experiment
compared with Galton's 800
- Collective Wisdom is based on the fact that
all people have a certain level of wisdom, if clairvoyant ability is
something which only a select few people are gifted with then success is
determined by the type of people taking part rather then the number of
people.
- When we look at individual test results
they usually get zero, one or two correct with a minority predicting 3
cards correctly. People need to be predicting 3 or more cards correctly
for them, as part of a group, to predict all 5 cards correctly.
- In Derren Brown's first attempt at predicting
lottery numbers only one number was correctly predicted, it took several
attempts with the same people and the application of relaxation
techniques to those people before significant results were achieved.
There are other possible reasons too including the
possibility that this type of ESP just isn't possible, either way this
experiment is difficult to conclude completely. Overall the maths is
flawed for this to work, a fact which has only been realised after the
completion of the experiment however in the interest of fairness it is
highly likely that we will attempt this experiment or a variation of it
in the future. The most positive signs we have from the results of this
experiment are that the group correctly predicted two cards and they
didn't predict that any of the cards would be a star, just as with the
actual cards that were on the table.
Our thanks goes out to all who took part in this
experiment, we hope you will join us for more events and experiments
soon.
- Report by Richard O'Connor
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