Theory: The Fatum Project
The main goal of the Randonauts movement is to research reality outside of the framework created by methodological templates, as well as to search for novelty and reveal the potential of consciousness that creates our surrounding reality. By combining all available resources and tolls of cognition, we can discover a world around us we never knew existed.
Project Methodology and Sturcture
The project does not claim to meet academic standards. We are somewhere in the middle between a game, science, and art, and we try to take as much as possible from each of them, because we believe that labeling and leading to a unified methodology limits the potential of activity. The project is a symbiosis of research and cultural medium, which work to develop each other. It is an inseparable fusion of folklore and technology that continuously evolves and creates new opportunities for discovery. The technological part of the project is based on real scientific studies, although the methodology for their application may deviate from the academic standards for research, as we are more inventors than academic scientists. Our goal is not so much the formation of full-fledged knowledge, but the acceleration of progress and the search for novelty that can indicate the direction for future searches and change our vision of reality. The project is not profit-oriented and all commercial activities in it are aimed at providing resources for the research infrastructure. One of our top priorities is to ensure that as many people as possible can be involved in the research process. Therefore, we propose to consider the project as a collaborative experiment, and not as a consumer product. We also do not insist on the correctness of the theories presented here and leave the reader with the possibility of their rethinking and addition.
Philosophy of Noveltism
Novelty is a treasure. Novelty shows us the way beyond the imaginable and opens up new possibilities for us. The one who possesses novelty becomes the creator of a new reality. Noveltism determines the degree of novelty of a subject by how much it differs from what already exists. But the most valuable novelty is Absolute Novelty, the kind of novelty that provides the maximum paradigm shift and cannot be obtained consistently. This is when the answer goes beyond the question, as if you were trying to invent a faster rocket engine and discovered teleportation instead. The person who made such a discovery becomes the founder of a new branch of technological development and changes the face of civilization. However, in the modern world, almost all research takes place sequentially, on the basis of existing knowledge, a question is formed and its formulation determines the way in which the search for an answer to it is conducted. Moreover, the further people go in a consistent search, the more difficult it becomes to participate in it and the fewer people are involved in it due to the high requirements for their competence and tools. This applies to both science and culture and any other areas of development. It's hard to make it to the big leagues when thousands are already fighting for a spot in there. Absolute novelty always stands at the beginning of any branch of development, so everyone can discover it and everyone can be equally involved in its search, and the one who finds it will hit the jackpot and become the founder of a whole new branch. However, since absolute novelty cannot follow from the knowledge available, it is almost impossible to formulate what exactly we want to find and in which direction this search should be conducted. The request for absolute novelty is a kind of the Ultimate Question, which cannot be formulated, since we, by definition, cannot know what we are trying to find. You can try to look for “something” where no one have looked yet, but as a rule, we do not know where it is. Therefore, noveltist methodology is usually based on a search in all directions at once and a natural selection of the results obtained. Such a search can be realized by involving the maximum number of people in it and using randomizers to evenly distribute their efforts. Then the likelihood of finding something new will increase, and if the search results are public and available to all participants, then the most valuable finds will attract more attention, which will ensure their natural selection. For this reason, we are trying to make research tools available to everyone, so that together we can explore every piece of reality and try all the ways to interact with it in order to find the most interesting and effective ones.
The Research Itself
Randonautica Project implements two separate experiments inherited from the Fatum Project, both based on visiting geographic coordinates, but conceptually completely different. We recommend that you carefully read the description of each, so as not to confuse them with each other.
Experiment #1: Probability Blind Spots
Imagine that somewhere near you, perhaps near your house there is a place that you always go around without any reason, you have never been there and probably do not even know that this place exists. We call such places Blind-Spots.
Their existence is mathematically determined, since all our behaviour has a certain share of determinism in it. Imagine that you toss a coin, it can fall heads, tails or stand on the edge, but nothing other than these three outcomes will be taken as result, the set of outcomes is determined by the coin itself. The Dice cannot give you two and a half, cause its sides are whole numbers.
The same is true for our geographical routes, no matter what path we choose, wherever we decide to go, there is a limited number of logical chains that will guide our mind when choosing a route, even if it seems to us that we act by chance, there is always a place where none of these logical chains leads.
Even more convincing example is the so-called "Chaos Game", illustrating the phenomenon, which in Chaos Theory is called attractors:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sierpinski_triangle#Chaos_game
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DcvY_45XFU4
In short: If we choose three random points and move the fourth point many times half the distance to one of these points, randomly chosen by a dice throw, then despite the fact that all movements were guided by randomness, all the locations of the point during the game form a figure known like a Sierpinski triangle. In other words, the presence of any game rule forms a limited outcomes space. It is interesting that in the center of this triangle there is a space into which points never fall. Such a space in our case would be called a Blind-Spot.
Now imagine how many rules shape your routes and behaviour: logic, habits, social norms, life experience, cognitive biases, external factors that affect you according to the characteristics of your personality or are in a causal relationship with your behaviour and so on. All this together creates a causal viscosity, which we call the Stasis Field, the force that holds you in the Reality-Tunnel of your own.
We define a "reality-tunnel" as the deterministic path that your life is on. Reality tunnels are influenced by factors that determine the relative frame of reality for a particular person. That is, how one sees the world, what is used to paying attention to, in what places and when one may find themselves, and how one reacts to various situations. It is assumed that different people can have not only a different set of opportunities, but also a different vision of the world depending on their personal qualities and behavior patterns. This is something like “Filter Bubbles”, when the deterministic component of your behaviour makes the places, things and information that exists outside such a Reality-Tunnel practically invisible to you, since it simply does not occur to you to think about it.
This means that no matter what choices you make, and no matter how many variations on how your day may pass, there are always some places where you simply cannot be, because none of the chains of your decisions leads there. Such places may be somewhere nearby. On your street there may be a lane in which you will never think to look and you do not even know about its existence. What could be hiding in such blind spots? And what could be hiding in places where no one looks at all? (Since no one has been there and such a place has an absolute geographical novelty, it may well contain things that no one knows about the fundamental existence of.)
Luckily, there is a way to go beyond the Reality-Tunnel and find such places. To do this, you only need to search in places chosen independently of the rules of our thinking. In our experiment, we used a random number generator to mark random points on the map and visit them. Because of being independent from deterministic patterns, RNG brings the possibility of generating coordinates anywhere on the map with equal probability, which means you have a chance to find a blind spot by visiting many of these points. However, there is no guarantee that you will find it at the first point.
The experiment methodology is simple: As a search area, you should choose a relatively small territory that is familiar to you. Using the RNG, you should generate random points on it and visit them regardless of whether they look interesting or convenient to visit. Perhaps the first point will not lead you to the Blind Spot, but with further attempts, the chance will increase. Many participants reported finding places within a five-minute walk from home that they had never noticed before and probably never would. The evidence that the blind spot has been found will be a feeling of surprise like "How I did not notice this place before."
The debatable question is whether external determinism can influence the course of the experiment, because of which the theory of Stasis Field often resembles the hypothesis of Simulation, although in this case we do not mean an artificial universe, but only a limited frame of perception and interaction with the real universe.
Since blind spots are methodologically hidden from us and finding them requires a choice of location that does not depend on our behavioral patterns, there is no need to resort to quantum RNGs, a pseudo-random source is fine. However, one should not forget that the reality-tunnel consists not only of geographical patterns, but also temporal, psychological, social, etc. Therefore, a blind spot can be not only an uncharacteristic place for us, but also, for example, a circumstance. Even being in a familiar place at an unusual time can give rise to non-standard situations. So one of the participants in the experiment said that while traveling, he came across an old acquaintance of his, whom he had not seen for 10 years, despite the fact that they live in the neighborhood, but appear in the same places at different times.
We believe that the reality-tunnels of different people can differ so much that the world itself looks different in them, especially if these are tunnels of people who are socially separated from each other by more than three handshakes. This is quite possible if we consider that all people exist within their own reality-tunnel, shaped by their qualities, habits and perceptions. Even just a very different person from us can live in a completely different world, because of going completely different routes and receiving different information. So, getting into random points, you can find yourself in someone else’s reality-tunnel and get new opportunities from there or meet someone who gives us a piece of information that changes everything.
It is difficult to imagine how reality-tunnels that are not at all typical for humans might look like. The ability to move between such tunnels is akin to traveling through the multiverse, only instead of physically moving to other dimensions, we move our frame of perception and interaction with reality.
For this reason, we recommend not limiting yourself to randomizing only geographic coordinates, but, for example, visit points at random times, or build sequential chains of random routes from them.
Next question is what are the long-term consequences of a researcher staying in a place where he should never have been. How much can determinism be broken by butterfly effect? Will the clockwork of the universe fail from changing its gear position? Will the objects found in these places or the images seen generate cascades of events drastically changing everything around?
It is noteworthy that our reality-tunnel can be completely changed as a result of the domino effects created by those elements of novelty that we find outside of it. We learned something new, found some unusual object and began to use it in everyday life, which is why we gained new advantages and are already doing something differently.
In such situations, if the Stasis field is strong enough, it tends to converge and displaces novelty from our reality-tunnel, but if it fails, we are pulled into the tunnel from where this novelty was brought, which accordingly changes our personality, habits, interests, so that we can match the new environment. For this reason, if you want to move into a new reality-tunnel, it is recommended to take an object from the trip and start using it in everyday life, taking advantage of novelty, such objects will not allow convergence to occur, that is seeking to return you back to the pattern.
There is also a statistical aspect to the experiment. Not every trip brings you to the blind spot, and not every randonaut finds something abnormal, but when a large enough number of people in the community visit random places, together they manage to explore even the most hidden nooks of reality, and therefore if something lurks somewhere - something strange, it will definitely be found and the whole community will know about it. This makes this collaborative search for novelty very effective and together we can explore every corner of the universe. By collecting all the found anomalies and studying them, we will gain new knowledge that will become the beginning of even more amazing research.
Memetic Factors and Side Effects
The psychological and cognitive effects arising under the influence of novelty deserve special attention. Given that it is the patterns of thinking that largely determine how we perceive reality, it is impossible to ignore them when trying to go beyond the reality-tunnel.
What do we know? In general, novelty should have a positive effect on the psyche, as it increases neuroplasticity and, in addition, there is research proving, among other things, that geographic diversity makes people happier:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41593-020-0636-4 (Association between real-world experiential diversity and positive affect relates to hippocampal–striatal functional connectivity) https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-athletes-way/202005/the-science-behind-our-need-variety-in-activities
Based on this, we can say that randonautting is very useful psychologically. We also assume that there are some psychological changes that are directly determined by the very setting of the experiment. Observations showed that over time, participants become more attentive to the small details of their environment and more open to new information.
However, there are two specific categories of psychological phenomena that were often observed among the participants in the experiment, which can be roughly divided into Dopamine Hit producing effects that potentiate curiosity, enthusiasm, and the ability to notice synchronicities and anxiety-enhancing effects such as Trespassing complex.
The mechanism of both phenomena is related to how our consciousness perceives the uncertainty that we are aware of when we think about the Blind Spots. Depending on the participant’s disposition, one of two mechanisms may be activated.
The first mechanism we called a Void-meme. This is a positive scenario for understanding the unknown, which is an important component of the Randonaut paradigm.
Void-memes are the open questions. In our case, this is the great unknown laying outside the deterministic world. Being completely indefinite, it, like the Rorschach stains, draws the most daring assumptions from your imagination, trying to fill the void of uncertainty. When your assumptions are optimistic, it creates a release of dopamine and motivates you, increasing your curiosity.
And since energy is expended in the search for truth, the mind seeks confirmation of its expectations and pays attention to anything even slightly unusual, which increases your impressionability. In this way, the ability to notice anomalies is greatly increased, and any anomalies that are noticed form new attention filters, which, due to the Baader-meinhof effect, make it possible to notice new types of things. This changes your very vision of the surrounding world, thus completing the creation of a new reality-tunnel.
This effect is extremely useful in novelistic research, and in order to enhance it, it is proposed to focus more on the unknown in the subject under study than on the prospects of what may be hidden behind this unknown, leaving the participants the opportunity to reflect on it for themselves.
However, there is also a negative scenario, when thinking about the unknown, the participant’s imagination does not draw attractive prospects, but frightening threats. This is possible if the participant is initially prone to pessimistic expectations. In such cases, uncertainty will arouse suspicion, paranoia and conspiracy theories. In addition, even if the predisposition to negative expectations is initially not very high, it is reinforced by instinctive anxiety designed to increase our caution in unfamiliar places.
This is manifested in the so-called trespassing complex, when a Randonaut visiting an uncharacteristic location is haunted by the feeling that being there he is breaking some unspoken rule and thereby incurring danger. People may think that they are being watched, any bystander may appear to be a persecutor, and any surprise causes fear. Reality itself can seem hostile. This effect can be considered as one of the main psychological components of the Stasis field, which keeps us within the boundaries of the reality-tunnel.
But what determines the very balance between optimistic and pessimistic expectations from the unknown? This phenomenon is explained by long exposure to a pattern that we call Despair-meme.
The principle of Despair-meme is simple, it is transmitted in the form of signals that simultaneously carry a danger and the impossibility of resisting it. For example: an endless stream of bad, terrifying or angering news in public media, aggression from people in a higher position in the social hierarchy, nagging people who cause discomfort at the level of empathy, but not taking advice to solve problems, etc. Since the resulting stress is unsolvable, a closed cycle of self-reflection is created, producing stress and a feeling of helplessness, prompting a person to search for an accessible target for their sublimation and send the same signal to someone else (retelling bad news or showing similar aggression to other people). Thus, with prolonged exposure to the despair meme, the brain learns that relief from the stress of helplessness comes only through antagonism and begins to see the environment as hostile and full of dangers.
To reduce the effect of Despair-meme, it is enough to understand its nature and try not to succumb to it, then over time the brain will learn to filter out groundless fears. There are also techniques, such as facial interpretation bias modification (FIBM), you can google them. We also recommend avoiding negative emotional reactions to information in the media whenever possible if this information is outside your locus of control. Ask yourself if this information really matters to you or if you're just projecting it onto yourself. Try not to oppose yourself to anything, but to understand the principles by which the surrounding world functions and to find opportunities for yourself in them. Learn to see new things as a benefit, not a threat.
Experiment #2: Mind-Influenced Randomness
This is where the things become a bit complicated. It is worth starting by looking at the phenomenon of Mind-Matter Interaction (MMI).
This phenomenon was known back in the 80s, but the most famous scientific study on this topic is known as The Global Consciousness Project. This parapsychology experiment began in 1998 as an attempt to detect possible interactions of "global consciousness" with physical systems and an extrapolation of two decades of experiments from the Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research Lab (PEAR).
PEAR employed electronic random event generators (REGs) to explore the ability of test subjects to use psychokinesis to influence the random output distribution of these devices to conform to their pre-recorded intentions to produce higher numbers, lower numbers, or nominal baselines. As their experiment shows, test subjects intention can cause randomness distribution to significantly deviate from average expected values.
http://noosphere.princeton.edu/papers/pear/fieldreg2.pdf
Probably, the study has entered a kind of methodological blind spot, since despite the large number of positive results it was subjected to intense criticism from the scientific community. The main subject of criticism is the low signal level (intention distorts the probability by no more than 1-5%), however, many researchers, such as, for example, Scott Wilber (Core Invention, Psigenics Corp.), are still working on solving this problem and achieving significant results:
https://psigenics.com/files/papers/PRD_Whitepaper.pdf (Machine-Enhanced Anomalous Cognition)
https://patents.justia.com/patent/9367288 (Device and method responsive to influences of mind)
https://patents.justia.com/patent/20160283197 (ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE DEVICE AND METHOD RESPONSIVE TO INFLUENCES OF MIND)
An interesting experiment was conducted by Jacob Jolij at the University of Groningen, where participants were encouraged to look for numerical combinations that are meaningful for them in the data stream of ordinary and quantum RNG.
(https://rug.eu.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_3ZXOIAG6hdImsbb )
The students were presented with ten randomly generated numbers and asked to say if the numbers meant anything to them.
Jolij wanted to know whether people saw meaning in the quantum-generated numbers more often than they did the software-generated ones. And believe it or not: they did. The p value of the significance was 0.0013. ‘That means that if you were to repeat this experiment a thousand times, you’d get these same results at least once’, Jolij explains. ‘And that’s a lot.’
Back to Randonauting
Mind-Matter Interaction brings us to the new form of chaotic agency. If the use of the entropy of pseudo-RNG is effective in overcoming the methodological boundaries of the mind, then the use of quantum RNG allows the intentions of our mind to overcome the boundaries of patterns of external reality. In the original experiments of Randonauts, the MMI effect was also referred to as the Genesis Field and was contrasted with the Stasis field. Thus, assuming that the participant’s thoughts can affect the quantum RNG in a way that is meaningful to them, we designed an experiment in the context of Randonauting:
Just as in the previous experiment, a point is generated on the map to be visited, but the principle of generation is completely different now.
For generation, a strictly quantum RNG is used.
Randonautica uses an open server of Australian National University's Quantum RNG (https://qrng.anu.edu.au/ ) as a source of quantum randomness, which receives random numbers by measuring the magnetic field fluctuations of virtual particles in a vacuum. It is currently the only open source quantum entropy server with enough performance to support the computation we need.
Some members of the MMI Research Randonaut community have expressed the opinion that this QRNG has low psi-responsiveness. For this reason, we conduct a lot of internal research on alternative quantum RNGs such as Psyleron REG (tunnel effects in a field-effect transistor), CamRNG (RNG based on thermal noise in the photo-matrix detectors of a smartphone's camera) and original prototypes obtained from Scott Wilber. Some of them, we hope, will be able to be included in the Randonautica system in the future. We invite everyone interested in this topic to join our team of researchers.
Project Methodology and Structure
The project does not claim to meet academic standards. We are somewhere in the middle between a game, science, and art, and we try to take as much as possible from each of them because we believe that labeling and leading to a unified methodology limits the potential of activity. The project is a symbiosis of research and cultural medium that work to develop each other. It is an inseparable fusion of folklore and technology that continuously evolves and creates new opportunities for discovery. The technological part of the project is based on real scientific studies, although the methodology for their application may deviate from traditional academic standards for research, as we are more inventors than academic scientists. Our goal is not so much the formation of full-fledged knowledge, but the acceleration of progress and the search for novelty that can indicate the direction for future searches and change our vision of reality. The project is not profit-oriented and all commercial activities in it are aimed at providing resources for the research infrastructure. One of our top priorities is to ensure that as many people as possible can be involved in the research process. Therefore, we propose to consider the project as a collaborative experiment, and not as a consumer product. We also do not insist on the correctness of the theories presented here and leave the reader with the possibility of their rethinking and addition.
Philosophy of Noveltism
Novelty is a treasure. Novelty shows us the way beyond the imaginable and opens up new possibilities for us. The one who possesses novelty becomes the creator of a new reality. Noveltism determines the degree of novelty of a subject by how much it differs from what already exists. But the most valuable novelty is Absolute Novelty, the kind of novelty that provides the maximum paradigm shift and cannot be obtained consistently. This is when the answer goes beyond the question, as if you were trying to invent a faster rocket engine and discovered teleportation instead. The person who made such a discovery becomes the founder of a new branch of technological development and changes the face of civilization. However, in the modern world, almost all research takes place sequentially, on the basis of existing knowledge, a question is formed and its formulation determines the way in which the search for an answer to it is conducted. Moreover, the further people go in a consistent search, the more difficult it becomes to participate in it and the fewer people are involved in it due to the high requirements for their competence and tools. This applies to both science and culture and any other areas of development. It's hard to make it to the big leagues when thousands are already fighting for a spot in there. Absolute novelty always stands at the beginning of any branch of development, so everyone can discover it and everyone can be equally involved in its search, and the one who finds it will hit the jackpot and become the founder of a whole new branch. However, since absolute novelty cannot follow from the knowledge available, it is almost impossible to formulate what exactly we want to find and in which direction this search should be conducted. The request for absolute novelty is a kind of the Ultimate Question, which cannot be formulated, since we, by definition, cannot know what we are trying to find. You can try to look for “something” where no one have looked yet, but as a rule, we do not know where it is. Therefore, noveltist methodology is usually based on a search in all directions at once and a natural selection of the results obtained. Such a search can be realized by involving the maximum number of people in it and using randomizers to evenly distribute their efforts. Then the likelihood of finding something new will increase, and if the search results are public and available to all participants, then the most valuable finds will attract more attention, which will ensure their natural selection. For this reason, we are trying to make research tools available to everyone, so that together we can explore every piece of reality and try all the ways to interact with it in order to find the most interesting and effective ones.
The Research Itself
Randonautica Project implements two separate experiments inherited from the Fatum Project, both based on visiting geographic coordinates, but conceptually completely different. We recommend that you carefully read the description of each, so as not to confuse them with each other.
Experiment #1: Probability Blind Spots
Imagine that somewhere near you, perhaps near your house there is a place that you always go around without any reason, you have never been there and probably do not even know that this place exists. We call such places Blind-Spots.
Their existence is mathematically determined, since all our behavior has a certain share of determinism in it. Imagine that you toss a coin, it can fall heads, tails or stand on the edge, but nothing other than these three outcomes will be taken as result, the set of outcomes is determined by the coin itself. The Dice cannot give you two and a half, cause its sides are whole numbers.
The same is true for our geographical routes, no matter what path we choose, wherever we decide to go, there is a limited number of logical chains that will guide our mind when choosing a route, even if it seems to us that we act by chance, there is always a place where none of these logical chains leads.
Even more convincing example is the so-called "Chaos Game", illustrating the phenomenon, which in Chaos Theory is called attractors:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sierpinski_triangle#Chaos_game
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DcvY_45XFU4
In short: If we choose three random points and move the fourth point many times half the distance to one of these points, randomly chosen by a dice throw, then despite the fact that all movements were guided by randomness, all the locations of the point during the game form a figure known like a Sierpinski triangle. In other words, the presence of any game rule forms a limited outcomes space. It is interesting that in the center of this triangle there is a space into which points never fall. Such a space in our case would be called a Blind-Spot.
Now imagine how many rules shape your routes and behaviour: logic, habits, social norms, life experience, cognitive biases, external factors that affect you according to the characteristics of your personality or are in a causal relationship with your behaviour and so on. All this together creates a causal viscosity, which we call the Stasis Field, the force that holds you in the Reality-Tunnel of your own.
We define a "reality-tunnel" as the deterministic path that your life is on. Reality tunnels are influenced by factors that determine the relative frame of reality for a particular person. That is, how one sees the world, what is used to paying attention to, in what places and when one may find themselves, and how one reacts to various situations. It is assumed that different people can have not only a different set of opportunities, but also a different vision of the world depending on their personal qualities and behavior patterns. This is something like “Filter Bubbles”, when the deterministic component of your behaviour makes the places, things and information that exists outside such a Reality-Tunnel practically invisible to you, since it simply does not occur to you to think about it.
This means that no matter what choices you make, and no matter how many variations on how your day may pass, there are always some places where you simply cannot be, because none of the chains of your decisions leads there. Such places may be somewhere nearby. On your street there may be a lane in which you will never think to look and you do not even know about its existence. What could be hiding in such blind spots? And what could be hiding in places where no one looks at all? (Since no one has been there and such a place has an absolute geographical novelty, it may well contain things that no one knows about the fundamental existence of.)
Luckily, there is a way to go beyond the Reality-Tunnel and find such places. To do this, you only need to search in places chosen independently of the rules of our thinking. In our experiment, we used a random number generator to mark random points on the map and visit them. Because of being independent from deterministic patterns, RNG brings the possibility of generating coordinates anywhere on the map with equal probability, which means you have a chance to find a blind spot by visiting many of these points. However, there is no guarantee that you will find it at the first point.
The experiment methodology is simple: As a search area, you should choose a relatively small territory that is familiar to you. Using the RNG, you should generate random points on it and visit them regardless of whether they look interesting or convenient to visit. Perhaps the first point will not lead you to the Blind Spot, but with further attempts, the chance will increase. Many participants reported finding places within a five-minute walk from home that they had never noticed before and probably never would. The evidence that the blind spot has been found will be a feeling of surprise like "How I did not notice this place before."
The debatable question is whether external determinism can influence the course of the experiment, because of which the theory of Stasis Field often resembles the hypothesis of Simulation, although in this case we do not mean an artificial universe, but only a limited frame of perception and interaction with the real universe.
Since blind spots are methodologically hidden from us and finding them requires a choice of location that does not depend on our behavioral patterns, there is no need to resort to quantum RNGs, a pseudo-random source is fine. However, one should not forget that the reality-tunnel consists not only of geographical patterns, but also temporal, psychological, social, etc. Therefore, a blind spot can be not only an uncharacteristic place for us, but also, for example, a circumstance. Even being in a familiar place at an unusual time can give rise to non-standard situations. So one of the participants in the experiment said that while traveling, he came across an old acquaintance of his, whom he had not seen for 10 years, despite the fact that they live in the neighborhood, but appear in the same places at different times.
We believe that the reality-tunnels of different people can differ so much that the world itself looks different in them, especially if these are tunnels of people who are socially separated from each other by more than three handshakes. This is quite possible if we consider that all people exist within their own reality-tunnel, shaped by their qualities, habits and perceptions. Even just a very different person from us can live in a completely different world, because of going completely different routes and receiving different information. So, getting into random points, you can find yourself in someone else’s reality-tunnel and get new opportunities from there or meet someone who gives us a piece of information that changes everything.
It is difficult to imagine how reality-tunnels that are not at all typical for humans might look like. The ability to move between such tunnels is akin to traveling through the multiverse, only instead of physically moving to other dimensions, we move our frame of perception and interaction with reality.
For this reason, we recommend not limiting yourself to randomizing only geographic coordinates, but, for example, visit points at random times, or build sequential chains of random routes from them.
Next question is what are the long-term consequences of a researcher staying in a place where he should never have been. How much can determinism be broken by butterfly effect? Will the clockwork of the universe fail from changing its gear position? Will the objects found in these places or the images seen generate cascades of events drastically changing everything around?
It is noteworthy that our reality-tunnel can be completely changed as a result of the domino effects created by those elements of novelty that we find outside of it. We learned something new, found some unusual object and began to use it in everyday life, which is why we gained new advantages and are already doing something differently.
In such situations, if the Stasis field is strong enough, it tends to converge and displaces novelty from our reality-tunnel, but if it fails, we are pulled into the tunnel from where this novelty was brought, which accordingly changes our personality, habits, interests, so that we can match the new environment. For this reason, if you want to move into a new reality-tunnel, it is recommended to take an object from the trip and start using it in everyday life, taking advantage of novelty, such objects will not allow convergence to occur, that is seeking to return you back to the pattern.
There is also a statistical aspect to the experiment. Not every trip brings you to the blind spot, and not every randonaut finds something abnormal, but when a large enough number of people in the community visit random places, together they manage to explore even the most hidden nooks of reality, and therefore if something lurks somewhere - something strange, it will definitely be found and the whole community will know about it. This makes this collaborative search for novelty very effective and together we can explore every corner of the universe. By collecting all the found anomalies and studying them, we will gain new knowledge that will become the beginning of even more amazing research.
Memetic Factors and Side Effects
The psychological and cognitive effects arising under the influence of novelty deserve special attention. Given that it is the patterns of thinking that largely determine how we perceive reality, it is impossible to ignore them when trying to go beyond the reality-tunnel.
What do we know? In general, novelty should have a positive effect on the psyche, as it increases neuroplasticity and, in addition, there is research proving, among other things, that geographic diversity makes people happier:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41593-020-0636-4 (Association between real-world experiential diversity and positive affect relates to hippocampal–striatal functional connectivity) https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-athletes-way/202005/the-science-behind-our-need-variety-in-activities
Based on this, we can say that randonautting is very useful psychologically. We also assume that there are some psychological changes that are directly determined by the very setting of the experiment. Observations showed that over time, participants become more attentive to the small details of their environment and more open to new information.
However, there are two specific categories of psychological phenomena that were often observed among the participants in the experiment, which can be roughly divided into Dopamine Hit producing effects that potentiate curiosity, enthusiasm, and the ability to notice synchronicities and anxiety-enhancing effects such as Trespassing complex.
The mechanism of both phenomena is related to how our consciousness perceives the uncertainty that we are aware of when we think about the Blind Spots. Depending on the participant’s disposition, one of two mechanisms may be activated.
The first mechanism we called a Void-meme. This is a positive scenario for understanding the unknown, which is an important component of the Randonaut paradigm.
Void-memes are the open questions. In our case, this is the great unknown laying outside the deterministic world. Being completely indefinite, it, like the Rorschach stains, draws the most daring assumptions from your imagination, trying to fill the void of uncertainty. When your assumptions are optimistic, it creates a release of dopamine and motivates you, increasing your curiosity.
And since energy is expended in the search for truth, the mind seeks confirmation of its expectations and pays attention to anything even slightly unusual, which increases your impressionability. In this way, the ability to notice anomalies is greatly increased, and any anomalies that are noticed form new attention filters, which, due to the Baader-meinhof effect, make it possible to notice new types of things. This changes your very vision of the surrounding world, thus completing the creation of a new reality-tunnel.
This effect is extremely useful in novelistic research, and in order to enhance it, it is proposed to focus more on the unknown in the subject under study than on the prospects of what may be hidden behind this unknown, leaving the participants the opportunity to reflect on it for themselves.
However, there is also a negative scenario, when thinking about the unknown, the participant’s imagination does not draw attractive prospects, but frightening threats. This is possible if the participant is initially prone to pessimistic expectations. In such cases, uncertainty will arouse suspicion, paranoia and conspiracy theories. In addition, even if the predisposition to negative expectations is initially not very high, it is reinforced by instinctive anxiety designed to increase our caution in unfamiliar places.
This is manifested in the so-called trespassing complex, when a Randonaut visiting an uncharacteristic location is haunted by the feeling that being there he is breaking some unspoken rule and thereby incurring danger. People may think that they are being watched, any bystander may appear to be a persecutor, and any surprise causes fear. Reality itself can seem hostile. This effect can be considered as one of the main psychological components of the Stasis field, which keeps us within the boundaries of the reality-tunnel.
But what determines the very balance between optimistic and pessimistic expectations from the unknown? This phenomenon is explained by long exposure to a pattern that we call Despair-meme.
The principle of Despair-meme is simple, it is transmitted in the form of signals that simultaneously carry a danger and the impossibility of resisting it. For example: an endless stream of bad, terrifying or angering news in public media, aggression from people in a higher position in the social hierarchy, nagging people who cause discomfort at the level of empathy, but not taking advice to solve problems, etc. Since the resulting stress is unsolvable, a closed cycle of self-reflection is created, producing stress and a feeling of helplessness, prompting a person to search for an accessible target for their sublimation and send the same signal to someone else (retelling bad news or showing similar aggression to other people). Thus, with prolonged exposure to the despair meme, the brain learns that relief from the stress of helplessness comes only through antagonism and begins to see the environment as hostile and full of dangers.
To reduce the effect of Despair-meme, it is enough to understand its nature and try not to succumb to it, then over time the brain will learn to filter out groundless fears. There are also techniques, such as facial interpretation bias modification (FIBM), you can google them. We also recommend avoiding negative emotional reactions to information in the media whenever possible if this information is outside your locus of control. Ask yourself if this information really matters to you or if you're just projecting it onto yourself. Try not to oppose yourself to anything, but to understand the principles by which the surrounding world functions and to find opportunities for yourself in them. Learn to see new things as a benefit, not a threat.
Experiment #2: Mind-Influenced Randomness
This is where the things become a bit complicated. It is worth starting by looking at the phenomenon of Mind-Matter Interaction (MMI).
This phenomenon was known back in the 80s, but the most famous scientific study on this topic is known as The Global Consciousness Project. This parapsychology experiment began in 1998 as an attempt to detect possible interactions of "global consciousness" with physical systems and an extrapolation of two decades of experiments from the Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research Lab (PEAR).
PEAR employed electronic random event generators (REGs) to explore the ability of test subjects to use psychokinesis to influence the random output distribution of these devices to conform to their pre-recorded intentions to produce higher numbers, lower numbers, or nominal baselines. As their experiment shows, test subjects intention can cause randomness distribution to significantly deviate from average expected values.
http://noosphere.princeton.edu/papers/pear/fieldreg2.pdf
Probably, the study has entered a kind of methodological blind spot, since despite the large number of positive results it was subjected to intense criticism from the scientific community. The main subject of criticism is the low signal level (intention distorts the probability by no more than 1-5%), however, many researchers, such as, for example, Scott Wilber (Core Invention, Psigenics Corp.), are still working on solving this problem and achieving significant results:
https://psigenics.com/files/papers/PRD_Whitepaper.pdf (Machine-Enhanced Anomalous Cognition)
https://patents.justia.com/patent/9367288 (Device and method responsive to influences of mind)
https://patents.justia.com/patent/20160283197 (ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE DEVICE AND METHOD RESPONSIVE TO INFLUENCES OF MIND)
An interesting experiment was conducted by Jacob Jolij at the University of Groningen, where participants were encouraged to look for numerical combinations that are meaningful for them in the data stream of ordinary and quantum RNG.
(https://rug.eu.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_3ZXOIAG6hdImsbb )
The students were presented with ten randomly generated numbers and asked to say if the numbers meant anything to them.
Jolij wanted to know whether people saw meaning in the quantum-generated numbers more often than they did the software-generated ones. And believe it or not: they did. The p value of the significance was 0.0013. ‘That means that if you were to repeat this experiment a thousand times, you’d get these same results at least once’, Jolij explains. ‘And that’s a lot.’
Back to Randonauting
Mind-Matter Interaction brings us to the new form of chaotic agency. If the use of the entropy of pseudo-RNG is effective in overcoming the methodological boundaries of the mind, then the use of quantum RNG allows the intentions of our mind to overcome the boundaries of patterns of external reality. In the original experiments of Randonauts, the MMI effect was also referred to as the Genesis Field and was contrasted with the Stasis field. Thus, assuming that the participant’s thoughts can affect the quantum RNG in a way that is meaningful to them, we designed an experiment in the context of Randonauting:
Just as in the previous experiment, a point is generated on the map to be visited, but the principle of generation is completely different now.
For generation, a strictly quantum RNG is used.
Randonautica uses an open server of Australian National University's Quantum RNG (https://qrng.anu.edu.au/ ) as a source of quantum randomness, which receives random numbers by measuring the magnetic field fluctuations of virtual particles in a vacuum. It is currently the only open source quantum entropy server with enough performance to support the computation we need.
Some members of the MMI Research Randonaut community have expressed the opinion that this QRNG has low psi-responsiveness. For this reason, we conduct a lot of internal research on alternative quantum RNGs such as Psyleron REG (tunnel effects in a field-effect transistor), CamRNG (RNG based on thermal noise in the photo-matrix detectors of a smartphone's camera) and original prototypes obtained from Scott Wilber. Some of them, we hope, will be able to be included in the Randonautica system in the future. We invite everyone interested in this topic to join our team of researchers.
How the Location is Generated
IDA (Intention Driven Anomalies) are places with the maximum deviation in the distribution of random points from the average expected value. In other words, in a random distribution, we theoretically expect a more or less even array of points. When we find deviations from this regular array, we call them “anomalies”. Their calculation is as follows: First, a large number of random points are applied to the map in the area you select, somewhere around ten thousand (the number varies depending on the radius of the area). Then, through triangulation and other mathematical transformations, areas are calculated in which points are distributed unevenly. It is believed that the uneven distribution occurs due to the MMI effect and creates a causal relationship between the intent of the user and the observation of his manifestation. Deviations can be positive and negative. If the deviation is positive, i.e. the density of points in some place significantly exceeds the average density in the area, this place is called an Attractor. It looks like a dense cluster of random dots. If the deviation is negative, i.e. the density of points is much lower than average, this place is called a Void. It looks like a territory on which random points seem to be avoided and there are almost none of them here. From the point of view of MMI, both Attractors and Voids are statistical deviations of the same nature and the difference between them is purely mathematical. In fact, both the Attractor and Void are MMI anomalies. Whether there is a difference between them in terms of results is not known for certain, and you have to figure it out yourself.
Since the very appearance of statistically significant deviations in the distribution of points is improbable, we believe that they result from the effect of intention on the source of entropy. We do not know for sure if intent can affect their location, however, in the course of experiments, many participants reported high personal significance of the resulting locations, often coinciding with what they were talking about or thinking about when the points were generated.
And although, due to the very structure of the experiment, many such observations can be attributed to confirmation bias, some coincidences turned out to be incredibly accurate, which gives us reason to assume that at least some part of the locations really reflected the intention of the users.
The main component of the majority of reports from these experiments are reports of synchronicities and meaningful coincidences, sometimes having a personal significance, but more often figuratively coinciding with what the participant thought or spoke about before the experiment.
It is worth noting that the IDA concept is fundamentally different from the Blind-Spot search, and although it is possible to discover those during the experiment, you should not expect that the IDA will be unfamiliar or completely random places. In fact, everything is exactly the opposite, since their position is formed by your mind, they should be meaningful.
Meaningful signs were also found on the way to the IDA, which suggests that the IDA does not necessarily indicate the position of the artifact, but provides the necessary conditions for its detection. That is, the very existence of an attractor-point can cause a participant to go to a place where he finds an artifact, even if this place does not coincide with the attractor-point. Meaningful signs can take the form of objects, events, or appear as combinations of graffiti encountered along the way, creating the impression that these graffiti refer directly to the participant (this effect was called "talking walls effect").
Quite revealing was the case when a participant who looked at a map of London before the experiment found a map of the London Underground at an attractor-point, even though he himself was in Australia. Also one of the most frequent synchronicities mentioned by project participants is the number 333.
How to explore IDA: During the experiment, it is recommended to choose a larger search area in order to increase the chances of finding artefacts in it that the algorithm could point to, but within the distance that you are ready to overcome. We recommend setting an intention by focusing on some idea in the process of point generation, so your intention could affect QRNG. Try different types of IDA and compare results to find out the difference between them. At the end of the day, the point of research is to understand how it all works, not just to see if it works.
It is empirically found that the best results can be achieved if we build chains of anomalies. So, for example, you generate one attractor-point, then from inside of it you change your starting location to the current one and generate a new one from there. The best result in most cases was manifested at the third point. We assume that this may be due to the gradual adjustment of the user to QRNG (or some additive causal effects).
It has also been found that IDAs lead to the discovery of expected artefacts, regardless of who expects them. There were cases when participants found what other participants were talking about at that moment in the chat. The most famous case was called "OWL-Experiment", when, after the system administrator installed an owl figurine on top of the server, the number of references to owl figurines in user reports increased sharply, from which it was assumed that by associating an owl with the server, the administrator created an intention, the manifestation of which observed indirectly through the experience of other Randonauts.
However, the technology is still being improved and there are still many questions about how the IDAs work, can you control what thoughts affect them, how do attractor-points differ from voids in terms of properties? We are still looking for ways to collect and analyze information obtained from user reports that can separate confirmation bias. If you have ideas on this matter and a desire to participate in the development, do not hesitate to let us know.
We also try to provide maximum access to the available technological base so that as many enthusiastic inventors as possible can try to create something of their own based on MMI technologies. We want the technology to develop in a decentralized fashion and evolve with maximum speed and maximum diversity, and we will be glad to collaborate with any research projects.
Some Speculations
In this chapter, we fantasise about some of the possible aspects of randonauting and how it is interpreted in the context of related ideological concepts.
The project is quite popular among supporters of the Hypothesis of Simulation. It is assumed that if the world is a computer simulation, then going beyond the standard algorithms can provoke it to inappropriate behaviour and glitches. In the original concept, we did not intend to question the reality of the universe, we only doubted the methodological accessibility of all its components, and therefore we will not particularly delve into this topic, in the end what is real and what is unreal, relative concepts. But if you want to hack the matrix, you can try.
About how the intentions of users are manifesting in IDA, the precog hypothesis seems to be the most convincing. According to this hypothesis, the place on the map is subconsciously determined by the user himself with the help of intuitive clairvoyance, and then translated into the system through Mind-Matter Interaction. In this case, Randonautica is only an interface for reading subconscious predictions.
Another hypothesis is that the embodiment of intention is a manifestation of retrocausality. According to this hypothesis, the user's expectation at the moment of setting the intention and his observation at the moment of visiting the anomaly are entangled through the quantum RNG. Thus, observing the result of an experiment in the future creates an observer-effect that retrocausaly collapses quantum superposition in the source of entropy, forcing it, thereby, to produce a distorted signal indicating this particular location. According to this theory, it does not matter when the user visits the point, since the very fact of its existence suggests that there is already a positive outcome of the experiment in a future.
Proponents of the Dimension Jumping idea also believe that at the time of IDA generation, the user moves along the probability axis, as a result of which he finds himself in a "parallel universe", which is not actually physically separate, but is another section of a more multidimensional continuum. In other words, the user is traveling through the multiverse. Since most Dimension Jumping methods on the Internet suggest an enhanced mental adjustment to the desired version of reality, it can be assumed that if this phenomenon is real, then it can be related to MMI. If we imagine that at the time of IDA generation, the user and all elements of reality entangled with him move along the probability axis, then the anomalies themselves in the distribution of random numbers produced by the quantum RNG can be represented as something like the probabilistic Doppler effect, when the probability is distorted relative to the user due to that he moves in it.
In any of the above cases, we recommend that you focus only on positive expectations so as not to create trouble for yourself. Search only for what you really want to find.