Paging Rupert Sheldrake: New Study from UC Davis

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Kuldebar
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Paging Rupert Sheldrake: New Study from UC Davis

Unread post by Kuldebar » Sat Apr 11, 2015 11:16 am

I thought this might be of interest to the TB community, it certainly caught my attention. I came across it here:

What magnets tell us about nature’s ‘flash mobs’
http://www.futurity.org/magnets-flash-mobs-895302/
How does an acorn know to fall when the other acorns do? What triggers insects, or disease, to suddenly break out over large areas? Why do fruit trees have boom and bust years?

The question of what generates such synchronous, ecological “flash mobs” over long distances has long perplexed population ecologists. Part of the answer has to do with something seemingly unrelated: what makes a magnet a magnet.

A study by scientists at the University of California, Davis, found that the same mathematical model that’s been used to study how magnets work—a well-known concept in physics called the Ising model—can be applied to understanding what causes events to occur at the same time over long distances, despite the absence of an external, disruptive force.


The name of the University of California paper:

Emergent long-range synchronization of oscillating ecological populations without external forcing described by Ising universality

http://www.nature.com/ncomms/2015/15040 ... s7664.html

Abstract:
Understanding the synchronization of oscillations across space is fundamentally important to many scientific disciplines. In ecology, long-range synchronization of oscillations in spatial populations may elevate extinction risk and signal an impending catastrophe. The prevailing assumption is that synchronization on distances longer than the dispersal scale can only be due to environmental correlation (the Moran effect). In contrast, we show how long-range synchronization can emerge over distances much longer than the length scales of either dispersal or environmental correlation. In particular, we demonstrate that the transition from incoherence to long-range synchronization of two-cycle oscillations in noisy spatial population models is described by the Ising universality class of statistical physics. This result shows, in contrast to all previous work, how the Ising critical transition can emerge directly from the dynamics of ecological populations.
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Is not the space between Heaven and Earth like a bellows? It is empty, but lacks nothing. The more it moves, the more comes out of it. -Lao Tzu's Tao Te Ching
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spagyr
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Re: Paging Rupert Sheldrake: New Study from UC Davis

Unread post by spagyr » Mon Apr 13, 2015 2:45 pm

Many thanks, a most useful set of links for a fascinating phenomenom

beekeeper
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Re: Paging Rupert Sheldrake: New Study from UC Davis

Unread post by beekeeper » Fri May 01, 2015 11:09 am

Greetings EU pilgrims, I do find this topic quite fascinating as well. Science today in my mind has too many categories. When we think of earth we call it nature as soon as we look out we call it space, in my mind it is still nature. One that many call a divine master once said when asked what about astronomy and the stars I quote " what's up there is there same as what is down here." I believe that the EU Theory complements this statement. In my book The Beekeeper I make good use of these interaction between the universal forces and the living organisms on our planet . For those interested you can find a link to it by scrolling down this forum to the Beekeeper, regards Beekeeper
If nothing can travel faster than light, how can darkness escape it

willendure
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Re: Paging Rupert Sheldrake: New Study from UC Davis

Unread post by willendure » Fri May 01, 2015 11:55 am

Kuldebar wrote:I thought this might be of interest to the TB community, it certainly caught my attention. I came across it here:

What magnets tell us about nature’s ‘flash mobs’
http://www.futurity.org/magnets-flash-mobs-895302/
How does an acorn know to fall when the other acorns do? What triggers insects, or disease, to suddenly break out over large areas? Why do f trees have boom and bust years?

The question of what generates such synchronous, ecological “flash mobs” over long distances has long perplexed population ecologists. Part of the answer has to do with something seemingly unrelated: what makes a magnet a magnet.

A study by scientists at the University of California, Davis, found that the same mathematical model that’s been used to study how magnets work—a well-known concept in physics called the Ising model—can be applied to understanding what causes events to occur at the same time over long distances, despite the absence of an external, disruptive force.


The name of the University of California paper:

Emergent long-range synchronization of oscillating ecological populations without external forcing described by Ising universality

http://www.nature.com/ncomms/2015/15040 ... s7664.html

Abstract:
Understanding the synchronization of oscillations across space is fundamentally important to many scientific disciplines. In ecology, long-range synchronization of oscillations in spatial populations may elevate extinction risk and signal an impending catastrophe. The prevailing assumption is that synchronization on distances longer than the dispersal scale can only be due to environmental correlation (the Moran effect). In contrast, we show how long-range synchronization can emerge over distances much longer than the length scales of either dispersal or environmental correlation. In particular, we demonstrate that the transition from incoherence to long-range synchronization of two-cycle oscillations in noisy spatial population models is described by the Ising universality class of statistical physics. This result shows, in contrast to all previous work, how the Ising critical transition can emerge directly from the dynamics of ecological populations.
Ising models and other models leading to power law distributions are a major topic of this book:

http://www.amazon.com/Critical-Mass-Thi ... 0374530416

Stock market crashes, and the distribution of wealth across society also exhibit power laws, and the author draws on models from physics to explain them.

Its a great read, I would recommend it.

beekeeper
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Re: Paging Rupert Sheldrake: New Study from UC Davis

Unread post by beekeeper » Mon May 04, 2015 5:53 pm

The laws of the stock market are used to define the socio economic society we live in along with the alterations to our democratic principles. So reversing the theory suggested in the work mentioned by will endure may very well be just as true regards Beekeeper
If nothing can travel faster than light, how can darkness escape it

willendure
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Re: Paging Rupert Sheldrake: New Study from UC Davis

Unread post by willendure » Tue May 05, 2015 1:55 am

beekeeper wrote:The laws of the stock market are used to define the socio economic society we live in along with the alterations to our democratic principles. So reversing the theory suggested in the work mentioned by will endure may very well be just as true regards Beekeeper
One of the main ideas in that book, is that systems in nature where many independent parts interact with positive feedback on each other, will tend to be characterised by power law distributions. This is the classic 1/f graph, where small events are more common than large ones, and form a nice event_size proportional to 1 / frequency_of_occurrence graph. In fact, in many cases the details of the system being studied are almost irrelevant because the overall effect is so heavily characterized by the power law distribution.

Ising model of magnetism exhibits this, as does a gas/liquid at its critical point, as does the stock market, as does the distribution of incomes in society, as does the distribution of people killed in acts of violence (ranging from isolated cases, very common, to wars, much less frequent but kill shit loads), and many many more examples that we can find in nature.

Indeed the power law is sometimes called natures distribution.

I don't know of examples of power laws in astronomy, but I bet they do exist.

seasmith
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Re: Paging Rupert Sheldrake: New Study from UC Davis

Unread post by seasmith » Tue May 05, 2015 10:37 am

~

A nice concise comparison of "power law distribution" vs. (normal) 'Gaussian distribution' is given here:

http://edgeperspectives.typepad.com/edg ... of_po.html


EM examples could be Pulsed-DC vs regular AC graphs / oscilloscope screens,
or induced Capacitance transitioning to Spark discharge.
The two distributions can meld into, or derive from each other, like with fractal progressions.

beekeeper
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Re: Paging Rupert Sheldrake: New Study from UC Davis

Unread post by beekeeper » Wed May 06, 2015 8:51 pm

Greetings EU pilgrims, forgive me for the revision but I wish to go back to the topic at hand which mentioned there long distance correlation between life forms on this planet in a way that can only be explained by some electrical or magnetic forces. I have often wondered how a flock of hundreds if not thousands of birds can turn simultaneously and on a dime. There is no leadership in my mind that can command such a performance. They react I believe to an external force as one. Now we experience with genetically modified crops and mammals, our life style defies the limits of survival for us and this life giving planet which in itself is a life force how long does anyone thinks it can support us or even allow us to continue regards beekeeper
If nothing can travel faster than light, how can darkness escape it

willendure
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Re: Paging Rupert Sheldrake: New Study from UC Davis

Unread post by willendure » Thu May 07, 2015 2:17 am

beekeeper wrote:I have often wondered how a flock of hundreds if not thousands of birds can turn simultaneously and on a dime. There is no leadership in my mind that can command such a performance.
This is the point of power law distributions.

When a gas/liquid is placed in a sealed glass container and pressurized/heated so that it reaches very close to its critical point something strange happens; a clear gas/liquid will turn cloudy at its critical point. The reason this happens is because of the 'scale free' nature of the power law distribution. That is to say that it exhibits features (blobs of gas or liquid) at all sizes from the very tiny, to the very large, with a 1/f distribution. Since it has features of all sizes, some must be of the same size as the wavelength of light travelling through it, so it appears cloudy.

Power law distributions will produce features at all scales, including the very large, which can sometimes give the illusion of 'spooky action at a distance'.

There is also a phenomenon called self organizing criticality, which is the tendency of a system to automatically return to a critical state. Think of a pile of sand with one grain at a time being dropped on top, the sand will stick together, but eventually one grain will trigger a large land slide, and a whole load of sand will run down the side of the pile. The stock market behaves very like this, with what looks like a normal distribution of small buys/sells, but in fact the system is unstable and will suddenly produce a large crash with very little warning.

So it is possible to have self organizing systems that regularly produce large scale spooky effects.

Personally I think Sheldrake has been fooled by the power law disitrbution, and invented morphic fields, which no-one has proven to exist, as an explanation. But I remain open minded.

beekeeper
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Re: Paging Rupert Sheldrake: New Study from UC Davis

Unread post by beekeeper » Sat May 09, 2015 3:04 pm

Greetings Will endure personally I am very skeptical about any natural interactions or any relations at all between nature or plasma physic and the stock market. As a matter of fact they ought to be at each extreme of any spectrums. They only relation I can think off is that a stock market crash would take a lot of wind or energies out of someone heavily invested in it. :P :P
If nothing can travel faster than light, how can darkness escape it

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rkm
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Re: Paging Rupert Sheldrake: New Study from UC Davis

Unread post by rkm » Sat May 16, 2015 3:00 am

Sheldrake's field of study is consciousness. Implicit, if not explicit, in his new study is the hypothesis that consciousness is the field in which these phase changes are occurring. He has already published many studies of consciousness acting at a distance. Evidently the alignment of consciousnesses in populations follows the pattern of the Ising model.

willendure
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Re: Paging Rupert Sheldrake: New Study from UC Davis

Unread post by willendure » Mon May 18, 2015 4:28 am

rkm wrote:Sheldrake's field of study is consciousness. Implicit, if not explicit, in his new study is the hypothesis that consciousness is the field in which these phase changes are occurring. He has already published many studies of consciousness acting at a distance. Evidently the alignment of consciousnesses in populations follows the pattern of the Ising model.
Hmm. Is he basically saying that there is some mechanism by which consciousness aligns that works sort of telepathically?

What I am saying is this. You don't need mechanisms that we don't understand, plain old human interaction is sufficient. Consider the issue of whether couples should be married, or co-habit (this is in the book I mentioned). Maried or co-habit are north/south magnetic alignment in a 2D Ising model. Couples develop an opinion on this issue based on what their friends think, by the normal mechanism of conversation, observing body langauge, and other subconscious clues that we ordinarily use to read others, but not by telepathically aligning with their conciousness. Just as a magnetic cell has its alignment influenced by its neighbours. The Ising model and its power law distribution can amplify the effect of this throughout a society, which is why we can sometime see a rapid shift in opinion on an issue such as this. We could equally well see a rapid shift in opinion back to traditional marriage in western society too.

It may appear that something telepathic is going on, but it can also be shown to fall out of the mathematics of the model.

seasmith
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Re: Paging Rupert Sheldrake: New Study from UC Davis

Unread post by seasmith » Mon May 18, 2015 12:36 pm

~

Isn't it like the old question of a "murmuration of starlings", or a school of anchovies ?
When the group turns so quickly, is it a collective impulse, or high speed interaction ?

When a flock turns in unison, it’s a phase transition.
[Ising model?]

At the individual level, the rules guiding this are relatively simple. When a neighbor moves, so do you. Depending on the flock’s size and speed and its members’ flight physiologies, the large-scale pattern changes. What’s complicated, or at least unknown, is how criticality is created and maintained.

It’s easy for a starling to turn when its neighbor turns — but what physiological mechanisms allow it to happen almost simultaneously in two birds separated by hundreds of feet and hundreds of other birds? That remains to be discovered, and the implications extend beyond birds. Starlings may simply be the most visible and beautiful example of a biological criticality that also seems to operate in proteins and neurons, hinting at universal principles yet ...
VIDEO OF :
http://www.wired.com/2011/11/starling-flock/

beekeeper
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Re: Paging Rupert Sheldrake: New Study from UC Davis

Unread post by beekeeper » Wed May 20, 2015 7:40 pm

Greetings EU pilgrims, I watched the posted video by Seasmith then I watched it again. The harmony displayed is fascinating. It's like a symphony in their air choreographed by a form of energies. These birds let themselves be taken over by these energies. These must be present in the oceans as well I often wonder how come us can ignore these manifestations that must be all around us and in us.
If nothing can travel faster than light, how can darkness escape it

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D_Archer
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Re: Paging Rupert Sheldrake: New Study from UC Davis

Unread post by D_Archer » Thu May 21, 2015 7:39 am

A trigger is a special kind of stored procedure that automatically executes when an event occurs/

Find the event. It is physical.

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Daniel
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