Global Peace Meditation Aug 8 2014

Standard analysis

It is a time which looks fearful, with wars brewing in several places around the world. To so many, this looks completely unnecessary and so wasteful of human lives and of the resources that we need to build a civilized and humane world. It looks impossible to do anything, since with the best of will, so many are powerless. Perhaps this is inevitable because war is profitable to the tiny fraction of people who are at the top of the corporate and political heap, and who continue to make decisions that increase profits, without regard for wisdom or moral principles.

But we cannot simply look on and be satisfied that we are powerless, so we try to influence things as humans alway have when faced with terrible and apparently insoluable problems. We pray, and we focus our attentions and intentions on something better. We act as positively as we can, hoping this will have a creative, active effect in the world. We believe it will help if we come together in a synchronized act of intention. Thus, many groups promoted a Global Peace Meditation on August 8 2014, synchronized across the world at the local equivalent of 16:00 UTC and lasting for an hour. Maybe this would do some good, and maybe it would register in the data of the Global Consciousness Project.

The GCP event was set for 16:00 to 17:00 UTC. The result is Chisquare 3537.8 on 3600 df, for p = 0.767 and Z = -0.729.

Standard Caveat: It is important to keep in mind that we have only a tiny statistical effect, so that it is always hard to distinguish signal from noise. This means that every “success” might be largely driven by chance, and every “null” might include a real signal overwhelmed by noise. In the long run, a real effect can be identified only by patiently accumulating replications of similar analyses.