Exploratory Study of Relationships between Physical Entropy and Global Human Attention

Examination of intercorrelations among the outputs of isolated, continuously operating, electronic truly random number generators (RNG) located around the world revealed that the largest daily average intercorrelation in the year 2001 occurred on September 11, 2001. That day experienced an extraordinary amount of worldwide, mass attention, associated with unprecedented terrorist attacks on the United States. To study this coincidence in more general terms, an analysis was conducted examining the relationship between objective daily measures of world-wide news events vs. daily average RNG intercorrelation values, over a one-year period. The prediction was a positive relationship, and the results were significantly positive (p = 0.004). This suggests that entropic fluctuations simultaneously observed in truly random, isolated systems may be meaningfully linked to events that attract mass human attention. One interpretation of these observations is that mind and matter are linked in fundamental ways.