Conference hydra::dejavu

Associated Press Mon  2-MAR-1987 12:37                   Afterlife Experiment

aarX 2-MAR-8712

              Experiment Can't Be Completed By The Living
                             By A.J. DICKERSON
                          Associated Press Writer
   PEMBROKE PINES, Fla. (AP) - The head of the Survival Research
Foundation says he doesn't mean to seem morbid.
   But about 100 of the group's 250 members worldwide have signed
up for a ``Is there life after death?'' study, and it can't be
finished while they are alive.
   ``I'm waiting for people to die,'' says Arthur Berger, who runs
the 16-year-old nonprofit group from his home here.
   Participants in the project have devised messages that can be
deciphered only if they are contacted after they die to give out
the top-secret decoder keys.
   ``We take no position on there is or isn't an afterlife. Our job
is to collect empirical data,'' said Berger. ``We're trying to get
this thing clarified ... to crack this puzzle once and for all.''
   So far, only Cambridge psychology professor Robert Thouless has
died, and the two messages the British national left before his
September 1984 death remain a mystery.
   Such projects aren't new.
   Before magician and escape artist Harry Houdini died on
Halloween 1926, he reportedly prepared a coded message for which he
was to send his wife the decoder key from the hereafter.
   Despite years of seances, the key never came. Scattered similar
projects have had equally inconclusive results, but people keep
trying.
   Priest-sociologist Andrew Greeley last month reported that 42
percent of polled Americans believed they had contacted someone who
had died.
   Berger's project isn't ``any more strange than anything else in
parapsychology,'' said Jeff Munson of the Institute for
Parapsychology, a private research group based in Durham, N.C.
   ``I admire his work because it's so tough and it has such
tremendous religious implications,'' said Munson.
   However, most parapsychology experts don't believe communication
with spirits is possible. Berger would need an airtight argument to
quiet critics if he should enjoy any success, Munson said.
   Berger has been studying paraspychology, which deals with such
phenomena as clairvoyance, extrasensory perception or telepathy,
since the 1970s.
   He said he's ready for skeptics. Participants swear never to
reveal their decoder key and never to write it down.
   Then there's the chance of a participant telling a medium the
key. To quash that, Berger plans to have mediums trying to contact
participants they couldn't have known. In fact, he'll select them
from different continents if possible.
   The odds of someone getting a key through sheer chance are
600,000 to one, he said. And while participants are alive, the
foundation challenges mediums the world over to try and find
message solutions. If a message is decoded early, the participant
writes a new one.
   None have been prematurely decoded.
   ``Should anyone be able to communicate and we have a result, we
will not claim this to be proof of life after death, because one
experiment isn't enough,'' Berger said. ``We need 100 successes, we
need 1,000.
   ``We're trying to get hard evidence.''

    There is a minor point implied by this item which I believe is
    incorrect.  Thouless was not connected, as far as I know, with the
    Survival Research Foundation.  Rather he originated this version
    of the test (this version is now generally refered to as the Thouless
    Cipher Test, but this also refers to its explicit use by him).
    Berger has used the test as the basis of the design for his broader
    study.
    
    Part of the nature of the test, as designed by Dr. Thouless is a
    fixed time limit during which results "count" (and for which the
    prize money is available).  There is one year left.  I've been meaning
    to post a copy of the official announcement of the test.
    
    Thouless did not believe that success on this would "prove"
    conclusively the existence of communication with an afterlife. 
    He did feel, however, that it would provide a great deal of support.
    
    There is quite a bit of argument in the parapsychological community
    about this.  The problem is that there are a number of alternate
    paranormal ways this information could be obtained (direct
    clarivoyance, transtemporal telepathy, telepathy while the subject
    was alived only surfacing after death, etc.).  This has been the
    problem in interpreting the meaning of a positive result in previous
    tests (e.g., Houdini's) if any had been positive.  Thouless sought
    to contrast success before the "subject's" death with after.  He
    felt it strengthens the test (as it does).  Unfortunately, in my
    opinion, it does not strengthen it sufficiently for a single or
    even a few cases.  One would have to have enough cases to demonstrate
    that it is significantly easier to get the information "from" the
    dead than from the living.  Even then there is a problem in
    psychological factors (motivation, beliefs, etc.) causing the effect.
    
    				Topher

    	Extracting a VTX AP new iten is easy -
    
    	When in VTX, hit the GOLD key (PF1) and then the 5 key.  At
    the command prompt, write SAVE/ALL, then hit return.  The AP news
    item will be sent to your directory.
    
    	I would suggest, however, cleaning it up so it's more presentable
    for reading in the Conferences.  You'll see what I mean when you
    do it.  I would also suggest punching up HELP while in VTX - that
    will give you info on what each key can do.
                                               
    	Larry
    

    re .1:
    
    Ummm.....
    
    This might not be good enough.  Suppose the "decoder key" is a word
    or phrase used to decipher a message.  Well, if one is a cryptologist,
    such deciphering, while not easy, wouldn't be beyond doing.  There
    are monalphabetic and polyalphasbetic schemes.  The Vigniere is
    popular, so is a simple monalphabetic substitution built around
    the word...  There now are available as programs for desktop computers
    somew of the _great_ enciphering/deciphering schemes of the last
    war (such as ULTRA), generally written in BASIC.
    
    I certainly wouldn't trust a decip[hering of a message as a "final
    proof," though for a real nasty encoding scheme, it'd be suggestive.
    
    Steve Kallis, Jr.
    

    Well, that's an interesting story...but I have an unusual view for
    looking at it...
    
    I wouldn't be surprised if they didn't get many successes, because
    once you die, why would you even be interested in hanging around this 
    limited world, to fulfill some experiment?  I would think there would 
    be a lot more interesting things to do! :^)  Maybe the beings (in 
    spirit form) that do hang around after they've died, are doing so out 
    of confusion, lonliness, ego (to be superior to us), or because
    they think it's their purpose to help us?  If there's such a thing as 
    "the light"...and unhappy spirits are always being prompted to go to 
    it...I would think satisfied beings would go towards it immediately
    instead of hanging around here.  Some experiment isn't going to mean 
    anything to them once they're out of here.  Somehow, I think when I 
    die, this life will have been like a dream...and this world just won't 
    matter anymore.

    
    When I was younger, my mother was famous for saying "IF YOU EVER
    IN YOUR LIFE [... fill in this space ...] I WILL COME BACK TO HAUNT
    YOU!".  She was very emphatic about it, and would reserve this threat 
    for things she considered unforgivable such as marrying outside our 
    faith or becomeing a Republican (the lady did have her moments).
    Well, since then Mom has passed away and my sister and I have had 
    our lives take some real twists and turns.  Inspite of all her threats,
    no word from Mom.  My sister and I have often said that we now know
    that not all spirits can come back at will! 
    
    I say the above only half seriously - and only half kiddingly.
    
    [ ;-) ]
     

    
    
    RE:  .6
    
    My mother never threatened me with "...I will come back...", however
    I have been to mediums and both my parents have come through to
    communicate.  And wouldn't you know that mixed in with all the
    messages of love and encouragement, there were those few that were
    definitely parental scoldings.  
    
      "You have all this needlework that you haven't finished working on
       yet."  
    
      "You have a lot of artistic ability and haven't done a thing with
       it."  
    
      "You really must do something about that stubborn streak."

    My sister was visiting recently and she went for her first "evidential"
    reading.  She asked me to sit in on it with her because she was
    a little nervous.  Sure enough, before the end of the reading, my
    mother had this to say to both of us:
    
       "I really want you two to be closer.  One of you needs to listen
        to the other more, however, you both have a lot to teach other."
    
    Maybe your mother is waiting for you to have a reading with a medium
    so that she can come back and, along with a lot of loving messages,
    still tell you what she thinks!
    
    Carole
    
    

		HAS DR. THOULESS SURVIVED DEATH?
	Two Organizations Issue Challenges To The Public


SOCIETY FOR PSYCHICAL RESEARCH --

Dr. Robert Thouless, who died at the age of 90 on September 25, 1984, intends
to prove his survival of death and his ability to communicate thereafter, by
an in ingenious test which he originated in 1948.  The test consists of the
two coded sequences


		INXPH CJKGM JIRPR FBCVY WYWES NOECN
		SCVHE GYRJQ TEBJM TGXAT TWPNH CNYBC
		FNXPF LFXRV QWQL

			    and

		BTYRR OOFLH KCDXK FWPCZ KTADR GFHKA
		HTYXO ALZUP PYPVF AYMMF SDLR UVUB.

What Dr. Thouless intends to communicate are the keys to decipher them.  The
only clues he has left are that the key to the first is a continuous passage
of poetry or prose which may be indicated by referring to its title, and the
key to the second consists of two words.

Earlier researchers such as F.W.H. Myers and Sir Oliver Lodge left sealed
packages to be opened when a psychic had claimed to read their contents.  That
kind of test is no good for three reasons: (1) once opened, the test is
finished; (2) if the message only refers to the contents of the envelope
obliquely it is difficult to know whether it is a hit or a miss; and (3) it
could be claimed that the psychic had "read" the contents by clairvoyance.
Dr. Thouless' test can be attempted as many times as there are claimed
messages; only the exactly right clue will unlock the coded message; and since
1948 psychics have been unsuccessfully trying during Dr. Thouless' life to
discover the key, which has never existed in written form.

If any person thinks he or she has the clue to unlock either of Dr. Thouless'
messages, please contact the Society for Psychical Research, 1 Adam and Eve
Mews, London W8 6UG, England (Tel: 01-937-8984), who will put the clue through
their computer program to see if it yields a message.


SURVIVAL RESEARCH FOUNDATION --

The Survival Research Foundation, which is investigating the question of life
after death, and a disinterested committee of judges issue the following
challenge to all persons:

Dr. Robert H. Thouless, who died in 1984, left two messages in cipher
enciphered under two different systems and which can be made plausible only by
using his correct secret keys.  The key for one message is the title of a
book, for the other, two words.  Dr. Thouless intended to communicate these
keys after his death.

$1000, or its equivalent in any other currency, will be given to any charity
designated by the first person who sends the SRF Committee of Judges a key
which will make plausible one of Dr. Thouless' test message and which is
confirmed by the SRF Committee as the right key, and a like amount will be
given any charity designated by the first person who does the same for Dr.
Thouless' second message.  The messages and descriptions of systems used will
be supplied to interested persons upon request.  Please write to Survival
Research Foundation, PO Box 8565, Pembroke Pines FL 33084 USA.

The Committee will determine all test conditions and will be the final
arbiters both of whether any submission fulfills the test conditions and a key
makes a test message plausible and whether it is the right key.  This offer
will terminate and be withdrawn in October 1987.  Send all keys with a
description of how and when they were obtained to:  Dr. E. L. Pattullo,
Director, Center for Behavioral Sciences, William James Hall, Harvard
University, 33 Kirkland Street, Cambridge MA 02138 USA 

RE: .4
    
    I don't know, offhand, what type of enciphering scheme Thouless used.
    As you can see, though, the passages are quite short and the contents
    fairly wide open, which would make anything much more complicated
    than a simple substitution cipher pretty strong -- there just is
    not a large enough sample for the usual statistical attacks.
    
    The challenge has been published in the major technical journal
    devoted to cryptography/cryptoanalysis (CRYPTOLOGIA -- as a matter
    of fact, I copied the challenge from there).  Presumably a cryptanalyst
    would be as eligible to the SRF prize as a medium; and without lying
    about how the message(s) were cracked.
    
    (By the way, there is a great article in the current issue of
    CRYPTOLOGIA about how easy some of the supposedly practical file
    encipherment systems for the PC are to crack).
    
    					Topher

    You'll be interested to know that this has been published in
    Cryptologia, a journal for people interested in cryptanalysis.
    It is quite possible that some of the readers of that journal
    will crack these without psychic assistance.
    
    /Bevin

    re .3
    Currently, when you enter "Save /ALL" you may get back a message
    saying "print and save restricted".  That doesn't mean you can't
    do it.  It means you have to save one "screen" at a time.
    
    Reportedly it is a version mismatch...
    You may also experience a "crash", despite the "restricted" message.
    Ignore it and reenter ap.
    
    As far as codes are concerned.
    There is a technique called the one-time-pad which is _UNBREAKABLE_.
    It would seem to me that an experimental protocol could be built
    around this.
    
    dave pierson

RE: .5
    
    Actually, that view is not at all unusual -- indeed it is the
    traditional Christian viewpoint (among others -- I don't mean the
    dream-like quality, I mean the lack of desire or ability, for whatever
    reason, to communicate with the living).
    
    There is another viewpoint, refered to as spirituallism (no, I didn't
    forget to capitalize it) which says that at least some (many) spirits
    seek to communicate and that certain talented/skilled individuals
    (generally called "spirit mediums" or simply "mediums") can give
    them the opportunity to do so.  This is essentially the claim that
    Dr. Thouless and the SRF are investigating.
    
    The philosophy of spiritualism forms the foundation for a religion
    called Spiritualism.  There have been a number of notes in this
    conference by people who have had some contact with Spiritualism.
    
    A failure of this test would not, of course, in any way prove the
    non-existence of an afterlife.  It would not even disprove
    spiritualism, since it is not generally claimed that *all* the departed
    are able to communicate through mediums, and it cannot be claimed
    that a strong desire before death to communicate would necessarily
    result in a strong desire afterwards.
    
    					Topher

    Unfortunately the one time is not only _UNBREAKABLE_, but also,
    since the key is as long as the message, all possible messages the
    length of the enciphered ones are reasonable.
    
    Say, for example, I died and had left the following (very interesting)
    message
    
    	00 00 00 00 00  00 00 00 00 00
    
    
    Two psychics could roll up, one claims that my onetime pad read...
    
        09 01 13 09 14  26 09 15 14 24
               
    which, when added to the above message, and translated
    A=1, B=2, etc. reads...
    
    	IAMIN ZIONX
    
    
    and the other claims my onetime pad read...
                                   
        09 01 13 09 14  08 05 12 12 24
    
    which would give the message...
     
    	IAMIN HELLX
    
    
    So, no, one-time pads do NOT help here, because we want to show
    that the key found by the psychic is THE key.
    
    
    /Bevin

    Re last several:
    
    As a <koff, koff> occasional contributor to _Cryptologia_, I'm certain
    that many readers will try their hand at cracking the cipher.
    
    A opne-time pad would be virtually useless here, since the key would
    have to be at least as long as the message.
    
    I suspect (without checking) that it's something like a Vigniere
    or a Playfair. 
    
    Steve Kallis, Jr.
    

RE: .13
    
    Good point.  There are some other, more subtle problems with one-
    time pad keys -- they are probably rather hard to communicate. 
    
    (For those who don't know what a onetime pad is, though /Bevin's
    example made it pretty clear -- the "key" which is chosen completely
    randomly, is the same length as the message.  Both the encoder and
    the decoder have a copy of the key.  Each letter of the key is "added"
    (usually using XOR, which is a type of addition, rather than ordinary
    addition) to the message and the result sent.  The receiver than
    subtracts the same letters in sequence (one of the reasons for using
    XOR is that it is its own "subtraction" operation, so encryption
    and decryption are exactly the same).  If you could choose the key
    than you could get *any* encrypted message you wanted this way.
    Without knowing something about the key, then, the encrypted message
    tells you *nothing* about the unencrypted message.  It is therefore
    unbreakable from analysis of the encrypted message).
    
    First off, the key must be as long as the message.  The message
    tends to be relatively long (tens of words) so that a translated
    message is convincing.  For any imperfect communication channel
    longer messages are harder to transmit (technical definition of
    this is fairly complex, but intuition is clear enough for our
    purposes).  This is the basic reason that Thouless allows a "title"
    to specify the longer passage for the first message, and that the
    second key is "two words".  If you make it too hard, you decrease
    the chance of success even if the hypothosis were true.  This does
    no one any good.
    
    Secondly, it is unbreakable only if the key is random.  But it is
    being communicated through a human being.  A long stream of numbers
    is difficult for people to process.  It is plausible that what is
    hard to remember would be hard to communicate, and a completely
    random string of numbers is as hard to remember as anything (plus,
    of course, the deceased has to be able to remember it).
    
    					Topher

    I have always been a skeptic about things that could not somehow
    be proven beyond doubt.This is how i approached the Ouija board
    a few months ago.I tested and tried to get some proof that could
    be verified by records which i could not.I now know why.They dont
    want us to know for sure.I could get into a long explanation of
    this but i wont here.However,by communicating over a period of time
    with my ex-wife and others on the other side,i have accumulated
    enough evidence of another kind.By knowing someone in life for so
    long you know if it is them.By sharing memories and experiences
    etc.Every once in a while information is passed on that is totaly
    disconnected from myself and Diane.Just as an example:Being spoken
    to in a foreign language by someone on the other side and having
    someone there translate it for you.Later on we found a book to check
    out the translation and it was 100 percent correct.Neither of us
    spoke the language.We all have to decide for ourself what we will
    believe.I have no doubt about an afterlife and i am learning more
    about it all the time and how things work there.Its very interesting
    and a real adventure.
    
                                             MIKE
    

    re. various
    Ummmm, maybe I don't understand the experiment.  I had assumed
    that a reference copy of the message (plaintext) was safely tucked
    away with a trusted individual, so as to establish validity.
    
    I am afraid I have too much respect for the modern cryptologist
    to have much faith in anything BUT a one time pad.  I shouldn't
    think the message would have to be long, and likely the
    post-mortem "transmission" could be repeated a few times.  That
    is a standard technique for a noisy channel.
    
    dave pierson

RE: .17
    
    Thouless felt that a plaintext copy would weaken the test.  Remember
    that he is trying to make the case for postmortem communication
    over other *paranormal* as well as conventional explanations.  The
    usual view of "clairvoyance" is the ability to directly sense things
    that are remote or otherwise hidden.  He wished to eliminate that
    possibility.  Unfortunately, many modern parapsychologists (myself
    included) think that this is a naive view of clarivoyance.  There
    is considerable evidence that ESP is "goal-directed", i.e., that
    what is "perceived" (if that is the right word) is what is needed
    to succeed at what is being attempted rather than the target itself.
    If this view is correct, encryption of the message adds no "security"
    against clairvoyant viewing.
    
    If you look at the copy of the "challenge" that I posted, you will
    see that there are several mentions of judgement of "plausibility".
    Not just any key resulting in any message will be judged a success.
    The judges must judge, subjectively, that both the key and the message
    are choices which Thouless is likely to make.
    
    Once again -- for it to *be* a one-time pad, the key *MUST* be random,
    natural language text *will not work*.  If you use ordinary text,
    then you no longer have the "one-time pad" which is considered secure,
    instead you have a Vigniere cipher with a long key.
    
    If the message is too short, then almost all messages become plausible.
    
    Repeating a message does not help if it is buried in a mass of false
    messages and if you do not have a protocol for "combining" the separate
    messages to do error correction.  Perhaps the latter should have
    been done, but it was not.  We are seemingly talking about a very
    sporadic channel here.
    
    I too have a great deal of respect for modern cryptanalysts -- but
    they are not magicians.  Breaking a cipher is a statistical process
    which, therefore, requires a significant sample of encrypted text
    (or a much shorter sample of plaintext and corresponding ciphertext)
    before it "works".  These samples are very short.  Perhaps a
    cryptanalyst will get lucky and decipher them (either because they
    just guess at some assumptions which turn out to be true, or because
    there is some exceptional hook in the message which makes it easy
    to get at), but the chances are, I would say against it.
    
    					Topher

    If I understand what I am reading here then we are talking about
    a puzzle with NO proveable solution.  Topher says that the solutions
    are to be studied and deemed "plausable" - not proven.  In this
    situation we have crypto text and we need a key to provide a
    "plausable" message.  I do not know of the gentleman that set this
    up, but with enough knowledge about him I could first create the
    "plausable" plain text and apply it to the crypto text to arrive
    at a "plausable" key.
    
    I guess my question is:  What's the point?
    
    					Bill
    

    Re .19:
    
    The point is that the author left hints about what the messages
    contained (one was from a poem).  This is good for both a demonstration
    and for cryptanalysis.
    
    I don't think that if someone comes forth with a deciphered message
    it would _prove_ that an afterlife exists.  If the person who comes
    up with it isn't a cryptanalyst, though, it would be suggestive
    that _something_ paranormal was involved.
    
    Steve Kallis, Jr.
    

RE: .19

    The "point" is that, while there are a large number of plausible
    messages and a large number of plausible keys, there are a very much
    larger number of implausible (including garbage) messages and keys.
    The chance that the key (or any of the keys for some schemes) necessary
    to derive a particular plausible message from the ciphertext is also
    plausible is very, very small. There is an excellent chance that there
    is, out of all the possible messages and keys, only *one* pair (the
    intended pair) are both plausible.  If you just searched plausible
    pairs at random looking for a plausible pair, you would probably spend
    thousands of years before succeeding. 

    This is precisely the problem with the one-time pad.  All keys must be
    meaningless and therefore all are equally plausible.  Furthermore it is
    easy to find a key which will turn any particular ciphertext into any
    desired plaintext of the same length. 

    (ROUGH ESTIMATE: The probability that a message or key of length N
    characters is plausible is about 0.1^N; i.e., 1 chance in
    1-followed-by-N-zeros; justification available if anyone is
    interested). 

			    Topher