From Egyptian barque oracles to Artificial Swarm Intelligence via the Ouija (or wDA?) board
From Egyptian barque oracles to Artificial Swarm Intelligence via the Ouija (or wDA?) board

Summary/Abstract: Ancient Egyptian barque oracles had a recent counterpart in the phenomenon of “table turning”, an occult process experienced in Nineteenth Century Spiritualist séances. The séance table’s small scale successor, the Talking Board, ensured that oracular locomotion persisted throughout the Twentieth Century; its best known embodiment – the Ouija board – remains popular even today. Scientific studies have helped to elucidate the behavioural drivers that govern table turning and Ouija sessions; these reveal that good faith groups are dominated by an auto suggestive process known as the ideomotor response (IMR). Learnings from such studies suggest that a hierarchy of up to four drivers (two conscious and conditional, two unconscious and continuous) would have underpinned the significance laden movements of Egyptian barque oracles. Such oracles constitute an early form of what is today called Artificial Swarm Intelligence (ASI); “human swarming” enables networks of individuals whose interactions are governed by real time feedback loops to converge quickly on optimal solutions. The paper also examines the possibility that Ouija – the name bestowed in 1891 upon the “Egyptian luck board” that went on to dominate the Talking Board market – might genuinely reflect an ancient Egyptian word with the approximate sense of “good luck”, just as the board’s pioneers claimed it did.

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