CIA Doc on Time Travel, Consciousness, and Existence of the Absolute (1983) [pdf]

There's a great book called "Stealing Fire" by Steven Kotler & Jamie Wheal about this very subject.

However, searching for low probability events in a large search space is not necessarily going to be a fruitful experience. For example, imagine that there is non-zero probability of a 20 karat diamond being on the beach somewhere, buried in the sand. You can look for it as much as you want, but you will still probably miss it.

Having a small outlet for things that seem crazy because they might turn out to be true is the same kind of logic as buying a lottery ticket because you can't win if you don't play. Yes, you will miss things, but you will almost certainly miss them anyway unless you expend more resources than they are worth -- and then you still aren't guaranteed to make progress.

On the other hand low probability risks that are likely to happen sometime are often worth investigating. For example, if there is a 1 in 1000 year earthquake event, it's highly unlikely to affect you in your life. But it will eventually affect someone so it may be work the effort to study what might happen. To get more esoteric, perhaps we can talk about large meteorites hitting the planet. Do we need a contingency plan for it?

To me, that's the main question you need to ask before you start: are we building up an understanding of something that will almost certainly affect us one day, or are we simply sifting through grains of sand on the beach hoping to find a diamond?

URL = https://www.aestheticimpact.com/_pdf/AAestheticImpactCIABiof...

The only thing I've really learned about these types of organizations is that their very nature makes them, as an entity, more like an octopus than a primate. They need to quarantine off information and seed it with falsehood to stop adversaries from making their way off with everything when they breach a system or trusting it all on the off chance they do.

There is no "CIA" in the way that there is a "Denver Broncos" because the CIA has no unity of perspective, purpose, or even vision.

That some of their hippie dippies studied stupid shit and some of their psychos experimented on humans isn't really emblematic of the agency as a whole. Not because they were mere outliers, but because the concept of "the agency as a whole" doesn't really fit.

Watch it, go down that rabbit hole

There are literally an infinite number of possible violations of established physics. Momentum is not conserved inside this cubic inch. Momentum is not conserved inside this other cubic inch...

The only reason one might prefer astral projection as a theory over the cubic-inch-ism of any particular volume is that astral projection fits a few preconceived notions about how the universe should conform to our psychological expectations. It might be surprising to hear, but exploding a goat with your mind is actually more psychologically familiar than any particular fact about quantum field theory. It involves explosions, minds, the exertion of will, and goats, while QFT involves unfamiliar components following unfamiliar rules to unfamiliar ends.

In short, if your idea is to test for a violation of the known laws of nature, great. If your idea is to test for a violation of the laws of nature that is only motivated by the predispositions you acquired in the cradle, that's not so good.

> (1) Soviet research is much more oriented toward biological and physical investigation of paranormal phenomena than is U.S. research, which is dominated by psychologists;

> (2) although visible U.S. and Soviet level of effort appear roughly equal, over forty years of research in the United States have failed to significantly advance our understanding of paranormal phenomena;

> (3) if paranormal phenomena exist, the thrust of Soviet research papers appears more likely to lead to explanation, control and application than is U.S. research;

The paranormal arms race between East and the West may have started with a 1960 French article describing how experiments at Duke University had established telepathic communication with nuclear submarines using Zener cards. The success rate was stated at 75%. The Navy later stated the story was a hoax, but it was likely deliberately planted by Western intelligence agencies to detract from real technological advances in communicating with submarines (such as Very Low Frequency Radio). But the Russians seemed to take the bait, wasting resources, yet later started reporting successes and publishing a wide range of high quality research (of which the CIA became aware). [1]

This in turn scared the USA into keeping up. Meanwhile the Russians promoted their own hoaxes and disinformation, such as Nina Kulagina, who was seemingly capable of telekinesis.

By the way, hypnosis and mass hypnosis are not woo woo, but legit toolsets of the intelligence agencies. Even the Stargate project had its use as a creative tool for scenario development and intuitive thinking. Interesting to note that its participants Harold Puthoff, Edwin May, Ingo Swann, and Pat Price were all involved with Scientology. Even the government may at one time been interested in the supposed powers of the OTO's.

> As scientists we should not be pre-disposed to shutdown things we do not understand without putting said phenomena through a testing phase.

Which is why Dr. Estabrooks (who the Russians knew was funded a big budget by US military to conduct research into the paranormal) wanted to know for sure if it was possible to hypnotize someone into committing murder and forget it ever happened. As real scientists such a test would be quickly shut down on moral grounds, so perhaps it is better to speak of military research when discussing this woo woo.

Given how disinformation and wasting the academic resources of foreign enemies ("eating carrots makes British pilots see at night", or the suggestion to drop the bandit problem over occupied France) is such a common trick, I wonder what current tricks are in use. I suspect that any country which focuses a lot of attention on fairness in AI will be at a disadvantage over a country that does not seem to care about this and just keeps automating no matter privacy or discrimination costs.

[1] https://www.wired.com/images_blogs/dangerroom/files/SovParap...

1: https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP96-00791...

Just because you can think of it, or can imagine it being true, or are afraid of it being true, doesn't mean it's worth investigating. Should the CIA engage in leprechaun research?

The cold war was ended by the Strategic Defense Initiative - not because it worked but because we forced the USSR to pour resources into matching us and it bankrupted the country.