National Cryptologic Museum (NSA/CSS) New Temporary Exhibit on Project Stargate
nsa.gov
nsa.gov
In the open.
With instructions on how to encode/decode messages using it.
And little slips of paper and tiny golf pencils right there encouraging you to use it.
This and the National Electronics Museum (colocated with the System Source Computer Museum [which also houses most of the DigiBarn collection]) about an hour north have more hands-on exhibits of actual vintage technology than practically every other museum in the country combined.
Checks calendar..... nowhere near April!
My understanding of "remote viewing" is it's actually about time travel, and recall of the future. In order for a "viewing" to work, it was found that there needed to be a report to the "viewer" at the end of a given "run", which included all the details were needed to make the mission successful.
Bonus points for having enemies trying to replicate the technology and observing that progress and espionage around it.
Hanlon's razor says the unfireable career bureaucrats overseeing this project were genuinely incompetent, and authentically stupid.
Also probably money laundering. Apparently there were a lot of connections between the USG's various psi programs and Scientology.
It's a self-revealing non-dismissal to associate with something you dislike. Maybe your hick uncle is poor, or a KKK member. Should you be punished, or condemned to poverty? But facts are: the Scientology connection I think is Hal Puthoff who was temporarily a member to study that organized religion apparently. So? US frontier science has a history with occult, such as NASA's Jack Parsons. In the real world, totality of programs is much bigger than 1 dude, unless you're fixated on that aspect, then it would seem to all revolve around that hahaha! :)
Another way to look at this is all of this skepticism is a very monocultural, in fact a very white, and by association with the faux-confident dismissals here a 'white-supremacist' viewpoint to take. While many cultures today embody pseudoscientific materialist dogma in a rush to embrace ‘scientific modernity’ , there’s also a widespread acceptance of psi phenomena (by many names) among Chinese, Indian, Central Asian, African and South American cultures.
Most folks neg-commenting here would be perfect candidates for this: unafraid of social ostracism, internally directed. Interested in it. Competitive.
So they assembled a team of scientists and psychics and learned that the success rate resembled the random sample. Some psychics were also good magicians and scammers
Your thinking is all so theoretical and divorced from the reality that there is zero doubt psi/RV works. It will be hard for you but try it for yourself and you will see: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42528680
Also, regarding history your idea counterfactual as US made a program in response to USSR.
You just need first hand experience, otherwise really hard for you to see that. Try for yourself. My answer gets you to your first try: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42528680
Also your theory fails on evidence: studies, testimony of people about psi/intuition, thousands of people's sessions on psi/RV, discrete use by law enforcement & business.
(or was the critical date 25 Dec 1991, and the program just had inertia? 1995 is mid-Yeltsin and mid-Clinton, so those can both be ruled out?)
1995 was the date it went dark, became a WUSAP with a bigot list. The performative disowning by CIA is ritual cover.
For example, a subject is told to do a remote viewing of Trumps toilet. After the session or sometime later they are shown evidence of Trumps toilet. Or even get a vip tour. Is that the gist?
All the self sessions and RV mobile apps use feedback, because otherwise how to know?
But strictly speaking you don't need feedback.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ganzfeld_experiment
Unfortunately the more it's replicated, the smaller the deviation seems to become. But if there is a deviation above random, say 1%, then we could use a large number of viewers and an error correction coding scheme to transmit a binary message by the Shannon-Hartley theorem:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shannon–Hartley_theorem#Power-...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Error_correction_code
At 1 impression per person per second, it might be on the order of 1.44*(1/100) or roughly 1 bit of data per minute per viewer. I'm sure my math is wrong. But a few dozen people might be able to achieve primitive Morse code-style communication across the globe or even space.
It would be interesting to see if/how results differ when participants are shown the answers after the experiment, like with your comment about time travel.
Governments probably worked all of this out decades ago if there's anything to it. But it might mean that aliens have faster than light communication. We can imagine petri dish brains or neural nets trained for remote viewing. Sort of an FTL dialup modem.
As long as we're going off the deep end, I think this works through the magic of conscious awareness, that science may never be able to explain. Loosely it means that God the universe and everything fractured itself into infinite perspectives to have all subjective experiences and not have to be alone with itself anymore. So rather than being a brain in a box/singularity, source consciousness created all of this when something came from nothing. Consciousness is probably multidimensional above 4D and 5D, able within the bounds of physics to select where it exists along the multiverse, like hopping between the meshing of gears that form reality. Or Neo in The Matrix. So thought may make life energy ripples like gravity waves on the astral plane where time and distance don't matter. So feelings may be able to affect the probability of quantum wave collapse.
https://hackaday.com/2021/03/04/can-plants-bend-light-to-the...
This has all sorts of ramifications. Time seems to have an arrow even though quantum mechanics is mostly symmetric in time. If we assume that free will doesn't exist, then people would make the same choices if we got in a time machine and watched them choose repeatedly. But if we assume that free will exists, then people would seem to choose randomly with a probability distribution, which would make time travel impossible since no sequence of events could be replayed with 100% accuracy. Similarly to how the 3 body problem can't be predicted beyond a certain timeframe. So we could have time travel or free will, but not both. This latter case seems to more closely match how the universe works with observing stuff like the double slit experiment, and our subjective experience of having free will that so-called experts tell us is only an illusion.
It could also mean that synchronicity and manifestation are more apparent to someone having the experience than to the rest of us in the co-created reality. So the subject and conductor of an experiment might witness different outcomes from their vantage points in the multiverse, with echoes of themselves in the other realities, even though the total probability adds up to one. Like how you are still you now and one second before now or after now. It's unclear if subjective mental efforts can hold sway over the shared reality. That gets into metaphysics and concepts like as above, so below.
Happy holidays everyone!
Read through the Ganzfeld experiments, and many of the same issues with the field jump out fairly readily.
1) The opinion from society at large, is generally negative and dismissive. Therefore, much of the work is to discredit, rather than to positively try to replicate or support.
2) There's a chilling effect on those who might actually possess any such ability. Per above, the societal response is mostly negative. Much risk, little reward, and generally a promise of being a social outcast, pariah, or weirdo. Possibly an experimental guinea pig forever with needles in your skull as the only reward.
3) Social antagonism, since almost nobody likes the idea somebody else is wandering around thought scraping them like LLMs pulling your website design. Historically , mostly shown negatively (possibly for good reason) in literature, TV, movies, video games. Governments don't like you, even your own. Corporations don't like you. Most have not civilians don't like you. If it's positive (there's some lately) you're usually that wacky eccentric who solves cold cases or talks to ghosts.
4) Jealousy / envy / greed. One of the most reliable responses of having almost anything unique in human civilization is desire for others to take what you have.
5) For those that can demonstrate such abilities to themselves, there's an Extreme benefit for not reporting, and not socially revealing. Chief example, like always, money. If someone can thought scan your plans for corporate, or stock choices, then why ever report? Better to read the thoughts of Amazon, Microsoft, Google, Nvidia, ect... executives, buy or sell before anybody has the information without any risk of insider trading accusations, get rich and powerful, and never, ever tell anybody anything.
6) There's a liar's dividend issue. Any group that might possess such abilities (espionage obviously a strong candidate) gains far more by spreading false debate, causing the argument to be about lies or red herrings, and maintaining their secret edge.
7) There's a weaponization issue. What did the government immediately do? Try to weaponize. If you're opposed to being used as a government weapon, there's not much motivation.
Has many of the same issues that animal coginition, animal conciousness, and animal language had for years. An implied threat to the researchers that they may not be the most superior, or that humanity may not be all that special. Up until the early 2000's, most animal consciousness or intelligence work that proposed anything other than severely sub-human was heavily dismissed.
Personal favorite was Alex the parrot [1], that asked questions I'm not sure most humans would ask about objects and the world. Yet, general academia response ... mostly negative. General subject has gotten much more attention lately though, and so maybe some of the ESP / PSI ideas will eventually also. Mishka Wants Waffles!
During Covid, the new director of the museum changed policy substantially -- primarily focusing on original artifacts, rather than the "displays" which had been built before to illustrate concepts (when something wasn't available, or where the original artifacts weren't impressive or illustrative enough). As someone fairly familiar with the field, seeing the actual objects is much more worth a trip than seeing a museum display illustrating a concept which I could see better in a wikipedia article or a book.
Both approaches work for museums, but I'm glad his one changed. The most striking thing for me was seeing the actual computers used in SIOP and nuclear war initiation a couple decades earlier (fairly run of the mill high end DEC Alpha boxes).
For "coordinate scan"
The people doing the “remote viewing” use vaudeville tricks but pass it off as real.
Sadly the US government has spent millions on programs like this. The programs always fall apart when someone, usually a professional magician, steps in and shows the researchers how they’re being fooled.
In other news, the lady isn’t actually sawed in half.
The government programs (like STARGATE) actually produced some compelling results according to their declassified documents. The issue wasn't that they were "debunked" - the programs ended largely due to inconsistent results and questions about operational usefulness, not because of exposed fraud.
I'd encourage looking at the peer-reviewed research rather than relying on stage magicians' critiques. While healthy skepticism is good, dismissing the entire field based on cherry-picked cases misses the nuance in the data.
The book "Phenomena" by the investigative journalist Annie Jacobsen is a fantastic and fascinating starting point.
I'm very skeptical. Do you have a good one?
Assume "psi" exists. Purely as a thought experiment. What does this mean?
One key implication would be that consciousness can somehow access information beyond normal sensory channels. If this ability exists, it would likely be influenced by psychological factors - just like any other cognitive function. This leads us to a fascinating paradox: Our beliefs and expectations about psi would logically affect our ability to demonstrate it.
This is exactly what researchers have found with the supposed "sheep-goat effect" - where belief in psi correlates with performance in psi experiments. While skeptics often dismiss this as special pleading, the ultimate cop-out for negative results, it's actually a logical consequence of the initial premise. Strong skepticism could act as a psychological barrier, while openness might facilitate the phenomena.
This creates an interesting epistemological challenge. Unlike testing a new drug where belief shouldn't affect the chemical reaction, testing psi inherently involves consciousness - and therefore belief systems. The field has faced intense scrutiny because of these challenges and its implications. When Bem published his precognition studies in 2011, it sparked unprecedented criticism and launched psychology's replication crisis.
However, this scrutiny has led to increasingly rigorous methods in the field - despite this controversial topic being a potential career-ender and underfunded (although there are some private initiatives...).
So, having said all that as an important preface, in my opinion... One answer to your question: a recent example is the 2023 study in Brain and Behavior examining CIA remote viewing experiments (Escolà-Gascón et al.). Using extensive controls and blind conditions, they found significant above-chance results in high emotional intelligence participants. The authors - who describe themselves as skeptically oriented - conclude their data shows "robust statistical anomalies that currently lack an adequate scientific explanation and therefore are consistent with the hypothesis of psi." They argue for continued rigorous research while acknowledging the philosophical challenges these findings present.
This isn't hard proof of psi, yet, but it's evidence that there may be more going on than skeptics may think. We shouldn't dismiss it out of hand, just because it's so controversial, and because it seems incompatible with a materialist worldview that says "mind" must be spatially and temporally localised, and cannot access or manipulate information elsewhere.
Tons of human abilities are affected by our belief in them. Medicine is more effective when the patient believes it’s effective, to the extent that pills with no medicine in them can still have an effect if the patient believes it will. Do we just throw up our hands and say, crap, it’s super hard to figure out of any of this medicine actually works? No, we sit down and design experiments that account for it and end up with a massive library of proven drugs.
We don’t dismiss this stuff because it’s controversial and seems incompatible with a materialist worldview. We dismiss it because there’s no good evidence for it and no proposed method of action despite decades of trying. Arguably millennia of trying; “remote viewing” and similar things are just new framings of ancient religious ideas. There’s no actual difference between attempting “remote viewing” and praying for a vision.
And sure, it’s possible this stuff is real. But when there’s no conclusive demonstration of it after thousands of years, the burden of proof is firmly on the people who think it’s real, and it is definitely not the job of the rest of us to take this stuff seriously.
Yeah, I've got a simple way to test this:
Go win the powerball lottery using whatever techniques you believe in. Then, even if nobody believes you, you have the proof in your wallet.
I think it's all bullshit, but it doesn't hurt to play the other side sometimes.
I’m not sure that ‘would be used widely by business’ is a great test of anything. Business is pretty conservative. Observe their adoption of technology, of cyber, even of dress code. Not to mention remote work!
Many things that work, as you working in tech in a business context will understand, are specifically not adopted by business for reasons that often don’t make sense (or at least aren’t right) to those who know what works and its value.
Even so, this capability is used by business. It's like a high end sensor system used in D&D and corporate espionage, very discrete.
And about the economic argument: let's continue the thought experiment I suggested above. Imagine a universe where psi exists as a real phenomenon of anomalous information transfer & manipulation. Assume anyone has some level of psychic influence on everything else. Let's say this explains the phenomenon of "hey I was thinking of this person and now they're suddenly calling me" (instead of it being purely confirmation bias).
In such a universe, you wouldn't want to publish much about your psi-based hedge fund, lest your profits would come under attack from the psi-influence of the active disbelievers... No, you'd keep it under wraps and do your recruiting secretly and selectively. And any disclosure would need happen very slowly and in the right way.
The rabbit hole goes deep :-)
Also, to run a real operation you can't rely on 1 talent. You need to run a team so it's typically outsourced. Companies don't have the political capital to run a real RV department due to stigma, which has surprising power: business is conservative and not always smart (think dress code, remote work, tech debt), so the test of "used widely by business" is not a great test. Many people in tech know that business decisions are not often rationally about what works best.
If you need external validation of why this works, try doing it yourself instead. Then you'll know! :)
My answer has all you need to get your first try: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42528680
Normally it's obvious why people think it's all bullshit, but you seem a little deeper, so I'm curious. What makes you say that?
Probably possible with error correction and extremely clever design, by you need to hack the 'sensor' to make it work. This is a sensor like anything else, and it's more impressionistic than fine-grained resolution. Try it and you'll see, my answer gives you all you need to get to your first session: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42528680
Without first hand experience you'll never be able to think about this clearly, due to stigma and materialist priors. So try! :)
Analogy to winning powerball is hitting 18 holes of hole in 1s.
I work in cryptography, so I have a pretty good handle on discrete probability. This is precisely why I posit the powerball lottery as the most convincing proof of any paranormal abilities.
That it's hard, or improbable, isn't a deterrent in my eyes. It's exactly what makes successfully being able to win such powerful and convincing evidence.
People are free to believe what they want. But if you want me to believe you're correct, I need extraordinary evidence.
(And if being able to accurately predict lottery numbers isn't convincing to others? That's their problem.)
I'm going to need this experiment repeated 9 times in a row (1 in 2^252).
far more important tho my reply to your other comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42538042
Zero-knowledge proofs.
And this has been a hilarious exhibition for all parties involved.
I proposed a simple way to prove remote viewing without needing to have a complete theory for why or how it works. You assumed I was playing gotcha with an impossible test. Instead, I proposed an impossible-to-debunk way to prove you're right. You continued to ask if I "tried it" yet while insisting you don't care what I believe. And now you say
> Again, you're lost in this imagining trying to make your 'not trying' about other people or excuses. It's not. Just about you.
And, like, this is obviously projection. I don't need supernatural powers to realize this.
You've been cascading your own misunderstandings to the point of ridiculousness.
Yet all I was doing was say, "Hey, if you do this, you'll have an irrefutable outcome that will give any skeptic pause".
If you had any intuition for analytic thinking, it would be clear that proposing such a test makes me on your side, not against you.
But no, you instead continue to respond in a way that is best explained by assuming that I wanted to fill James Randi's shoes.
I'm a goddamn furry. It's in my username. I never made any attempt to obfuscate this. I spend a lot of free time with people who aren't just "playing pretend" online, but who are significantly psychologically comforted by calling them their fursona species. And I have no trouble squaring objective biological materialism with "here's an easy button to make a friend feel better". When it comes to remote viewing, I'm agnostic. I have no strong opinions either way. That you keep insisting I'm here to discredit you or your beliefs is your own insecurity screaming through the actions and context of your words.
I don't need a fucking crystal ball to see it. Maybe you do.
I'm inferring your assumptions based on what would logically cause a person to continue the conversation in the manner you are.
And this has been a hilarious exhibition for all parties involved.
I proposed a simple way to prove remote viewing without needing to have a complete theory for why or how it works. You assumed I was playing gotcha with an impossible test. Instead, I proposed an impossible-to-debunk way to prove you're right. You continued to ask if I "tried it" yet while insisting you don't care what I believe. And now you say
> Again, you're lost in this imagining trying to make your 'not trying' about other people or excuses. It's not. Just about you.
And, like, this is obviously projection. I don't need supernatural powers to realize this.
You've been cascading your own misunderstandings to the point of ridiculousness.
Yet all I was doing was say, "Hey, if you do this, you'll have an irrefutable outcome that will give any skeptic pause".
If you had any intuition for analytic thinking, it would be clear that proposing such a test makes me on your side, not against you.
But no, you instead continue to respond in a way that is best explained by assuming that I wanted to fill James Randi's shoes.
I'm a goddamn furry. It's in my username. I never made any attempt to obfuscate this. I spend a lot of free time with people who aren't just "playing pretend" online, but who are significantly psychologically comforted by calling them their fursona species. And I have no trouble squaring objective biological materialism with "here's an easy button to make a friend feel better". When it comes to remote viewing, I'm agnostic. I have no strong opinions either way. That you keep insisting I'm here to discredit you or your beliefs is your own insecurity screaming through the actions and context of your words.
I don't need a fucking crystal ball to see it. Maybe you do.
You assume I'm encouraging you to try because I care what you believe. Nope. Wrong again! Because I enjoy the idea of people becoming stronger, and seeing more reality does that. A world filled with stronger people is better.
Dude, there's a lot of delusion in your answer, I appreciate you for revealing it. Maybe you can read it back and learn.
Hahaha! You try to convince people you are on their side by exploding into abuse? After mislabeling and projecting your stuff onto people? Hahahahaha!
However you saw your role here in the arc of the psi/Remote Viewing story, it was never that. This was just 1 moment in your life where you had a chance to try something new. And you failed. Because of fear. Just like I laid out in my OG linked answer why it would be hard. You showed the example.
I hope you have a nice day and give it a shot another time.
You don't seem to understand the point, or the value, of proof. Ironically, this belies a poor understanding of the value of belief.
If you're going to assert "there's zero doubt", then you should have profound amounts of proof. But to couple that with "you don't need to prove it" exposes a very fragile worldview.
Doubt isn't the opposite of belief, but its opening act. If I believe something to be true, I can explain why. This requires proof and a state of humility. The strongest faith is forged in the fires of the deepest doubt.
If you aren't willing to entertain doubts or understand the value of proofs, why are you even on a hacker forum? Everything here is science, mathematics, and technology. Hacking requires a mix of curiosity, rigor, and imagination. It's not that any discussion outside the accepted consensus is unwelcome, but if you're going to engage in such a silly way, you shouldn't be surprised when things "[get] ugly".
Why?
> That’s the whole point. You can keep dancing around it, but that’s a fact.
Why do you believe this to be true?
First-hand experience doesn't seem to offer me much except confirmation bias and feeding one's ego. No thanks.
> Until then, you’re just lost in delusion.
What belief have I uttered in this discussion that warrants the word "delusion"?
> You have no concept of my worldview, barely your own.
How would that even work, having "barely [my] own" concept of my own worldview? If I barely have a concept of a given worldview, how would it be mine? Even if it were flawed?
> You need to try. If you don’t do that, you just keep generating garbage like this, unchallenged, think you’re right - you’re missing so much of the picture. You’re so wrong, you don’t even know it.
We have language for a reason. If you can't explain something and convince me of it being true without me having to experience it first-hand, and independent experts cannot interrogate your explanations to agree that it's correct, then how do you know it's actually true?
You keep making absolute statements, but get really defensive when I ask simple questions.
However you saw your role here in the arc of the psi/Remote Viewing story, it was never that. This was just 1 moment in your life where you had a chance to try something new. And you failed. Because of fear. Just like I laid out in my OG linked answer why it would be hard. You showed the example.
I hope you have a nice day and give it a shot another time.
Fear is not belittling, it's okay to be afraid. Only shame is to hide from it, or let it rule you. So why all this angry noise and abuse, all this time, when you could have just tried? You can always show it doesn't rule you: try.
Your outburst doesn't affect me because I'm so assured in this - I earned it - but think about how your angry outburst here will affect and may dissuade people who want to try this, and take responsibility for your words and your own convincing, instead of fake blaming others. If dissuading people is your goal, continue and you'll meet people like me who'll push back in ways you dislike. If it's not don't do it.
If you come back to this topic, I encourage you to read my OG answer https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42528680, see your patterns, decide to move beyond them, try the next steps, and head to the remoteviewing subreddit. There's a community of people there happy to assist someone with the humility to say "I don't know, but I'll try". From your behavior here tho, I'm not interested to know you at all, so please do not contact me again. Accept that 'no', thanks. Good bye.
It's a beautiful time of year, I hope you find some peace and that what challenged you here becomes seeds in the new year that grow into real growth rather than the stagnation you orbited. And be better.
I'm not tryin' to convince you, and I don't care what you believe. Nobody is coming to convince you - except you! - it's your responsibility. Your life. Own it. And... you got it ... try! Just try. Extraordinary conservatism leads to extraordinary ignorance! :) hahaha. Your grasp of stats appears loose if you require such odds to see an effect.
Right now, you're coming at this all wrong! It don't matter what you work in, and it ain't about belief. You look like you're hiding behind priors and statistics. "Extraordinary" depends on your priors. So, your prior beliefs in "the impossibility of golf" are deluding you into thinking you need 18 hole-in-ones to know you can play golf. When there is zero doubt psi/RV is real. All you have to do is try. 1st. Hand. Experience. :) I refer you to my other answer: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42528680
You totally misunderstand. I invite you to try remote viewing my intentions here instead of misreading my post defensively.
> I'm not tryin' to convince you, and I don't care what you believe.
Interesting thing to say, for someone who assumes so hard that I'm being dismissive.
You could try instead of making excuses, and acting like it's other people's fault: incorrect concept of personal responsibility.
You think I'm defensive? Defensive? me? Here? Dude, I am so assured about this stuff. I have zero reason to be defensive here at all. I am not. You are misreading it and projecting.
But I will bat back your mislabeling and confused entitlement. You’re not entitled to my viewing, but I don’t need to view your intentions, I knew them before I even opened the page to read your comment. They’re irrelevant to me, tho. Totally irrelevant, even tho they’re not good, no matter how you disguise them. Here, a mirror -
So…Defensively? Assumes so hard? I totally misunderstand? Hahaha, your fantasy of import and vanity, your talk of you, right? Twistedly projecting to make your stuff about others is classic toxic behavior. You need see others like that? I get if you need that, but that ain’t how reality is.
You do not understand, do you? Nobody is chasing you. Nobody needs your approval or judgement. Nobody needs to prove to you. This is just your chance to prove to yourself, that’s all. But instead of trying a session, maybe doing that, and sharing how it was, you … made stuff up, tried to make it about other people, and invoked maths, lies and hiding. When you coulda just…tried a session. Afraid?
And that unsatisfied entitlement which leads to provocation for attention, being also a mark of fear blurring intimacy, just another way to hide.
Lol - I think you’re dismissive? Why would I not just then dismiss you back? Haha! No, you’re fixated. But on the wrong thing. You don’t have serious ideas about this topic, just lazy ones. Your commentary is a lot of lonely, boorish mental gymnastics to avoid the one thing this is all about. You trying. I guess you’re not interested in that.
You could try instead of making excuses, and acting like it's other people's fault: incorrect concept of personal responsibility.
So you know what I'm feeling? No, you have no idea. I have zero insecurity, zero defensiveness about any of this. I take my word for it not yours. You read in your projection of your insecurity and defensiveness to compensate issues. You got some serious emotional boundary issues. Again, you're lost in this imagining trying to make your 'not trying' about other people or excuses. It's not. Just about you.
It's true the placebo effect affects other research too (and honestly I think the explanation for why it does so, isn't different than in parapsychological research, but I digress). It's also true studies (including the study I cited) try to account for this, so I don't understand why you bring this up as if it's a counter argument for what I wrote?
If psi doesn't exist, then it shouldn't matter if you believe in it or not - empirically we would observe the same outcomes for both groups, no? That's one starting point.
And while you are claiming you aren't dismissing it because it's controversial, I feel like you are literally doing so.
No, the results published so far aren't conclusive (I stated this as well in the post you are replying to), but again, if you are truly impartial, how can it not be evidence that it may be worth exploring further? It's okay to say it doesn't interest you and not have an opinion on the matter, but I think, if you are dismissing it as invalid, you should at least provide arguments for why the evidence is invalid, so enthusiasts like myself can learn from it & help improve future studies.
If you read what I wrote, you would've seen the reference to one example published in Brain & Behavior, so yes, there is peer-reviewed research.
There are more examples, more datapoints, but I don't think it's very useful to share those in a discussion where you know the other person already made up their mind and isn't willing to engage very productively.
But you will need the stomach for it. Reading this comment will likely require a process of pairing away, and like any cutting back it may be painful, but if you can bear with it, treasures await! :)
So let's begin: unfortunately the pre-requisite section here will be somewhat lengthy, and you will most likely and understandably complain, or find yourself wanting to reactively discredit simply due to the number of paragraphs, or you find the introductory apparatus excessive and obnoxiously handwavey. You will most likely experience an urge to yell "Shut up!" or to fight with every point and wording. If you can endure beyond these perceptions, and if you can retain sufficient patience, and keep in mind that as your goal sincerely is learning, then these words are the necessary sanding down, because if you jump straight to the facts without this minimal introduction, you will be in no position to comprehend them.
So, there's a sort of selection process already in operation. Only those who can resist attacks on multiple fronts (both from within and without their own minds) can get through and retain their rational faculty. This perhaps unique-to-this-topic challenge is oft under appreciated but once perceived will be readily apprehended, and its importance and necessity, including the necessity of overcoming such limiting beliefs to learning, realized.
You have hinted at what's there for you in your comment, so let's directly address that: the objection raised in the above comment is a fairly standard academic dismissal, not specific to psi/RV and to be expected anywhere, tho the tone of multiple commenters here was a tad too spicy to encourage the standard academic responses.
Which again is not that surprising given the understandable yet irrational resistance to something like this, especially for those minds embedded in a Western materialist framework, a contrast about which more can be said in another place.
Given all that, it's understandable (is it not?), and hopefully forgivable, that a bit of couching (counter couching?) is required, when those with different ideas, either from having opposite views, or from lacking the priors required to view this correctly, come heavily encumbered in their own couching, and display it so overtly -- hahah! :)
So hopefully that can dispense with some of the spiciness, so now down to practical matters.
Papers? Sure, we've got a few, but first a question on methodology of approach to the topic, and pre-requisites. The following two paragraphs could easily be taken personally, but shouldn't be. If you find yourself doing that, look around to the prevailing biased or dismissive commentary on this (here or wherever you like), and reassure yourself it applies to them, not to you! Yet these paragraphs are a necessary introduction to help you unlearn obstacles, and be aware of impediments to your curiosity and learning about this. So, the key insight is that: papers are not the best way for most of you to approach this given the significant obstacles you will face from pre-existing biases. But equally important, unless you are an actual psi researcher, who do you want to read stuffy academic papers? Especially when you can just experience it for yourself, right now!
In that context it's likely that papers will be simply a mill for you to dismiss each study with methodological, design, or analysis quibbles, as that confirming of your existing biases is what you want to do anyway. And even if you don't want to, it will be easy for you to pseudo-confidently do as such questions can be levied at any papers in any discipline, and even if you levy them, either unfairly on this topic; or to a stricter standard than you apply to other topics; you will sincerely believe you are in fact objective, because you want to achieve your aim. And even if you don't take the lead, you will easily be lead by others who do. The talk of being 'taken in by shysters' is funny, because it can be so often applied to those who inconsistently dismiss studies by enslavement to legacy bias! Ha :) There is no cure to this beside first hand experience, which is, sensibly where we will go first, and now!
So, again papers are not the best way for many of you to initially approach this. The best way is by having a conversion experience (without drugs!) -- and free, and only taking a few minutes of your time. So, take the responsibility, don't outsource it, and try :)
What other topic can offer you such a compelling and transformative re-vivisection/reorientation of your worldview at such low cost, and entirely within your capacity to effect? I challenge you to name one, haha! :)
So, I will give you papers, but only on the condition that you do not read them until you have given an honest try to it yourself. And I will not listen to your whinnying about papers until you have attained the proper training and experience, albeit brief but sufficient, via such first hand experience, a fairly standard academic bar to raise.
So, finally we come to what you probably hope we had just said at first, but hopefully by now you have some understanding of why that was unwise to do before the introduction above. SO: first and most importantly, head to https://www.reddit.com/r/remoteviewing/ and head to the pinned "[START HERE] INTRODUCTION | FAQ | RESOURCES" post, just as you would when learning any new technology (and believe me, this is a technology, although the public versions are not as advanced as the current state of the art). Read all of that, and then go to the "beginners guide" (linked in the same), and do all of that. That will take you through your first psi/RV session. All of this is a small investment of time, and the largest obstacle you will find to doing it is your own fear, because the implications of this are so huge. Briefly: there are other paths, and intros (just like to any tech there are a glut of resources), but this one is clear, simple, checked through experience, and comes with a community -- all very important for a supportive first time.
I trust you have sufficient discipline to do the above prior to possibly getting mistracked reading any papers, so I will provide you a decades long bibliography, which you can find here: https://www.irva.org/library/bibliography
Much more can be said, but the necessary initiation for you to understand is to perform the self exercise first. The papers are not important (for reasons given, you can always simply abuse them to confirm biases), but if approached with the right mind, only obtainable through first hand experience in our materialist Western purview, they may help you.
So to conclude, hopefully this painful, and difficult comment, likely also made harder to read by its difficult long-sentence style, could nevertheless assist those true learners to step forward beyond the difficulties and into the light of this topic. The point of that? Their own enrichment. And expanding the community of understanding, acknowledgement and acceptance around this. Greater treasures await if we can do that. Finally, in the gestalt this process of approaching this topic is analogous to (and likely essential to) the very process of psi/RV itself where conventional senses must be moved beyond to access information from what lies beyond them. Hopefully this effort by me today helped you in some way on your path to that :)
There's zero doubt psi/RV is real. You require 1st hand experience: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42528680
They give 347 nonbelievers and 287 believers a set of 32 locations. They must clasify them as (a) military bases, (b) hospitals, (c) schools (or education centers), or (d) cemeteries. The expected average is 8 but they get 8.31 and 10.09 respectively.
[I'm skiping a lot of confusing parts, like figure 4 and 5 that I can't understand what they mean and how are they related.]
Anyway, 8.31 for believers vs 10.09 for believers is interesting.
But ... from the article:
> A total of 347 participants who were nonbelievers in psychic experiences completed an RV experiment using targets based on location coordinates. A total of 287 participants reported beliefs in psychic experiences and completed another RV experiment using targets based on images of places.
These are two different tasks! It's impossible to know if the difference of the result is cused by nonbeliever/believer or cuased by coordinates/images.
As a technical opinion: This inmediately invalidates the whole study. I don't understand how this was even published.
As a personal opinion: It's obvious that the guys/gals with the photos would get better results than the guys/gals with only the coordinates. The CIA should build more spy planes and satelites.
I mean, if you assume psi is possible, sure, then it's a valid criticism that this is a confounding variable that causes the believers to score better.
However, if you're a skeptic, it shouldn't matter. I mean, if you assume psi is BS, then why would it be obvious image target X23AY would be easier to "guess" as an image of a hospital instead of getting the coordinates (39.2965, -76.5915)?
If you want to move beyond skepticism you need 1st hand experience. My linked answer gets you on the path :)
Randi literally walked in, showed how vaudeville magicians do spoon bending (spoiler alert: the spoon is swapped for one that’s already bent using sleight of hand) and the researchers blushed in embarrassment.
They’d been HAD!
Cite this so called research you claim to have.
ps: your uncle didn’t actually steal your nose. That’s his thumb.
How was SRI scammed? They initiated the project and won the contract. Werner von Braun helped allocate the funds after meeting Targ.
"Major Dumbass is researching what?" "Well we didn't have any actual useful work for him so we figured this was harmless"
The thing that impressed me is the typewriter-size Enigma machines of legend, and the multiple-refrigerator-size Bombe nearby that decoded the Enigma output. Seeing the actual hardware makes an impression that reading stories can’t get to.