Remote viewing is real--and the truth is being seen by the media...

Great Debates
21

I once saw a rabbit disappear inside a hat. No, really, live, no camera cuts, no TV bluescreen, a rabbit was placed in a large hat and the rabbit was gone. That proves that it is possible to make small things disappear as long as you have a special kind of hat. Einstein couldn’t explain this trick – everyone knows that in his memoirs, he said, “God does not play dice with rabbits. Relativity fails to explain how this amazing event took place.”

I once saw a girl go behind a curtain. On stage, no trick lighting, no film editing, no smoke and mirrors, in front of my honest and unblinking eyes. After saying “Bibblety-bob,” the magician pulled the curtain was away, and the girl was gone!!? Now that must be an unknown force, right? Science is baffled! This proves that the magic phrase “Bibblety-bob” has supernatural powers, doesn’t it? (Careful – don’t say it out loud or you computer mught disappear.)

I once saw a magician pick a card from a deck. It was the EXACT SAME CARD that I had chosen earlier and put back in the deck! Impossible without psychic ability! He MUST have read my mind, and seeing the cards with his fingers, picked out the correct one. How else could this have possibly have been done? No one in the world knows how, so it must be ancient magic!

I once saw a man shot with an arrow, right through the stomach. The arrow went all the way thru and came out the other side! No trick could ever be this good! Yet he survived! Obviously this man had special, supernatural powers to withstand a hole in his gut, two shows a day.

I could go on, but why bother? How many stories like this do you need – the phenomena is solidly proven beyond a shadow of a doubt. The Harry Potter books aren’t fantasy (why would you think that?) – they are real; witches really do travel on brooms – I have a cousin who knows someone who was a witch, so case closed, and you cannot argue me out of it. After hundreds of years of magic tricks, science doesn’t have the slightest answer about why these events take place, so they must be supernatural.

Or quantum physics.

:rolleyes:

22

You’re entirely correct, and I apologize for my generalization. Shoulda said something to the effect of “Well, Japanese TV has it’s Fox Network, too. :wink: And all of the networks from time to time air silly, stupid or untrue stuff, just like they do here.”

23

No! Say it ain’t so, Manny! But I saw it on TV – it must be true!

On the other hand, I have heard nasty rumors that TV wrestling is fake. Maybe this bears some looking into.

24

Is that all it takes to convince you is some TV show that you have seen, or did you even see it and only reporting what you read or heard? That done it for you, eh? I’m sure that show is a very accurate purveyor of truth, and leading scientific groups are in awe of this discovery. Physicists are bewildered and now must admit defeat. Just any day, the US media ought to be picking up on this amazing but true story. I‘ll be checking all major news networks daily for it. :rolleyes: From the few threads I’ve seen of you, you’re second only to one other in having a propensity for believing in such tommyrot. At the rate you’ve been going in your Gullible’s Travel’s, you might overtake lekatt to becoming Straight Dope’s favorite whipping boy. Why is it whenever these people agree to be tested by legitimate groups such as CSICOP, James Randi Foundation, and others that have been investigating paranormal phenomena for decades including “remote viewing,” end up each and every time failing miserably? A TV show where there are not much in the way of controls, if any, and just about anything goes as long as it is entertaining, isn’t the most ideal place to further your education. Put down the remote.

The blase assumption that, oh, it’s just TV, meaningless. Easily deniable. Who gives a fk. Now matter how much evidence piles up, oh well.**

There is a mountain of scientific evidence against it. Your evidence is not scientific. You do have something piling up on the other end, and evidence, it is not.

I have a Master of Science degree, my friend. I resent your condescending tone like the devil.

Mind if we verify that? What particular school puts out people like you? And what scientific interaction do you propose is occurring with remote viewing?

JZ

25

Okay, Aeschines, I will attempt to address you on your own terms, and not make fun of you.

Your OP is rather vague on the details, so I’ll list a few assumptions:

[ol]
[li]That the fellow’s connections with the FBI were stated by the host who introduced him, or by the fellow himself in some kind of preliminary chat after he was introduced.[/li][li]That his experience in drawing a minefield map was introduced in a similar fashion.[/li][li]That “they found her” means that a camera crew appeared at her house, and she acknowledged upon their arrival that she was the mother of the woman who made the request, who recognized her.[/li][/ol]

You claim this fellow discovered the location of the mother solely by means of remote viewing. If you wish to convince me that this is the case, you will have to provide evidence of the following:

[ol]
[li]That the fellow had never heard of the woman making the requestor her search for her mother before she asked him on television.[/li][li]That the fellow had access to absolutely no resources other than his own psychic powers between the time the request was presented to him and the time he produced the map.[/li][li]That no one on television has the nerve to broadcast claims that are not true or have not been rigorously checked.[/li][/ol]

If you can provide uncontrovertible evidence, I will acknowledge that remote viewing does indeed exist. I await your response.

26

Ah. The Japanese version of FOX.

27

Was the “they said that he was able to draw etc., etc, …” statement made by an FBI representative on the show?

28

Remote viewers always seem to surface after the fact or when it’s convenient for them. There are tons of ongoing missing person cases and plenty of them make it to local and national news i.e.
If any legit “viewer” out there wanted to make a case for themselves all they’d have to do is call the media, say “My name is such-an-such, i’m a remote viewer, the person your looking for is at this location, so grab a camera crew and get going. And if you don’t believe me at least record this call so when they do find them you will see that I was right.”
But, since there is no such thing as “remote viewing” this never seems to happen. If it did the media would be all over it and give this person as much airtime as they wanted.

29

Fuck, if it was on TV then I’m a believer – I would very much like to subscribe to your newsletter, the rest of you can just wallow in your self-imposed, so-called sceptical ignorance.

30

A “TV Station” is not the vanguard of truth and objectivity; its mission is to get ratings. Some news stations believe the way to steady ratings is objectivity, others take the chance on sensationalism. The credibility of the experiment/experimenter is the single most important variable in paranormal experiments so it can’t just be tossed off as an incidental. I understand your frustration with knee-jerk skepticism; its filled with the same fallacious arguments and fanaticism that skeptics accuse “believers” of employing. Nevertheless, citing this show hurts your case a lot more than it helps.

31

You could not possibly be surprised at this reaction. You don’t have to be psychic to realize that a cite does not equal evidence. lekatt, at least has a message he’s trying to spread. What is your purpose? If it’s to show that skeptics won’t consider factual information, you might want to try presenting them with some next time. If it’s just to get attention with outrageous assertions, you Aeschines are a success. :rolleyes:

32

Exactly. Best damn point I’ve heard all week. If all this stuff - remote viewing, dowsing, telepathy, telekinesis, pyrokinesis, speaking to the dead - actually worked, it would be so noticeable as to be impossible to ignore. It’d be like denying the existence of motor cars or airplanes. It would have profoundly changed our society, just like engines did, and computers, and indoor plumbing. Instead we get these fumblers on a Japanese television network and clueless people like Aeschines spreading the word.

33

If somebody claiming to have remote viewing abilities did as Hampshire suggested, and it turned out the missing person was a dead body, don’t you think the cops suspicion would be on him as the murderer? I believe this actually has happened, but the show I watched has been years ago, and I can‘t remember if it was a true story or not. But you’re right, a remote viewer could easily demonstrate this. As long as it was repeatable, and the remote viewer claiming this ability didn‘t turn out to be a serial killer. :slight_smile: But no amount of hard evidence that science and legitimate groups have accumulated showing the unlikelihood of it, thus far, is going to have an impact on a true believer.

JZ

34

Let’s evaluate the possibilities here, shall we?

  1. Humans have the ability, previously unknown and unexploited, to leave their corporeal bodies and fly throughout time and space.

or,

  1. A TV show was rigged.

It’s a conundrum.

35

Ahh, but how do you KNOW it’s been unexploited? Much like the psychics who don’t win the lottery with their gifts, maybe these people have been hiding themselves! It’s certainly NOT unknown; otherwise, where would all these people who claim to do it get the idea? :wink:

Seriously, though, watch Columbo Goes to the Guillotine for just one of the many, many ways that these kinds of tests can be rigged (though I’d expect that, like in the show, many require complicity on the tester’s part).

36

Nice insult. So much for not getting personal in GD, eh?

At any rate, the show sponsored the research, showed footage of what the psychics actually were doing, and said flat out “such and such was what happened.”

Like most Japanese TV shows that are not 100% newsy news, they had guest stars on to comment on the content. One guy said, “It doesn’t matter whether you believe or not, but you’ve got to recognize the fact that this thing happened” (re the guy who helped a Japanese woman find her mother). That is, the show was emphasizing that these were factual happenings.

They had 4 people on which apparently have all have been used by the FBI to solve crimes, etc.

I actually didn’t write my OP very well, so my opinion on the matter wasn’t very well expressed. OF COURSE the show could have faked every damn thing it presented, and I wouldn’t know otherwise. I also know that Japanese TV often gussies up stories with “yarase,” or telling people what to say and do for the camera. (I know this because I’ve experienced it myself when filmed [although I was never shown]). Now, not all “yarase” is dishonest or aimed to deceive–some of it is just stuff like, “Say it again for the camera.” But is one to trust Japanese TV blindly? Heck no.

The POINT, however, is that they are saying that the research is for real, and they are putting their credibility on the line. Their attitude is not, “Hey isn’t that neato? Whether it’s true or not, your guess is as good as ours.” Rather, they’re saying, “This is what happened, the footage you just saw was of a real person doing what he or she really does, and the results show genuine psychic ability at work.”

In other words, the media is taking the phenomena seriously, and they are sponsoring research or actual use thereof.

37

So what? The media (or various parts of it) is well known for taking all sorts of things seriously, provided that it serves the purpose of getting people to watch.

Lets see some more documentary evidence of this phenomenon, please.

38

BTW: I don’t think DDG’s questions were unreasonable at all, or intended as an insult; your complaint that you are being insulted looks like a rather transparent attempt to dodge some hard pointed questions.

39

Have you somehow missed the fact that it’s an entertainment show? Go to the NTV homepage and see where Super Special is filed under. You won’t find it in the “journalism” section or the “information” section, but under “variety shows.” It’s understood to be the TV equivalent of Weekly World News, intended for people who want to indulge in a little fantasy and escapism. The show is not “putting their credibility on the line” because it has no journalistic credibility to begin with.

I did a big of googling and found that these “FBI psychics” have been on this show before. The last time was June 2003, when one of the “psychics” investigated an arson case in Japan, providing a sketch and detailed descriptions of the suspect. As luck would have it, the suspect was arrested two days later. (Possibly because the show generated some publicity for this case.) It turns out that the details provided by the “psychic” were all wrong; the “psychc” claimed he was a farmer, that he walked to the scene of the crime, and got injured during the crime and took one week off work. The real criminal was a taxi driver who drove to the scene of crime and turned up to work the next day. Even the “psychic’s” sketch is more similar to the police sketch (based on witness reports) than the actual criminal. Here’s the source (in Japanese):
http://van-dan-emon.web.infoseek.co.jp/niiki/200306/200306.html

40

In whatever science you hold a masters in, do you routinely use TV as a source for your research?
Do you now, or have you ever cited a TV show for any of your academic work, like your thesis?