Aloha Czarcasm,
I am still not really convinced that you are competent to make any such claim, or discuss this issue with any fair consideration. Perhaps the approach of DDG of a little investigation would be a good teaching point for you. Learn a bit more before you begin to mimic the Amazing Randi himself. Should you post something coherent I will respond.
Aloha Glenn
I’ve gone through your website several times. It’s not that hard to sort out the actual testing from the pseudo-scientific jargon and wishful thinking that goes on. It seems that all of the people in your group quit testing to see if “remote viewing” actually exists quite some time ago, and have moved on to become a mutual admiration society. The incredible claims made on your bulletin board, if they could possibly be proven true, would surely earn your group not only James Randi’s Million Dollar Prize, but the Nobel Prize to boot.
I invite everyone else to visit the bulletin board at http://www.hrvg.org , but I would advise anyone not to take the psychic investing advice given by their leader, and I wouldn’t take at face value the claims made about their success finding lost people.
Like other “true believers” you seem to mistake understanding with accepting. I fully understand what your group is doing, and that is specifically the reason I cannot accept it.
BTW, if anyone with a scientific background can make heads or tails from this missive from their leader, I would greatly appreciate it. Of course, the fact that not one of their group questions the fact that he claims to have a ghost in his house leads me to believe that any fantastic claim made by anyone in the group would be accepted-sort of a mad version of “The Emperor’s New Clothes” where everyone plays the Emperor.
“…if anyone…can make heads or tails from this missive…”
I’ll take “Jargon for $200”, Alex.
And that’s as far as I got. There follow 11 paragraphs of completely incomprehensible jargon, purporting to explain what ARV is and how it works. And when I say “incomprehensible”, trust me, I mean “incomprehensible”. Glenn, if you want us to understand remote viewing, you’re going to have to learn how to put your explanations in plain English. Words of one syllable, dude. Think “Career Day” down at the local kindergarten, okay?
Glenn’s post to me:
In most cases the analyst does not know the target. Okay, that seems clear enough. However, why do you see a need to provide feedback to an analyst in training? Either the data adds up to “the sinking of the Titanic” or it doesn’t.
Okay, it seems clear enough that according to you, most of the time you are conducting double blind remote viewing, in that the viewer, the monitor, and the analyst don’t know what the target is. However, there is still a big problem, in that it’s still a group effort. The monitor is still allowed to give hints (cues) to the viewer, even if those hints are only generated by looking at what the viewer has produced from S-1 through S-4. Don’t you see? For the viewing to be of any worth at all, it has to be produced solely from the mind of the viewer, not from the viewer and the monitor working together.
Your description of how analysis works is sketchy at best. I would still like more nuts-and-bolts information about how exactly the analyst decides that the data adds up to “the sinking of the Titanic.” What exactly is he looking for? Telling me, “He looks at several different viewers data and if two of them say ‘round structure’, he writes down ‘round structure’” isn’t very helpful. How does he get from “round structure” to “the Arecibo radiotelescope”? You’re saying he constructs a “plausible scenario” from the data. So, basically, he’s just guessing. There isn’t really any “scientific” method to it. And if he happens to not be familiar with the Arecibo radiotelescope, he might construct a plausible scenario for “the Capitol Rotunda”.
How does he decide which “anomalous bits” to discard? How does he decide what’s important in the data, and what’s not important? If he’s just guessing, constructing a “plausible scenario”, then he’s just discarding anything that doesn’t put him in mind of the Arecibo telescope, isn’t he?
What happens if the analyst says the target is the Arecibo radiotelescope, and it’s actually the Capitol Rotunda? Is that when the committee reviews it? And they change it? But according to you, it’s okay if they change it, as long as everyone knows they changed it?
In science, when someone gets a test result that doesn’t come out like it was supposed to, he doesn’t have a committee review it, and then the committee changes the test result to be the correct one, and simply publishes the fact that they changed it, and that makes it okay.
This statement of yours–
–is directly contradicted by this other statement of yours:
How do you explain this contradiction? Either the monitor is only allowed to say “JCKE-CMRC”, or he is allowed to give hints based on what the viewer has produced earlier in the session. You can’t have it both ways.
What I am not willing to accept, Glenn, is that Banshee was given merely a set of target coordinates, and that she remote viewed what was in Mark David Chapman’s mind at the moment he shot John Lennon. For one thing, I would like to know exactly what happened between the Diary entry and the final “cue” page, what kind of analysis went on. The Diary entry, Thumbnail 11, says, “This is an event where a very mentally ill man commits an assassination–it feels like New York City and I get the impression that the cue is the murder of John Lennon or other famous celebrity”. The final page, Thumbnail 1, says quite specifically, “The person that shot and killed John Lennon at the moment of the shooting”. Do you see? The Diary is rather vague. It might be the shooting of John Lennon, it might be in New York City. But Page 1 is quite specific–not only is it definitely John Lennon’s death, but where Page 11 had it as “an event–the murder of someone”, Page 1 has it as “a person–the man who did the shooting”. I would like to know how that change came about. Was it in the analysis?
I would also like to know whose decision it was to discard the anomalous bits in Banshee’s other pages, and at what point that decision was made.
Page 4: “is like falling down drunk, taste of butter, taste of alcohol”. AFAIK, Mark David Chapman was not falling down drunk when he shot John Lennon. Nor was Lennon.
Page 5 word list: “blue, white, glimmers, shimmers, glistening, sunny, light, vibrating, vacant, spatial, enclosed space, small rock, small water, viscous, slimy, smell moss/algae, damp, dark, big, huge, old”. Some of these are directly contradictory. How was Mark David Chapman’s mind “sunny” and “dark” at the same time? Obviously some parts of this have been discarded. I would have said, at this point, that the target was an old warehouse by the waterfront somewhere. Under “B:” she has “water/energy, natural/manmade quality”. How was Mark David Chapman’s mind “natural” and “manmade” at the same time?
Page 6 word list: “subject, lying down, rough, something about hands, male energy around it, blue, black, wet, sticky, red, metallic small, tastes metallic, bitter, gestalt of danger, adrenalin, crusted, work clothes, intoxication, swaying, swooing”. Now it’s starting to look like a wino or bum, passed out, down by the old warehouse at the waterfront.
The other Page 6 word list says: “swirling, in one end–out the other, builds up on [unreadable], glimmers in light, moving fast, damp, dark, piercing, listeing, leaving, space/spatial, something is passing through a space, activity in the space, bursting, slimy, enclosed, hard on outside, soft in the middle”.
Okay, and here’s the kicker–down at the bottom of page 6, in handwriting that is at a different slant from the two word lists, are these words: “Feels like a stoned young musical”. At a slightly different angle from these words, obviously having been added on, are the words “possibly shot to death”. At a complete different spot on the paper, up and to the right of these words, are the words “D–John Lennon”. It is completely obvious to me, Glenn, that she first saw a “stoned young musician” passed out somewhere, and then changed it to “a musician lying dead”, and then realized that the most famous dead musician she knew was John Lennon, so she tacked that on there, too. “D–John Lennon” is block printed, the same way as Page 1, so I’m assuming that the “D–John Lennon” was added after the session was over and it was decided that that was what she had remote viewed.
But, this doesn’t make sense. According to Page 1, the target was supposed to have been “the mind of Mark David Chapman”, not “the body of John Lennon”.
See, the viewer is allowed to keep all pages until the session is officially over, so she can go back and make additions and corrections as much as she wants. So–your whole setup is flawed. Any “data” you obtain is thus contaminated by later results. You’d have to take away the data sheets as they were completed, to convince me that she really had remote viewed the mind of Mark David Chapman at the moment he shot John Lennon.B
But wait, there’s more. Page 7 has a picture of a body lying on the ground, and the words say: “From standing to reclining, feels like something is moving through the subject, gestalt of great force”. Over in the right-hand corner, similar to the “D–John Lennon” are the words “D–assasination” and “D–Kenndy assas.”
So, which is it, Banshee? John Lennon or JFK?
Page 8 just has vague words like “builds up and releases”.
Page 9: “secondary subject, male energy, portly, stout, sweaty, nervous, glasses, caucasian, 5’ 9”, crazy, confused, delirious, lucid moments, planning, schizophrenic, tourist–doesn’t live there". And down at the bottom: “Theres 2 distinctly different thought patterns inside this guy’s head, feet smell, cool out, body sweaty, standing then takes action, forceful, definative”.
AFAIK, Mark David Chapman was not found to be schizophrenic. He says he prayed to Satan for the strength to do it, and he pleaded guilty. He appeared quite calm and rational throughout his arrest and trial, not “delirious” and “confused”.
Here is the famous picture of John Lennon and Mark David Chapman together. Chapman is wearing glasses, but they are sunglasses.
Page 10: "Movement order–Focus on secondary subject. Rotate 360[sup]o[/sup] around this subject what else is there
I feel like hes waiting for something or someone–element of surprise. He will [unreadable]–He reads while he waits altho it is semi dark. He has to go to bathroom but cannot leave his “post”. This feels like an urban environment–a lot of energy. Bit city-- tall buildings – sense numbered streets–park nearby – night–traffic is less than usual-- mole on his face somewhere – vision glasses there a tattoo on his body-- military influence in his past – Navy – weapon firearm in possession – pocket size – on his person – book on his person – shortish hair dark greasy like-- needs a shave – no beard – 30’s age and English American – European ancestry – Asian influence around him somewhere-- married – manual/desk job/civil servant – anxious – tense – evil glee – in awe of primary subject – easily influenced by externals ’
Over in the right-hand corner it says “D–New York City” and “D–Pages visit”.
“Needs a shave” and “no beard” are directly contradictory. Other than that, this all corresponds closely to the facts about Chapman that are available in the official biographies and that are available online in excerpts from http://www.crimelibrary.com/classics4/chapman/3.htm So I am going to assume that Banshee is familiar with the facts in the Lennon case, and has by this time made a deduction that she is remote viewing John Lennon’s murder, not JFK’s.
It’s also significant, to me, that there’s no way of checking her results, that is, of knowing whether what she remote viewed was really what was in Mark David Chapman’s mind on that December day.
I would like to see the analysis for this. I’d like to see the train of thought, exactly who said what, when. Perhaps you are right that Banshee was never told the target was “the murder of John Lennon”, but then, the target wasn’t “the murder of John Lennon”-- the target was “the person that shot and killed John Lennon at the moment of the shooting”. There’s a difference. One is an event, the other is a person’s mind. I want to know how the decision was made, during analysis, that she had gotten the target correct. Who said, “Yep, she did it”. Because, that Page 1 is in her own handwriting, and it’s verbatim from the target. How did she know how to phrase it? Why didn’t she say something like, “inside the mind of the guy who shot John Lennon”? The page just before this one, Page 11 says, “the murder of John Lennon or other famous celebrity”. Again, I’m back to, “Who decided that she had hit the target?”
Duck, did you see their great project concerning Stephanie Condon? After pooling their vast resourses and using their amazing abilities to their fullest extent, do you know what amazing conclusion they came to?
She’s probably dead.
No. Really.
Of course, not being able to leave well enough alone, they just had to insert their brand of craziness-their other conclusion was that she was buried somewhere in the northwest, probably Oregon.
I have ernestly tried to find any section of their website that looks even remotely authentically scientific in principle. No luck yet.
Hi CurtC!
By this I meant that there are too many human factors involved in the execution of the protocols…for the process to be exactly a science…every viewer has their own indiosynchratic bents to the protocols so there are deviations in method…humans are not machines that robotically go through the exact same process from one session to the other…although the protocols are scientifically standardized in theory, in execution, we have to allow the human error factor…and that is what contributes to the range of success rate in remote viewing.
To conduct a scientific study of Remote Viewing, the tasking would have to be extremely stringent. There are so many human factors that can interfere with a successful RV session:anxiety…nutrition…sleep…interest…hormonal levels. It is all about how well the viewer can focus on the target, overcome distractions and physical inclemencies…how DISCIPLINED the viewer is.
I have worked hundreds of sessions…ALL of them BLIND. I had no prior briefing about the target. I worked the session solo (ie without a monitor) with no prompting or leading whatsoever. All I was given was the Target ID which is a random series of letters and/or numbers. I would say that my HIT rate is around 40%. However, when I HIT, the data I collect is about 95%-100% accurate. I am always amazed at the process.
To do a really scientific study of remote viewing, each viewer would have to work 100 targets BLIND. and then analyzed for accuracy. Prior to sitting down to work the session, it would be of interest to report what the various physical factors that exist, including time of day, amount of sleep, what the viewer ate that day, any upsets with people, temperature, general comfort level, how they were feeling physically, emotionally and mentally.
Up to this point, we at HRVG have been training. We are now moving into the next phase of our research in conducting some very stringent experiments that take all these factors into account. It is time consumming and all of us at HRVG are fully employed doing other worldly things to support ourselves and our families.
One of these days, one of us will be awarded a grant which will allow us to conduct more scientific experiments. For now we are honing our skills and working targets.
Aloha,
Mana
BTW: if you go to the sessions section and projects, my sessions may be either Mana’s, Valtra’s or MJ001V’s :)!
I just wish to thank all of you for your posts and continued interest in RV and our website. Reading your posts demonstrate that we assume too much that the average browser understands what we are talking about…it is clear to me at this point that you would really have had our training to understand the sessions…how it all works. As Duck Duck Goose is probably finding out from examining the Farsight Institute Training material, that it takes hundreds of pages of written material to describe every nuance about not only the theory of Remote Viewing, but also the practice of it.
As for Czarcasm’s sarcasm regarding that he has not found anything scientific about anything he has found on HRVG’s website…the protocols are standardized…the practice of course is subject to idiosynchratic execution of the individual viewer fraught with human foibles…we do not claim that there is any scientific proof that RV is real…there is a lot of phenomenological evidence that it is real. We do have an extensive database of raw session data that was collected under set parameters…1. the viewer works the session using a specific set of protocols. 2. the viewer, monitor and analyst are all BLIND to the target.
That means that none of the players in doing the remote viewing work have ANY prior knowledge of what constitutes the target. All they are given is a randomly generated 8-digit alpha or apha-numeric code (target ID).
I am tired now :)!
Aloha,
Valtra
ALoha DDG,
I am afraid that it is impossible to carry on a fair debate (great or otherwise) in this forum. The tactics employed are as old as they get, mutt and jeff, good cop bad cop, psicop. I would have to say that it the greatest shortcomming of the skeptics who are really psuedo-skeptics.
The failure or inability to engage in a constructive exchange of information is the first sign that the forum is not a forum but an arena. It seems to be a question of Intelligence more than anything else. I believe the topic is beyond the comphrehension of Czarcasm who seems afraid to have his paradigm shaken abit.
Nice try for what I thought would be a fair exchange, but no joy today. I would have to say you have been less than genuine in providing a fair forum.
Aloha Glenn Wheaton
DDG,
There is no analysis involved in Banshee’s session, her own intuitions excluded. Analysis in remote viewing is conducted only on several sessions via the method Glenn has described.
A single session isn’t worth much. It can show the “RV effect” (ie. non-local information transfer has occurred), but it may not really answer any question. Even a project with multiple sessions and analysis may only provide little substantial information. It is a LOT of work.
And how does that differ from SDMB? [sub]Racism[/sub] Are there not “wrong questions” here that are not tolerated? [sub]Pedophilia[/sub] Aren’t the rules here as subjective as “don’t be rude and crude”? [sub]Don’t be a jerk[/sub]
Ah, Libertarian, you are truly a libertarian! Bravo! Encore!!
There are several points that I would like to address, albeit, very late.
(I post from a public library and am limited both in how long and when I can be on the Web. 
)
Duck Duck Goose, you wrote:
Firstly, your “hoaxette” site does not seem to address the long EM waves. Our eyes receive EM waves in the “visible” part of the spectrum; our skin, in longer waves (infrared). There is, as far as I can see, no reason why we humans can’t receive EM waves anywhere in the spectrum where we are designed to receive them. To say “we have no evidence that we can”, without presenting evidence, is, at best, ingenuous. (The Stanford EE’s said that they could, and did, have evidence that they were able to receive long waves in Calif. from Costa Rica. It got published and needs to be refuted by further evidence, not just pooh-poo’ed by a “family oriented” group on a “feel good” trip.)
Secondly, Duck Duck Goose, when you say that “We know all about electromagnetism,” that simply is not true. There is still much that is not known about electricity and about magnetism. **Would that we did know all;–**but we don’t. Research is ongoing by physicists, by chemists, by mathematicians [–Even Maxwell’s Equations have yet to be fully plumbed!–], and by other researchers in BOTH electricity AND magnetism!
P.S. I know I said “Cornell” but this morning I think that it was really Stanford EE’s who did the experiment. What I really do remember (I think) is that it was some College in Calif. (Isn’t Cornell U. in New York or New Jersey or Conn.? Isn’t Stanford U. in Calif.?) Also the correct title [I found it last night sandwiched between **Feller, Vol. II** and a book called **Spinors**, with a very pretty cover but which I have never opened. :o ] of Pat. Billingsley’s book is Ergodic Theory and Information.
P.P.S., Duck Duck Goose. The information content available in long EM waves is small. It’s not surprising that it has been difficult to detect and difficult to emulate with hardware. (Or has it? Shades of yet another CIA conspiracy theorist plot! Hmmmm!! 
) My (near-only) speculation has been that the real purpose of any LongWave (“ESP”) intra-human activity is to send cries of “HELP!”, “DANGER!!” and like warnings. Or, maybe, just an emoticon-like feeling. :eek: That is to say, short, low information content, terse messages. 
I am nonplussed by your referring to the AFF as a “hoaxette site”. They are an organization for dealing with and debunking religious cults. If you put the word “cults” into Google, the AFF is the sixth hit. Telepathy and ESP are not normally within their purview, but since it does sometimes come up when you’re talking about religious cults, they have a study guide for it. List of their other “Critical Thinking” study guides.
CSJ is the Cultic Studies Journal.
I wouldn’t have thought of them as a “hoaxette site”.
And as for your comment that the “hoaxette site does not seem to address the long EM waves”, all I can do is paraphrase what the AFF study guide said: We have been studying electromagnetism for 400 years. We know all about it. There are no mysterious or unknown long waves out there. We have built instruments to look for them, and they aren’t there.
I do not agree with your statement that “there is much we do not know about electromagnetism”. Our entire society, our entire culture, our entire Western civilization, is founded upon electromagnetism. There is probably no other part of the science of physics that we understand so well.
NASA site on electromagnetism.
The shortest waves are gamma rays, the longest rays are radio waves. In between are all sorts of wavelengths, like X-rays and infrared and ultraviolet and microwaves. All of these wavelengths, all, are without exception marvelously useful. Look at all the things we can do with them. Some of the things we have discovered we can do with electromagnetic waves have made life better for millions. Some of the things we can do with electromagnetic waves have made some of us very rich. And some of the things we can do with electromagnetic waves have given us awesome weapons of destruction.
So, given the human animal’s capacity for curiosity, invention, aggression, and especially greed, do you think we haven’t spent the last 100 years of the Industrial Revolution, and in particular, the last 20 years of the Computer Revolution, looking for even more marvelously useful electromagnetic wavelengths? The last ones that really went mainstream were microwaves, and look how useful they are. Do you think there haven’t been people out there looking for “the next microwave”? Of course there are. And so far, they ain’t found diddly.
Saying that “Research is ongoing by physicists, by chemists, by mathematicians” is irrelevant.
Mathematicians do not do research into electromagnetism. The fact that Maxwell’s Equations have not yet been “fully plumbed” is completely irrelevant to a discussion of electromagnetism.
Chemists do not do research into electromagnetism.
Physicists do do research into electromagnetism, but they aren’t bothering with long range waves any more because they already know all about them. Please find me a cite that says that some physicist somewhere is working on low frequency, long range electromagnetism, lower than radio waves.
The “unexplored country” is way up there with the quarks and the particle physics and the nuclear scientists, not down at the bottom with the long wavelengths and the radio waves.
NASA says:
Radio waves is as low as you can go. I guess it boils down to whether you believe NASA, or whether you believe there’s a gigantic conspiracy out there to suppress scientific research into low frequency electromagnetism and ESP.
Perhaps you misunderstood me, Duck Duck Goose. The AFF site claims to provide
but fails to even mention the greatest “psychologically manipulators” of all human history, modern advertisment media. (I include in this most [verbal] music, all movies, billboards, 98% of television broadcasts [to include, weirdly, news broadcasts sans CNN], and considerable chunks of the web.) How, I must ask you, could I use any other word than the dimunitative “Hoaxette” (after “Smurfette”): A very soft, kindly version of, say, HoaxBusters ! 
I did not, however, mean to “put down” their (undoubtedly) rightous efforts in exposing mean-spirited “cults”, etc. I merely meant that they (seemingly) limited themselves to just a small portion of those who psychological manipulate; and that portion a, IMHO, relatively benign portion.
You comment, Duck Duck Goose, that
It’s this last sentence where we, you and I, most definately part ways. Just because something has been studied for 400 years absolutely, most-certainly does not imply that “we know all about it”! I can’t think of a more false statement.
The NASA site you reference is pure fluff, albeit true fluff. It is designed for the vast electromagnetically illiterate/ignorant masses. (And for LittleKids and Grandmas, of course.) It’s a nice site. Very picturesque. Cute. Pleasant. Relaxing, in a numb-minded way. Artistic. Nearly clever. I have nothing bad to say about your NASA site beyond the PlainTruth that it is, and was designed to be, fluff.
You continue, Duck Duck Goose to write with mind-boggling sincerity
I will save you the embarrasment by not even commenting further (–unless, of course, you might wish it so).
Research on long waves? Well it’s not exactly a physicist but then I’m not very good with search engines. This link gives the following paragraph:
And you write
Much of modern chemistry is about the four forces, one of which is the electromagnetic. All interactions between “chemicals” is electromagnetic, IIRC. Chemistry is about “chemicals” and their interactions, IIRC.
If one defines everything about a certain wavelength to be “radio waves”, then I can’t (nor can anyone) disagree with the NASA statement that you provided,** Duck Duck Goose,** that
What more can be said in closing?
I will confine myself to remarking that I thought the NASA site, with its many links to other sites, both NASA’s and others, was a remarkably well-produced and educational site.
Not fluff.
So I guess we’re clear here: I believe in what science tells me, and you don’t. Oh, well. I’m cool with that. 
The crop circles people don’t trust NASA either.
Oh! Duck Duck Goose ! You got me wrong when you wrote:
I like NASA. I liked their page, fluff or no. I even (mostly) trust NASA (–except they go too slowly: Give me a NASA Administrator who will go into the President’s office and will LEAP onto the Presidential desk and threaten the incumbant with bodily harm if more space-exploration money isn’t put into the Budget! One who will go into the Congress and twist arms [or even necks] to get what’s needed to DEFEND the U.S. and the Planet against potentially impacting asteroids and comets.)
No, no, Duck Duck Goose. You got me wrong.
Nice baseless attack there, Libertarian. I commented on the fact that there seems to be absolutely no debate or arguements on their board at all. If one of their members make a claim, the others accept it readily. If their leader claims to have a “ghost” in his house, suddenly all of his friends/BB members(they seem to be the same people) claim to experience said “ghost” when they visit. If he claims that he has psychic stock advice, another member thanks him and claims that she/he dumped the stock on his advice.
There are NO signifigant differences of opinion there, Lib. A rather incredible claim has been made, they designed a test with enough variables and pseudo-scientific mumbo-jumbo to create the desired results.
Oh, a small note to the leader of this small band of true believers: I am indeed afraid of any “paradigm shift” that tends to take me away from reality. From the cult-speak “alohas” to the claims that every single one of you were “skeptics” before you saw the Light to the misuse of standard scientific terms to the creation of new terms obviously created to make your group seem important to your baseless attacks on all those who won’t take you at your word(hint-you have absolutely no idea what I know about remote viewing or about your group, so attacking me on my supposed “ignorance” was a cheap shot at best), your group does nothing to convince me that a “paradigm shift” is in order.
By the way, the little jabs at James Randi that are sewn throughout your messages here, your website and your bulletin board do nothing but convince me that you have nothing to show for your work but wishful thinking and creative interpretation. Of course, you could go with the claim that you have nothing to prove, but that would fly in the face of the claims you’ve made here, wouldn’t it?
As the king of lurkers on this board, I felt compelled to offer my two cents.
I don’t trust anybody who tries to tell me what is right or wrong, real or not real without providing an opportunity to make a decision based on direct experience.
These HRVG folks are putting a hell of alot of effort into something that the rational mind says is ridiculous. Many physicists are doing the same thing (ever check out what quantum physicists are coming up with?). But the HRVG people are obviously not scientists. They’re also not squatters living in the desert trying to beam UHF signals to passing aliens. It seems like they are a group of people who are trying to deduce what may be an anomaly in human communications.
I love being a skeptic because I find that I can sometimes shake people from the funnel-effect that plants a seed in a mind. Layers upon layers tend to build up in the mind, sometimes to the point that the wind shutting a door becomes a ghost. It’s part of being human – our experiences, biases, mores form a filter for every experience we have. We label things. We create our own reality. We inevitably feel that only our mind is most rational.
I respect the efforts to explore remote viewing. If psi exists, I’d rather see it proven by a protocol than by someone in front of a crystal ball. I also respect the HRVG folks for attempting to offer a clear-minded, non-emotional response to this forum. They obviously are focused and feel that they are onto something. I don’t see how this could work, but I also don’t see how writing down whatever comes to mind in a bunch of columns turns anyone into a cult member…that’s not rational deduction, that’s showing your personal fears on your sleeves.
I’ve explored the Farsight FAQ, the HRVG site, and a few other sites with a significant amount of research and conclude, at this point in my research, that a statistical anomaly may exist. As a marketing communications consultant, I find it interesting that the gestalt of the collective descriptors often is within an acceptable range of the target. Since I free write – stream descriptors in order to kick-start the creative process for a particular project – I understand that not every word these people are putting onto paper is meant to be accurate. The brain doesn’t work that way. It wavers in accuracy by the moment. That’s why a paragraph of concepts often gets compressed down to one tight, short sentence.
I tried an experiment. I found a site that posted practice targets and gave it a shot…just for the sheer hell of it. I decided to just write down the target i.d. number and stream some words. Nothing formal. The i.d. number on the screen was 1960-8253. I streamed out a quick, doodled sketch, then wrote down the following descriptors (in this order): cold, snow, breeze, brisk, cow, tailormade, ingots, brillo, grass, field, timeless, journey, tackle, mainstay, fellow, Thomas, gadget, ring."
I didn’t see where it could possibly be going so I stopped, walked over to the computer, and clicked the link that pulled up the picture associated with the i.d. number. The target was labeled ‘Super Bowl/ Game number 24/Denver Broncos vs. San Francisco 49ers/event’ and the accompanying picture was from the game – a SF 49er clutching the football and weaving between a couple of Broncos.
Was I psychic? I don’t know. I don’t have any reason to believe so. I don’t have any information whether it’s real or not. Did a statistical anomaly occur. Yes. The word ‘tackle’ is directly associated with football. There’s ‘grass’ on the ‘field.’ Start reaching, and perhaps the January 1990 game was ‘cold, brisk’ and near ‘snow.’ Reach even more, and the picture included a ‘tailormade cow’…a football.
Will I explore this more? Yes, only because I’ve now printed out the Farsight FAQ and another little doc I found called the Coordinate Remote Viewing manual that gives a bunch of interesting insight into the technique. Yes, because I like to know what makes people tick. Yes, because I may learn more about the expression of language concepts that I can apply to my profession.
Whether I get results or not, the info is interesting to me because it outlines fundamental techniques our brains use to form messages, from low-level info such as shape and form through higher-level function such as emotions, concepts and structure. This isn’t psi-cho stuff, it’s fundamental brain science. Hell, I could use this manual stuff for forming my client’s corporate communications plans.
Fact is, whether it’s real or not, even my little test showed some results that make me think about how we communicate. I’m figuring it’s results like mine that made people look into this in the first place. Since I wrote a few words that fit the picture, I accept HRVG for exploring aspects of human communication that we may not yet understand. Perhaps they’ll find some interesting results, even if it’s not paranormal. Then we’ll all be thanking them. Jeez, give them credit for that. And instead of fuming, get off your whining asses and try it yourself. I’m donating a few hours of my life to give it a somewhat open-minded chance…why not do the same? Perhaps we can all figure it out.
Nobody’s accusing the HRVG of being a “cult”, okay? As a matter of fact, that was one of the first things I checked about remote viewing, and it doesn’t fit the definition of a “cult”. When we’re talking about them “witnessing” in here, we’re using it in the dictionary sense. From Merriam-Webster:
The members of the HRVG have come in here and posted what are essentially “witnessing” posts, in which they say only, “I believe in remote viewing, because it works for me”, but they don’t give us any facts about remote viewing. This is what (usually) Fundamentalist Christians do here in Great Debates–they come in here to say, “I believe in Jesus Christ!” but they aren’t here to talk about Jesus, or to discuss facts about Him. All they want to say is, “I believe!” That’s what we mean by “witnessing”.
Okay, let’s analyze what actually happened in your test. Here’s your word list for target 1960-8253:
I see the following words that could apply to a football game: cold, snow, breeze, brisk, grass, field, tackle, fellow. I think “tailormade cow” is a stretch to mean “a football”. A “tailormade cow” could just as easily be an IVF Holstein.
Super Bowl XXIV was played in New Orleans, at the Louisiana SuperDome, which is, of course, a climate-controlled dome. So that eliminates “cold, snow, breeze, brisk”. So that leaves “grass, field, tackle, fellow”. Wow! You really DID remote view Super Bowl XXIV…
Oh, wait…what about “ingots, brillo, timeless, journey, mainstay, Thomas, gadget, ring”? [heavy sarcasm] Oh, let’s just ignore those, as they don’t seem to have anything to do with SuperBowl XXIV. [/heavy sarcasm]
You came up with a random word list, and out of 18 words, you got 4 that had to do with a football game. Were you psychic? No. Was it a statistical anomaly? No. Coming up with a word list of 18 words, and having four of the words “go together”, is perfectly average.
How about, “Thomas the Unbeliever, with the white gold ring, on a timeless journey”?
How about “cow in a field on a winter day” (cold, snow, breeze, brisk, cow, grass, field") I would think that that would be more likely as your target, as it’s got 7 words that fit, whereas “football game” only has 4 words, six if you include the tailormade cow.
But see, that’s how the whole remote viewing thing evidently works. You make a word list and then pick and choose which words you want to keep, to fit a target, and which words you want to ignore. That’s hardly science, it’s more like the kind of hobby where you make anagrams out of people’s names and newspaper headlines and billboards.
It isn’t “fundamental brain science” because there isn’t any “science” to it. Science, by its very definition, is quantifiable, and repeatable. Remote viewing is neither. It’s isn’t science, it’s what’s known as “pseudo-science”, like homeopathy.
And I might add that we are all just as skeptical about what “science” purports to tell us as we are about what “pseudo-science” purports to tell us. Every time we hear another sound bite on the evening news telling us about some new “scientific” discovery, we think, “Oh, yeah?” and we check it out to see if it makes sense, to see if it hangs together with the other scientific facts we know. And if the scientific “news” in the sound bite doesn’t seem supported by good evidence (if it’s the usual heavily qualified “some scientists think that this may show that…”), then we ignore it until some real evidence comes along supporting it.
The fact that you could use a remote viewing manual for a corporate communications plan speaks volumes for the high level of jargon generally found in most corporate communications plans, but doesn’t say anything about the level of “science” involved in remote viewing.
None of us are whining, Suzie. Please show me where any of us were whining. Or fuming. Ditto. And we have tried looking at targets, and seeing what happened, and nothing happened. And, please, don’t start with the “they laughed at Galileo, too” argument, because if you’re indeed the King of the Lurkers, you must know that that particular line gets very little respect at the SDMB.
Fascinating discussion. I have been interested in RV since the infamous Hale-Bopp days of Art Bell and Courtney Brown.
I took a course in RV from Paul Smith mostly out of curiosity with a pinch or two of skepticism and of “hope-its-true”.
One of the biggest problems with RV is the idea that is is somehow a documentary video or on the spot live news report.
This mis-conception is the result of sensationalism via
shows like Art Bell’s and books like Cosmic Voyage and a few
self aggrandizing RV instructors claiming 100% accuracy and that their “system” is better than anyone elses.
RV is nowhere near 100% accurate as to identifying a target or providing 100% accurate information about a target. On rare occasions, on a specific tasking it can happen within the bounds of subjective interpretation. Remember, there may be dozens of descriptors and sketches in a session with nuances resulting from the viewers life experiences and the analysts or casual observers interpretations. (How would your “average housewife” describe details of a highly technical target? )
Consider the Condon example. How many possible situations exist similar to that case? Did the viewers describe Jon Bonet? Did they describe the Lindburg kidnapping? Did they describe the crash of TWA800?
The second biggest problem with RV is the lack of “practical, usefull examples” of its use. Aside from the handfull of examples given in Schnabel’s book Remote Viewers, all of the government work is still classified and all of the subsequent civilian work is confidential. With perhaps one exception, those who have gotten on the public stage have batted zero or produced unverifiable claptrap about aliens, UFOs and underground bases or have produced a sketchy and tantalizing “answer” to a news topic but refuse to followup to closure. Too many say RV can do it all but barely go beyond the first step.
Does it work for me? A little. Often? No. What keeps me interested? The occasional minor “wow”. Example: My wife targeted me with her mother’s laundry room building at the retirement home where she lived. I did my session (CRV methodology), had no idea what in hell my data reprensented, got the target ID and drove out to the laundry room. Did my data describe in CNN reporter/video tape fashion the physical details of the laundry facalities? No.
Did my nouns and adjectives and sketchy sketches represent what was there? About 70%. Did I not describe things that weer there. Yeah. Lots. But I surely did not describe Niagra Falls, or Devil’s Tower or Wrigley Field or my brother’s garage.
There are at least two possible routes for skeptics. 1. Try to find someone who will work with you doing RV targets of your selection. Unfortunately, this is usually called doing parlor tricks by most of the “name” remote viewers.
Keep it simple. My first attempt was at Lyn Buchanan’s website. A target was identified by a number. I just sat there in front of the computer and wrote down a few words…high, open, small, cold. I drew what looked like 2 "T"s. The target photo was of two people in a ski lift.
It wasnt a volcano or a tugboat or a parade at Disney World.
I suppose it could have matched a glacier. And, yeah, I have no idea how “small” fit in.
Now take a break and check out the Remote Viewing Roast and see a humorous look of some of the many and often self-inflicted wounds in the RV community.
http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Rampart/3843/
Remember to click on: REMOTE VIEWING Q&A.
Sorry its slow…Geocities be that way…
Rich
FYI, to fellow Dopers: The first “RV This” license plate marked “Just for fun–don’t get too serious” is a big fat naked butt poking up out of a swimming pool with a gas-farting graphic coming out of it, and “Save The Whales” above it. Uh-huh.
But it’s nice to see that RVers can have a sense of humor about it.
