4 ms·

tl;dr Psychic experiments didn't work.

api 8y ago
I'm still glad such experiments were done and even that they continue to be done. We should be open minded enough to ask crazy questions from time to time.
- madez 8y ago
  If your mind is too open your brain might fall out.
  - unit91 8y ago
    "mind" != "skull"
  - api 8y ago
    If your mind is too closed nothing gets in. Like virtually everything else in biology and learning theory the optimum is not at either "edge" of the parameter space but somewhere in between. Willingness to entertain model-breaking ideas and data is a compromise between the need to avoid falsehood and error and the need to learn and update models when needed.
- komali2 8y ago
  That was my theory when I defended a firm that had made a (so, so minor) investment into solar road research on Reddit. I couldn't believe the vitriol, on a subreddit devoted to futuristism no less. I don't know how to classify this phenomena but its characteristics are: lofty, haughty, condescending, dismissive language - a desire to be "right" about the "true boring nature of the world - high cynicism paired with disgust for optimism - absolute conviction even lacking more than a trickle of experimental evidence. In the case of the solar roads, people were "promising" me that it would never be a viable solution not because of any good thermodynamics calculations or anything, but merely because the roads were pretty expensive right now, and kinda slippery right now, and because it seems to make more sense right now to just build solar panels in the Mojave desert or whatever. Never mind that freeways are arteries across the nation, never mind that maybe someone will whip up some crazy asphalt mixture that you can plug a cord into, nope, it's not ever going to be a thing, TRUUUUST USSSS.
  - api 8y ago
    I call it the "boring universe brigade." They go far beyond criticizing fringe science and pseudoscience, tending to also pile onto pretty much anything that is too new even if its entirely within known laws of physics.
    - carapace 8y ago
      "Planet Without Laughter" by Smullyan https://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~knuth/smullyan.html https://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~knuth/smullyan.html > Once upon a time there was a universe. In this universe there was a planet. On this planet there was virtually no laughter. Nothing like ``humor'' was really known. People never laughed, nor jested, nor kidded, nor joked, nor anything like that. The inhabitants were extremely serious, conscientious, sincere, hard-working, studious, well wishing, and moral. But of humor they knew nothing. All except for a small minority who had some feeling for what humor was. These people occasionally laughed and joked. Their behavior was extremely alarming to everyone else and was regarded as an obviously pathological phenomenon. These few people were called ``laughers,'' and they were promptly hospitalized.
  - otakucode 8y ago
    I consider myself 'intellectually adventurous'. I don't know how else to describe it. I will very willingly read total bunk and extend to it every hypothetical and grant it the widest margin of "OK, just maybe..." But, when it comes down to discussing it, I like using strong language where called for and absolutes when they can be defended. Reason can get you far. But I've run across the same folks you have, not willing to actually explore ideas at all and clearly looking only to find one excuse to throw something out. The most annoying are the many who claim to be approaching thins with reason who immediately flee to the worst flaws in thinking there are, ad hominem and arguments from authority. Rather than focus on substantive issues, they point out that those putting forward the ideas don't have the right credentials or similar. Which, if you're just dealing with "am I personally going to accept this idea", that's fine. But it's a pragmatic dodge that is guaranteed to fail quite often. Identity of the speaker can't influence truth of what is spoken, it's that simple. Then you've got things like the issues you mention, like the expense. So tackle the expense problem! WHY is it expensive? Things are only expensive for a few reasons. Either they require rare materials, extremely precise engineering, or they're being produced for an extremely small destination market. It's not magic. If the things can be made at scale, and they can be made with commodity components, they can be made cheap, end of story. That's just a matter of scale. Whether that scale could ever be achieved is one of those "you have to grant the hypothetical" situations. The slipperiness might be a bigger sticking point. What physical properties lead to stickiness and how do they affect light transmission through a medium? That might be the killer right there, but you have to actually pursue it before you can write something off. Being intellectually adventurous isn't for everybody. Many people can't take an idea like "maybe it would be best if we ate people" and then just take it apart and determine what the consequences would be and whether they accomplish a desired goal. They just can't bring themselves to do it. Or once they hear about prion diseases, they bail instantly without looking for workarounds. You have to WANT an idea to work to ever have a chance of proving whether its possible. Then you can define the conditions under which it WOULD be possible. And if it's not possible, then you actually know why. Which means you probably know far more about the original problem you were trying to solve and that might generate some great ideas going forward.
- JackFr 8y ago
  There's the apocryphal of an executive with a large stack of resume's who picks up half of the stack and drops it in the trash. "I can't have people that unlucky working for me."
bpicolo 8y ago
They seemed to really believe in them at the time: https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP96-00788R000600630001-7.pdf https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP96-00788...
armitron 8y ago
If they did work, would you ever expect to see them declassified and listed here?
- ianai 8y ago
  Yes, for two reasons: The government isn’t that great at secrets. They disclosed their stealth bombers after a time - and those were also seen before disclosure. There’s being capable of a thing and the fear that instills in people it’s used against. There’s also displaying a large sword deliberately. Governments in general love having moments where they wow their adversaries.
  - komali2 8y ago
    I feel this is an unfair characterizion - the US government isn't a singular entity. In fact, as we've seen these last two years, it is an entity fully capable of warring with itself (the current executive branch is in bitter battle with the justice department and intelligence agencies, for the previous 8 years around half of the legislative branch had a mission statement of preventing the executive branch from doing anything). Given the nature of the US government I think it is unreasonable to anthropomorphisize it as something that can "enjoy displaying a large sword," for example.
    - otakucode 8y ago
      I don't think that was, or even was meant to be, specific to the US. That's a universal thing. And it's one which is really very well supported in military history and strategy. Hell, it even goes down to the animal kingdom. Displays of strength are almost always preferred to actual USE of strength. Use of strength brings with it real dangers of injury to those displaying it, the negative consequences of revenge and the like from the victim, etc. This is one of the reasons that many military historians remain confused to this day why Hiroshima and Nagasaki were bombed. Everyone involved in the decision had to have known that dropping the bombs in unpopulated woodland near the cities would have actually been MORE effective at accomplishing the goals (mostly intimidating the USSR, as it was known from decrypted military communications of the Japanese that they were already defeated and ready to surrender on terms amenable to the Allies).
yulaow 8y ago
Actually it seems more complex than that: "Even though a statistically significant effect has been observed in the laboratory, it remains unclear whether the existence of a paranormal phenomenon, remote viewing, has been demonstrated. The laboratory studies do not provide evidence regarding the origins or nature of the phenomenon, assuming it exists, nor do they address an important methodological issue of inter-judge reliability. Further, even if it could be demonstrated unequivocally that a paranormal phenomenon occurs under the conditions present in the laboratory paradigm, these conditions have limited applicability and utility for intelligence gathering operations. For example, the nature of the remote viewing targets are vastly dissimilar, as are the specific tasks required of the remote viewers. Most importantly, the information provided by remote viewing is vague and ambiguous, making it difficult, if not impossible, for the technique to yield information of sufficient quality and accuracy of information for actionable intelligence. Thus, we conclude that continued use of remote viewing in intelligence gathering operations is not warranted." quoting: Executive summary, "An Evaluation of Remote Viewing: Research and Applications", American Institutes for Research, Sept. 29, 1995[19]
- JoeAltmaier 8y ago
  'Remote viewing' was debunked decades ago. That's the trouble with reading old reports.
  - yulaow 8y ago
    I wanted just to stress they didn't stop the research because at the time they were sure it was all false, but because they thought the information was not good enough to use in intel operations
    - walterbell 8y ago
      With now-ubiquituous surveillance, other data sources could be used to triage “remote viewing” or other weak signals.
  - SuoDuanDao 8y ago
    citation?
leanthonyrn 8y ago
Dean Radin and Walter von Lucadou may disagree. -Google tech talk "Science and the taboo of psi" https://youtu.be/qw_O9Qiwqew https://youtu.be/qw_O9Qiwqew -Ted Talk with Walter von Lucadou https://youtu.be/TdfFEO-lFD0 https://youtu.be/TdfFEO-lFD0
- DavidBachmann 8y ago
  Thanks for the links. Very interesting material.

api 8y ago

I'm still glad such experiments were done and even that they continue to be done. We should be open minded enough to ask crazy questions from time to time.

madez 8y ago
If your mind is too open your brain might fall out.
- unit91 8y ago
  "mind" != "skull"
- api 8y ago
  If your mind is too closed nothing gets in. Like virtually everything else in biology and learning theory the optimum is not at either "edge" of the parameter space but somewhere in between. Willingness to entertain model-breaking ideas and data is a compromise between the need to avoid falsehood and error and the need to learn and update models when needed.
komali2 8y ago
That was my theory when I defended a firm that had made a (so, so minor) investment into solar road research on Reddit. I couldn't believe the vitriol, on a subreddit devoted to futuristism no less. I don't know how to classify this phenomena but its characteristics are: lofty, haughty, condescending, dismissive language - a desire to be "right" about the "true boring nature of the world - high cynicism paired with disgust for optimism - absolute conviction even lacking more than a trickle of experimental evidence. In the case of the solar roads, people were "promising" me that it would never be a viable solution not because of any good thermodynamics calculations or anything, but merely because the roads were pretty expensive right now, and kinda slippery right now, and because it seems to make more sense right now to just build solar panels in the Mojave desert or whatever. Never mind that freeways are arteries across the nation, never mind that maybe someone will whip up some crazy asphalt mixture that you can plug a cord into, nope, it's not ever going to be a thing, TRUUUUST USSSS.
- api 8y ago
  I call it the "boring universe brigade." They go far beyond criticizing fringe science and pseudoscience, tending to also pile onto pretty much anything that is too new even if its entirely within known laws of physics.
  - carapace 8y ago
    "Planet Without Laughter" by Smullyan https://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~knuth/smullyan.html https://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~knuth/smullyan.html > Once upon a time there was a universe. In this universe there was a planet. On this planet there was virtually no laughter. Nothing like ``humor'' was really known. People never laughed, nor jested, nor kidded, nor joked, nor anything like that. The inhabitants were extremely serious, conscientious, sincere, hard-working, studious, well wishing, and moral. But of humor they knew nothing. All except for a small minority who had some feeling for what humor was. These people occasionally laughed and joked. Their behavior was extremely alarming to everyone else and was regarded as an obviously pathological phenomenon. These few people were called ``laughers,'' and they were promptly hospitalized.
- otakucode 8y ago
  I consider myself 'intellectually adventurous'. I don't know how else to describe it. I will very willingly read total bunk and extend to it every hypothetical and grant it the widest margin of "OK, just maybe..." But, when it comes down to discussing it, I like using strong language where called for and absolutes when they can be defended. Reason can get you far. But I've run across the same folks you have, not willing to actually explore ideas at all and clearly looking only to find one excuse to throw something out. The most annoying are the many who claim to be approaching thins with reason who immediately flee to the worst flaws in thinking there are, ad hominem and arguments from authority. Rather than focus on substantive issues, they point out that those putting forward the ideas don't have the right credentials or similar. Which, if you're just dealing with "am I personally going to accept this idea", that's fine. But it's a pragmatic dodge that is guaranteed to fail quite often. Identity of the speaker can't influence truth of what is spoken, it's that simple. Then you've got things like the issues you mention, like the expense. So tackle the expense problem! WHY is it expensive? Things are only expensive for a few reasons. Either they require rare materials, extremely precise engineering, or they're being produced for an extremely small destination market. It's not magic. If the things can be made at scale, and they can be made with commodity components, they can be made cheap, end of story. That's just a matter of scale. Whether that scale could ever be achieved is one of those "you have to grant the hypothetical" situations. The slipperiness might be a bigger sticking point. What physical properties lead to stickiness and how do they affect light transmission through a medium? That might be the killer right there, but you have to actually pursue it before you can write something off. Being intellectually adventurous isn't for everybody. Many people can't take an idea like "maybe it would be best if we ate people" and then just take it apart and determine what the consequences would be and whether they accomplish a desired goal. They just can't bring themselves to do it. Or once they hear about prion diseases, they bail instantly without looking for workarounds. You have to WANT an idea to work to ever have a chance of proving whether its possible. Then you can define the conditions under which it WOULD be possible. And if it's not possible, then you actually know why. Which means you probably know far more about the original problem you were trying to solve and that might generate some great ideas going forward.
JackFr 8y ago
There's the apocryphal of an executive with a large stack of resume's who picks up half of the stack and drops it in the trash. "I can't have people that unlucky working for me."

bpicolo 8y ago

They seemed to really believe in them at the time: https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP96-00788R000600630001-7.pdf https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP96-00788...

armitron 8y ago

If they did work, would you ever expect to see them declassified and listed here?

ianai 8y ago
Yes, for two reasons: The government isn’t that great at secrets. They disclosed their stealth bombers after a time - and those were also seen before disclosure. There’s being capable of a thing and the fear that instills in people it’s used against. There’s also displaying a large sword deliberately. Governments in general love having moments where they wow their adversaries.
- komali2 8y ago
  I feel this is an unfair characterizion - the US government isn't a singular entity. In fact, as we've seen these last two years, it is an entity fully capable of warring with itself (the current executive branch is in bitter battle with the justice department and intelligence agencies, for the previous 8 years around half of the legislative branch had a mission statement of preventing the executive branch from doing anything). Given the nature of the US government I think it is unreasonable to anthropomorphisize it as something that can "enjoy displaying a large sword," for example.
  - otakucode 8y ago
    I don't think that was, or even was meant to be, specific to the US. That's a universal thing. And it's one which is really very well supported in military history and strategy. Hell, it even goes down to the animal kingdom. Displays of strength are almost always preferred to actual USE of strength. Use of strength brings with it real dangers of injury to those displaying it, the negative consequences of revenge and the like from the victim, etc. This is one of the reasons that many military historians remain confused to this day why Hiroshima and Nagasaki were bombed. Everyone involved in the decision had to have known that dropping the bombs in unpopulated woodland near the cities would have actually been MORE effective at accomplishing the goals (mostly intimidating the USSR, as it was known from decrypted military communications of the Japanese that they were already defeated and ready to surrender on terms amenable to the Allies).

yulaow 8y ago

Actually it seems more complex than that: "Even though a statistically significant effect has been observed in the laboratory, it remains unclear whether the existence of a paranormal phenomenon, remote viewing, has been demonstrated. The laboratory studies do not provide evidence regarding the origins or nature of the phenomenon, assuming it exists, nor do they address an important methodological issue of inter-judge reliability. Further, even if it could be demonstrated unequivocally that a paranormal phenomenon occurs under the conditions present in the laboratory paradigm, these conditions have limited applicability and utility for intelligence gathering operations. For example, the nature of the remote viewing targets are vastly dissimilar, as are the specific tasks required of the remote viewers. Most importantly, the information provided by remote viewing is vague and ambiguous, making it difficult, if not impossible, for the technique to yield information of sufficient quality and accuracy of information for actionable intelligence. Thus, we conclude that continued use of remote viewing in intelligence gathering operations is not warranted." quoting: Executive summary, "An Evaluation of Remote Viewing: Research and Applications", American Institutes for Research, Sept. 29, 1995[19]

JoeAltmaier 8y ago
'Remote viewing' was debunked decades ago. That's the trouble with reading old reports.
- yulaow 8y ago
  I wanted just to stress they didn't stop the research because at the time they were sure it was all false, but because they thought the information was not good enough to use in intel operations
  - walterbell 8y ago
    With now-ubiquituous surveillance, other data sources could be used to triage “remote viewing” or other weak signals.
- SuoDuanDao 8y ago
  citation?

leanthonyrn 8y ago

Dean Radin and Walter von Lucadou may disagree. -Google tech talk "Science and the taboo of psi" https://youtu.be/qw_O9Qiwqew https://youtu.be/qw_O9Qiwqew -Ted Talk with Walter von Lucadou https://youtu.be/TdfFEO-lFD0 https://youtu.be/TdfFEO-lFD0

DavidBachmann 8y ago
Thanks for the links. Very interesting material.