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A Soviet circus clown tried to prove that dogs can be psychic
- forgotmypw17 4y agohttps://archive.ph/c5vqP https://archive.ph/c5vqP
- superb-owl 4y agoHere's a clip from physicist Leonard Susskind where he discusses some "psychic" experiences with a Russian colleague. He offers a pretty good mundane explanation, but it's still pretty incredible. https://youtu.be/jhnKBKZvb_U?t=3731 https://youtu.be/jhnKBKZvb_U?t=3731
- Enginerrrd 4y agoThat is pretty incredible and all the more interesting given his colleague's purported background of being recruited and trained as part of some soviet cold war psychic force. It's funny... On one hand, I don't believe in psychc phenomenon. But on the other, I have certainly seen and experienced some things in my life that are very difficult to explain. I've become a lot more aware over time though of the very subtle ways in which information can leak about things. People are often awash in information which they are totally oblivious to.
- labrador 4y agoI used to do a lot of solitary road trips exploring America. I noticed that drivers in the car next to me could tell when I was looking at them even though they were staring straight ahead. And they would notice me looking at them all at once and their head would snap to look at me. I tried experimenting with this by looking at them from further back. I never did figure out how they knew.
- coding123 4y agoI have noticed that too, but didn't really think about that angle until you said it.
- alchemist1e9 4y agoAnother example is women seem to know if a male is looking at them. They will pull their shirt down to cover rear end but it’s completely impossible they could have seen the observer, they can sense it.
- kingkawn 4y agoThis isn’t magic, we can feel what each other are feeling even at some distance. The only reason it feels at all mystifying is because our dogmas about the nature of thought separate feelings into a separate category of triviality, rather than taking them seriously as phenomena produced by our body and environment in concert.
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- hutzlibu 4y ago"They will pull their shirt down to cover rear end but it’s completely impossible they could have seen the observer, they can sense it." Women usually have better peripheral vision than men. Also we hear and smell many more things, than we consciously notice.
- throwaway290 4y agoMales of course can't notice if women adjust clothing when they aren't looking, if they adjust clothing sufficiently often then it's as if they adjust clothing whenever you're looking That plus subconscious monitoring of nearby males and how they move, if you're a woman roughly speaking if one is in your blind spot it's sufficiently probable he would be using that chance to look at you (or parts of you).
- swayvil 4y agoAnother example is snipers, when sniping, avoid watching their target-person (through the scope) for more than a few seconds at a time. Because the target gets nervous and flighty.
- abudabi123 4y agoSome couples in love have uncanny synchrony.
- labrador 4y agoThat's really interesting. I have a theory that our minds are connected in a field of consciousness, so this is another piece of data.
- nahkoots 4y agoDo you have a source for this?
- ordu 4y agoIt is orienting reflex[1]. You car comes from a blind spot, triggers the reflex, they turn their heads. Then would return to a staring straight ahead, if they didn't noticed that you are staring at them. If they did they would look at your eyes to see any signs of what is it you want from them. > I never did figure out how they knew. Did you tried to figure out do they know that you are not looking at them? Would they look at you if you are not looking? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orienting_response https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orienting_response
- labrador 4y agoIf I came up alongside them without looking at them they would not snap their head to look at me. Most of the time drivers do not look at the driver in the car next to them. However, if I came up alongside them while looking at them, most of the time they seemed to be able to sense they were being looked at and turn to look at me. This article describes one situation of sensing when someone stares at you: https://bigthink.com/surprising-science/why-is-it-you-can-sense-when-someones-staring-at-you/ https://bigthink.com/surprising-science/why-is-it-you-can-se... However, in the situation I describe, they are looking at the road ahead and not noticing me or where I might be looking. They seemed to be able to sense that I was looking at them before they even noticed that I was there.
- hutzlibu 4y ago"However, in the situation I describe, they are looking at the road ahead and not noticing me or where I might be looking. " There is something called peripheral vision https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peripheral_vision https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peripheral_vision If there is a movement in the corner of the eyes, like someone turning their head towards you, you can spot it subconsciously, or if you trained it a bit, consciously.
- labrador 4y agoYes, I'm aware of that. That's why I experimented with being further behind out of their peripheral vision
- defrost 4y agoRather reminds me of that infamous 1688 pamphlet suggesting the application of the Powders of sympathy in order to use dogs as a Longitude determining GPS unit. [1] https://royalsociety.org/blog/2022/01/powders-of-sympathy/ https://royalsociety.org/blog/2022/01/powders-of-sympathy/ [2] http://www.creative-science.org.uk/hollywood21.html http://www.creative-science.org.uk/hollywood21.html [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Island_of_the_Day_Before https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Island_of_the_Day_Before
- ggm 4y agoBoth the US and the USSR had very little to lose at the scale of their economies investing in "out there" research. At worst it cost money. It had potential to lead to unexpected discovery, mask other more serious work, or in an extremely unlikely universe provide a "missile gap" class advantage. The guy was a professional animal trainer. The soviets had dogs trained for war. Who knows what other side benefits he might uncover in animal behaviour? Clowns are taken very seriously in some cultures as licenced lords of misrule. Soviet circus acts toured the world in my childhood in the sixties. Projecting modern aesthetic on what he did before this work would be counter-productive. The British employed Maskelyne, a well known illusionist in their camouflage unit in the middle east. He made inflated claims about some mirror and light trick defending Cairo, but searchlights absolutely were used in wartime for offensive and non AA reasons. Personally, i have never believed PSI and assume almost all animal communication is "clever hans" but non communication animal intelligence research has confounded much of what I think about animal reasoning. Just not what I think about PSI.
- DethNinja 4y ago> at worst it cost money. I would say at worst they would woke up an eldritch abomination.
- blululu 4y agoIn a world where we tried to use an atomic bomb to drill for oil, the downside of having a tete-a-tete with a dog seems pretty mild.
- iancmceachern 4y agoI must know more about this atomic bomb oil drilling you speak of...
- thedrexster 4y agoCrazy to think of now! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Oilsand https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Oilsand https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Plowshare https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Plowshare
- Stamp01 4y agoThe testing methodology, where the human and the dog must see each other, suffers from the same biases as Clever Hans. I will point out that while he may not have proven dogs can be psychic, he didn't disprove it either.
- hedora 4y agoPrimary source (translated to English by the US military, because of course it was): https://web.archive.org/web/20180728054156/http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/415676.pdf https://web.archive.org/web/20180728054156/http://www.dtic.m... Edit: There are some gems in this summary (the text matches, but the page numbers do not): https://techpeterburg.wixsite.com/mysite/post/biological-radio-communication-kazhinsky https://techpeterburg.wixsite.com/mysite/post/biological-rad...
- taxicabjesus 4y agoIngo Swann helped design the United States' threat analysis of the Soviets' bio-information transfer program. Swann was an artist who'd made a name for himself as a parapsychological research subject in NYC. This page is about how the CIA initiated its Remote Viewing program, and how Ingo Swann helped convince the Spooks that it was worthwhile: https://www.newdualism.org/papers/H.Puthoff/CIA-Initiated%20Remote%20Viewing%20At%20Stanford%20Research%20Institute.htm https://www.newdualism.org/papers/H.Puthoff/CIA-Initiated%20... I met Ingo Swann at one of his talks: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32587071 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32587071 Swann covered Bernard Bernardovich Kazhinskiy's formative experience in the opening pages of his posthumously-published book, Psychic Literacy [1] (Kazhinskiy is the subject of this Atlas Obscura submission.): > I. The Psychic Renaissance Begins > In 1923, IN THE NEWLY-formed Soviet Union, a psychic Event took place in a most unlikely situation. Yet, insofar as anything that affects human affairs can be said to have beginnings, it commenced a new epoch regarding what we in the United States call psychical or parapsychological research. > For forty-six years the meaning of this Event remained almost completely unappreciated in the United States -- until, in 1969, its implications began to be grasped within an aura of disbelief. What this Event was, along with its enormous impact, takes some explaining. But in a precise sense, it cracked open a special door to a different kind of future -- a door whose existence had long been suspected by some, but hotly debated by the many. > This first Event, and others analogous to it that were to follow, eventually came to have what we like to call "great implications." The vista of these implications is now widening. They have begun to change our human image, our conception of our collective potential, and the nature of our immediate and distant future. > In retrospect, why the 1923 Soviet Event remained cloaked in obscurity as far as American comprehensions are concerned is understandable. Frankly speaking, Americans were not at all prepared to expect that psychic matters would ever take on anything other than fringe meaning. Thus, at the time, it certainly would not have been possible to assess this obscure Event as one that was destined to aim world society toward a future in which psychic matters woud take on fundamental importance. But unquestionably it did so, and thus it is of great interest to understand the how and why. > The Tiflis Event > In 1919, IN THE CITY of Tiflis (later called Tbilisi) in the Georgian S.S.R., there lived a man named Bernard Bernardovich Kazhinski During August of that year, his best friend fell ill of a fatal disease diagnosed as typhus. One night during the death crisis Kazhinski, was suddenly awakened out of a deep sleep by a noise that sounded like a silver spoon striking glass. In vain he looked for what might have caused this sound. > The next afternoon, he learned his friend had died during the night. Arriving at the dead man's house to pay his respects, he noticed a glass with a silver spoon in it on the night table next to the bed in which the corpse was laid out. Seeing him studying these objects the dead man's mother burst anew into tears. She explained that she had been about to give her son his medicine, but at the very moment she put the spoon to his lips he died, and she had dropped the spoon into the empty glass. When the mother demonstrated just how she had done this Kazhinski heard the exact sound that had awakened him at the very moment his friend had died -- even though their mutual homes were a mile apart. > Kazhinski was very moved and excited. How was it possible that the tone had communicated itself to him across such a distance and awakened him from a deep sleep? Kazhinski, a confirmed materialist, had no time for "superstition", but, apparently, he was a man who could acknowledge a strange fact drawn from his own experience. So, on that August day he vowed he would solve the mystery of what had linked his own mind with that of the mother and the dying friend. > In order to fulfill his vow, Kazhinski began to study the human nervous system under the famous scientist Alexander Vassilievitch Leontivich and became an electro-technologist specializing in studying the electrical nature of the human nervous system. By 1923 he had collected facts and had concluded that the human nervous system can react, by means unknown, to stimuli not accessible to the normal five senses. In 1923 he published his findings in a book entitled Thought Transference. The book interested a number of Soviet scientists -- and, in this way, a new epoch in psychic research began. > [...] [1] https://www.google.com/books/edition/Psychic_Literacy_the_Coming_Psychic_Rena/8H91DwAAQBAJ?kptab=getbook https://www.google.com/books/edition/Psychic_Literacy_the_Co... (77 page preview) (edit: rewording, fixed link)
- mberning 4y agoJeffrey Mishlove has interviewed quite a few people directly involved with remote viewing programs and other parapsychological topics. Worth a listen if you are intrigued by that sort of thing.
- fractallyte 4y agoRemarkably, I actually witnessed this just two days ago. I'm a scientist and skeptic. My friend left her puppy in the car, while she went to run an errand. I remained in the car, keeping the dog company. She was licking and biting me, and shifted around a few times, but was generally sedate. When my friend emerged from a building at least a hundred meters away, the dog sat bolt upright, ears erect, searching. There was no way she could have seen or heard my friend - the puppy was below window level, and the car window facing the distant building was closed. My friend wore sneakers, and there was plenty of ambient noise. Not only that: the dog became very excited, and continued that way until my friend returned to the car. I considered that the tone of my voice could have been a trigger - but I'd used many different tones while we were waiting, and this puppy doesn't know me well enough yet to associate tones with events. I have no explanation for this, other than ‚unscientific‘ ones...
- TaylorAlexander 4y agoI assume the dog was somehow able to tell that you knew your friend was coming back. It may be more that just the tone of your voice. Could be body language, heart rate, the way you moved your head, or something else.
- fractallyte 4y agoI considered that too, and eliminated it as a cause. (I was looking around a lot; there was nothing particularly different about my body language.) But that's my subjective opinion; I wish a camera had been recording it all...
- karmakurtisaani 4y agoOne explanation could be smell as well. We emit tons of pheromones that we miss from each other, but a dog could easily pick up.
- Enginerrrd 4y agoI wouldn't be so quick to rule this out. There's a lot of subtle expressions and body language that people give off without being aware of.
- JohnJamesRambo 4y agohttps://calteches.library.caltech.edu/51/2/CargoCult.htm https://calteches.library.caltech.edu/51/2/CargoCult.htm Read about the rat experiments in mazes for an example of how research on this subject would have been done, if it was done properly.
- shadowgovt 4y agoDogs don't have psychic powers, but I am impressed at how incredibly empathetic and attuned to the moods of the humans they are bonded to they are. I have a dog that will lay around in a dead sleep, and the moment I shift my weight to get off the couch to go to another room he's right there next to me. I suspect this has less to do with psychic power and more to do with the fact that he's descended from a long line of the dogs that didn't get left behind when the tribe had to pack up and leave.
- rongopo 4y agoShared trainer-trainee intuition is no telepathy.
- DeathArrow 4y agoI always wonder if there is some truth in parapsychology. If it is, then the domain is based on super mega empiric experiments and evidences, similarly to how ancient Greeks discovered electrically charged materials. Until we won't do many more experiments and use as much scientific methods as possible for conducting experiments and gathering evidences, the field will sit at the border of imposture.
- pfoof 4y agoSome of you might laugh at this ridiculous idea to even hypothetize on such an experiment but remember: some time ago you would be burned at the stake for believing in heliocentric system or if you could show some tricks with electricity.
- aasasd 4y agoI've inevitably heard of the Durov circus dynasty, as they were pretty big around here in the past and iirc have a prominent circus building named after them. However I had no idea that Vladimir Durov was that dapper. Here I thought that Fellini's ‘I clowns’ had some marvellous-looking individuals, by today's standards.
- Maursault 4y ago"psi" = 23rd letter of the Greek alphabet Ψ or ψ which among others can be a symbol for psychology, psychiatry, and sometimes parapsychology involving paranormal or relating with the supernatural subjects, especially research into extrasensory perception. Psi is not an initialism, so all the letters of the word "psi" should not be capitalized to prevent confusing it with an initialism such as pound per square inch, except when used at the beginning of a sentence and then only capitalizing the first letter.