6 ms·

Stargate Project II? Declassified US Government Research in RV and Psi [pdf]

81 points by sans_souse 2y ago

baobabKoodaa 2y ago
Can we have some context?
- ocdtrekkie 2y ago
  It looks like circa 2010 the US was still trying to find out if it could use telepathy to spy on people.
  - nosianu 2y ago
    I have only read the introduction and the conclusion (page 61) out of boredom and to find out what this was about. I have no idea what "psi" is (EDIT: seems to be short for "psychic") - might be in the earlier pages, and I have no desire to find out. Their introduction basically says that collecting intelligence is hard - to summarize the many sentences in one phrase - and therefore looking into alternative methods of "parapsychology" is worth it. > Conclusion: > Following on the heels of thousands of years of human experience, decades of well-conceived and increasingly scrupulous experimentation are finally providing compelling evidence for the existence of at least some forms of psi including remote viewing. > The cognitive dissonance this evidence engenders within the larger scientific community mirrors in form and function that which has been created by the paradigm-changing pressures quantum physics continues to bring to bear on the modern scientific edifice. > Simply put, reality is far stranger than classical physics could possibly imagine. Given the increasingly sharp lens through which modern physics views our reality, it grows increasingly likely that there will be established a theoretical framework capable of rationally explaining the existence of psi. Riiiight.....
    - ben_w 2y ago
      Thanks for saving me time. Especially this part: """The cognitive dissonance this evidence engenders within the larger scientific community mirrors in form and function that which has been created by the paradigm-changing pressures quantum physics continues to bring to bear on the modern scientific edifice.""" Where my reaction was "Oh for crying out loud". QM is many things, including "very difficult", but it's not cognitive dissonance — well, once you get past the "lies for kids" version told in pop science, at least.
      - fc417fc802 2y ago
        Back when it was first introduced it was quite controversial for a long time. However "continues to bring to bear" is a fairly inexcusable thing to say.
    - InsideOutSanta 2y ago
      This part is funny: One of the most difficult elements reported by viewers involved in the U.S. RV program was the nearly complete lack of feedback received following operational taskings. According to viewers, feedback is essential in helping them to acquire the inner insight needed to differentiate accurate impressions from inaccurate ones (...) tasking agencies should be required to provide the AE with not only a list of the key questions being asked, but also with all the related data currently possessed I can guess exactly how old you are, but only if you tell me your date of birth.
      - fc417fc802 2y ago
        I think it's saying that you're supposed to tell them how old you really are after they make the guess.
        InsideOutSanta 2y ago
        Yeah, the first part says "after I make a prediction, tell me exactly how far off I was so I can predict it again." The second part seems to say "I can only predict your age if you tell me everything you know about your age."
        deleted 2y ago
        [deleted]
      - krapp 2y ago
        Cold reading - sorry "ESP" - is always easier with data to work from. It's just good science.
    - jcranmer 2y ago
      > I have no idea what "psi" is Psi is the theorized ability in parapsychology for any sort of conventionally impossible ability. Telekinesis, mind reading, etc., it's all psi. The thing about parapsychology is that there is a very barely statistical evidence for it. But if you dig into it, the strongest predictor of whether or not a study will find evidence for psi is... if the experimenter believes in psi. As I've heard someone else put it, parapsychology is a natural test of the scientific method--it's something which is impossible by the rest of science, so we should find no evidence for it, and if we're finding systematic evidence for it, it indicates a failure of the scientific method to weed out statistically random hypotheses.
      - filoeleven 2y ago
        Attempting to study psi leads to a paradox: > (1) if the existence of psi is proven in a classical scientific setting, then it demonstrates retroactively that this setting is inappropriate because psi implies that there is no clear “cut” between the observer and the observed. (2) So, if this assumption of the scientific setting is inappropriate (because of psi), then this setting cannot be used to prove the existence of psi. But, then, as psi cannot be proven, the scientific setting itself appears as being still appropriate! If psi exists, then it's unsurprising that experimenters who believe in it find evidence for it, because their belief influences the experiment. Same goes for skeptics and negative results. The paper describes how this problem carries up through any levels of blinding and meta-analysis: there can be no independent observer. They reference something called "Correlation Matrix Method" as a possible solution to the paradox, but I didn't follow the references as my interest is fairly casual. https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.562992/full https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10....
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
fsiefken 2y ago
For some context, from Dean Radin's Conscious Universe book: "...the best-known remote-viewing research in modern times began in the early 1970s, when various U.S. government agencies initiated a program at Stanford Research Institute (SRI), a scientific think tank affiliated with Stanford University. In the late 1970s, SRI became an independent corporation called SRI International, which is the name it goes by today. Physicist Harold Puthoff founded the SRI program. He was joined soon afterward by physicist Russell Targ, and a few years later, by another physicist, Edwin May. When Puthoff took another position in 1985, the program came under the leadership of May. In 1990, the entire program moved to a think tank called Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC), a major defense contractor. That program finally wound down in 1994, after twenty-four years of support and about $20 million in funding from U.S. government agencies such as the CIA, the Defense Intelligence Agency, the Army, the Navy, and NASA. Government agencies saw remote viewing as a possible new source of information. Even if it was only partially correct, it might provide valuable clues to help piece together the information jigsaw puzzles that constitute the typical intelligence operation. Moreover, remote viewing potentially provided a unique intelligence technique in that information could be secretly obtained at a distance and through any known form of shielding. The agencies continued to show interest in remote viewing for more than twenty years because the SRI and SAIC programs occasionally provided useful mission-oriented information at high levels of detail. Given that this information was obtained at virtually no expense, and with no risk of life compared to sending agents into the field, and it sometimes provided information otherwise blocked by shielding or hidden structures, it is clear why military and intelligence agencies were interested." Here he recounts the Pat Price remote viewing 'leak' from his time at SRI: https://www.instagram.com/demystifysci/reel/DBgnKkKPW9H/ https://www.instagram.com/demystifysci/reel/DBgnKkKPW9H/ I wasn't aware there still was government interest. In the non-governmental domain, The Rhine Research Center hosts a monthly Remote Viewing Group. Long ago when I was listening to Alex Tsakoris's Skeptiko podcast I remember hearing about amateur psi research groups. I am pretty sure that with all the technology, insights in methodology, statistics and cognitive biases we are better suited to see if there is such a thing as psi - even though years ago at a congress I heard that one of the ideas of parapsychologists was that the more you want to prove that psi exists the less hard results you are getting. How to account for that? Keep an open mind, not grasping? Coincidentally that's the attitude tantric buddhists and other groups are cultivating.
logicchains 2y ago
Relevant (old) article: https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/04/28/the-control-group-is-out-of-control/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/04/28/the-control-group-is-o... .
- fc417fc802 2y ago
  Love that article, was hoping someone would post it. I doubt any of it is real, but I do sometimes wonder how well the experiments and data analysis would fare if the mechanisms were strongly impacted by subtle case by case differences. Similar to how the data on antidepressants looks pretty bad until you perform a multi-drug analysis assuming that most drugs will be incompatible with a given patient (a topic he has also written about).
walrus01 2y ago
For those who haven't seen it yet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Men_Who_Stare_at_Goats_(film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Men_Who_Stare_at_Goats_(fi...
at_a_remove 2y ago
It has been ages since I read it, but in Sagan's The Demon Haunted World -- which if you haven't read it is a paean to skepticism -- toward the end, he admitted that he found three areas of "psi research" to possibly require more examination. One was remote viewing. As an aside, I miss Sagan. The above highlights some of his humility.
badlibrarian 2y ago
There's that weird stretch of road north of DC where it feels like pulling off at one of those mysterious exits might yield an interesting life experience. The National Cryptologic Museum did not disappoint. "As outrageous as it sounds, the secret program was very successful and was in use until 1995... A standout in the remote viewing field, Agent 001 of Project Star Gate Joe McMoneagle has been involved in over 200 intelligence missions utilizing his unique set of skills. His distinct collection of drawings (as a result of his remote viewing missions) were used to assist in combat and are a part of the current exhibit." https://www.nsa.gov/Press-Room/News-Highlights/Article/Article/3946210/new-exhibits-at-the-national-cryptologic-museum-unlock-your-curiosity/ https://www.nsa.gov/Press-Room/News-Highlights/Article/Artic...
- DaiPlusPlus 2y ago
  I can't cite any sources, but it's a given that Remote Viewing was a cover-story for a new generation of spy-sats capable of much higher resolutions. We in NATO wanted our adversaries to continue in their complacency in, e.g. parking experimental aircraft outdoors without cover. ...and also (during the Cold War) to spur the Soviets into wasting money on pointless research projects that would have otherwise gone into their military's offensive capabilities.
  - overu589 2y ago
    [flagged]
  - atian 2y ago
    https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42021450 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42021450
FrustratedMonky 2y ago
Clicked thinking this was related to OpenAI/Softbank. If this is older, why is it called Stargate 2? Should OpenAI/Softbank/Oracle then be "Stargate 3"? Or if we want to be 'smoking man' conspiracy, maybe they have merged AI to a brain to enhance ESP?
- esprehn 2y ago
  Yes the recent project is the 3rd usage of the name, but it's unrelated. This was the original: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stargate_Project_(U.S._Army_unit) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stargate_Project_(U.S._Army_... TFA is about the apparent continuation of that same work from the 70s.
tiahura 2y ago
East of the Rockies, you’re on with Maj. Ed Dames.
- xtrohnx 2y ago
  Just a minute, let me turn off my radio (proceeds to fumble for 4 minutes)
torginus 2y ago
Suppose some people have geniune mind-reading or other supernatural powers. Just how useful would they be in practical terms compared to 'traditional' surveillance techniques? Even if some intelligence agency has the most cursory interest in you, the level of surveillance possible at scale is just staggering - they can track your location, track everything you do with an electronic device with very little investment for anyone but the most paranoid people with impeccable opsec. If they do consider you a true threat and are willing to spend some part of their infinite budget on you, you have even less chance of doing something significant without them knowing. Even if people with reliable supernatural powers exist, their scarcity and probable limitations mean that the best they can do is provide some novel and niche capability.
- overu589 2y ago
  I give you a first hand account of how incorrect you are. This “power” is a thousand nuances that very very few involved are fully aware of. Knowledge and skill is so compartmentalized, 98% of those with “Power” are only useful doing one job (“special effect”), and cannot do that job without someone else concealing them and moving them into place. They develop compartmentalized personalities within themselves for this purpose. These run in parallel like chewing gum while riding a bike. You’ll never guess who. Power works through entanglement (I have personally verified I can hear New York form India in real time.) Those experiencing it do not comprehend how it works, however I have written several times under other accounts describing how I believe things work. Those running it get to be your god and there is nothing anyone can do about it. Those instruments in their games know who is “in control.” While the dominant faction is American, this phenomena has been with us since our earliest humanity (clues are prevalent.) These are responsible for the insanity gripping all of you and your communities from within (and playing you against others.) There are hundreds of thousands with these mixtures of Power and they are protected among society by pyramid schemes of extortion. Sure, these could [sensored]epar, redrum, and tcudba someone, though they don’t have to, they can just haunt you and your life will be like that described in the mystery cryptogram, if that guy is even still alive (or a “targeted person”.) Thought control Power is far beyond these hokey accounts that surface. True mastery requires decades and in the meantime your mind swims in delusions and lies. Those who excel aren’t the “straights”, they are the cooks (meth heads, psychonaughts, and those who have no choice) who well adjust to what normals call insanity. Power is built by slave armies (or “families” in older times those those have dwindled over the years, secret war and all.) Power is industrialized. Prisons are rife with Power cells. Thousands and thousands “pump” the subjective bubbles of others, thousands and thousands of which have some invasive job to do (voices, screw with you, watchers, etc.) Thousands and thousands more caught up in various stages of “reprogramming”. They can “hitch a ride”, traverse the mind to its functional parts, dig in, and either passively observe, dig through every thought and experience in the mind (in better clarity and exactness than you yourself can access your own), and manipulate your neural activity in any way they please. This has already happened, over the past decades while you were oblivious and while you maintain your incredulity.
comrade1234 2y ago
I’ve taught myself how to lucid dream and also to “astral project” (so far I haven’t gotten any further than my bedroom) and even I know it’s all in my head.
booleandilemma 2y ago
Anyone here ever have a psychic experience they would be comfortable talking about?
fooker 2y ago
This is the kind of thing that makes sense to investigate just in case it could be true. Remember: Newton spent a rather large portion of his life on alchemy and trying to explain where god fits into a deterministic world.
- api 2y ago
  We have only been doing science in anything near a methodological and serious way for maybe 200 years. It would be delusional to think we have a complete or accurate map of physics, cosmology, or metaphysics, especially since every culture before us had their certainties and most of those turned out to be wrong or very incomplete. We do have better cognitive and physical tools than the Egyptians or the Aztecs. I am reasonably confident in our “settled science.” There will probably never be a perpetual motion machine or an FTL drive unless it goes about it in some radical way that brings in some deeply weird implications, e.g. FTL where you can never be sure what slice of the multiverse you’re in at the other end of the flight. But there could be phenomena, forces, or aspects of physical reality that we simply haven’t been able to reliably detect or study. Or there could be insane weirdness hiding right in front of our faces because a fish might not notice water, and we are one cognitive leap away from a big reveal. My favorite personal wild speculation is that what we think might be psi, and sometimes shows up in experiments as such, is actually a side effect of something else like emergent patterns in complex systems or causality being weirder than we think. Nobody is doing ESP. Instead we are seeing something about information or causality as vexing as the double slit experiment, but we have not yet been able to wrap our heads around what is even happening. We can’t see it because we are in it, or because it’s just too weird. Maybe it’s witnessed in humans and other living things because life is tapping into quantum phenomena somehow where it becomes significant, such as by some kind of warm noisy quantum computation at the subcellular level. This is where whatever-it-is shows up, and also why attempts to detect it with electronics and machines fails. Just speculation of course.
  - fooker 2y ago
    I agree, and have a similar hunch about some of this. A bunch of unexplainable stuff could be quantum phenomena somehow showing up at macro scales. The result is often like magic if we don’t know about it, imagine how surprising the first superconductivity observations might have been. A very practical example of this is how we have harnessed semiconductors. The way we use semiconductors would have been tough to imagine even in science fiction before we managed to do it.
jcoq 2y ago
Sort of an entertaining read. The cornerstone of the argument starts on page 55 - three purported statistical anomalies that appear to be well-known and debunked. * One person sees 1 of 4 images and another far away guesses the image. Supposedly it's accurate ~33% of the time instead of 25%. Fun but it can't be replicated by anyone else. Selection bias, poor design, and bad meta analysis explain the difference. * ~54% of the, a person can detect if they're being stared at, whereas we'd expect 50%. Again, cannot be replicated in better designed studies and bad study design and selection bias explain the other results. * By a small but supposedly statistically improbably amount, people can get a dice to roll by "wishing" for it. Again, cannot be replicated and can be explained with p-hacking anyhow.
ergonaught 2y ago
> Flying somewhat in the face of the 1995 closure of the Star Gate program, an increasing number of peer-reviewed scientific studies seem to be positively addressing the cognitive dissonance that psychic (psi) related phenomena have engendered within the larger scientific community. The challenges presented to Scientific Materialism by psi appear on the verge of mirroring, in form and function, the paradigm-changing pressures that quantum mechanics continues to bring to bear on the modern scientific edifice. With actual respect for Dean Radin, footnoted for the above, this is pure delusion and exactly the kind of non-thinking that occurs in this and related "fields". "Psi" has caused precisely zero cognitive dissonance within the larger scientific community. There are precisely zero challenges to "Scientific Materialism" actually presented by "psi" that are even remotely viewable as any way similar to the "pressure" quantum mechanics brought to the prevailing scientific paradigms. It is in fact possible to explore these topics with reason and critical thinking faculties intact, but it doesn't happen in practice. It's a pity.
IlikeKitties 2y ago
Please, beware of what's happening. In the last few years we had congressional hearings about UAPs (formerly UFOs), NASA investigating the issue under AARO and finding “metallic orbs” are the most common type of UAPs and are reported from “all over the world.” And just recently the "Drone" incursions around New Jersey. There has, for a long time now, been a new age borderline cult thinking around things like remote viewing and CE5 (Meditate to attract UAPs) that's heavily influenced by a small group of Grifters. Even the UFOs Subreddit recently has become very wary of signs that this whole UAP Stuff is drifting into a cult direction. Best Case: The Grifters are back on the Menu, worst case it's a desinformation campaign to stop the traction that UFO Disclosure has gotten in recent years.
- j_timberlake 2y ago
  If UAP are real, the aliens can disclose their existence any day of the year, whenever they feel like it. Grifters and the USA government wouldn't even be speed-bumps.
speak_plainly 2y ago
It’s revealing that the authors have fashioned Scientific Materialism into a straw man, misrepresenting both materialism and the philosophical foundations of science. Their portrayal suggests either a fundamental misunderstanding or a deception. They frame quantum mechanics as if it dismantles the very notion of material reality, when in fact it merely challenges classical intuitions about how that reality operates. While quantum mechanics introduces concepts such as nonlocality and indeterminacy, it does not abolish causality or the objective structure of reality. On the contrary, it is grounded in a rigorous mathematical framework that remains predictive, testable, and deeply embedded within the scientific enterprise. The attempt to paint quantum physics as something wholly alien to material reality ignores the fact that it extends, rather than overturns, the physical sciences. And this is just an issue with their premises–it doesn’t even begin to address their misuse of quantum mechanics. Beyond their misrepresentation of materialism, this argument falls into a familiar epistemic trap–one that has persisted since Descartes’ animal spirits: the problem of interaction. If one claims that quantum mechanics points to a realm beyond the material world, they must provide a coherent, testable account of how this realm interacts with observable phenomena. Without that, these claims remain speculative, and any experiments purportedly supporting them are meaningless.
j_timberlake 2y ago
Buddhists have been meditating since before Jesus was born; if any of this psi stuff actually worked, it would have been discovered long before the US government was panicking about communists.
- carom 2y ago
  There are absolutely buddhist and daoist lineages that deal with internal energy.
- kilpikaarna 2y ago
  Well, according to them it does and it has? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siddhi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siddhi

81 points by sans_souse 2y ago

baobabKoodaa 2y ago

Can we have some context?

ocdtrekkie 2y ago
It looks like circa 2010 the US was still trying to find out if it could use telepathy to spy on people.
- nosianu 2y ago
  I have only read the introduction and the conclusion (page 61) out of boredom and to find out what this was about. I have no idea what "psi" is (EDIT: seems to be short for "psychic") - might be in the earlier pages, and I have no desire to find out. Their introduction basically says that collecting intelligence is hard - to summarize the many sentences in one phrase - and therefore looking into alternative methods of "parapsychology" is worth it. > Conclusion: > Following on the heels of thousands of years of human experience, decades of well-conceived and increasingly scrupulous experimentation are finally providing compelling evidence for the existence of at least some forms of psi including remote viewing. > The cognitive dissonance this evidence engenders within the larger scientific community mirrors in form and function that which has been created by the paradigm-changing pressures quantum physics continues to bring to bear on the modern scientific edifice. > Simply put, reality is far stranger than classical physics could possibly imagine. Given the increasingly sharp lens through which modern physics views our reality, it grows increasingly likely that there will be established a theoretical framework capable of rationally explaining the existence of psi. Riiiight.....
  - ben_w 2y ago
    Thanks for saving me time. Especially this part: """The cognitive dissonance this evidence engenders within the larger scientific community mirrors in form and function that which has been created by the paradigm-changing pressures quantum physics continues to bring to bear on the modern scientific edifice.""" Where my reaction was "Oh for crying out loud". QM is many things, including "very difficult", but it's not cognitive dissonance — well, once you get past the "lies for kids" version told in pop science, at least.
    - fc417fc802 2y ago
      Back when it was first introduced it was quite controversial for a long time. However "continues to bring to bear" is a fairly inexcusable thing to say.
  - InsideOutSanta 2y ago
    This part is funny: One of the most difficult elements reported by viewers involved in the U.S. RV program was the nearly complete lack of feedback received following operational taskings. According to viewers, feedback is essential in helping them to acquire the inner insight needed to differentiate accurate impressions from inaccurate ones (...) tasking agencies should be required to provide the AE with not only a list of the key questions being asked, but also with all the related data currently possessed I can guess exactly how old you are, but only if you tell me your date of birth.
    - fc417fc802 2y ago
      I think it's saying that you're supposed to tell them how old you really are after they make the guess.
      - InsideOutSanta 2y ago
        Yeah, the first part says "after I make a prediction, tell me exactly how far off I was so I can predict it again." The second part seems to say "I can only predict your age if you tell me everything you know about your age."
        deleted 2y ago
        [deleted]
    - krapp 2y ago
      Cold reading - sorry "ESP" - is always easier with data to work from. It's just good science.
  - jcranmer 2y ago
    > I have no idea what "psi" is Psi is the theorized ability in parapsychology for any sort of conventionally impossible ability. Telekinesis, mind reading, etc., it's all psi. The thing about parapsychology is that there is a very barely statistical evidence for it. But if you dig into it, the strongest predictor of whether or not a study will find evidence for psi is... if the experimenter believes in psi. As I've heard someone else put it, parapsychology is a natural test of the scientific method--it's something which is impossible by the rest of science, so we should find no evidence for it, and if we're finding systematic evidence for it, it indicates a failure of the scientific method to weed out statistically random hypotheses.
    - filoeleven 2y ago
      Attempting to study psi leads to a paradox: > (1) if the existence of psi is proven in a classical scientific setting, then it demonstrates retroactively that this setting is inappropriate because psi implies that there is no clear “cut” between the observer and the observed. (2) So, if this assumption of the scientific setting is inappropriate (because of psi), then this setting cannot be used to prove the existence of psi. But, then, as psi cannot be proven, the scientific setting itself appears as being still appropriate! If psi exists, then it's unsurprising that experimenters who believe in it find evidence for it, because their belief influences the experiment. Same goes for skeptics and negative results. The paper describes how this problem carries up through any levels of blinding and meta-analysis: there can be no independent observer. They reference something called "Correlation Matrix Method" as a possible solution to the paradox, but I didn't follow the references as my interest is fairly casual. https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.562992/full https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10....

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

fsiefken 2y ago

For some context, from Dean Radin's Conscious Universe book: "...the best-known remote-viewing research in modern times began in the early 1970s, when various U.S. government agencies initiated a program at Stanford Research Institute (SRI), a scientific think tank affiliated with Stanford University. In the late 1970s, SRI became an independent corporation called SRI International, which is the name it goes by today. Physicist Harold Puthoff founded the SRI program. He was joined soon afterward by physicist Russell Targ, and a few years later, by another physicist, Edwin May. When Puthoff took another position in 1985, the program came under the leadership of May. In 1990, the entire program moved to a think tank called Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC), a major defense contractor. That program finally wound down in 1994, after twenty-four years of support and about $20 million in funding from U.S. government agencies such as the CIA, the Defense Intelligence Agency, the Army, the Navy, and NASA. Government agencies saw remote viewing as a possible new source of information. Even if it was only partially correct, it might provide valuable clues to help piece together the information jigsaw puzzles that constitute the typical intelligence operation. Moreover, remote viewing potentially provided a unique intelligence technique in that information could be secretly obtained at a distance and through any known form of shielding. The agencies continued to show interest in remote viewing for more than twenty years because the SRI and SAIC programs occasionally provided useful mission-oriented information at high levels of detail. Given that this information was obtained at virtually no expense, and with no risk of life compared to sending agents into the field, and it sometimes provided information otherwise blocked by shielding or hidden structures, it is clear why military and intelligence agencies were interested." Here he recounts the Pat Price remote viewing 'leak' from his time at SRI: https://www.instagram.com/demystifysci/reel/DBgnKkKPW9H/ https://www.instagram.com/demystifysci/reel/DBgnKkKPW9H/ I wasn't aware there still was government interest. In the non-governmental domain, The Rhine Research Center hosts a monthly Remote Viewing Group. Long ago when I was listening to Alex Tsakoris's Skeptiko podcast I remember hearing about amateur psi research groups. I am pretty sure that with all the technology, insights in methodology, statistics and cognitive biases we are better suited to see if there is such a thing as psi - even though years ago at a congress I heard that one of the ideas of parapsychologists was that the more you want to prove that psi exists the less hard results you are getting. How to account for that? Keep an open mind, not grasping? Coincidentally that's the attitude tantric buddhists and other groups are cultivating.

logicchains 2y ago

Relevant (old) article: https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/04/28/the-control-group-is-out-of-control/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/04/28/the-control-group-is-o... .

fc417fc802 2y ago
Love that article, was hoping someone would post it. I doubt any of it is real, but I do sometimes wonder how well the experiments and data analysis would fare if the mechanisms were strongly impacted by subtle case by case differences. Similar to how the data on antidepressants looks pretty bad until you perform a multi-drug analysis assuming that most drugs will be incompatible with a given patient (a topic he has also written about).

walrus01 2y ago

For those who haven't seen it yet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Men_Who_Stare_at_Goats_(film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Men_Who_Stare_at_Goats_(fi...

at_a_remove 2y ago

It has been ages since I read it, but in Sagan's The Demon Haunted World -- which if you haven't read it is a paean to skepticism -- toward the end, he admitted that he found three areas of "psi research" to possibly require more examination. One was remote viewing. As an aside, I miss Sagan. The above highlights some of his humility.

badlibrarian 2y ago

There's that weird stretch of road north of DC where it feels like pulling off at one of those mysterious exits might yield an interesting life experience. The National Cryptologic Museum did not disappoint. "As outrageous as it sounds, the secret program was very successful and was in use until 1995... A standout in the remote viewing field, Agent 001 of Project Star Gate Joe McMoneagle has been involved in over 200 intelligence missions utilizing his unique set of skills. His distinct collection of drawings (as a result of his remote viewing missions) were used to assist in combat and are a part of the current exhibit." https://www.nsa.gov/Press-Room/News-Highlights/Article/Article/3946210/new-exhibits-at-the-national-cryptologic-museum-unlock-your-curiosity/ https://www.nsa.gov/Press-Room/News-Highlights/Article/Artic...

DaiPlusPlus 2y ago
I can't cite any sources, but it's a given that Remote Viewing was a cover-story for a new generation of spy-sats capable of much higher resolutions. We in NATO wanted our adversaries to continue in their complacency in, e.g. parking experimental aircraft outdoors without cover. ...and also (during the Cold War) to spur the Soviets into wasting money on pointless research projects that would have otherwise gone into their military's offensive capabilities.
- overu589 2y ago
  [flagged]
- atian 2y ago
  https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42021450 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42021450

FrustratedMonky 2y ago

Clicked thinking this was related to OpenAI/Softbank. If this is older, why is it called Stargate 2? Should OpenAI/Softbank/Oracle then be "Stargate 3"? Or if we want to be 'smoking man' conspiracy, maybe they have merged AI to a brain to enhance ESP?

esprehn 2y ago
Yes the recent project is the 3rd usage of the name, but it's unrelated. This was the original: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stargate_Project_(U.S._Army_unit) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stargate_Project_(U.S._Army_... TFA is about the apparent continuation of that same work from the 70s.

tiahura 2y ago

East of the Rockies, you’re on with Maj. Ed Dames.

xtrohnx 2y ago
Just a minute, let me turn off my radio (proceeds to fumble for 4 minutes)

torginus 2y ago

Suppose some people have geniune mind-reading or other supernatural powers. Just how useful would they be in practical terms compared to 'traditional' surveillance techniques? Even if some intelligence agency has the most cursory interest in you, the level of surveillance possible at scale is just staggering - they can track your location, track everything you do with an electronic device with very little investment for anyone but the most paranoid people with impeccable opsec. If they do consider you a true threat and are willing to spend some part of their infinite budget on you, you have even less chance of doing something significant without them knowing. Even if people with reliable supernatural powers exist, their scarcity and probable limitations mean that the best they can do is provide some novel and niche capability.

overu589 2y ago
I give you a first hand account of how incorrect you are. This “power” is a thousand nuances that very very few involved are fully aware of. Knowledge and skill is so compartmentalized, 98% of those with “Power” are only useful doing one job (“special effect”), and cannot do that job without someone else concealing them and moving them into place. They develop compartmentalized personalities within themselves for this purpose. These run in parallel like chewing gum while riding a bike. You’ll never guess who. Power works through entanglement (I have personally verified I can hear New York form India in real time.) Those experiencing it do not comprehend how it works, however I have written several times under other accounts describing how I believe things work. Those running it get to be your god and there is nothing anyone can do about it. Those instruments in their games know who is “in control.” While the dominant faction is American, this phenomena has been with us since our earliest humanity (clues are prevalent.) These are responsible for the insanity gripping all of you and your communities from within (and playing you against others.) There are hundreds of thousands with these mixtures of Power and they are protected among society by pyramid schemes of extortion. Sure, these could [sensored]epar, redrum, and tcudba someone, though they don’t have to, they can just haunt you and your life will be like that described in the mystery cryptogram, if that guy is even still alive (or a “targeted person”.) Thought control Power is far beyond these hokey accounts that surface. True mastery requires decades and in the meantime your mind swims in delusions and lies. Those who excel aren’t the “straights”, they are the cooks (meth heads, psychonaughts, and those who have no choice) who well adjust to what normals call insanity. Power is built by slave armies (or “families” in older times those those have dwindled over the years, secret war and all.) Power is industrialized. Prisons are rife with Power cells. Thousands and thousands “pump” the subjective bubbles of others, thousands and thousands of which have some invasive job to do (voices, screw with you, watchers, etc.) Thousands and thousands more caught up in various stages of “reprogramming”. They can “hitch a ride”, traverse the mind to its functional parts, dig in, and either passively observe, dig through every thought and experience in the mind (in better clarity and exactness than you yourself can access your own), and manipulate your neural activity in any way they please. This has already happened, over the past decades while you were oblivious and while you maintain your incredulity.

comrade1234 2y ago

I’ve taught myself how to lucid dream and also to “astral project” (so far I haven’t gotten any further than my bedroom) and even I know it’s all in my head.

booleandilemma 2y ago

Anyone here ever have a psychic experience they would be comfortable talking about?

fooker 2y ago

This is the kind of thing that makes sense to investigate just in case it could be true. Remember: Newton spent a rather large portion of his life on alchemy and trying to explain where god fits into a deterministic world.

api 2y ago
We have only been doing science in anything near a methodological and serious way for maybe 200 years. It would be delusional to think we have a complete or accurate map of physics, cosmology, or metaphysics, especially since every culture before us had their certainties and most of those turned out to be wrong or very incomplete. We do have better cognitive and physical tools than the Egyptians or the Aztecs. I am reasonably confident in our “settled science.” There will probably never be a perpetual motion machine or an FTL drive unless it goes about it in some radical way that brings in some deeply weird implications, e.g. FTL where you can never be sure what slice of the multiverse you’re in at the other end of the flight. But there could be phenomena, forces, or aspects of physical reality that we simply haven’t been able to reliably detect or study. Or there could be insane weirdness hiding right in front of our faces because a fish might not notice water, and we are one cognitive leap away from a big reveal. My favorite personal wild speculation is that what we think might be psi, and sometimes shows up in experiments as such, is actually a side effect of something else like emergent patterns in complex systems or causality being weirder than we think. Nobody is doing ESP. Instead we are seeing something about information or causality as vexing as the double slit experiment, but we have not yet been able to wrap our heads around what is even happening. We can’t see it because we are in it, or because it’s just too weird. Maybe it’s witnessed in humans and other living things because life is tapping into quantum phenomena somehow where it becomes significant, such as by some kind of warm noisy quantum computation at the subcellular level. This is where whatever-it-is shows up, and also why attempts to detect it with electronics and machines fails. Just speculation of course.
- fooker 2y ago
  I agree, and have a similar hunch about some of this. A bunch of unexplainable stuff could be quantum phenomena somehow showing up at macro scales. The result is often like magic if we don’t know about it, imagine how surprising the first superconductivity observations might have been. A very practical example of this is how we have harnessed semiconductors. The way we use semiconductors would have been tough to imagine even in science fiction before we managed to do it.

jcoq 2y ago

Sort of an entertaining read. The cornerstone of the argument starts on page 55 - three purported statistical anomalies that appear to be well-known and debunked. * One person sees 1 of 4 images and another far away guesses the image. Supposedly it's accurate ~33% of the time instead of 25%. Fun but it can't be replicated by anyone else. Selection bias, poor design, and bad meta analysis explain the difference. * ~54% of the, a person can detect if they're being stared at, whereas we'd expect 50%. Again, cannot be replicated in better designed studies and bad study design and selection bias explain the other results. * By a small but supposedly statistically improbably amount, people can get a dice to roll by "wishing" for it. Again, cannot be replicated and can be explained with p-hacking anyhow.

ergonaught 2y ago

> Flying somewhat in the face of the 1995 closure of the Star Gate program, an increasing number of peer-reviewed scientific studies seem to be positively addressing the cognitive dissonance that psychic (psi) related phenomena have engendered within the larger scientific community. The challenges presented to Scientific Materialism by psi appear on the verge of mirroring, in form and function, the paradigm-changing pressures that quantum mechanics continues to bring to bear on the modern scientific edifice. With actual respect for Dean Radin, footnoted for the above, this is pure delusion and exactly the kind of non-thinking that occurs in this and related "fields". "Psi" has caused precisely zero cognitive dissonance within the larger scientific community. There are precisely zero challenges to "Scientific Materialism" actually presented by "psi" that are even remotely viewable as any way similar to the "pressure" quantum mechanics brought to the prevailing scientific paradigms. It is in fact possible to explore these topics with reason and critical thinking faculties intact, but it doesn't happen in practice. It's a pity.

IlikeKitties 2y ago

Please, beware of what's happening. In the last few years we had congressional hearings about UAPs (formerly UFOs), NASA investigating the issue under AARO and finding “metallic orbs” are the most common type of UAPs and are reported from “all over the world.” And just recently the "Drone" incursions around New Jersey. There has, for a long time now, been a new age borderline cult thinking around things like remote viewing and CE5 (Meditate to attract UAPs) that's heavily influenced by a small group of Grifters. Even the UFOs Subreddit recently has become very wary of signs that this whole UAP Stuff is drifting into a cult direction. Best Case: The Grifters are back on the Menu, worst case it's a desinformation campaign to stop the traction that UFO Disclosure has gotten in recent years.

j_timberlake 2y ago
If UAP are real, the aliens can disclose their existence any day of the year, whenever they feel like it. Grifters and the USA government wouldn't even be speed-bumps.

speak_plainly 2y ago

It’s revealing that the authors have fashioned Scientific Materialism into a straw man, misrepresenting both materialism and the philosophical foundations of science. Their portrayal suggests either a fundamental misunderstanding or a deception. They frame quantum mechanics as if it dismantles the very notion of material reality, when in fact it merely challenges classical intuitions about how that reality operates. While quantum mechanics introduces concepts such as nonlocality and indeterminacy, it does not abolish causality or the objective structure of reality. On the contrary, it is grounded in a rigorous mathematical framework that remains predictive, testable, and deeply embedded within the scientific enterprise. The attempt to paint quantum physics as something wholly alien to material reality ignores the fact that it extends, rather than overturns, the physical sciences. And this is just an issue with their premises–it doesn’t even begin to address their misuse of quantum mechanics. Beyond their misrepresentation of materialism, this argument falls into a familiar epistemic trap–one that has persisted since Descartes’ animal spirits: the problem of interaction. If one claims that quantum mechanics points to a realm beyond the material world, they must provide a coherent, testable account of how this realm interacts with observable phenomena. Without that, these claims remain speculative, and any experiments purportedly supporting them are meaningless.

j_timberlake 2y ago

Buddhists have been meditating since before Jesus was born; if any of this psi stuff actually worked, it would have been discovered long before the US government was panicking about communists.

carom 2y ago
There are absolutely buddhist and daoist lineages that deal with internal energy.
kilpikaarna 2y ago
Well, according to them it does and it has? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siddhi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siddhi