Remote Viewing: Test Run #1

Okay, so sue me: I’m working on either proving that remote viewing doesn’t work, or becoming a psychic. I just bought some lessons by Ed Dames from someone who claims she got it to work, but isn’t really all that interested in going through all the lessons. She said she was interested “for a while” but that now her interest is more focused on taking care of her kids. And, knowing her the way I do, this is a major shift in priority: her main aim before was in paying someone else to take care of her kids. If psychic training can have that kind of an impact on someone’s priorities, it’s well worth my attention!

So, I’ve gone through the first DVD. Woop-de-doo. I found out everyone’s actually psychic: it’s a matter of degrees and what people are good at. And my own results were rather impressive to me, but about average for someone doing this for the first time. I successfully drew elements which related to the photos they show in the DVD (I won’t say what those are, since I don’t wanna ruin it for someone who wants to try it later).

And in about two weeks, I’ve amassed a little over 150 mb of data about the background of Remote Viewing.

Ed Dames, a retired Major from the US Army, was employed during the 1980’s and 1990’s by the CIA in Project Stargate—a project which has now been somewhat declassified. Stargate was not something most people think is real: it was psychic spying.

In reading the final report about why it was shut down, I was very interested to find out that it wasn’t due to a lack of measurably positive results; but instead, in the fact that people weren’t comfortable trusting those results as the basis for intelligence operations. They call this “lack of utility in intelligence operations” and it’s basically an expression that they’re really uncomfortable with it, not that it’s effective or not. Science rejects the idea utterly, without so much as an inkling of evidence to refute the thousands of pages of documents I’ve amassed.

Someone asked why they don’t publish in a reputable peer-reviewed scientific journal, thinking that to be the end of the argument. After careful examination of the literally hundreds of reputable peer-reviewed journals, I can’t seem to locate a single one which would be suitable to publish findings such as these. Therefore, the issue is what we call a “reverse file-drawer problem,” which means that significant results cannot be disclosed because of a lack of suitable outlet. The only solution is disreputable or non-peer-reviewed journals, none of which could really serve to spark scientific interest—and of the ones which might actually work, the main issue is that of infinite regress. Everything would be required to be proved, and then the proof would have to be proved, and then the proof of the proof would need to be proved… yeah, no thanks. Can we say “lockout”?

The other solution is just to move forward, until science actually gets sick of dealing with it to the point that they grudgingly make some concessions about validity, at which point we set up a demonstration, and the scientific examination of psi actually begins.

I’m no expert, but I think that odds of 200 trillion to 1 against there being any other effect in play after 25,000+ trials is a pretty good starting place.

But I still wanted to try my own. Here’s my unscientific experiment, and its results:

So, I took the kids out, and my lady spent about $20 on magazines. I had no idea which ones she’d buy, and she had only a few instructions about how to prepare the envelopes. She was to write down two sets of four numbers with a black felt-tip marker (a “Sharpie” marker) on a photo, which was to be placed inside a manila folder, which was then placed inside of a Kraft paper envelope, on which the same numbers were written. She then destroyed the magazines she didn’t want to keep by dropping them into a black trash bag, then depositing them in the trash bin outside (which accepts trash for 3 businesses and 40 residents of my building) before I got home.

We tested: holding it up to the sunlight, I couldn’t see anything inside. And in the house, even less so. Then it was her turn to take the kids. She handed me the printed list of numbers she’d typed up. After she left, I rolled some dice to pick 10 of the 30 envelopes.

I went through the remote viewing sessions, writing down my impressions. In 10 trials, I correctly identified 2 of the photos, and got significant elements of all of them which were unique to the photos, or which were obvious by looking at them. My lady says I got 10 out of 10; I think I only actually got the 2 that I nailed perfectly. If we split the difference: 60% accuracy. And, I was told, that’s because I’m skeptical.

I mean, come on: how much more proof do we need to start actually looking at this? Science doesn’t think it’s useful. On the contrary, I think this is one of the most important discoveries in history! How can anyone just sit there, nod, and justify spending time negating any claim, instead of actually doing something scientific like, oh, I don’t know, experimentation? I wonder if they know about this little thing I like to call the Scientific Method. Or how about the Philosophy of Science? No? Critical thinking, perhaps? Any of this ring a bell inside that thick skull that can spend all the time in the world telling me how wrong my interpretations are, but which isn’t willing to spend a fraction of that time in actually testing to see if a result can be achieved?

Except, wow: 25,000 results by a very reputable scientific organization have been done, and nobody can publish the results.

Sucks to be them. Who wants to be a psychic? Bah, that’s kids’ stuff from comic books. If that’s so, I shouldn’t have been able to discern anything about any of the contents of the envelopes. My success after only a few hours of training (less than a day) from a DVD indicates a high probability that this effect can be duplicated at a scientific level.

If this is real, I have to start wondering what else might actually be able to work. If science can figure out why this works, might we unlock the human mind’s abilities in other ways? Perhaps ESP isn’t enough: maybe we have to demonstrate telepathy, too. And psychokinesis. Or whatever else we might consider trying to study. Maybe ESP is the only thing that works. Or just maybe, it’s the tip of the iceberg. We can’t know until something really happens in the way of study. Science is what gave us remote viewing: not religion. In fact, religion used to persecute people for claiming to be psychic, since it was heavily associated with witchcraft. Nothing witchy about this: it’s nothing more than thinking about and writing down impressions. I don’t even actually “see” anything in remote viewing. I only get vague impressions, which I then construct into a picture that I draw using these vague impressions. The process itself seems kinda hokey, actually. But the results are nothing short of stunning—the scientific controls seem to produce better results, but I need lots more data on something like that.

After some serious review of the papers I have (I still need to do more), I’m thinking that the best move will be to save up enough and buy some more training in California, because I’m fairly sure that another way might increase my results.

If you’re interested, there are quite a few web sites devoted to remote viewing, but the experts from the CIA’s project definitely have it together better, and aren’t sounding all fluffy and new-agey. I’m sticking with them for the moment.

And I just found out about a convention in Vegas in July. I can’t go, finances aren’t permitting for the travel at the moment. Which sucks. But that’s life. Maybe next year.