LOL. Yeah, 98% of the remote viewing world won't talk with you much, won't show you anything or help you get to that, but they will SELL you Methods To Omniscience(tm). (If you're not yet omniscient, still have money, but have maxxed out your current MTO, you will find there are several others, all of whom will assure you they are the Real Deal. In fact, I'll bet your purse won't outlast your ambition.)
IMO if psi exists at all, it is something innate in the species. Or maybe it's not really a 'thing' at all, it's just us trying to slap a label on the rare ability some humans have to subconsciously process information we all get but have learned since babyhood to ignore, as it doesn't fit in the 'consensus reality' of the world around us and parents.
By the way there's a book from the 80's, "Deciphering the Senses", that postulated that a good % of what people call psychic is actually information gleaned from physiological senses. I think it was that book which suggested science has nailed down about 17 senses -- not just the 5 obvious ones we know -- and of the additional senses, we don't yet really know how much info can be transferred.
For example at one time, certain things would be considered psychic, that we now know might be a person's unusually good ability to subconsciously process info about the frequencies in voice, or pheremones. (It's for this reason that parapsychology science is always double blind. It's also for this reason and others that CSL labs, at least, has the psychic do the session, and THEN the computer generates 5 'potential' targets, and THEN the computer chooses one of those decoys to be "the target" for that trial. So there is no possibility of fraud or collusion or accidental info transfer.)
I suspect that soldiers who survive repeatedly despite all odds, incredibly successful CEOs, unusually inventive scientists, and others along those lines are all actually displaying some of what some might call psi; they call it "a gut feeling" or "inspiration" or "being in the zone" or whatever, but the labels don't much matter; that gut feeling that knows when to zig when the bullet zags can be called anything we want but it saves the guy's life regardless. (There is actually some empirical evidence that psi may tend to show up as a 'survival skill'.)
Anyway, in response to a comment earlier, appreciate the objective fairness, but seriously, a given 'psychic methodology' some will mistakenly label as remote viewing is not required for successfully obtaining psychic information. Humans have been doing this probably since time began; psi wasn't invented in the 1970's or anything. Of course, there have always been about 999 wishful thinkers, poorly talented, confused and/or fraudulent persons who think and/or pretend they are getting psi info, for every rare person who can do it anywhere near semi-consistently (even for the best viewers it is not consistent. Who knows why. The Sidereal Time papers (jsasoc.com/library/) don't answer any questions--only add more--but do cause one to think on that a bit more)... just to confuse everybody.
The term 'Remote Viewing' was coined in the ASPR lab back in the 70's. The psychic mostly under study then was Ingo Swann, who said he thought remote 'sensing' was more accurate, but the scientists liked 'viewing', probably because they weren't the ones doing it and it sounded cool. It was coined to refer specifically to "psychic functioning done within an approved scientific protocol." (After all, the world already had plenty of terms that meant "psychic". They were trying to find one that would indicate it was 'scientifically' done. Of course the public glommed onto it instantly and now the term is undifferentiated from any other. CSL came up with 'Anomalous Cognition' which is so stupendously boring, nobody in the public appears to want to steal that one.)
In the early 80's, Swann came up with (mostly compiled from existing research and knowns) a psychic method he thought ought to work for people not as nearly-omniscient as himself. They called the rules of this methodology "the protocols" (the military loves that word). The physicist in charge of the project humored him by letting him train people, but apparently didn't take him seriously enough to bother baseline testing any of these people ahead of time. (Which only led to immense confusion later, as a bunch of guys psychologically were certain that 'the magic methods' made it possible for them, whereas most people who'd been brought into the lab off the street and tested felt that it was apparently innate in them. This continues in present-day confusion where methods become doctrine and RV groups become cults. Sigh.)
Alas the term "the protocols" meaning methods, and the phrase "the protocol" meaning the scientific circumstance psi was to be done in IN ORDER TO CALL IT REMOTE VIEWING, have been completely mixed up and the general public is hopelessly confused. So is about 98% of the layman's remote viewing world (to include retired military). People will tell you that you need to learn 'the remote viewing protocols' and what they mean is, you need to pay them money to learn their MethodX.
Now, the fact that the science done that got funding, continued funding, and has best demonstrated RV (not just in the lab but on senate subcommittee floors and more) most the time did NOT use that method--or any particular method in most cases--is usually not mentioned.
There have been a couple other internet attempts to demonstrate remote viewing. In both instances, the 'challenging' group was either painfully ignorant of what was a legitimate way to go about it (a case of as usual, testing what they THINK psi is supposed to be, and not what it is, because they wouldn't deign to study the damn subject first to educate themselves, as they figure there is 'nothing to be educated about'), or in one case, where some Official Skeptics(tm) dropped into help, obviously knew something about RV--and geared it toward making success nearly impossible.
For example, I mentioned previously about info but lack of specific naming etc. There was this one 'trial' where a target was to be presented with several 'decoys' and a judge was to see what the sessions matched best. (I'm remembering here; very hazy, I admit.) Several of the sessions described a human, male, somewhat famous, some other info. Every damned decoy was a human, male, somewhat famous! I mean the point is that if the target pool is close to infinite, I mean it could be the White house or a goldfish pond or a corral or a volcano or Mars or DNA or god only knows what, then even getting the facts they did was pretty damn good. But you can't mix in 'decoys' that at a 'general' concept or descriptive level are nearly indistinguishable from the target--that is pointedly unfair; it was done deliberately to confuse, to make it impossible, rather than choosing, as science does, clearly defined targets/decoys so if the viewer IS describing the target, it is apparent at least somewhat above chance.
This kind of thing has given a lot of viewers a rather low opinion of the intentions, ethics and legitimacy of the endless cast of folks who want to challenge something.
The biggest problem in judging (in addition to the 'subjective' nature of it, but what can be done...) is that you don't realize till you start trying to judge this stuff, just how similar seemingly disparate (computer selected) targets are. In fairness, research shows that about 30% of all data provided by psychics will apply to about 30% of all targets. So this suggests that even if they described a different target they might get some data right about the real target; or even if they described the target well, some of their data is still going to apply to the 'decoys' as well. There are many different ways to do analysis on psychic sessions.
It's an interesting lesson in geometry, how certain shapes/dynamics seem to make up our universe. I once reviewed a lab test where the viewer, with a target of a waterfall, doing a real quick 5-10 minute 'gestalt' session (usually all that is required in the lab) had described a very tall, stone or rock wall, water at the bottom, and quick-sketched this little 'splay' of water, which had just a few lines going 'out' like a splash. Well that was very low-level and basic but seems pretty clear. But one of the random decoys was this city in france with super tall stone-wall buildings over a canal... so the water was kind of in 'lines' at the bottom. And another random decoy was this south american pyramid, tall stone wall of sorts, set right next to this agricultural area with irrigation canals in lines near the bottom of it, going out...)
I wish I had the ref for this... I could find it but it'd take awhile. A graduate paper was done some years ago that explored scientists' knowledge about, and opinion about, psychic functioning. It was a really interesting paper. What it showed was that almost none of the non-parapsychology scientists had ANY CLUE about the actual science. They didn't read the journals, they didn't talk to the scientists, they literally just were totally ignorant about it. Nearly all the information they "thought they knew" about the topic came from the media--TV, movies, magazines! (Maybe I should consider "Sliders" to be physics edu? Or the way a teenager with a laptop can press 3 buttons and hack into national security databases? :-)) And yet, they held what they considered a "scientific opinion" about it (almost invariably negative)--even though they actually had no science-based knowledge available at all for forming any such opinion. That was kind of enlightening. Clearly a cultural bias from the start.
I'm out of room so I'll shut up now.
PJ
