Former psychic spy claims parapsychology is off course. Suffers from Stockholm Syndrome |296|

That seems to me to be also confused. Of course there is advancement in the field. Though like any field it's not constant. But I do agree that most discussion (which is more often arguments) on Skeptiko is stuck in a loop. And for me that's because the forum attempts to cater to all. So person A1 states "that's not real" A2 states that it is. They both give reasons for their positions. Then person B1 comes along and states again what A1 has stated though with different reasons. Then B2 come along. But since the point being focused on is real/not real there is no movement into discussion of the details. And if there is, it's again met with opposition.

To me the only way there'll be "progress centered" discourse is if it's only the "yes of course it's real" people. Then energies and focus are on getting into the nitty-gritty.

This is a very good point. Much is stuck on real/not real. It would make a better forum if there was a forum centred on "believers". I'm 100% sure it has been suggested. Do you know the reasons it was rejected?

The other point is that really you need more than a forum. You need an organiser (somebody like Alex to take charge), a website (to record the "conclusions") and a forum (to generate the "conclusions") and a voting system. The site would be deeply influenced by the organiser but it would be better than nothing. I suppose, in a way, we have this. Alex has written his conclusions in his book and they are, to some extent, the conclusions of the Skeptiko community.
 
I haven't finished listening to this one, so maybe I'll have something to say at the end of it. But I agree that part of it is a), Michael. I also agree that the forum should be made much more visible on the website.
Alex, I just wanted to point out I thought this was a fantastic interview. You guys many covered many fascinating areas, and this is a rich interview I'll want to revisit. It was great to have Paul so open to have this free-ranging discussion/debate with you.

Btw, I love that bit you told about your personal RV experience while playing hide-and-seek with your children. Awesome. :)

Maybe I missed it if it was mentioned in the interview, but I just saw there's this relatively new book out about UFOs and Remote viewing by Tunde Atunrase (I think it's based on Joseph McMoneagle's RV work) hat Paul Smith wrote the foreword too. I'll make sure to get to that.
 
I wanted to mention that there are reasons why some members of the remote viewing community have doubts about Courtney Brown. The biggest issue is probably his association with Ed Dames, who is not well liked or respected by people such as Joe McMoneagle or Lyn Buchanan.


No wonder they made fun of Ed.
 
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Courtney Brown is also responsible for this fiasco:

http://farsight.org/demo/Demo2008/RV_Demo_2008_Page1.html

In general, nearly all of the remote-viewing perceptions for all targets for the date 1 June 2008 appear to correspond with the physical state of those locations for that date. However, the remote viewing perceptions for 1 June 2013 appear much different, and they seem to suggest the following types of physical changes across many of the above geographical locations by mid-2013:​
  1. Impacts from what appear to be large meteors leading to tsunamis and possible volcanism
  2. Extensive and forceful flooding of coastal areas
  3. Excessive solar radiation
  4. Storms and other severe weather
In terms of the effects of these changes on humans, these data also suggest:​
  1. Massive self-organized relocation from coastal areas (refugees)
  2. The breakdown of rescue or other notable governmental functioning
  3. The breakdown of the food supply system
  4. The breakdown of the vehicular transport system
  5. Extensive loss of buildings near coasts
We do not know with any certitude why the remote-viewing data appear to show these things.
When a result that can be verified turns out to be inaccurate, it ought to influence how people interpret results that cannot be independently verified.
 
With "Skeptiko" topics, there is little or no progression yet there is real evidence to substantiate this stuff. How can this be? Some possible reasons:
- Because they don't really exist. This is the skeptic/materialist position.
- Because they are hard to study / non-reproducible / ephemeral / subjective etc. I think this is the mainstream belief among psi "believers". This is why we always need "more research".
- Because these topics are designed on purpose by some higher power to be this way. This is my view. God is a God of plausible deniability. See http://posthumanblues.blogspot.co.uk/2006/09/every-few-nights-i-get-out-my-laser.html. There is more in this vein in Mike Clelland's site Hidden Experience. This example is UFOs but it might as well be remote viewing or NDEs etc.
let me throw out another:
- because what we are observing is at 6.72 orders of magnitude beyond what we are able to understand.

This may also be a reason for a potential decline in Skeptiko.
it depends on how you look at it. I've changed the focus of the website toward "sharing" (primarily through Facebook) because sharing has passed search (i.e. google-ing) as the primary way people find new information. The share stats are right there on the website and they're pretty good. I mean, this is an interview show on conscoisness, so getting 400-500 shares and 10K+ downloads is pretty good.

Then again, I get your point... the first pass thru the NDE stuff was a little more electric than mulling over Sam Parnia's next move.

People come, are interested, have some great conversations, become believers and then, well, that's it. So people lose interest and move on to other things. I feel this way sometimes. I have traveled a long, strange journey and worked hard to make up my mind about all this stuff. There is lots of this stuff and man, it is tough stuff but there is nothing new on the scene.

yeah, but then again we're all constantly evolving... I feel like I am. I think one of the tricks is to stay on our own edge of discovery. that's what Skeptiko has always been for me -- follow the data wherever it leads. or, put another way -- follow God wherever it leads.
 
let me throw out another:
- because what we are observing is at 6.72 orders of magnitude beyond what we are able to understand.


it depends on how you look at it. I've changed the focus of the website toward "sharing" (primarily through Facebook) because sharing has passed search (i.e. google-ing) as the primary way people find new information. The share stats are right there on the website and they're pretty good. I mean, this is an interview show on conscoisness, so getting 400-500 shares and 10K+ downloads is pretty good.

Then again, I get your point... the first pass thru the NDE stuff was a little more electric than mulling over Sam Parnia's next move.



yeah, but then again we're all constantly evolving... I feel like I am. I think one of the tricks is to stay on our own edge of discovery. that's what Skeptiko has always been for me -- follow the data wherever it leads. or, put another way -- follow God wherever it leads.
Lots of people don't use Facebook.
 
Yeah, I know that's the case anyway with quite a few people on this board, including myself. I wish I did just so I could "share" and promote Skeptiko.

I don't use Facebook either. Maybe I should? But I see you have to sign up, and how easy is it to unsign up later? Do they pass on your email to others? Maybe I'm worrying over nothing. Is there a link where I can read about all this?
 
let me throw out another:
- because what we are observing is at 6.72 orders of magnitude beyond what we are able to understand.

Very true. This goes back to the "dogs and algebra" point you have made many times. A great point. I guess I am just trying to say that my feeling is that we aren't dealing with "phenomena". We are engaged in a dance with an intelligence(s).

it depends on how you look at it. I've changed the focus of the website toward "sharing" (primarily through Facebook) because sharing has passed search (i.e. google-ing) as the primary way people find new information. The share stats are right there on the website and they're pretty good. I mean, this is an interview show on conscoisness, so getting 400-500 shares and 10K+ downloads is pretty good.

Interesting to have figures. I would not have guessed that you were getting 10k downloads. Well done!
 
With "Skeptiko" topics, there is little or no progression yet there is real evidence to substantiate this stuff. How can this be? Some possible reasons:
- Because they don't really exist. This is the skeptic/materialist position.
- Because they are hard to study / non-reproducible / ephemeral / subjective etc. I think this is the mainstream belief among psi "believers". This is why we always need "more research".
- Because these topics are designed on purpose by some higher power to be this way. This is my view. God is a God of plausible deniability. See http://posthumanblues.blogspot.co.uk/2006/09/every-few-nights-i-get-out-my-laser.html. There is more in this vein in Mike Clelland's site Hidden Experience. This example is UFOs but it might as well be remote viewing or NDEs etc.

I would go with option 2 above but add that I think the reason this stuff is hard to study / non-reproducible / ephemeral, etc.. is because it originates from a less rational illogical aspect of reality. Our own conscious being is composed of a rational logical predictable aspect as well as an irrational unpredictable aspect. Logic alone leads to deterministic robots. Unpredictable irrationality is insanity. Combining the two leads to dynamic creativity. If reality is a creative act of a consciousness akin to our own consciousness then it makes sense that there would be a nonsensical aspect to reality which is by its very nature as unpredictable as the creativity of the human spirit. Imagine that God's control panel for reality has a slider on it with "logic" at one end and "insanity" at the other end. The consensual reality we find ourselves in has the slider pegged pretty close to the "logic" end, but not quite all the way there. This leaves the door open for small amounts of high strangeness to enter.
 
Very true. This goes back to the "dogs and algebra" point you have made many times. A great point. I guess I am just trying to say that my feeling is that we aren't dealing with "phenomena". We are engaged in a dance with an intelligence(s).



Interesting to have figures. I would not have guessed that you were getting 10k downloads. Well done!
not always, but on the good ones :)
 
- Because these topics are designed on purpose by some higher power to be this way. This is my view. God is a God of plausible deniability. See http://posthumanblues.blogspot.co.uk/2006/09/every-few-nights-i-get-out-my-laser.html. There is more in this vein in Mike Clelland's site Hidden Experience. This example is UFOs but it might as well be remote viewing or NDEs etc.

A point on what I said before (I am quoting myself above). There is, of course, a problem with this which is I am laying it all at God's feet. I am making the UFOs, the pesky greys, the spirit guides as being controlled (or at least regulated) by God (or his/her agents). Ditto for regulating remove viewing and medium communication. Ditto for arranging synchronicity. Even though this is my position, I must admit that it feels "lazy" to me. I just don't see an alternative which makes sense. The only other alternative I really see is "the trickster" or it is all some kind of "performance art". High strangeness as "performance art" does makes a certain sense to me though. In this view, things are real but not literal.
 
There is a huge amount of empirical and scientific evidence for all sorts of paranormal phenomena. The problem is that people don't know about it, or ignore it because they don't want it to be true, or don't believe it because they are duped by the professional pseudo-skeptics.

https://sites.google.com/site/chs4o8pt/skeptical_misdirection#skeptical_misdirection_double_standard

The Double Standard

Skeptics apply different standards of proof for parapsychological research and mainstream science. They justify this double standard by claiming that extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof. This is a fallacy which is exposed in the chapter on Skeptical Fallacies. That chapter explains that when skeptics apply this double standard, they are simply demonstrating they prefer to disbelieve parapsychological research because that research contradicts their strongly held beliefs and not because there is any objective scientific reason to doubt it. Since there is no objective scientific way to identify an extraordinary claim it is based on personal belief rather than scientific facts. Ultimately, it is hypocritical for a skeptic who claims to require scientific evidence before accepting a belief to use this double standard to reject parapsychological research in order to maintain his belief that ESP does not exist.

The Wikipedia article for Remote Viewing gives an example of this type of skeptical misdirection.
Professor Richard Wiseman, a psychologist at the University of Hertfordshire and a fellow of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry (CSI) has said that he agrees remote viewing has been proven using the normal standards of science, but that the bar of evidence needs to be much higher for outlandish claims that will revolutionize the world, and thus he remains unconvinced:[24]
"I agree that by the standards of any other area of science that remote viewing is proven, but begs the question: do we need higher standards of evidence when we study the paranormal? I think we do. (...) if I said that a UFO had just landed, you'd probably want a lot more evidence. Because remote viewing is such an outlandish claim that will revolutionize [sic] the world, we need overwhelming evidence before we draw any conclusions. Right now we don't have that evidence." Richard Wiseman Daily Mail, January 28, 2008, pp 28-29 [24]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remote_viewing
In fact, Professor Wiseman was speaking about more than simply remote viewing. In this clarification he explains that he was also referring to Ganzfeld experiments and other forms of ESP.
It is a slight misquote, because I was using the term in the more general sense of ESP - that is, I was not talking about remote viewing per se, but rather Ganzfeld, etc as well. I think that they do meet the usual standards for a normal claim, but are not convincing enough for an extraordinary claim."
http://podblack.com/2009/09/dr-richard-wiseman-on-remote-viewing-in-the-daily-mail-clarification/
Chris French has also stated he believes that ESP has been proven to scientific standards. However, he does not accept that those results should be accepted by science until the results have been replicated by skeptical scientists. These results have been replicated by parapsychologists. What French is saying is that replications are not valid unless the researcher has a certain philosophical beliefs. That is unheard of in any other branch of science.

Skeptic Ray Hyman in his 1995 article Evaluation of Program on Anomalous Mental Phenomena admits that the results of remote viewing and Ganzfeld experiments have demonstrated statistically significant effects. However, he implies there could be unknown methodological flaws in the experiments. This demonstrates a double standard because in no other field of science would a positive experimental result be criticized because there might be sources of errors that no one can think of. It is impossible for any scientist to defend his work against that type of criticism. Hyman wrote:

...it is premature to try to account for what the SAIC and the Ganzfeld experiments have so far put before us. On the basis of these experiments, contemporary parapsychologists claim that they have demonstrated the existence of an "anomaly." I will grant them that they have apparently demonstrated that the SAIC and the Ganzfeld experiments have generated significant effect sizes beyond what we should expect from chance variations. I will further admit that, at this writing, I cannot suggest obvious methodological flaws to account for these significant effects. As I have previously mentioned, this admission does not mean that these experiments are free from subtle biases and potential bugs....​

More evidence of the double standard is described by Chris Carter in his article Does Telepathy Conflict with Science?. Carter quotes Donald Hebb admitting there is sufficient evidence to prove ESP but he won't accept it because it conflicts with his "prejudice". Carter also quotes George Price who published an article in the journal Science where he implied that despite the proof, belief in ESP could be rejected because it conflicts with scientific theories. This is equivalent to saying he prefers to ignore empirical evidence when it conflicts with his beliefs.
...back in 1951 psychologist Donald Hebb wrote this:
Why do we not accept ESP as a psychological fact? Rhine has offered enough evidence to have convinced us on almost any other issue... Personally, I do not accept ESP for a moment, because it does not make sense. My external criteria, both of physics and of physiology, say that ESP is not a fact despite the behavioral evidence that has been reported. I cannot see what other basis my colleagues have for rejecting it... Rhine may still turn out to be right, improbable as I think that is, and my own rejection of his view is -- in the literal sense -- prejudice.​

Four years later, George Price, then a research associate at the Department of Medicine at the University of Minnesota, published an article in the prestigious journal Science that began:

Believers in psychic phenomena... appear to have won a decisive victory and virtually silenced opposition.... This victory is the result of careful experimentation and intelligent argumentation. Dozens of experimenters have obtained positive results in ESP experiments, and the mathematical procedures have been approved by leading statisticians.... Against all this evidence, almost the only defense remaining to the skeptical scientist is ignorance.
But Price then argued "ESP is incompatible with current scientific theory" and asked:

If, then, parapsychology and modern science are incompatible, why not reject parapsychology? ...The choice is between believing in something "truly revolutionary" and "radically contradictory to contemporary thought" and believing in the occurrence of fraud and self-delusion. Which is more reasonable?​
...

Price, George, R. 1955. "Science and the Supernatural," Science Volume 122, number 3165, August 26, pages 359-367.​
 
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There is a huge amount of empirical and scientific evidence for all sorts of paranormal phenomena. The problem is that people don't know about it, or ignore it because they don't want it to be true, or don't believe it because they are duped by the professional pseudo-skeptics.​

I agree there is good evidence. That is why I am convinced. But the evidence is all of a certain type and there is a line that is never crossed which preserves "plausible deniability". There are no mediums in the casino. There are no ghosts being interviewed on Oprah. There are no nuts and bolts from flying saucers. No greys are killed by gun nutter householders or run down in traffic. The "phenomena" is batting 1000. There are no mistakes - spirits who go too far and tell the lottery numbers, teenage greys who take the saucer out for a joyride and crash it etc.

I suppose the other thing which fits into all this is whether we are dealing with separate phenomena or whether all of it is really the same thing (but that is another thread really :-) ). My vote is that it is all the same thing.
 
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There are no mediums in the casino. There are no ghosts being interviewed on Oprah. There are no nuts and bolts from flying saucers. No greys are killed by gun nutter householders or run down in traffic. The "phenomena" is batting 1000. There are no mistakes - spirits who go too far and tell the lottery numbers, teenage greys who take the saucer out for a joyride and crash it etc.

Just because you don't know about something doesn't mean it isn't happening. And just because you crave to see/hear something doesn't mean those in the know will provide it.

Of course most of what you list is - I'm guessing - you kidding around. .
- Nuts and bolts? Really?
- Ghosts on Oprah, ETs killed by gunfire, etc.

So yeah, kidding around. But still. Why would you even think that ETs or their crafts would fit within the physical norms humans know? Do you really think that current human knowledge encompasses a great deal of what there is to know about physical states, dimensions, etc?
 
I agree there is good evidence. That is why I am convinced. But the evidence is all of a certain type and there is a line that is never crossed which preserves "plausible deniability". There are no mediums in the casino. There are no ghosts being interviewed on Oprah. There are no nuts and bolts from flying saucers. No greys are killed by gun nutter householders...

What do you mean by gun nutter householders? Please explain.
 
So yeah, kidding around. But still. Why would you even think that ETs or their crafts would fit within the physical norms humans know? Do you really think that current human knowledge encompasses a great deal of what there is to know about physical states, dimensions, etc?

Good point. My point is really just that I think things would advance - in some way. That way might give a glimpse of other physical states/dimensions etc. Really the question is: Are we dealing with a set of very difficult and confusing problems? Or, are we dealing with another intelligence(s) who is playing a game of sorts with us? And, of course, the secondary questions: how many intelligences and is it all one game or is it several?
 
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