This article goes back to a discussion that occurred around a previous article on Remote Viewing. One of our readers has had personal experience in the practice of Remote Viewing and felt that his own experiments in the field made a better case than I felt has been made for the practice. Dan offered a link to his blog where his results are discussed. I thought it appropriate to make that information available here. I offered Dan the opportunity to discuss his results, but never heard back from him. Below is the article that has been hanging out in my files since then.
Some of you may have been following a discussion on a recent article on “Remote Viewing” which addresses fraudulent and even dangerous actions by a group called The Farsight Institute.
One of our readers, DAN, has performed multiple experiments of his own over the years and has challenged me to address his results. Not in a schoolyard fashion, simply stating that he does not feel I have given either the practice (I refuse to deem remote viewing a science) or his results a fair assessment. The only practical way to do that is here rather than in a discussion board.
Dan has linked his blog in that discussion and I am also linking it HERE for your convenience.
In this experiment a sender concentrates on an image while a receiver creates their impressions of what is being sent. You can view all of these images larger on Dan’s blog, for viewing simplicity they are kept smaller here.
Here you see on the left the image sent, and on the right the image received, and in this image I can easily concede a degree of relevance between the images.
This one poses some difficulties both for and against. Gorbachev was a figure in the news in 1992, had been for the better part of a decade, no surprises he might show up. Environmental issues were growing in the public consciousness. I cannot deny a case can be made for the connection between the circles in both images. BUT, look at a page of most people’s random doodles and see if there are circles (even within the examples shown here, the majority contain circles.) Each item taken for what it is, does not make much of a case for remote viewing, taken as a group, well it comes closer, but there are three items received and only two sent, typically you would expect to see information lost, rather than expanded.That does pose a translation difficulty to my mind.
Here again the left image was sent and the image on the right received. In Dan’s comments, a blind judge determined that the character of the cat’s eyes and the presence of four distinct circles in the cat drawing relate to the image of binoculars. I cannot agree, and consider that assessment broad generalization and an attempt to force the result to fit the data. Dan has this to say on the subject in his blog:
The assignment of an incorrect item to a correct perception is called deduction in Scientific Remote Viewing, and analytic overlay in traditional Remote Viewing. We perceive adjectives, we feel compelled to make them in to a noun.
Others call it Confirmation Bias. In psychology and cognitive science, confirmation bias is a tendency to search for or interpret information in a way that confirms one’s preconceptions, leading to statistical errors.
On the left, the image being sent and on the right the image being received. There are numerous doodles on the received image and the presence of half filled dots is not enough to convince me that the yin-yang image is being represented here. This one is open to debate.
Here is a hit I will happily concede.
Here is a beautiful example, with the sent image of a waterfall on the left and the text description in image received on the right. Dan has this to say on this to say on this one:
This one was my “holy moly this works!” moment. Remember, I’m still a novice, so for this little training, it shows impressive results!
I cannot agree. As with horoscopes and other sorts of predictions read the description of what was received; Awe, and Nature, Glassy calm, Movement, etc. I could apply that description to images of herds of animals running near a lake, Flamingos, schools of fish, Storm clouds rising in the distance on an otherwise sunny day, kittens playing next to a mirror and claim equal success. This is a perfect example of fitting a broad description to a specific image.
You may want to view the received, second imagre larger and can do so HERE Suffice to say this is far more vague than the example above. Description of rocks, rough surfaces and a smooth artificial machine tilted the wrong way. A beached cargo ship, a collapsed oil derrick, the Hindenburg. The list of possible interpretations which could be called successful is practically endless.
This story relates to a body recovered from a suicide attempt, the second attempt in two days at Niagra Falls, leaving open the possibility that the “receiver” had heard the story of the first attempt somewhere other than CNN, where Dan reports the headline appearing, and the description received is a rough oval with circles and arrows reminiscent of a football strategy chart, and a list of words: Hard, Solid, Surrounds, Encloses, Unpleasant, Control, Cold, Hard, Pointy, Many, Smooth, Cruel, Fear, Threat, Many, Moving, Angry, Crowd, No Outlet, Bad, Concerned, Worried.
I challenge you to name a disaster this image could NOT relate to, then go to the newspaper or a news website and look for any disaster that has happened in the world, today, yesterday, last week, or guess if one will happen somewhere tomorrow?
Out of these eight examples there is one I can definitively call a “hit” two that are questionable and have more to do with justification than recognition, and the rest fairly easily dismissed. You can view Dan’s full set of viewing experiments at his page. and form your own opinion.
My integrity has been questioned for exclusion of this piece of evidence from Dan’s blog, so in the interest if fair play I include it here, with the text that accompanies it.
The assignment of an incorrect item to a correct perception is called deduction in Scientific Remote Viewing, and analytic overlay in traditional Remote Viewing. We perceive adjectives, we feel compelled to make them in to a noun.
Analytic overlay can turn a fork in to a paint brush, then a forearm.
When Kathy simply described the object “stick with something at the end”, she was correct.
So, we have an image of a fork being sent, and received, what appears to be a pillow, what appears to be a paintbrush, and what is pretty clearly a human arm. If the standard of success is to receive a “stick with something at the end”, than I say your goal is pretty low. What would you have not accepted as success? A rake? A broom? A rifle? A hammer? A flag? A Balloon? Cotton Candy?
Dan goes on to report his own experience of predicting that Apple ™ stock would close up on a particular day. Not to be flip, but Apple is one of the top performing stocks in the world. Does it ever close down? Sure, does it fluctuate over the course of a day, absolutely, but people invest in it because it grows.
View us at FaceBook for updates and more discussions.
40 comments
