Talk:Remote viewing/Archive 1

message: We should describe all major points of view (POV) in this article:
* the materialistic view of most scientists
* the spiritualistic or New Age view of typical believers
* the open-minded view of some scientists
Many people are unaware of the division amoung scientists between "pure materialists" and the utterly open-minded. Thus they fail to distinguish between prejudice and evidence:
#prejudice - nothing exists but the material world, therefore supernatural phenomena could not possibly exist
#evidence - we looked for it with open minds, as impartial observers who do concede the possibility of these phenomena (and here is what we found)
I have collected some anecdotal evidence of remote viewing, astral projection, detection of auras, encounters with ghosts and angels, etc. BUT I have not subjected any of this to the scrutiny of impartial observers yet, so I haven't published it.
Our standards for writing Wikipedia articles on supernatural phenomena, ESP, etc. should fairly present the POV of three kinds of authorities:
#those who WANT to believe in these phenomena
#those who REFUSE to believe, i.e., it's theoretically impossible and ALL reports are fakes
#those who have an open mind and will believe or disbelieve according to impartial, REPEATABLE tests
I daresay that any Wikipedian who is in group #2 will have a hard time writing from the neutral point of view, as they will tend to use the article to prove the charlatans wrong.
I'm in group #1, so you might think I'm prejudiced with wishful thinking, but I'm also in group #3. I would like to discuss with other Wikipedians what they think an "impartial, repeatable test" might be. We could also write about the results of such tests. I'm guessing that so far, all such tests have proven negative; if so, the article will be easy to write: just say that impartial researchers have NEVER found anyone who can do it. --user:Ed Poor (talk) 14:35, Nov 30, 2004 (UTC)
:I think your divisions are useful for examining the situation.  I think that the focus of a wikipedia article description should be from the perspective of section three of your list of "authorities", as this is the most encyclopedic and neutral of the views.  It does not come into the article with preconceived notions of what should or should not be true, but simply examines the evidence.  However, since an article on remote viewing is not just about remote viewing, but about the people involved with it, that also means that people from the first two categories should be discussed with clarifiers indicating that these people are known proponents or critics when this is appropriate.
:Your division is useful because it raises the important point that controversial topics such as this are NOT just proponents versus critics, because there is also the third category of the scientific approach of examining evidence for its merits.  It is tempting at time to classify people as just proponents or critics when writing an article like this, but that ignores the differences in how they come to their views.  Some come to those views predisposed, and some come to those views by examining the evidence.  (And it is not our place to speculate about the nature of their thoughts, but only about the nature of their presented reasoning.)  This is why the article needs to be more than just opinions of proponents and critics, but also needs to objectively discuss the nature of the evidence to present the basis by which the most reasoned proponents and critics are making their conclusions.
:I think we have a good start on this, but there is certainly much more that could be done with time.  We could, for example, include specific details about experimental results and their statistical analyses.  This would present more of a background for discussions about their interpretation. --Cortonin 19:59, 30 Nov 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: the materialistic view is incompatible with openmindidness? Can you prove that claim?Geni 21:19, 30 Nov 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: The materialistic view is not intrinsically incompatible with open-mindedness, but I believe he's referring to the case where materialism is used as an axiomatic premise, as this is incompatible with open-mindedness.  But this is a slight digression.  I think the important point is that the article we're discussing should focus on the open-minded evidence-based approach, rather than having its primary focus on either of the two axiomatic premises.  The article should also mention the impact of the two belief systems, as they are important to understanding the history of this topic.  --Cortonin 23:10, 30 Nov 2004 (UTC)

text: You can of course show that materialism is a belife system rather than a  system based on evidenceGeni 00:01, 1 Dec 2004 (UTC)

text: Now do you have evidence that this is the position of the majority of scientists?Geni 17:51, 1 Dec 2004 (UTC)

text: In general, it's difficult to formulate a hypothesis that something does exist and then prove that it doesn't exist by falsifying that hypothesis.  Try to prove that neon-pink elephants don't exist by falsifying the claim that they do.  You can't do this without systematically searching all of existence.  This is often simplified with claims like, "Try to prove that neon-pink elephants don't exist in the kitchen," which is easier to falsify by a systematic search.  Falsification is most useful, however, when a statement can be falsified by a body of evidence, even if not everything possible has been observed.  The statement, "Remote Viewing does not exist" can be more easily falsified by showing evidence that it does exist.  You can deduce that Remote Viewing probably does not exist by disproving all the evidence existing and by invoking Occam's Razor.  But falsification is not a practical method of disproving it due to the size of the search space.  It wouldn't be reasonable for this article to indicate such.  --Cortonin 00:00, 2 Dec 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Incorporating POV

message: From the astral projection page:
:Astral projection is an out of body experience (OBE) technique, sometimes associated with the occult and the New Age movement, where it is said that the "astral body", or "double", which some believe to be one of several co-incident "bodies" in each person, is able to move free of the physical body. During astral projections, sometimes the traveler reports being attached to his/her physical body by a silver umbilical cord.
And from the Out-of-body experience page:
:An out-of-body experience (or OBE, or OOBE) is the subjective perception that one is no longer in one's body, while (generally) being able to perceive it from the outside. It is sometimes associated with near-death experiences, hypnopompic or hypnagogic dreams, mystical trances or occult phenomena, and psychoactive drugs, mainly dissociative hallucinogens such as ketamine, DXM and PCP.
And from the Clairvoyance page:
:Clairvoyance is defined as a form of extra-sensory perception that it is claimed allows a person to perceive distant objects, persons, or events, including "seeing" through opaque objects and the detection of types of energy not normally perceptible to humans (i.e. radio waves). Typically, such perception is reported in visual terms, but may also include auditory impressions (sometimes called clairaudience) or kinesthetic impressions.
Remote viewing is the process of viewing a location from remote in a trancelike state.  It does not involve leaving the body, nor does it involve astral cords, double bodies, near-death experiences, or anything of the sort.  Thus the only one of these three that it's directly comparable, to the extent of an "also known as", is clairvoyance.  Remote viewing is essentially the same thing as clairvoyance except for one difference, which is that remote viewing is closely associated with a specific remote viewing protocol because it was developed in a lab setting, whereas clairvoyance simply labels the ability.  All of this information about the relationship between remote viewing and clairvoyance is already correctly stated in the opening paragraphs of the remote viewing article.
I changed the main article's opening sentence to more clearly reflect these things.  --Cortonin 17:37, 8 Dec 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Remote Viewing and Astral Projection. 

message: Quick google found a number of references pointing to the view that Ingo Swann was instrumental in forming the "procedure" known as Remote Viewing in its current popular form. Many of these articles say "Swann and SRI" or similar phrasing, indicating that Swann and his work was in cooperation with, but not as an employee of, SRI. Here's where I'll put links (more to come), others are welcome - but please sign the link below, as I do:
* from the "How did RV being?" page at Remove Viwing Instructional Services, Inc. --NightMonkey 22:42, Dec 20, 2004 (UTC)
* about.com article - The term "remote viewing" came about in 1971 through experimentation conducted by Ingo Swann (who correctly remote viewed in 1973 that the planet Jupiter has rings, a fact later confirmed by space probes), Janet Mitchell, Karlis Osis and Gertrude Schmeidler. --NightMonkey 22:42, Dec 20, 2004 (UTC)
:Okay, but we need to make clear that there were others who contributed.  It would be inappropriate to attribute the entirety of its development to Ingo Swann, even if he was a central figure.  I tweaked it to try to make that clear.   — Cortonin | Talk 23:47, 20 Dec 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Ingo Swann & importance to "Remote Viewing" 

message: Hal Puthoff and I were on a physics email list a few years ago. I wrote him outside the group if he could "remote view" me, and tell me what he saw. He replied something to the effect that he was just a supervisor for the remote viewing project and never actually did it himself. BF 00:52, 2 Feb 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I believe this corresponds to the mentioning of him in this article.   — Cortonin | Talk 02:53, 2 Feb 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Hal 

message: This article has been in NPOV dispute for over a month, during which time no specific areas of dispute were given and no actual contributions were made to the article except for one anon.  According to NPOV dispute, Wikipedia policy clearly states, Everyone can agree that marking an article as having an NPOV dispute is a temporary measure, and should be followed up by actual contributions to the article in order to put it in such a state that people agree that it has a NPOV.  So in order to comply with Wikipedia policy of NPOV dispute being a temporary call for editing, and not a "permanent warning label to readers", the NPOV dispute is being removed.   — Cortonin | Talk 08:58, 4 Feb 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Perpetual dispute