Remote viewing

[[File:PSM V88 D140 Pocket periscope.png|right|thumb|165px|No, not like that.]]{{psychic}}
'''Remote viewing''' is the supposed ability to view places, people, and activities at any place, without being there personally and without aid of cameras. Usually this results in the remote viewer drawing what they "see," often "through the eyes" of a target person.<ref>Brian Dunning, [http://skeptoid.com/episodes/4044 The Truth About Remote Viewing]. Skeptoid, 11 May 2007.</ref> It is one of multiple claimed [[psychic]] powers. This has obvious application in espionage, both political and industrial, and because of this once received much genuine attention by educational and governmental organisations, before it was determined to be complete [[bullshit]]. The word ''[[quantum woo|quantum]]'' often crops up in contemporary "explanations" of remote viewing,<ref>Gerald O'Donnell, [https://archive.is/RTIRF The Quantum Physics of Remote Viewing]. Archived from ''American Chronicle'', 29 May 2007.</ref><ref>Annah Glenfield, [http://web.archive.org/web/20101221033058/http://www.remoteviewingprogram.com/remote-viewing-and-the-quantum-mechanic-theory/ Remote Viewing and The Quantum Mechanic Theory]. Archived from remoteviewingprogram.com, 21 December 2010.</ref> and like other uses of the word at the macro level, it's a tip-off that it doesn't actually work.

==Some (non) demonstrations==
To date there has been no conclusive demonstration of "remote viewing". The claimed successes rely on over-interpreting very vague drawings and scribbles (see [[shoehorning]], the [[Forer effect]], and [[pareidolia]]) or outright fraud. For instance, one remote viewer, Joseph McMoneagle, reported the following when remote viewing through a volunteer who had been sent to one of four locations for a test on the ''Put It To The Test'' TV show in 1994:

#There is a river or water nearby
#There are perpendicular lines nearby
#She's standing on an incline
#She's looking up at the object
#There's a bridge nearby
#There's a lot of metallic noise
#There's something big and tall nearby
#There's a platform with a black stripe

Clearly, these are incredibly vague claims, with things such as rivers and water features, perpendicular lines, and noise being a good bet for any location in the area McMoneagle knew they were sending their target. The most specific statement, about the platform with a stripe, didn't match any of the potential locations at all. Despite this, the ''Put It To The Test'' show still concluded that remote viewing was genuine.

In one [[CIA]] test (see [[Operation Stargate]] and [[#spies|below]]), the following result was obtained by a remote viewing experiment of a series of images:

[[File:Remote viewing fig.png|center]]

No.1 is the remote viewing drawing, while no.2 is the original source that was meant to be viewed. Now, bear in mind that this has been hailed as one of the successes of the experiments into how the process works and how much promise it would show. But there are many striking differences that the remote viewer failed to notice or got wrong, such as:

#The number of segments in the roundabout
#That the bars aren't connected in the middle
#There's no structure at the top
#The roundabout isn't dome shaped
#There's definitely not a lightning rod anywhere
#No suggestion of the obvious grassy and tree-lined backdrop
#It's not all white, but most likely wood and metal

But let's not get too bogged down in details, let's look at what they got right!

#It's round with arches

==Spies==
Perhaps the only solid evidence that proponents have ever put forward to the validity of remote viewing is that it was once taken seriously by the intelligence community. Although really this just proves how desperate and gullible intelligence groups can be (but remember, these were people who could have just paid a bunch of people to shoot [[Castro]], and instead preferred exploding cigars and booby-trapped sea shells). The CIA spent millions of dollars on a program known as [[Operation Stargate]], wasting millions of dollars on this crap.<ref>Judyth Piazza, [https://newsblaze.com/usnews/national/operation-stargate-cia-and-psychic-spies_2157/ Operation Stargate, The CIA and Psychic Spies]. ''NewsBlaze, 26 June 2007.</ref> They did this because the [[Soviet Union]] was spending millions of rubles investigating the same thing, and policymakers feared a "remote viewing gap." "Star Gate" and its related projects were eventually shut down with all funding for [[psychic]]s stopped when it failed to produce tangible results:

{{quotebox|"Star Gate" is a Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) program which involved the use of paranormal phenomena, primarily "remote viewing," for intelligence collection. During Star Gate's history, DIA pursued three basic program objectives: "Operations," using remote viewing to collect intelligence against foreign targets; "Research and Development," using laboratory studies to find new ways to improve remote viewing for use in the intelligence world; and "Foreign Assessment," the analysis of foreign activities to develop or exploit the paranormal for any uses which might affect our national security.<ref>Michael D. Mumford, Andrew M. Rose, and David A. Goslin, [https://web.archive.org/web/20120327092741/http://www.lfr.org/lfr/csl/library/AirReport.pdf An Evaluation of Remote Viewing: Research and Applications]. Archived from The American Institute for Research, 29 September 1995.</ref>}}

Despite the lack of funding, the scrapping of the programs, and all information relating to them now being publicly released in 1995, some believers had an alternative view: that Stargate was shut down by an evil [[skeptic]] [[conspiracy]] in order to conceal the truth from the world on the entirely specious grounds that the more experimenters excluded biases and confounders, the more the effect vanished. As one essayist on the subject notes:

{{quotebox|Regardless of one's a priori position, however, an unimpassioned observer cannot help but attest to the following fact. Despite the ambiguities inherent in the type of exploration covered in these programs, the integrated results appear to provide unequivocal evidence of a human capacity to access events remote in space and time, however falteringly, by some cognitive process not yet understood. My years of involvement as a research manager in these programs have left me with the conviction that this fact must be taken into account in any attempt to develop an unbiased picture of the structure of reality.<ref>H. E. Puthoff, [https://web.archive.org/web/20040203182405/https://www.biomindsuperpowers.com/Pages/CIA-InitiatedRV.html CIA-Initiated Remote Viewing At Stanford Research Institute]. Archived from Bio Mind SuperPowers (yeah, with a website name like that...), 3 February 2004.</ref>}}

So, it's [[Bullshit|a bit shit]], but have an [[open mind]]!

==Pop culture==
There is, of course, a Hollywood version. ''[[The Men Who Stare at Goats]]'', based loosely on events and military projects mentioned in the 2004 book of the same name, is a comedy film from 2009 about the purported paranormal program.

==See also==
*[[Courtney Brown]]
*[[Ed Dames]]
*[[Aaron C. Hanson]]
*[[Psychokinesis]]
*[[Telepathy]]
*[[Teleportation]]

==References==
{{reflist|2|80%}}

[[Category:Pseudoscience]]
[[Category:Psychic powers]]
[[Category:Parapsychology]]

Categories: Pseudoscience, Psychic powers, Parapsychology