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Psychic Dogs and Enlisted Men: the Military's Research Into ESP (muckrock.com)
v3rgEz writes: Government research often pushes the boundaries between science and science fiction. Today, the proud bearer of that mantle is often DARPA, experimenting with robots, cybernetics, and more. But in the sixties, during the height of the Cold War, this research often went into more fantastical realms, even exploring whether ExtraSensory Perception (ESP) was possible. Thanks to FOIA, MuckRock looks back on the paranormal history of American surveillance.
Let us not forget the psychic spying program of the 70s, The Stargate Project. As mentioned in the linked WP article, this program was much of the plot of the film The Men Who Stare at Goats , though not actually mentioned by name in the film. When the project concluded in 1995, the report stated that "a statistically significant effect has been observed in the laboratory," but of course also that "it remains unclear whether the existence of a paranormal phenomenon, remote viewing, has been demonstrated."
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Thank goodness the government dosent have a way to see into all of our daily lives with striking detail. That would have been a nightmare!
1. "Supernatural" is an annoying word. If e.g. ESP is possible, it would be something amazing, but natural, and we'd go about finding an explanation for it. Dismissing the possibility of some occurrence merely because it is commonly associated with those who do not seek explanations is irrational
2. Some of these tests showed statistically significant positive results. More recent research, I assume, remains classified.
In a world where the vast majority of people are _not_ out to get you, it simply doesn't matter if they could see some things in some cases. Maybe they're very good at it, so they see 10 true things bad guys are doing and 1 false thing bad guys aren't doing ... plus 100,000 false things good guys aren't doing. Insofar as you have corroborating evidence, the psychic evidence is probably not useful, and if you don't have corroborating evidence, the psychic evidence is too noisy to be actionable.
It would work well if your psychics where absolutely spot on almost all the time, like 99.99% (if you have many thousands of them), and they could do directed seeing so you could have them check each other. But, honestly, in that case a cabal of psychics would already run the world, either through being very wealthy or by being able to blackmail the people who actually do run the world.
I am mostly in agreement with your argument, but I'd like to play devil's advocate here, just to explore some possibilities.
ESP, more specifically the "seeing at a distance" you reference, would, I think, require intelligence to make it useful. Otherwise, if you have no idea that what you are seeing is a window into the world that you cannot see, you would not be able to act on it and therefore it would be evolutionarily useless and, as you point out, not an advantage worth keeping.
Also, if intelligence has to arise before such an ability becomes useful, it makes sense then that this adaptation would be very primitive. I am thinking of eyes here, how at first they were very primitive adaptations that let early organisms distinguish up from down based on light to the full visible spectrum organs that have evolved multiple times in different genera at different times. So perhaps some individuals do have an ability that, to the rest of us, is extra-sensory, but perhaps it is a very limited ability compared to adaptations that have been honed for millions of years.
Personally, I am not convinced that ESP exists, but I am willing to accept that such abilities may arise. So I see nothing wrong with testing to see if there might be some truth in claims for these abilities.
How come Slashdot never gets Slashdotted?
There have been several studies now which show a statistically significant psi effect, though too small to be practical.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/p...
You are welcome on my lawn.
ESP and similar phenomena inhabit an interesting place in our history. There have been accounts and claims throughout history and undoubtedly prehistory as well. But as far as my 5-minute Googling tells me, these claims were never tested with scientific rigour until late 1800s.
So I wonder if there was some justification in doing these studies. Does anyone know if ESP had been scientifically ruled by the time these studies were done, or if these were the first large-scale studies with the appropriate level of rigour?
It seems foolish to us now, but at some point, we had no evidence of the null hypothesis. I'm just curious at what point in the timeline that changed.
Last post!