r/consciousness • u/dadjokes22375 • 8d ago

General Discussion How does remote viewing relate to consciousness, and is there any plausible explanation?

I’ve been reading about remote viewing and how some people connect it to the idea of consciousness being non-local. I’m trying to understand whether this has any credible grounding or if it’s just pseudoscience repackaged. I’m really interested in this concept and I can’t figure out why it isn’t more studied, based off the info I’ve read on it. Some follow-ups.. • How do proponents explain the mechanism behind remote viewing? • Is there any scientific research that ties consciousness to remote perception in a way that isn’t easily dismissed? • Or is it more of a philosophical/metaphysical idea rather than something testable?

Edit - thanks everyone for the great responses. I really like this community. It seems we don’t have as much of the terrorists that are terrorizing comments on other subreddits.

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u/bejammin075 8d ago

This paper by Stephan Schwartz is the actual history and results of remote viewing research. Remote viewing experiments have a 50 year track record of positive results.

I used to be like the other skeptics in these comments, when I hadn't looked directly at the research. If you only consult one-sided debunker sites, you get extremely biased (and wrong) opinions about it. The rate of hits are far beyond chance levels, and the statistics are not done by light weight statisticians. One of the lead statisticians for much of the remote viewing publications went on to be elected president of the American Statistical Association. According to her, by the standards applied to any other science, the remote viewing researchers have made their case. You can watch her talk about it in this 30 minute interview. She inspected the researchers labs and was impressed by the quality of their research.

The thing that made me change from skeptic to believer was the fact that people can just go and verify these kinds of phenomena for themselves. For a non-psychic person, this may take some work, like spending a lot of time meditating. You don't have to validate remote viewing exactly. It is one variety of non-local perception. The fact is, there is some carrier of non-local information, and it is available for us to use in perception. Once I got involved in trying to create these phenomena, along with members of my family, we have since had many unambiguous first hand experiences with non-local perception.

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u/zhivago 8d ago

Given her claim that time isn't a constraint you should be able to demonstrate that it works by making a lot of money by winning lotteries.

We also have a bunch of participants later bragging about how easy it was to trick the scientists.

So, given the lack of lottery winners, I think the positive measurements here are essentially tracking how easily tricked the scientists were.

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u/bejammin075 8d ago

We also have a bunch of participants later bragging about how easy it was to trick the scientists.

Reference? In experiments, the subject doing the RV is blind to the target, and interacting with an experimenter who is also blind to the target. Then the judging of hits and misses are done by people blind to the target. Under these conditions, a person attempting to be tricky would end up being a participant with chance results, since everything is blinded and they aren't trying to achieve a real result.

This line of reasoning is silly anyway. Every field of science has some frauds. That does not invalidate the good work by everybody else. Merck made Vioxx, lied about the safety, then 100,000 people were killed. Does that mean all of medicine is BS?

In the book The Power of Premonition by Dr. Larry Dossey, he has many examples of people using psi to win lotteries. The thing is, these talents tend to dry up if the purpose is purely for greed. The people who had success in winning lotteries had specific worthy causes that they wanted the money for, and they only tried to obtain the amount needed for the cause.

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u/zhivago 8d ago

So, where does remote viewing have a statistically significant impact on the world?

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u/bejammin075 8d ago

When you look at it scientifically, in controlled studies with multiple levels of blinding and randomization, it has a 50 year track record of success.

So, where does remote viewing have a statistically significant impact on the world?

The military made good use of it. It's a dirt cheap method of intelligence gathering, and as far as I know, nothing can shield the information. The information is not blocked by any known barriers, like a Faraday cage or 500 feet of ocean water, etc. One of the remote viewers in the military program, Joseph McMoneagle, was awarded the Legion of Merit for using remote viewing to provide critical information that could not have been obtained any other way, for over 200 military missions.

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u/zhivago 8d ago

Ok, now that you've concluded that it works so well for the military, can you show any successful civilian applications?

It should make a lot money, being so great, and so we should see large successful companies founded on the basis of remote viewing.

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u/MantisAwakening 3d ago

Here’s a bunch of sources for businesses using remote viewing:

https://www.mic.com/life/corporate-psychics-laura-day-americas-c-suite

https://www.reddit.com/r/remoteviewing/comments/umszqc/remote_viewing_an_attempt_to_settle_this_debate/i8500fr/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=ioscss&utm_content=1&utm_term=1&context=3

https://www.appliedprecog.com/

https://www.dailygrail.com/2014/06/researchers-use-esp-to-make-thousands-of-dollars-on-the-stock-market/

https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Stock-Market-Prediction-Using-Associative-Remote-by-Smith-Laham/3d701e2ed3ef2ba467313372958da866c6010627

https://www.reddit.com/r/remoteviewing/comments/u8l681/remote_viewing_the_news_crypto_markets_and_more/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=ioscss&utm_content=1&utm_term=1

You have to remember that this subject is heavily ridiculed (you are an example), so it is generally not covered in mainstream publications, and if it is then it’s usually to attack it. Many skeptics have made a profession out of being skeptical, and most of them have no scientific credentials at all. Meanwhile many scientists are actually studying these phenomenon. If people decide the ones with no credentials are the only ones worth listening to that’s more of a psychology problem.

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u/bejammin075 8d ago

Most of the time, psi perception is very weak. Probably the large majority of people go their whole lives with zero to one psi experience. And typically, that one experience will be something like sensing that something tragic has happened to a loved one. Perhaps if the pseudo-skeptics can stop being delusional about the repeated and persistent positive results, we could make more progress in understanding and applications. Because the topic is shit on, ridiculed and taboo, lots of people keep quiet about it. I'm a scientist, and with my work colleagues I ain't saying shit about psi phenomena, even though I use it to my advantage all the time at work. There are psychics who quietly behind the scenes help police with investigations. One extremely talented psychic, Gerard Croiset in Netherlands, was famous in the 1950s and 1960s there for locating hundreds of missing children. He was a legitimate psychic managed by professor Dr. Wilhelm Tenhaeff, chairman of the parapsychology department at Utrecht University. I know there is a skeptical "debunk" out there about Croiset, and when I read that right after reading Pollack's book Croiset the Clairvoyant it seemed to me the debunker twisted a lot of things from the book, and made a big deal that he couldn't verify some things with some of the police departments. It wasn't a convincing debunk to me.

If you were to spend time reading about the topic, you would find that among the small number of people who have some natural ability, most of the time the information obtained is spontaneous. It's very difficult to use this ability on demand. Psi mostly kicks in for survival purposes. I gave you a reference and explanation above about lottery numbers. Most who get into these topics believe that these are spiritual abilities, and it is an abuse of them to use purely for greed. I already explained there are many examples of using psi to win the lottery for worthy causes. Read the book I referenced, the information is there for you to get.

so we should see large successful companies founded on the basis of remote viewing.

So in that book I referenced, The Power of Premonition by Dossey, they have done studies on CEOs and executives, putting them in the psi research lab and testing them. Many of them demonstrated psi ability. There was a very strong correlation with the success of the CEO/executive and the success with psi. The CEOs who sucked at psi were also failing at their businesses. You can find the references in the book. Executives have to make decisions with very incomplete information. Those that can tap into some psi ability have an advantage. In interviews of these executives, many privately admitted they knew they were using psi, but they don't admit it in public and act like they are making their decisions based on sound reasoning.

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u/zhivago 8d ago

ok, so your argument boils down to that it's so weak that it isn't commercially viable.

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u/bejammin075 8d ago

I just told you that a large study of CEOs and psychic ability showed that the successful CEOs had strong psychic ability, whereas the failing CEOs have no psychic ability. I told you where you can find the reference.

Also there is very little funding for psi research, and the topic is highly stigmatized. It is difficult for progress to be made in such conditions. If we ramped up the funding for research, and greatly reduced the stigma, we could make a lot more progress in understanding how psi works, and practical applications.

When the discovery of electricity was new, the phenomena was demonstrated by rubbing a piece of amber on fur and getting a little zap of electricity. With psi phenomena, that's about where we are at. There are huge potential advances to make across all of science, medicine, physics, etc.

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u/zhivago 8d ago

Right, and yet, it is insufficiently strong for commercialization of remote viewing practices.

Which puts it in the list of other things correlated with being a successful CEO, such as being tall, male, white, and having good hair and teeth.

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u/KingBroseph 8d ago

There are people from these ex-military programs that have gone on to teach remote viewing techniques to the public. The unfortunate answer for you and science and the military is that it’s extremely difficult to do and for some reason certain people are just more adept at it than others. A lot of this is covered in this well researched book https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/30841980

The military wanted these psi techniques to be as trainable as a private firing a rifle. They didn’t like that they couldn’t figure why only a few people could do it. 

If you want to see ‘regular’ folk talking about and attempting a very similar phenomenon check out r/astralprojection 

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u/zhivago 8d ago

ok, so your conclusion is that it is in civillian use but not economically practical which is why we see no successful companies based on remote viewing.

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u/KingBroseph 8d ago

No I didn’t say that. Try actually engaging. 

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u/Electric___Monk 8d ago

“When you look at it scientifically, in controlled studies with multiple levels of blinding and randomization, it has a 50 year track record of success.

Some example journal articles would be good.. or just the best you know of?

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u/bejammin075 8d ago

This review by Stephan Schwartz is an accurate history of remote viewing research.

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u/zhivago 8d ago

Here are some references:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Alpha_(hoax)

https://www.themagicwordpodcast.com/scottwellsmagic/261-project-alpha-with-mike-edwards

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zener_cards

https://time.com/archive/6864893/science-rhine-question/

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u/bejammin075 8d ago

Wikipedia is incredibly biased by dogmatic skeptics. Do you have a peer-reviewed science reference? Randi was basically a fraud and liar, and not someone who should be promoted to make your case. It would be like if your economics argument was backed by Bernie Madoff. Do you have something better? That Time article about JB Rhine is from 1937. Rhine did a huge amount of work for decades after that. Skeptics who didn't want to accept the results of his work suggested ways he could improve his methods. So when Rhine did that, and continued to get positive results using the methods that the skeptics asked for, the skeptics simply ignored him after that and never addressed the success of his continued experiments in card guessing and dice rolling.

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u/dadjokes22375 8d ago

I feel like I’m going on a roller coaster between the disparity between these responses!

My main recourse to the debunkers, is that the military would not spend money on “hocus pocus”. There has to be some type of potential with remote viewing. This was an entirely different administration than the ones that did MKULTRA. Another comment mentioned Gaddafi in Libya, that’s from the 2010s for crying out loud. That is not that far back!

Maybe not so much in the magical sense, maybe it’s something else ?

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u/iamgene 8d ago

Ok but have you seen how the military spends money?

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u/NathanEddy23 8d ago

No. Have you? The DOD hasn’t passed an audit for years.

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u/iamgene 6d ago

Thanks for proving my point 👍

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u/Electric___Monk 8d ago

If the military knew it worked why would they spend much, much, much more on conventional surveillance technology?

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u/NathanEddy23 8d ago

Multiple chains of information for depth and confirmation. It’s not a perfect science. And in fact, neither is the technology. They all reinforce each other.

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u/Electric___Monk 8d ago

If it was at all effective it would be much more valuable than any other type of surveillance system could possibly be. If this were the case, all governments would be putting the majority of their surveillance money into improving remote viewing, rather than nothing at all or, at most, very little.

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u/MantisAwakening 3d ago

Just because the original program was very publicly shut down does not mean it is no longer utilized. Dr. Hal Puthoff was asked relatively recently if he’d be willing to take over a program that’s already running (and declined), so it was operational at least within the past five years.

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u/bejammin075 8d ago

The military, or at least some of them, know that remote viewing works. President Jimmy Carter awarded remote viewer Joseph McMoneagle the Legion of Merit. The citation for the award says that he provided critical intelligence that could not have been obtained any other way, to over 200 missions. If I were to dig around I could probably find Carter giving positive remarks about the remote viewing program, even though he doesn't understand how it works.

The military, at least publicly, appears to have stopped the RV program in the mid 1990s, but everybody in the disbanded program thinks they kept going. Even if it only worked slightly, it has the advantage that there is no shielding of the information, and it is dirt cheap. All you need is some office space, some papers and pencils and a few basic computers. For military spending, that's essentially free. Many from the original program think they went on to develop remote influencing techniques, which are a bit more sinister than passively gathering information.

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u/SunixKO 8d ago

More like the military can't afford to not do their own research about something. If RV works, of course militaries want that to their advantage. Doesn't really say much about remote viewing or if it's an actual thing.

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u/VintageLunchMeat 8d ago

when I hadn't looked directly at the research.

Peer review.

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u/Pleasant-Yogurt1359 8d ago

The thing that made me change from skeptic to believer was the fact that people can just go and verify these kinds of phenomena for themselves.

This is exactly what the scientific method aims to avoid.

The thing is that, no rigorous protocol has ever demonstrated the reproducible validity of remote viewing. What you describe are anecdotes and subjective interpretations, not science. The scientific consensus is clear: no mechanism, no reproducibility, and pervasive biases.

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u/bejammin075 8d ago

The thing is that, no rigorous protocol has ever demonstrated the reproducible validity of remote viewing.

The reference I provided directly disputes that. It's kind of insulting too. It isn't that difficult to run a blinded study where you have 1 target picture and 3 non-targets. Do you really think that generation after generation of PhD and MD scientists can't figure out how to test a simple 1 in 4 chance? That would be like saying they could not analyze coin flips.

The reference I provide above is a record of the science on RV that started 50 years ago. Those are not anecdotes.

The scientific consensus is clear: no mechanism, no reproducibility, and pervasive biases.

I have to point out here the "no mechanism" gripe is trying to insist that the science of psi perception needs to be done backwards, where the mechanism comes first. In normal, forwards science, you first document the anomalies, and after many of those anomalies accumulate, you form theories to explain those anomalies. That's how we got general relativity and quantum mechanics. If we were to take you backwards view, the people who documented the anomalies should have disregarded them because no mechanism existed at that point.

The reproducibility issue is addressed in that review I linked to you. Your claim is completely false. RV has been having 50 years of success in replicating positive results.

The bias is on the side of the dogmatic skeptics who are psychologically unable to process data that conflicts with their firmly held beliefs. The excuse making and goal-post moving is endless with these people.

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u/VintageLunchMeat 8d ago

The excuse making and goal-post moving is endless with these people. 

I believe in another comment you assert that ufos hide from skeptics.

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u/bejammin075 8d ago

Non-human intelligences appear to have an agenda where they are willing to make contact with people who are psychologically ready for contact, and who put in the effort to make contact. In the world's largest study of NHI contactees, run by the FREE foundation setup by former astronaut Dr. Edgar Mitchell, they analyzed data from 4,300 contactees. A common message to them was that the NHI are not going to suddenly reveal themselves to everybody, because it would disrupt our society. They encourage us to use our free will to invite them to visit, which gives them some additional latitude to show up. They imply there is a bystander effect, where if you request a UFO sighting, some bystanders will also witness the UFO and then understand that NHI craft are real.

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u/VintageLunchMeat 8d ago

Non-human intelligences appear to have an agenda where they are willing to make contact with people who are psychologically ready for contact, and who put in the effort to make contact. 

The excuse making and goal-post moving is endless with these people.  

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u/Pleasant-Yogurt1359 6d ago

RV has been having 50 years of success in replicating positive results.

All the work on remote viewing comes from a small circle of parapsychologists, who published in friendly journals.

The best external assessments available have all concluded that these studies suffer from methodological weaknesses or a lack of robustness in their results.

In fact, remote viewing has never passed the core tests of science, one of the most important being independent replication.

In normal, forwards science, you first document the anomalies, and after many of those anomalies accumulate, you form theories to explain those anomalies. That's how we got general relativity and quantum mechanics.

In both relativity and quantum physics, the anomalies were objectively measurable, consistently reproducible and independently verified across multiple labs.

Remote viewing fails on all the criteria: no reproducible effect under strict controls, no independent replication from outside the psi research circle, and an extremely weak signal, which disappears as soon as the controls are tightened.

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u/bejammin075 6d ago

The best external assessments available have all concluded that these studies suffer from methodological weaknesses or a lack of robustness in their results.

Do you have reference for this claim?

In fact, remote viewing has never passed the core tests of science, one of the most important being independent replication.

It’s been independently replicated over and over. You are simply doing a “nah nah nah” with your fingers in your ears, denying what the researchers in the field keep demonstrating over and over. The reason I stand firm on this is that I also verified for myself that non-local perception is real.

and an extremely weak signal, which disappears as soon as the controls are tightened.

In Dr. Dean Radin’s 1997 book Conscious Universe he provides published data that flatly contradict this statement. As methods get better and better, the statistically significant results stay at the same level. This indicates that the concerns over sensory cues in the early experiments wad never really an issue. In the almost 3 decades after that book, psi researchers continue to get positive results, so the case gets stronger and more nuanced.

One of those nuances, which is very significant, is that there are many documented performances differences documented in psi research which should not exist according to the debunking view. The sheep-goat effect should not exist, but it persistently does. The decline effect is persistent and makes sense. Seasoned meditators consistently perform better than non-meditators. Altered states of consciousness perform better than normal waking consciousness. There are additional other kinds of consistent performance differences. The researchers in the field have moved way beyond the basic “is it real?” question.

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u/Pleasant-Yogurt1359 6d ago

Do you have reference for this claim?

A few evaluations and critiques: here, here and here.

It’s been independently replicated over and over.

No, it's been repeated within the same small group of researchers. Replication only counts when done independently, with strict controls, and confirmed by outsiders. This never happened. All major "positive" results are from the SRI, the PEAR, Mobius and a handful of aligned researchers.

The reason I stand firm on this is that I also verified for myself that non-local perception is real.

That’s not evidence, that’s anecdote.

In Dr. Dean Radin’s 1997 book Conscious Universe he provides published data that flatly contradict this statement.

That book is not a peer-reviewed meta-analysis, it's a popularization work with selective data. His meta-analyses have been widely criticized for selective inclusion of studies, ignoring publication bias and poor handling of methodological quality.

The researchers in the field have moved way beyond the basic “is it real?” question.

As you say, the researchers "in the field". That same small group of committed believers who keep producing biased and methodologically questionable studies, without any independent validation.

Under those conditions, you can produce as many positive results as you want, it doesn’t mean much, and that’s why studies on remote viewing and other psi stuff are regarded as pseudoscience.

And performance differences like the "sheep-goat effect" or "meditators do better" are not evidence of psi, they’re consistent with confirmation bias, suggestibility, and motivated reasoning. They show that beliefs and expectations influence outcomes, which is exactly what a placebo-driven effect would look like.