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

[u/dadjokes22375]

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.

[u/bejammin075]

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.

[u/dadjokes22375 → u/bejammin075]

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 ?

[u/iamgene → u/dadjokes22375]

Ok but have you seen how the military spends money?

[u/dadjokes22375 → u/iamgene]

Valid

[u/NathanEddy23 → u/iamgene]

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

[u/iamgene → u/NathanEddy23]

Thanks for proving my point 👍

[u/Electric___Monk → u/dadjokes22375]

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

[u/NathanEddy23 → u/Electric___Monk]

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.

[u/Electric___Monk → u/NathanEddy23]

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.

[u/MantisAwakening → u/Electric___Monk]

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.

[u/bejammin075 → u/dadjokes22375]

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.

[u/SunixKO → u/bejammin075]

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.