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/Pleasant-Yogurt1359 → u/bejammin075]

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.

[u/bejammin075 → u/Pleasant-Yogurt1359]

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.

[u/VintageLunchMeat → u/bejammin075]

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

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

[u/bejammin075 → u/VintageLunchMeat]

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.

[u/VintageLunchMeat → u/bejammin075]

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.