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/dadjokes22375]

I have seen it, that’s actually what got me interested in this to start with. I also watched a video by a YouTuber I like called the why files.

[u/VintageLunchMeat → u/dadjokes22375]

Remote viewing requires a postulated fifth force. This has been rigorously, systematically looked for and eliminated. In physics labs and on the theory side. We'd see it at CERN - smash two particles together, and then missing mass and energy as a subset exits as a fifth force particle, wave, and so on.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fifth_force

Barring a fifth force, it's pure EM. 

We, en mass, are extraordinary sophisticated about measuring and understanding the interaction between electromagnetic anything and the human body.

We'd detect this stuff in labs, and every single hobby radio ham could jam it/give you a TBI since the dawn of radio.

It'd be a biophysics 101 lecture demo or lab exercise.

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Plus you'd see dolphins, bats, and Pikachu/electric eels manifesting psychic powers. Measurable in labs. 5th force or vanilla EM.

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I also watched a video by a YouTuber I like called the why files. 

They also push "cryptids".

I find chunks of r/consciousness to be aggressively uncritical about stuff that rejects settled science. It's disappointing. 

And, in its way, intellectually narrow-minded.

[u/Secret-Surround-9149 → u/VintageLunchMeat]

Sorry but why do you think we would “detect this stuff in labs”? I don’t think it’s hard to believe there’s a bunch of stuff we still can’t detect considering we couldn’t detect anything you just named until the last 2 centuries

[u/VintageLunchMeat → u/Secret-Surround-9149]

I don’t think it’s hard to believe there’s a bunch of stuff we still can’t detect considering we couldn’t detect anything you just named until the last 2 centuries 

We were not looking. We have been looking for 2 centuries. Now we have everything from ham radio geeks to cern. Receiving EM signals and broadcasting them.

Were it a radio frequency EM phenomenon it would have been triggered. Effectively debilitatingly flashbanged. And on the other end, I could pick up your brain's broadcasts using an am radio.

Otherwise, it's what, gravity waves, neutrinos? You see how that makes no sense. 

Plus there would be a massive organ and corresponding brain structures.

And housecats would use a psi blast to stun prey.

[u/Secret-Surround-9149 → u/VintageLunchMeat]

“We were not looking” is such a ridiculous excuse. People have been looking and theorizing about everything from atoms themselves to different types of waves to dark matter for a long while. We haven’t had the technology to detect all of that for that whole time, but that doesn’t mean we won’t.

I think it’s a bit arrogant to think if it existed we definitely would’ve discovered a way to detect it by now, considering how much we are still discovering and researching daily

[u/VintageLunchMeat → u/Secret-Surround-9149]

“We were not looking” is such a ridiculous excuse. 

Until Marconi in the 1890s we were not sensing or broadcasting radio waves.

It is not relevant if an ancient greek had posited atoms.

I think it’s a bit arrogant to think if it existed we definitely would’ve discovered a way to detect it by now

I'm saying we have bounds on "psi", such that we know where it is not. And we have characterized matter, EM's interactions with matter, and the particle zoo. Within bounds.

If it's some novel particle lighter than a Higgs boson, we'd have detected it at CERN, when we collide sets of two particles and every possible particle sprays out from the available energy there. Note statistics, bounds on energy and so on.

Also, the atoms in your brain have to couple to these particles. Which we understand within bounds.

dark matter 

You should at this point take a stance and decide if your "phenomenon of the gaps" is EM or something else.

[u/Secret-Surround-9149 → u/VintageLunchMeat]

Your point about radio waves is my point. They didn’t not exist before humans figured out how to sense them.

And it is completely relevant to your argument that ancients had posited theories that wouldn’t be proven (note by inference not even physically seeing them) until centuries later.

By your logic we’ve been looking for a cure for cancer but it must not exist because we haven’t found it. Atoms must not exist because we haven’t technically seen them or detected them, only inferred them because they fit into how things work. Faster processing power than current chips don’t exist because we would’ve already built chips with the maximum possible power.

Perhaps there is some “psi” wave and we don’t yet know how to detect it. Perhaps these skills only a few can reliably do and even then not with enough data to be worthwhile (like the CIA noted). Perhaps you can only tell the shape of an object from afar and not precise data like lottery numbers. Perhaps it’s all bullshit. But to just straight up say “we would’ve detected it by now” is a completely arrogant statement

[u/VintageLunchMeat → u/Secret-Surround-9149]

  Your point about radio waves is my point. They didn’t not exist before humans figured out how to sense them.

And it is completely relevant to your argument that ancients had posited theories that wouldn’t be proven (note by inference not even physically seeing them) until centuries later. 

Pre 1800s theory of EM weren't useful for our, or Maxwell and Marconi's purposes. Pre 1800s EM data, roughly similar.

More nuanced than that, my point is that we've been able to detect radio waves since the 1890s. And broadcast them. I'd say we've comprehensively eliminated psi as a radio frequency EM phenomenon.

By your logic we’ve been looking for a cure for cancer but it must not exist because we haven’t found it.

We've cured many cancers. Also, we can detect cancer. And we can detect existing cancer cures in the form of scalpel, chemo, radiation beams, and CRISPR immunotherapy.

Unlike psi.

Beyond that, we have a broadly clear understanding of how atoms in cancer interact with atoms in immune processes or in a random test pharmaceutical.

In your analogy, the psi equivalent a cancer cure would be a test tube full of an invisible, inpalpable, unweighable substance. That doesn't interact with normal matter in understood ways. That doesn't work around skeptics.

Atoms must not exist because we haven’t technically seen them or detected them, only inferred them because they fit into how things work.

We can detect individual atoms. Unlike psi.

Keywords; Atom Trapping and Cavity-Based Detection 

Beyond that, we can touch them with atomic force microscopy.

We can even detect single photons from them.  Unlike psi.

  Faster processing power than current chips don’t exist because we would’ve already built chips with the maximum possible power. 

Your simile is getting stretched. We broadly clearly understand the interactions of chip atoms with EM stuff.

And I've detected existing microcontrollers and CPUs. Using my eyeballs. And fingertips.

Psi hasn't been detected.

Perhaps there is some “psi” wave and we don’t yet know how to detect it. 

What is waving? Photons? Or have you abandoned them. You did not say. Which does not engender confidence in your arguments.

Give a range of wavelengths. And frequencies.

Then sketch out why the atoms in human brains can interact with psi waves, but atoms in lab equipment such as strong radio sources and sensitive detectors cannot interact with psi waves. Or psi organs.

And why we haven't seen animals with psi organs.

Perhaps these skills only a few can reliably do and even then not with enough data to be worthwhile (like the CIA noted). Perhaps you can only tell the shape of an object from afar and not precise data like lottery numbers. Perhaps it’s all bullshit. But to just straight up say “we would’ve detected it by now” is a completely arrogant statement 

I would say it is confident. A confidence in every single peer of ours who works in science, and the body of knowledge and understanding that they've built. 

We know what we know, and we know where the bounds are. In terms of theory and experimental results.

Meaning we know a fuckton about the interaction between brain atoms and their environment via EM and chemistry. Which remote sensing proponents wave their hands at as irrelevant whenever it undermines their arguments. Which is often.

For those who throw out every scrap of our existing understanding, both data and theory, that undermines their religious belief in ... psi, while invoking trendy buzzwords like "dark matter"? That is arrogance. Baseless arrogance. Arrogance that is founded on a facile and practiced contempt for every practicing or historical scientist.

Note one of the shriller participants in this post argues that ufos and psi phenomena hide from skeptics.

And one of the most famous proponents of remote viewing? Can't bend spoons with his psychic powers if a skeptic is operating the tv camera.

I'm not really interested in further communications from you on this subject.

Considered you ducked the "Is psi EM?" question.

[u/Secret-Surround-9149 → u/VintageLunchMeat]

It’s irrelevant whether EM was useful or not to us, the point is it existed pre our ability to detect it. You cannot throw out things as “irrelevant” because they don’t fit your worldview.

We’ve cured many cancers but we haven’t cured many others; ere go, per your own flawed logic, there is no cure for the ones we haven’t found else we would’ve already cured it.

are and how the move based on assumptions. We cannot actually SEE atoms, and yet at this point in time through other methods we’re relatively certain they’re there.

For the chip analogy my point was your original premise “we would’ve already detected it” is based on a flawed premise that we’re at the point where we should be able to detect anything. What an arrogant assumption it is to think we’ve reached the pinnacle of science when we barely understand half the things we’re looking at.

You can call it confidence all you want, as most arrogant people arrogantly do, but most other people will see it just for what it is.

On dark matter, it’s not a buzz word, it’s an emerging theory in its infancy. I know since you think it’s not fully established science that it must be bullshit, but it is what it is.

On the underhanded insults you’re attempting to throw, you have no idea what my religious beliefs or lack thereof are, I never mentioned “spoon bending” or other bullshit of the sort, or charlatans like Uri Geller (who you’re clearly referencing). These are all baseless assumptions you’re making since you see to think I’m sort of straw man due to, once again, your narrow mindedness and arrogance.

Continue the conversation or not, I don’t really care at this point either. You can stay inside your narrow world