[ExI] ESP

[Damien Broderick]

At 04:26 AM 9/13/2008 -0700, John Grigg wrote:

>And though unlikely it is possible that Stargate was set up to fail 
>with the purpose of providing a smokescreen for another similar 
>project (cue X-Files music...).

Star Gate didn't "fail". Read Prof. Utts's AIR reports ( 
http://anson.ucdavis.edu/~utts/response.html
http://www.stat.ucdavis.edu/~utts/air2.html ). The relevant sections 
of my book (which Lee tells us he owns but hasn't read; cough groan) 
sketch some of the contortions in this whole long process.

Essentially, it was found that remote viewing was useful as an 
adjunct to conventional intelligence gathering, but insufficient by 
itself. There was far too much pressure from the military side for 
immediate operationalizable results, despite the wish of the 
scientific side to get more work done on establishing the parameters 
of the phenomena; this produced enough startling good data that the 
program was repeatedly funded, year after year for nearly two 
decades, by its sponsors. But I think the bottom line is that these 
sponsors were demanding jet fighter aircraft from the Wright 
brothers, and as the original staff resigned in frustration or 
because their terms were up the whole thing started to fall apart.

As everyone knows who's spent a couple of days looking into this 
topic seriously, data acquired by ostensible psi is always at least 
somewhat murky and contaminated by the expectations, prejudices, 
mental set and so on of the operator and judge/s--just as it is with 
liminal perception of briefly exposed imagery in a lab. It's the 
nature of the beast. And the effect size is always small. There are 
no sf-style telepathic/precognitive supermen out there, and 
nobody  except $cientologists and Crowleyites ever thought there 
were. (Of course, some of the key SRI figures involved in starting 
Star Gate *were* $cientologists for a while, which muddies the 
waters. Again, see my book.)

Anyone open to looking into this topic might turn to Jim Schnabel's 
very funny but not altogether reliable book REMOTE VIEWERS (which is 
what first led me to think there might be something in this), and 
some of Joseph McMoneagle's first hand testimony as an Army remote 
viewer in his several books. Under no circumstances pay any attention 
at all to the lying fuckers who *pretend* to have held important 
roles in Star Gate, the likes of "Dr." David Morehouse, ret-Major Ed 
Dames, Dr. Courtney Brown, or any of the other deluded or scammish 
bullshitters who rake in money "teaching" remote viewing for 
thousands of bucks a pop, and help you get in touch with Jesus and 
the Grey Aliens. Naturally, these morons and crooks are the ones 
everyone who reads National Enquirer for their information on the 
topic will assume speak for the parapsychologists.

Damien Broderick