[ExI] psi yet again.

[Damien Broderick]

On 6/29/2010 9:05 PM, Mike Dougherty wrote:
>
> Do you consider remote viewing to be in the same class of phenomenon
> as precognition?

Quite a few remote viewing (and Ganzfeld) implementations *are* 
deliberately precognitive, to avoid, as much as possible, suspicion of 
cheating.

> Are there no well-controlled studies of precog

There are plenty of such studies. What makes you suppose otherwise? 
That's precisely what presentiment (pre-stimulus response) studies, and 
controlled, blinded attempts of say who is about to call on the phone or 
text, are, among others kinds.

> because they're more difficult to construct than remote viewing
> experiments?

RV is a specific protocol of psi implementation, that's all. (Of course 
the net is filled with liars or psychotics claiming to be able to do and 
teach it, and boasting of their lofty roles in STAR GATE, which 
generally they had nothing or very little to do with. David Morehouse is 
probably the most egregious example.##)

> I think game shows would be an interesting body of data to study for
> psi.  I have previously mentioned Jeopardy answers leaping to mind
> right before the answer is spoken (answers I could not even imagine
> encountering previously).  I also imagine the format of Match Game
> would yield interesting questions (if not answers)  Why, for example,
> was Richard Dawson chosen for the big-money match so frequently that
> they had to implement a semi-random celebrity chooser in later years?

I don't know anything at all about such games, sorry.

Damien Broderick

##"Dr" David Morehouse, a Mormon major not quite honorably discharged 
from the army for a series of offences that don't strike me as 
especially offensive--"sodomy" was one--after he had a nervous breakdown 
where he spoke to angels, published a book titled Psychic Warrior (1997) 
that Major Ed Dames (another soldier who overstates his official RV 
role) claims is largely based on his life, rather than Morehouse's....

While Jim Schnabel's book Remote Viewers was cautious and very fleeting 
on the topic of Morehouse's alleged exploits, Schnabel gave free vent to 
his distaste in an article posted widely on the Internet but now rather 
hard to find:

"To me, his story is not just about the depths to which one human can 
sink. (Morehouse is, in the end, perhaps only a sleazier, crazier 
version of the old Sgt. Bilko character.) Somehow his story also 
reflects the current state of things in America, a country that seems to 
be going insane... What else to call a people who feed hungrily, via The 
X-Files and other forms of that hugely popular genre, on paranoid 
conspiracy fantasies otherwise found only on psychiatric wards?"

Morehouse's own account of his life shows an honorable man tragically 
misused by evil manipulators, but saved from suicidal depression by 
eternal love for his angelic wife plus some actual kitschy angels and 
his patriotism and decency. It's intriguing to compare this with 
Schnabel's relentless savaging in his article, which looks rather like a 
chapter excluded mysteriously from his book: Morehouse the scummy 
womanizer, the guy with "a small home improvement business, House Tech, 
that he ran on the side." Can this be the same Morehouse who rails 
against the shocking state of morale and morals in the spook business 
(the other sort of spooks)? "And some of their private lives! A few 
staff members hardly bothered to conceal extramarital affairs... It was 
a real Peyton Place, and I hated it... Let me top my description off 
with the colonel who sold Afghani rugs out of the trunk of his car in 
the parking lot" (Morehouse, 157).

The major's alleged sexual improprieties, even his goldbricking while on 
the payroll of the Defense Intelligence Agency, are finally irrelevant. 
We all have our little quirks. It is notable, though, that none of this 
material was touched in his own book, not even to rebut it. The jacket 
mentions his PhD (in Education Administration). "My doctorate is from 
LeSalle University in Mandeville, LA.," he told me by email. He meant La 
Salle. In a rather odd disclaimer, he added: "I did not simply buy my 
degree--believe it or not, I had to work for it" (personal email 
communication). It would be easiest, obviously, to discount Morehouse as 
a former, or feigned, psychotic with schmaltzy style and delusions of 
grandeur. But we are meant to accept that this kind of operative 
provided the psychic material that the CIA and DIA and other dark powers 
once found impressive. Something about all this stinks to me of a 
disinformation package, rich in odors attractive to New Age nostrils and 
old X-Files fans but just as certain to wrinkle the snooty noses of 
skeptics.

[from OUTSIDE THE GATES OF SCIENCE]