Remote View­ing is Evi­dent — But What is its Use­ful­ness now and in the Future?

All the evi­dence con­cern­ing Remote View­ing points to it being an unde­ni­able phe­nom­ena. Jes­sica Utts in another great report on remote View­ing shares some very inter­est­ing find­ings. She also illus­trates what the path­way for­ward for Remote View­ing should be.

It’s about time that we stopped test­ing for evi­dence of Remote View­ing. She shares that it’s time to ask a lot more per­ti­nent ques­tions such as:

“How does this abil­ity work?”

She goes on to describe her vision:

“I am con­fi­dent that the ques­tions are no more elu­sive than any other ques­tions in sci­ence deal­ing with small to medium sized effects, and that if appro­pri­ate resources are tar­geted to appro­pri­ate ques­tions, we can have answers within the next decade.”

Use­ful­ness of Remote Viewing

by Jes­sica Utts

Even if we were all to agree that anom­alous cog­ni­tion is pos­si­ble, there remains the ques­tion of whether or not it would have any prac­ti­cal use for gov­ern­ment pur­poses.  Some spec­u­la­tions can be made about how to increase the use­ful­ness.

3 Great Find­ings on Remote Viewing

1) Indi­vid­ual Differences

First, it appears that anom­alous cog­ni­tion is to some extent pos­si­ble in the gen­eral pop­u­la­tion. None of the ganzfeld exper­i­ments used exclu­sively selected sub­jects. How­ever, it also appears that cer­tain indi­vid­u­als pos­sess more tal­ent than oth­ers, and that it is eas­ier to find those indi­vid­u­als than to train peo­ple. It also appears to be the case that cer­tain indi­vid­u­als are bet­ter at some tasks than oth­ers. For instance, Viewer 372 at SAIC appears to have a facil­ity with describ­ing tech­ni­cal sites.

2) Users Trained on its Potential

Sec­ond, if remote view­ing is to be use­ful, the end users must be trained in what it can do and what it can­not. Given our cur­rent level of under­stand­ing, it is rarely 100 per­cent accu­rate, and there is no reli­able way to learn what is accu­rate and what is not. The same is prob­a­bly true of most sources of intel­li­gence data.

3) Breadth of its Uses

Third, what is use­ful for one pur­pose may not be use­ful for another. For instance, sup­pose a remote viewer could describe the set­ting in which a hostage is being held. That infor­ma­tion may not be any use at all to those unfa­mil­iar with the ter­ri­tory, but could be use­ful to those famil­iar with it.

Remote View­ing: Where Next?

It is clear to this author that anom­alous cog­ni­tion is pos­si­ble and has been demon­strated. This con­clu­sion is not based on belief, but rather on com­monly accepted sci­en­tific cri­te­ria. The phe­nom­e­non has been repli­cated in a num­ber of forms across lab­o­ra­to­ries and cultures.

The var­i­ous exper­i­ments in which it has been observed have been dif­fer­ent enough that if some sub­tle method­olog­i­cal prob­lems can explain the results, then there would have to be a dif­fer­ent expla­na­tion for each type of exper­i­ment, yet the impact would have to be sim­i­lar across exper­i­ments and lab­o­ra­to­ries. If fraud were respon­si­ble, sim­i­larly, it would require an equiv­a­lent amount of fraud on the part of a large num­ber of exper­i­menters or an even larger num­ber of subjects.

What is not so clear is that we have pro­gressed very far in under­stand­ing the mech­a­nism for anom­alous cog­ni­tion. Senders do not appear to be nec­es­sary at all; feed­back of the cor­rect answer may or may not be nec­es­sary. Dis­tance in time and space do not seem to be an imped­i­ment. Beyond those con­clu­sions, we know very little.

I believe that it would be waste­ful of valu­able resources to con­tinue to look for proof. No one who has exam­ined all of the data across lab­o­ra­to­ries, taken as a col­lec­tive whole, has been able to sug­gest method­olog­i­cal or sta­tis­ti­cal prob­lems to explain the ever-increasing and con­sis­tent results to date. Resources should be directed to the per­ti­nent ques­tions about how this abil­ity works.

Wit­ness the full report »

Are you look­ing for more infor­ma­tion? Why not read up on How to Learn Remote Viewing.