Instructor: Rainsong
Date: February 1, 2020 (Saturday)
Seminar: Topic: Journal Club — Saturday, 1 February, 2020 at 6:30pm/1830hr New York Time — text format in the PSC #lecture room (Discord) — Instructor: Rainsong — Search LECTURE114
https://www.scientificexploration.org/docs/33/jse_33_4_Targ.pdf
Journal of Scientific Exploration, Vol. 33, No. 4, pp. 569–592, 2019 0892-3310/19 What Do We Know about Psi? The First Decade of Remote-Viewing Research and Operations at Stanford Research Institute RUSSELL TARG Submitted September 18, 2019; Accepted September 29, 2019; Published December 30, 2019 DOI: https://doi.org/10.31275/2019/1669
Rainsong: Good evening, ladies and gentlemen.
Rainsong: Welcome to another seminar here at the social club.
Rainsong: Tonight is another Journal Club session.
Rainsong: The article is a recent (ie, published just a touch over a month ago) piece that is mostly a historical reckoning, with some interesting details.
Rainsong: It’s a relatively long read, but not very complicated.
Rainsong: I discovered some interesting bits of historical trivia that I hadn’t previously been aware of.
Rainsong: Aaaaand this might be another cancelled seminar… or at least, very short
Rainsong: I know Chiro and Ceah are busy elsewhere tonight
PatchesTheCoydog: I’m here
Rainsong: Hi, Patches
Rainsong: Did you get a chance to take a look at the article?
PatchesTheCoydog: https://journalofscientificexploration.org/index.php/jse/article/view/1669/983 think this one read while ago. Did look at.
Rainsong: I found it interesting that he notes that precog is useful up to days-to-weeks in the future, rather a more open-ended range.
TehOldeSourcerer: Won’t be able to check much, power outage that might take a while
Rainsong: Hi, TehOldeSourcerer. Stay safe.
TehOldeSourcerer: Aye, using phone light to get around lol
PatchesTheCoydog: Psi ability clearly violates our ordinary ideas of causality, since future events are seen to be the cause or trigger for experiences at an earlier time” Causality in general has been thing chalenged on many grounds(Hume for skepticism about whole idea and obtaining precise definition of is difficult. Discussion of the relation of causality in general to psi might be fruitful. Hopepower outage goes well and everyone having a good weekend.
Rainsong: Hmm, yea. That could make for interesting discussion.
Rainsong: Rather than mucking up causality itself, directly, it might just reflect an imperfect understanding of the nature of time
Rainsong: “Time is an illusion. Lunch time, doubly so.” — Ford Prefect, maybe? Was from The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, in any case… or, rather, at least one version of it.
PatchesTheCoydog: I’ve heard and have tried to adhere to different acausal or trans-causal theories(which didn’t develop into muchout and embarrassed of at this point even if general concept did give I think neat construct thing). You can analyse things in terms of what’s statistically likely without implying causation, just correlation
Rainsong: nods And often something thought to be causation is mere correlation. My favourite example is the plethora of folk-remedies for rattlesnake bite
PatchesTheCoydog: But we can learn, and must learn, to recognize a true precognitive dream by its freedom from the previous day’s residue, no anxiety about possible future events, or wish fulfillment of desired future events. While these three are the basis of most ordinary, non-precognitive dreams, future-oriented dreams are recognizable by their frequent bizarre content, or unusual crystal clarity” This is comment later on in article on qualitie sof precognitive dreams. Might be useful for people wanting to recognize signs of
Rainsong: Evidently, people thought snakebite was more dangerous than it actually is. A defensive rattlesnake bite usually isn’t envenomated, and even if it were, the mortality rate is about 10% for most of the kinds of rattlers in North America…. and that includes salmonella poisoning. You can presume that any snakebite involves salmonella infection.
Rainsong: That 10% is if nothing is done at all.
Rainsong: But if you think the mortality is much higher, and someone survives after using your folk-remedy, then there’s a tendency to assume causation. IE, “it worked”
Rainsong: One of the common ones involved the consumption of large amounts of whiskey. That probably increased the mortality rate, in fact…
Rainsong: Anyway…
Rainsong: Re dreams: yes, very true. It’s a useful nugget in there 😀
Rainsong: Another useful nugget is the “What is surprising” prompt for clairvoyant data
Rainsong: Sounds like Stargate started out as a way for astronauts to be more in touch with their ships, and the espionage aspect was incidental… originally
PatchesTheCoydog: Pat Price is also discussed in article and studies done related to his work interesting and generally interesting story. Ingo Swanns viewing of gas giants also discussed i article
Rainsong: And I’m always amused that Hella Hermid was supposed to be the “control” in the experiment, because she had no experience with psi, and agreed to participate on a lark because she thought it would be funny
Rainsong: Re Swann:… “What interesting things do you think the probe will find out about Jupiter?”
Rainsong: “The ring around it”
Rainsong: “You must be thinking of Saturn”
Rainsong: “I know the difference between Jupiter and Saturn >:( ”
Rainsong: It’s not exactly a controversial paper
PatchesTheCoydog: ” In conclusion, I propose that in our interconnected nonlocal space–time, feedback about the target to a viewer is not necessary. If a viewer’s consciousness has direct access to any point in space–time, we do not have to invoke any kind of separate retrocausation. The viewer doesn’t have to ever physically see or experience the feedback. That is to say, he is not, in general, reading his own future mind as some, such as physicist Gerald Feinberg, conjectured”-One question the study does claim to answer is the issue of if viewers are just giving themselves information from their future selves and answers in negative. Which does have import fr any attempt to find a physical basis for psi among other things.
Rainsong: nods Some of the evidence in favour of “not giving themselves information from their future selves” is simply that Mr. Price died before getting feedback on some of his sessions. (And of course, operationally, it’s common to never get feedback)
Rainsong: Thanks for participating 😀
Rainsong: At work, Journal Club sessions where there is controversy are often more fun than those which are either not controversial or on which everyone in attendance is in agreement…
Rainsong: …but this seemed like it would be a fun little paper to cover, and it wasn’t behind a paywall
Rainsong: I didn’t actually read it until last night (I don’t choose the papers according to which ones I agree with. Just things that seem interesting, and demonstrate that there are papers on this topic)
Rainsong: When I asked about length limits, it was suggest that a maximum of 40 pages is reasonable, halving the length for each equation involved.
Rainsong: So, that ruled out a 41-page piece with so many equations in the first two pages alone, that halving for each would reduce it to part of the first sentence in the abstract XD Won’t be using that one.
Rainsong: The topics for the next couple weeks are basic reviews, and then the next Journal Club selection was, admittedly, becuase I recognised the paper from a presentation I saw at a conference, when looking for something else.
Rainsong: Then a couple more basics (including an RV bit we haven’t covered before)… and then we get into a syllabus prompted by an NSA paper too fun to pass up. “Parapsychology: The COMSEC Threat and SIGINT Capability”… Otherwise known as “you’d think we were actively trying to get in trouble with the alphabet soup guys”
PatchesTheCoydog: https://www.nature.com/articles/251602a0 here’s link to abstract f one of articles references in article thugh not full ne. Looked sme for full aerticles of bt culdn’t http://www.ijhssnet.com/journals/Vol_1_No_11_Special_Issue_August_2011/22.pdf there thing going back to earlier bit abut causality if anyne interested. Those sund cool. Thans for journal sminar. Hope are well
Rainsong: Thanks for these. I hope things are well for you, too 😀
Frater Animo: I’m a little late but good read