The CIA declassified all information, and while the 70s documents show clear interest and weird results, reading it in chronological order is very interesting as you can feel desillusions set in as experimental protocols hardens and results prove irreproducible.
It was not a "CIA project" - it was a US Army unit; the name "STAR GATE" is merely the final public program name for a bunch of related programs; collectively, their intelligence missions served government customers including the special forces, CIA, NSA, DIA, NRO, etc.
- They didn't "declassify everything", there's lots of redactions and more documents;
- it wasn't "scrapped after not showing anything despite some participants claiming it did", RV has a very high success rate (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42584264), and Stargate became an unacknowledged program - these are facts despite some unhinged internet commenters seemingly having an issue with it; and
- "reading it in chronological order" - you don't see disillusion or non-reproducible results, you see 25 years in a row of renewed funding on the back of quality intelligence product continued being ordered by government customers.
I wonder, with all the ways you went wrong, did you have to try very hard to make that up?
It also didn't "explore parasciences: telepathy, twin telepathy" as if that was the main thing - Stargate mostly researched, developed and practiced remote viewing. Which you can try too, which probably would be a good idea, so maybe you come up with more accurate stuff than you did here. Head to https://reddit.com/r/remoteviewing/ and learn something before you talk next time. Good idea, right? Hahaha!
Since we're talking about secret military and CIA projects, a fun thing that the "Stargate SG-1" TV series (about a secret military project) did at one point was to have a plot arc around a conspiracy theorist character, who was going to expose the project. So, to placate the conspiracy theorist, and discredit public chatter that was getting too close to the truth, the military in the TV series... commissioned a cheesy military sci-fi TV series, based on the truth of the actual military sci-fi TV series.
"Wormhole X-treme": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gT-Vf_x4Dc4
They even did a faux behind-the-scenes piece for it, within the TV series universe (which then broke the fourth wall, to reference the entire real-world franchise): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n0hW0A43n3Y
In addition, there's a remote viewing subreddit which holds regular practices and encourages you to post results: https://reddit.com/r/remoteviewing
And IRVA (intl. association) has a pretty good scientific bibliography if that floats your boat: https://www.irva.org/library/bibliography
The interviews are fairly well done in my opinion.
Hm, I wouldn't say RV is controversial - only possibly in the sense that heliocentrism was controversial in the 15th and 16th centuries: i.e., to the folks who had not been exposed to the data showing the Earth orbits the Sun. Specifically tho, this sentiment and similar in other comments, are common misrepresentations or misconceptions. Here are the key stats from the same ("Stargate") document archives - by 1983:
85% of 700 RV missions gave accurate target information.
50% of 700 RV missions produced usable intelligence.
50% does not mean the "success rate was chance", because the odds of randomly producing actionable intelligence for a mission based solely off an opaque 6 digit number (ie, the "Coordinate" in Coordinate RV), are far lower than 50% of the time. These stats are from a FOIA'd briefing transcript by Lt. Col Buzby, the Project Manager of INSCOM (United States Army Intelligence and Security Command) RV project "CENTER LANE". The full quote is:In summary, over the past 5 years INSCOM has conducted 89 collection projects for a number of different US government agencies. Our successes must be examined from two perspectives. (Chart change) Over 85% of our operational missions have produced accurate target information. Even more significant, approximately 50% of the 700 missions produced usable intelligence.
Page 8,
https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP96-00788R001700330003-6.pdf
More context: "Stargate" was the program name for the final declassified RV program which absorbed many previous programs such as Center Lane (early 80s), Grill Flame, etc.More facts: Hal Puthoff has suggested in a recent interview with Eric Weinstein and Jesse Michels that the RV programs were not discontinued when declassified in 1995, but rather "went dark" (became unacknowledged special access programs). The "debunking" report accompanying the 1995 declassification was most likely ritual cover for this.
I'm not saying that this is impossible, but if it's true, we would have to throw out much - perhaps all - of present day scientific consensus.
One comment I've seen on Reddit seems to offer an alternative explanation:
>RV functions as a kind of precognition-on-demand. Think about it like the opposite of memory. Instead of setting your intention to view information from a memory in the past, you are setting your intention to view information from an experience you will have in the future, which is the act of checking feedback. If you have no real world feedback, then you have no verifiable real world data in your session.
Still outside of mainstream science, but I think there are some theories of quantum mechanics where the future can affect the past? If that were the case, being informed that the target was "Mars, 1 million years ago" might inspire one to come up with a narrative like that and transmit it to your past self?
Personally, I have no idea what the theory is, but it's an interesting question. I guess it might be beyond the reach of our current theoretical understandings to explain it. Which, from the point of view of advancing understanding of reality, makes it particularly interesting data - that you can obtain at no cost yourself.
I guess we wouldn't have to discard our consensus, but rather see present understanding from a more rigorously (and purely) "Scientific" point of view: as mere temporary models, beads in a evolving chain of understanding, to be discarded and adapted (not worshipped or imposed). That's true science. Maybe our coherent predictive theories represent a good description of "top layer" physical reality, but fail to describe a possible "substrate layer" where consciousness an information play integral roles. In a like way to how physical properties and descriptions change when moving media, from air to water, or space.
PEAR lab research "retrocausality" (fairly conclusively showing that future image stimulus could affect present biosigns). I think that's another effect of the underlying thing, but it's not the whole thing. How can you view the past? How can RV work when no "remote human" is involved?
Do you have any other sources on that? I would imagine someone replicated this...
And it's not what I'm actually looking for. I'm looking for controlled studies with a falsifiable hypothesis and a detailed section on the study design :)
I've spent some time looking for such studies and I didn't find anything (convincing). So if anyone has something to share, I'd appreciate that
Then once you have sufficient prior data, you'll be able to actually look at the evidence (stuff, academic) if that actually interests you!
I would say it is, because as always with anything on the "para" edge, those who are convinced remain convinced and those who are not keep on saying it's a fraud. This applies to you, dear reader.
Anyone can get 100% accuracy by guessing trivial things that are always true regardless of the nature of the target. Without more information these numbers aren't meaningful
https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP96-00788R0011002...
Obviously people lie but a compelling report.
More probably the conclusions from the project manager are positive exaggerations because it would directly benefit from the continuation of the project but let's consider the possibility that RV works! This would be a fantastic evidence of psychic/paranormal phenomena that would make anyone reconsider other paranormal/spiritual claims that we're previously dismissed. Which creates a dilemma because if I'm non-receptive to paranormal phenomena it will not work and there's no point in trying and if I'm receptive then it's unwise because divination is sinful according to the majority of religions.
I imagine there's a "reality" be it real or fictitious where RV and other forms of divination works but ain't widespread enough to be scientifically acknowledged because those really capable of it knows it leads to eternal damnation so they don't practice it or share it publicly. In this same "reality" it's possible that the CIA as other intelligence agencies successfully used divination to acquire intel but discontinued it as they did with Blackbird because nowadays the have much better ways like software backdoors, spy satellites and even OSINT. And to note at best RV produces subjective intel which is non-optimal.
https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP96-00788R001100290005-5.pdf
Page 12 (final page)But trivial things that are always true does not describe the information sought by government customers from these programs, to which the above data refer.
> How come nobody can replicate this in less opaque settings?
You can, right now! You can try it yourself, see my other comments in this thread for resources.
Those numbers aren't described with the level of rigor needed to be considered evidence. No examples, no methodology, etc. We don't know what "usable intelligence" means. You have taken the liberty of interpreting that in a particularly generous way.
> You can, right now!
I mean under controlled conditions. Why didn't any of these people in /r/remoteviewing sign up for the JREF $1 million prize? Or at least contact parapsychologists (e.g. Dean Radin or Daryl Bem) who would have been happy to facilitate rigorous public experiments? The best we have from experiments is statistical effects, e.g. guessing a coinflip correctly 51% of the time over large numbers of trials. Not the kind of large, obvious effects that "50% useable intelligence" or "85% accuracy" is hinting at.
So you need to try if you are serious about getting the truth. Think of it like doing the required pre-requisite work to understand a new topic. This is the same.
Why would you enter a competition you believe was a rigged attempt to disprove what you know through first hand experience to be real?
However, if you believe parallel construction was needed, I suppose you are also acknowledging the intel was good. If you have concerns the Stargate archives are disinformation to disguise a true source, you can interrogate this belief that RV is mere parallel construction by trying it yourself. Just head over to https://reddit.com/r/remoteviewing and follow the FAQ to try a session. See how you go!