Post by drredpill on Nov 30, 2006 17:41:58 GMT 10
I. Introduction
In the three decades since its introduction into the modern vocabulary, the term "remote viewing" has come to signify many things to many people: while its basic definition ("the acquisition and description, by mental means, of information blocked from ordinary perception by distance, shielding or time"*) is easily quoted by both supporters and detractors, it is often surprising to realize how few individuals on both sides of the argument understand its implications. The protocol at the heart of RV, which states that the viewer and everyone present during the collection of the RV data must be completely blind to the nature of the target, is in effect the functional definition of remote viewing, which separates the body of scientific evidence from the facile claims of sensationalism and self-delusion.
Why should we make this point at the very beginning of our discussion? The reason is sadly evident to those who have spent any part of their career engaged in parapsychological research (see IEEE Symposia p.xxv-xxvi; McMoneagle 2002, p.132; Radin 1997, p3-9): in no other discipline are ridicule and accusations of fraud based on so little factual understanding of the research material. Why bother to read the methodology, why pay attention to the scores of meta-analyses, why respond to repeated invitations to observe and criticize an experimental design - when we know a priori that these results cannot be true? That seems to be the reasoning among most physicists - the same people who, as David Deutsch notes, "suffer from a loss of nerve" when it comes to accepting the strangeness of quantum reality and who, "for the first time in history [...] refuse to believe what their reigning theory says about the world" (Folgers).
Yet it is precisely to the physics community that these studies in anomalous cognition and anomalous perturbation should be most meaningful. Anyone who has taken the time to review the research literature which has accumulated in this field over the past eight decades understands that the question is no longer "whether", but "how". The consistency of distant mental interactions over a wide spectrum of applications ranging from remote viewing to medical Qigong reminds one of last century's "two minor clouds on the scientific horizon": in spite of our efforts, it seems that mere manipulation of the standard model will not make them disappear. These results lead back to some of the most intractable problems in fundamental physics - such as the measurement problem, the nature of time, non-locality and the quantum/relativity interface. For example, QM theory implies that observation, hence consciousness, interfaces with matter in some "mysterious way" which causes the collapse of the quantum wave function and ultimately affects the localization of a quantum system in a definite state. The evidence from parapsychology
(in particular remote viewing and Qigong)
suggests that these effects are not restricted to the forbiddingly small and fragile quantum scale, but manifest on a level where our intervention can become part of the experiment in a much more controlled and robust way.
The existence of these effects at the macroscopic level and the degree of mental control that one can learn to exert in the framework of such experiments means that, for the first time, we have the means to actively probe the "phase space" of mind-matter interactions. Such studies could represent a royal road to our understanding of spacetime and the testing of alternative cosmological models.
Even within the mainstream, there is today a growing understanding that the current physics platform needs to be expanded. But so far the search for a new, powerful model has suffered from what we could call a lack of ontological direction and an unwillingness to open more than one can of worms at a time. Thus our attempts reduce to stretching and patching current models, for example focusing on engineering a junction between relativity and quantum theory - while other deeply disturbing symptoms of model fatigue continue to be ignored. More precisely, some problems have been resurrected once we found a technical, instead of philosophical way to formulate them (see quantum computing and information teleportation instead of non-locality); while other symptoms are still too embarrassing to be mentioned in polite company (see observer effect).
As it turns out, these difficult and persistent questions are historically related through the work of three people, whose great insight was that information flow might be intimately linked with the structure of spacetime, in addition to that of material systems. Although this radical new paradigm has lead to two different cosmological interpretations (see Parallel Universes for Everett and Deutsch, and Topological Geometrodynamics for Pitkanen), the theoretical leap signifies the same thing: for the first time we have a framework in which consciousness is no longer the uninvited guest disrupting the conference with annoying party tricks, but a legitimate and essential "founding father".
In this paper we shall try to present an argument for such an alternative cosmology (Matti Pitkanen's Topological Geometrodynamics), based on a series of general observations from the available literature on remote viewing and other forms of anomalous cognition. This is far from a comprehensive model, but it lays a foundation for a theoretical framework combining physical and cognitive structures as fundamental, interchangeable quanta of reality. It is our hope that this rather naive argument will act as a stimulus for our readers to examine the proposals of TGD in the full detail of their implications for particle physics, biophysics and information theory.
____________
* CRV Manual
II. Some preliminary observations: errors and error-correcting modes in RV
Our point of departure shall be a basic phenomenon that has been noted almost universally by those involved in experimental telepathy and remote viewing: that of mental contagion. In short, the term refers to the transmission of mental images from one participant to another without the conscious intent to do so (Warcollier 2001, Warcollier 1927, 1928; Targ & Katra; CRV manual; Swann 1996a; Jaegers)
Although telepathic overlay, as this type of noise is known in RV terminology, clearly constitutes an impediment to accurate data collection, we would like to argue that it has been too easily dismissed as a "problem" and that its value in understanding the mechanics of remote mental interactions can hardly be overestimated. In fact, it serves to remember that RV has historically developed on a solid foundation laid by Rene Warcollier and his decades of experimental research with group telepathy: clearly while the application focus is different in RV, there is much to be learned from Warcollier's insights.
Whatever the nature of the signal line between viewer and target, the initial contact is clearly dependent on the mental interactions of the participants ("intent is the glue that holds RV together") and that alone justifies a more serious analysis of group mental interactions.
In "La telepathie experimentale" (Revue Metapsychique, 1926-1927), Warcollier discusses his series of studies with batteries of senders and recipients, noting that "the most extraordinary observation we have made [under our experimental conditions] is that the percipients have very frequently shared identical spontaneous images (perceived visually or intuitively) whose origin remained unknown." Also - "Their lack of coherence seemed to indicate an origin external to the experimenters, but that was doubtlessly only an appearance. Our 1923 experiences [...] have revealed very numerous cases of analogous perception between the percipients, which were altogether independent from those that the agent intended to transmit. It was a true mental contagion of errors [...] probably [...] the transmission of a [...] fragmentary, subconscious thoughts of one of the percipients"
We have extensively quoted from this article because the phenomenon in question is here, more than anywhere else in the literature, treated as a meaningful datum and deliberately observed across an extensive series of experiments. Nevertheless, while others have failed to accord it a similar significance, they still made note of it in a variety of experimental settings ranging from remote viewing (where it can manifest as both perception of other participants' thoughts, or as identification of unknown viewers tasking the same target outside the experiment); to forensic psychometry; to simultaneous dream telepathy (Targ and Katra; Mars p. 103, 106-8; Ullman & Krippner p17, 66-67; Jaegers; CRV manual).
It would appear that the possibility of telepathic "contamination" is a universal feature of remote mental interactions: as long as a common point, or node is shared by several participants, there seems to be at least a finite time interval for which information can flow bi-directionally along all established mental "bridges". At this point, however, the notion of nodes and bridges is still ill-defined: we shall try to reach a more concrete understanding of this blueprint in sections III and IV.
It is also useful, at the start of this discussion, to realize that some form of critical mass effect is often noted in remote mental interactions: for example, in an experiment conducted by Dr. Arden Mahlberg, a Wisconsin psychologist, subjects showed that they were able to learn the Morse code much faster than an alternative code designed for the purpose of this experiment - even though the two codes had the same level of complexity. In a series of controlled experiments conducted between 1983-1985, Rupert Sheldrake has shown that difficult-to-discern patterns became much easier to spot for the first time by test subjects all over the world after several million people had been shown the answer on a local TV broadcast. These effects are not restricted to humans: as early as 1923, Russian physiologist Pavlov ran a series of studies in mice where he taught them to run to a feeding place when a bell was rung: to his surprise, the first generation required an average 300 trials to learn, the second 100, the third 30, and the fourth only 10.
(Borland 2000; Gilman 1986). Similar results have been obtained in other animal models, such as monkey populations on isolated islands, where newly learned behavior suddenly spread from one population to the others, despite the absence of direct communication.
It therefore becomes clear that any model claiming to elucidate the mechanism of anomalous cognition must go beyond the mere invocation of a shared Single Mind and show how the individual modules of this universal mind communicate with each other. That information is shared non-locally is clear: but whether and when this information is available at a given point in the global matrix is far less obvious. It is this question that will be the central focus of our argument.
Let us then continue by listing a few more well-known empirical observations:
- remote viewing appears to be an intrinsically non-deterministic process: even the best viewers agree that the expected accuracy rarely surpasses 70% on a consistent basis, but that this value may fluctuate wildly and unpredictably. While the reliability of the data tends to increase with practice, failures can and do occur even after decades of rigorous professional training (McMoneagle 2000 p. 205, 209; McMoneagle 1997 p 216), but they may also alternate with direct hits. In other words, while the mental and physical state of the viewer may negatively influence results, a perceived optimal state in a highly trained viewer is still not a guarantee of success. Unlike musical or athletic training, where "great form" can be cultivated and expected to yield relatively consistent results over a given period, no such expectation is a valid assumption in RV. (McMoneagle 1997 p. 230; McMoneagle 2000, p33-35; McMoneagle 2002 p. 82 )
- like telepathic signals, remote viewing data arrives in a range of sensory modalities (visual imagery, tactile feelings, sounds, tastes, smells, even electrical or magnetic fields - in addition to emotional and conceptual information (Targ and Katra) and displays heavy fragmentation. While in his work Warcollier has noted the predilection of certain percipients for consistent types of distortions (Warcollier 2001, p 61), introducing the notion of signal processing as a function of the percipient's psychophysiological profile (the parallel with psychoanalysis is unavoidable), we would like to focus our attention on the very nature of this fragmentation: why, if a contact with the target has presumably been established, should the signal suffer this much breakdown and modification? Note that the problem is not merely analogous to "static noise" or intermittent break-up -
the data is literally scrambled: the color or texture of an object may not arrive at the same time with or be association with the shape of the object, an image may be transmitted as an abstract concept or a symbol, details may figure more prominently than the central concept, associated functions, motion or emotions may manifest before or without any grasp of the physical object; the orientation of the target is often reversed, or the size grossly under/overestimated; etc. (Warcollier 2001 p xxxvii, xl, 31; McMoneagle 1997, 2000; Targ & Katra; IEEE Symposia p 29, 46; McMoneagle 2002, p. 99, 191)
In the three decades since its introduction into the modern vocabulary, the term "remote viewing" has come to signify many things to many people: while its basic definition ("the acquisition and description, by mental means, of information blocked from ordinary perception by distance, shielding or time"*) is easily quoted by both supporters and detractors, it is often surprising to realize how few individuals on both sides of the argument understand its implications. The protocol at the heart of RV, which states that the viewer and everyone present during the collection of the RV data must be completely blind to the nature of the target, is in effect the functional definition of remote viewing, which separates the body of scientific evidence from the facile claims of sensationalism and self-delusion.
Why should we make this point at the very beginning of our discussion? The reason is sadly evident to those who have spent any part of their career engaged in parapsychological research (see IEEE Symposia p.xxv-xxvi; McMoneagle 2002, p.132; Radin 1997, p3-9): in no other discipline are ridicule and accusations of fraud based on so little factual understanding of the research material. Why bother to read the methodology, why pay attention to the scores of meta-analyses, why respond to repeated invitations to observe and criticize an experimental design - when we know a priori that these results cannot be true? That seems to be the reasoning among most physicists - the same people who, as David Deutsch notes, "suffer from a loss of nerve" when it comes to accepting the strangeness of quantum reality and who, "for the first time in history [...] refuse to believe what their reigning theory says about the world" (Folgers).
Yet it is precisely to the physics community that these studies in anomalous cognition and anomalous perturbation should be most meaningful. Anyone who has taken the time to review the research literature which has accumulated in this field over the past eight decades understands that the question is no longer "whether", but "how". The consistency of distant mental interactions over a wide spectrum of applications ranging from remote viewing to medical Qigong reminds one of last century's "two minor clouds on the scientific horizon": in spite of our efforts, it seems that mere manipulation of the standard model will not make them disappear. These results lead back to some of the most intractable problems in fundamental physics - such as the measurement problem, the nature of time, non-locality and the quantum/relativity interface. For example, QM theory implies that observation, hence consciousness, interfaces with matter in some "mysterious way" which causes the collapse of the quantum wave function and ultimately affects the localization of a quantum system in a definite state. The evidence from parapsychology
(in particular remote viewing and Qigong)
suggests that these effects are not restricted to the forbiddingly small and fragile quantum scale, but manifest on a level where our intervention can become part of the experiment in a much more controlled and robust way.
The existence of these effects at the macroscopic level and the degree of mental control that one can learn to exert in the framework of such experiments means that, for the first time, we have the means to actively probe the "phase space" of mind-matter interactions. Such studies could represent a royal road to our understanding of spacetime and the testing of alternative cosmological models.
Even within the mainstream, there is today a growing understanding that the current physics platform needs to be expanded. But so far the search for a new, powerful model has suffered from what we could call a lack of ontological direction and an unwillingness to open more than one can of worms at a time. Thus our attempts reduce to stretching and patching current models, for example focusing on engineering a junction between relativity and quantum theory - while other deeply disturbing symptoms of model fatigue continue to be ignored. More precisely, some problems have been resurrected once we found a technical, instead of philosophical way to formulate them (see quantum computing and information teleportation instead of non-locality); while other symptoms are still too embarrassing to be mentioned in polite company (see observer effect).
As it turns out, these difficult and persistent questions are historically related through the work of three people, whose great insight was that information flow might be intimately linked with the structure of spacetime, in addition to that of material systems. Although this radical new paradigm has lead to two different cosmological interpretations (see Parallel Universes for Everett and Deutsch, and Topological Geometrodynamics for Pitkanen), the theoretical leap signifies the same thing: for the first time we have a framework in which consciousness is no longer the uninvited guest disrupting the conference with annoying party tricks, but a legitimate and essential "founding father".
In this paper we shall try to present an argument for such an alternative cosmology (Matti Pitkanen's Topological Geometrodynamics), based on a series of general observations from the available literature on remote viewing and other forms of anomalous cognition. This is far from a comprehensive model, but it lays a foundation for a theoretical framework combining physical and cognitive structures as fundamental, interchangeable quanta of reality. It is our hope that this rather naive argument will act as a stimulus for our readers to examine the proposals of TGD in the full detail of their implications for particle physics, biophysics and information theory.
____________
* CRV Manual
II. Some preliminary observations: errors and error-correcting modes in RV
Our point of departure shall be a basic phenomenon that has been noted almost universally by those involved in experimental telepathy and remote viewing: that of mental contagion. In short, the term refers to the transmission of mental images from one participant to another without the conscious intent to do so (Warcollier 2001, Warcollier 1927, 1928; Targ & Katra; CRV manual; Swann 1996a; Jaegers)
Although telepathic overlay, as this type of noise is known in RV terminology, clearly constitutes an impediment to accurate data collection, we would like to argue that it has been too easily dismissed as a "problem" and that its value in understanding the mechanics of remote mental interactions can hardly be overestimated. In fact, it serves to remember that RV has historically developed on a solid foundation laid by Rene Warcollier and his decades of experimental research with group telepathy: clearly while the application focus is different in RV, there is much to be learned from Warcollier's insights.
Whatever the nature of the signal line between viewer and target, the initial contact is clearly dependent on the mental interactions of the participants ("intent is the glue that holds RV together") and that alone justifies a more serious analysis of group mental interactions.
In "La telepathie experimentale" (Revue Metapsychique, 1926-1927), Warcollier discusses his series of studies with batteries of senders and recipients, noting that "the most extraordinary observation we have made [under our experimental conditions] is that the percipients have very frequently shared identical spontaneous images (perceived visually or intuitively) whose origin remained unknown." Also - "Their lack of coherence seemed to indicate an origin external to the experimenters, but that was doubtlessly only an appearance. Our 1923 experiences [...] have revealed very numerous cases of analogous perception between the percipients, which were altogether independent from those that the agent intended to transmit. It was a true mental contagion of errors [...] probably [...] the transmission of a [...] fragmentary, subconscious thoughts of one of the percipients"
We have extensively quoted from this article because the phenomenon in question is here, more than anywhere else in the literature, treated as a meaningful datum and deliberately observed across an extensive series of experiments. Nevertheless, while others have failed to accord it a similar significance, they still made note of it in a variety of experimental settings ranging from remote viewing (where it can manifest as both perception of other participants' thoughts, or as identification of unknown viewers tasking the same target outside the experiment); to forensic psychometry; to simultaneous dream telepathy (Targ and Katra; Mars p. 103, 106-8; Ullman & Krippner p17, 66-67; Jaegers; CRV manual).
It would appear that the possibility of telepathic "contamination" is a universal feature of remote mental interactions: as long as a common point, or node is shared by several participants, there seems to be at least a finite time interval for which information can flow bi-directionally along all established mental "bridges". At this point, however, the notion of nodes and bridges is still ill-defined: we shall try to reach a more concrete understanding of this blueprint in sections III and IV.
It is also useful, at the start of this discussion, to realize that some form of critical mass effect is often noted in remote mental interactions: for example, in an experiment conducted by Dr. Arden Mahlberg, a Wisconsin psychologist, subjects showed that they were able to learn the Morse code much faster than an alternative code designed for the purpose of this experiment - even though the two codes had the same level of complexity. In a series of controlled experiments conducted between 1983-1985, Rupert Sheldrake has shown that difficult-to-discern patterns became much easier to spot for the first time by test subjects all over the world after several million people had been shown the answer on a local TV broadcast. These effects are not restricted to humans: as early as 1923, Russian physiologist Pavlov ran a series of studies in mice where he taught them to run to a feeding place when a bell was rung: to his surprise, the first generation required an average 300 trials to learn, the second 100, the third 30, and the fourth only 10.
(Borland 2000; Gilman 1986). Similar results have been obtained in other animal models, such as monkey populations on isolated islands, where newly learned behavior suddenly spread from one population to the others, despite the absence of direct communication.
It therefore becomes clear that any model claiming to elucidate the mechanism of anomalous cognition must go beyond the mere invocation of a shared Single Mind and show how the individual modules of this universal mind communicate with each other. That information is shared non-locally is clear: but whether and when this information is available at a given point in the global matrix is far less obvious. It is this question that will be the central focus of our argument.
Let us then continue by listing a few more well-known empirical observations:
- remote viewing appears to be an intrinsically non-deterministic process: even the best viewers agree that the expected accuracy rarely surpasses 70% on a consistent basis, but that this value may fluctuate wildly and unpredictably. While the reliability of the data tends to increase with practice, failures can and do occur even after decades of rigorous professional training (McMoneagle 2000 p. 205, 209; McMoneagle 1997 p 216), but they may also alternate with direct hits. In other words, while the mental and physical state of the viewer may negatively influence results, a perceived optimal state in a highly trained viewer is still not a guarantee of success. Unlike musical or athletic training, where "great form" can be cultivated and expected to yield relatively consistent results over a given period, no such expectation is a valid assumption in RV. (McMoneagle 1997 p. 230; McMoneagle 2000, p33-35; McMoneagle 2002 p. 82 )
- like telepathic signals, remote viewing data arrives in a range of sensory modalities (visual imagery, tactile feelings, sounds, tastes, smells, even electrical or magnetic fields - in addition to emotional and conceptual information (Targ and Katra) and displays heavy fragmentation. While in his work Warcollier has noted the predilection of certain percipients for consistent types of distortions (Warcollier 2001, p 61), introducing the notion of signal processing as a function of the percipient's psychophysiological profile (the parallel with psychoanalysis is unavoidable), we would like to focus our attention on the very nature of this fragmentation: why, if a contact with the target has presumably been established, should the signal suffer this much breakdown and modification? Note that the problem is not merely analogous to "static noise" or intermittent break-up -
the data is literally scrambled: the color or texture of an object may not arrive at the same time with or be association with the shape of the object, an image may be transmitted as an abstract concept or a symbol, details may figure more prominently than the central concept, associated functions, motion or emotions may manifest before or without any grasp of the physical object; the orientation of the target is often reversed, or the size grossly under/overestimated; etc. (Warcollier 2001 p xxxvii, xl, 31; McMoneagle 1997, 2000; Targ & Katra; IEEE Symposia p 29, 46; McMoneagle 2002, p. 99, 191)