[kjkjadksj]

The issue with remote viewing as the CIA understood it was not that it didn’t work. By all means there are documents that indicated it did work. The difficulty however was that the training program was unreliable and insufficient to establish a reliable pipeline to competency like other military skills.

[the_af]

The "difficulty" with remote viewing is nonsense pseudoscience and crackpottery.

It absolutely does not work. Not "unreliably", but not work at all.

This reminds me of that one time on HN when someone tried to convince me that ritual witchcraft (I think they called it blood magic) on servers was a real thing, necessary to make them work, and my dismissal was typical of narrow minded people.

[mnky9800n]

I would be supportive of blood magic if it made things work lol

[buildsjets]

Don’t knock it till you try it:

I call upon thе blood-moon goddess for I have but one request.

I've laid the altar, charged the crystals, the circle, I have blessed.

Then make clean && make all, BOOM compiles with no errors or warnings every time.

Witchcraft.

[lijok]

Dude claims “there are documents that indicated it did work”. You didn’t enquire about them, just completely dismissed it. That is indeed typical of narrow minded people.

[the_af]

Dudes claim all kinds of crap online. He already posted a PDF that indicated nothing of the sort.

If you will believe anything that seems true to you, because someone online said so, without any weight of evidence, and which is widely considered pseudoscience (go check)... I have a bridge to sell you.

What's with the wave of anti-intellectualism on HN of all places? Are we really trying to debate whether debunked crap like witchcraft and ESP is real? What's next, that Nigerian prince truly wants to gift you his money if only you can help him with a few dollars?

Carl Sagan must be spinning in his grave.

[lijok]

You're one of the dudes online - never forget that.

Examining something != believing it, it's step 2 in the scientific method, with which I advise you get familiar with before invoking it as much as you have in this thread.

If all you have to contribute to the discussion is thrashing around, maybe stay out of it?

[the_af]

> You're one of the dudes online - never forget that.

I never made any outlandish claims and therefore the onus isn't on me to prove anything.

> Examining something != believing it

But parapschyology has been examined and tested by scientists, and none of it has been verified in independent and controlled conditions. Unlike what the other commenter claimed, there are zero documents indicating RV works. Many of its practitioners have been shown to be frauds, pranksters or cranks (Puthoff thought Uri Geller was a psychic and was fooled by sleight of hand). What new evidence is there? RV isn't a new claim; it's an old debunked claim. Have they won the Amazing Randi prize yet? They could have, if RV was real!

> If all you have to contribute to the discussion is thrashing around, maybe stay out of it?

I'm reminding participants about how the scientific method works, which is important when discussing outlandish claims.

> Maybe stay out of it

???