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Remote Viewing Experiment: Procedure

  • 23-08-2006 12:44PM
    #1
    Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 9,688 Mod ✭✭✭✭


    So I've been thinking it might be fun if we tried more practical experiments on the forum. Remote viewing by it's very nature, lends itself to being tested across the internet, and it's also often considered to be one of the most succesfull and reproducible paranormal phenomenon aswell as being something which can be tried by anyone, not just 'psychics'. I was initially going to just take a picture of somewhere/something, assign it some coordinates and get people to try and RV it. Then I started thinking, if we're going to try it, why not try it properly and have a proper procedure in place, so I've started this thread first to try and decide what procedure can work best for us.

    I think the best method we can employ is called rank-order judging. With this method, five images are chosen as the target pool. Out of these five images, one image is selected at random to be the 'target'. The 'selecter' will then assign coordinates to this target and then post the coordinates on the thread. The participants (remote viewers) will then have a set amount of time (48 hours ?) to respond with their descriptions of the target. After the time has elapsed a blind judge who has the five images from the target pool but is unaware of which is the actual target will score each response. Scoring will involve comparing the description to each of the 5 images and assigning each image a rank of 1 to 5, 1 being the image which most matches the description and 5 being the image which least matches the description. After the scoring is complete, a new pool of 5 images shall be selected for the next iteration. Ideally there would be one blind judge for each remote viewer, but hopefully we'll have enough participants to make that impractical.

    The method for the remote viewers to use is (roughly) as follows. First the remote viewer should recieve the coordinates from the experiment thread. Then set aside an hour or so to try and view the target. The RVer should begin by taking a few minutes to relax. The next step is to try and remove any preconceptions about the target. This generally involves taking ten or fifteen minutes to think about the target and acknowledge any ideas which come to mind as preconceptions. Many people find it usefull to write these down on a sheet of paper, and then push it to one side when done. When this is done the remote viewing itself begins. To do this the RVer simply needs to think of the target coordinates (some prefer to do so just once, others think of them over and over) and clear their mind. In general the RVer does not try to actually go to the target, they allow impressions from the target to come to them. Some people find it usefull to take notes as this happens, others find it usefull to do small sketches. At the end of their alloted time, the RVer should allow 5 to 10 minutes to write their description of the target. This description should as far as possible be made up of adjectives and descriptions as opposed to nouns or pronouns. If the RVer wishes, they can at the end of this make a guess or guesses as to the location or object being viewed, but this should be seperate to their description.

    Now, some of the things I'm unsure of so far are:
    Should scoring be presented after every round, or only after all rounds are complete ?
    Should descriptions from remote viewers be presented on thread, or PM'd to the blind judge ?
    Should participation by remote viewers be open to people to start and finish whenever they choose, or should we decide on a set list of participants here first before the experiment begins ?


    Because of the way this experiment will be conducted over boards.ie, we can't guarantee that the selector/judge/remote viewers won't contact each other outside of the thread, and as such we can never claim this experiment can prove anything, but I think it can lead to a good mix of fun and usefullness.

    Please post any suggestions, criticisms etc, or even just post if your interested in taking part.

    (also, we'll need a volunteer for blind judge, or if someone wants to be the selector I can do the judging instead)


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Comments

  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 10,934 ✭✭✭✭Stoner


    I think this sounds decent enough, I hope i have it right, but are you suggesting that you will be marking each suggestion?
    You can then do some stats on the frequency of occurances of the reselts. At the end you can check the balance of mark 1s and mark 2s against mark
    4s and 5s.
    Depending on these results you can at least see what side of the line your on.
    I guess you'd have to know the people you are dealing with as the test environment is very much uncontrolled, but you more or less said that yourself.


  • Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 9,688 Mod ✭✭✭✭stevenmu


    Stoner wrote:
    I think this sounds decent enough, I hope i have it right, but are you suggesting that you will be marking each suggestion?
    You can then do some stats on the frequency of occurances of the reselts. At the end you can check the balance of mark 1s and mark 2s against mark
    4s and 5s. Depending on these results you can at least see what side of the line your on.
    That's basically it, the judge will assign scores to each picture in the pool based on your description, you then get the score given to the correct picture. For example based on your description the judge might score the pictures A-E as follows
    A: 3
    B: 4
    C: 1
    D: 5
    E: 2

    So if picture E was the actuall target, you would then be given a score of 2. Over enough tests, statistically you should get an average score of 3, an average of 1 or 2 would indicate some remote viewing had taken place. I'm not sure what 4 or 5 would mean ?

    If all went well, we'd be able to get out statistics for each individual test and the whole experiment, both for each individual taking part and the group as a whole. It'd be interesting to see if we could spot any trends such as the group's scores improving over time or some people consistently scoring higher than others and so on
    I guess you'd have to know the people you are dealing with as the test environment is very much uncontrolled, but you more or less said that yourself.
    Yeah, it would have to be done on an 'honour' basis, but once the selecter and judge act honestly then it shouldn't be too much of a problem.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 10,934 ✭✭✭✭Stoner


    sounds as if it could work, however I have one suggestion, I would keep the numbers 1 to 5 as numbers, ie would not add them and get an average. for example if you took 10 tests for someone and marked them all from 1 to 5. I would not add all these marks up and then divide by 10 to get that persons average mark and then judge which side of mark 3 they were on to see if any remote viewing took place. I think its important to look at the numbers as degrees of sucess/capability and not ordinary numbers to add etc.
    We could get more from the results if we represented the results by giving persentages of mark 1, mark 2 , etc all the way to five. This way we could say that someone like you or 6th had say 25% Mark 1s, 50% mark 2s and 25% mark 5s. This would allow us to say stuff like, 25% of the time he was bang on, but 25% of the time he was completly wrong, but 75% of the time he was more right then wrong etc.
    I have some excell stuff for this if you dont have it, I understand that you might already have this stuff or I could do it , since I have no such gifts myself and I heard 6th calling me "Sceptic Joe" behind my back in Ross Castle. He can be very hurtful sometimes, sensitive indeed!!


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 247 ✭✭IrishAirCorps


    Wasnt that the "Manhattan" Project?


  • Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 9,688 Mod ✭✭✭✭stevenmu


    The Manhattan project was the project to build the first atomic bomb, so no :)

    You might be thinking of the Montauk Project, but it wasn't that either (I'll try to find a good link for it later on)


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  • Closed Accounts Posts: 6,718 ✭✭✭SkepticOne


    stevenmu wrote:
    Now, some of the things I'm unsure of so far are:
    Should scoring be presented after every round, or only after all rounds are complete ?
    Ideally after all rounds are complete.
    Should descriptions from remote viewers be presented on thread, or PM'd to the blind judge ?
    By PM to the blind judge.
    Should participation by remote viewers be open to people to start and finish whenever they choose, or should we decide on a set list of participants here first before the experiment begins?
    Fixed set of participants preferably.

    However, the main problem is that even if you simulated the experiment by randomly assigning the numbers, you would still get plenty of variation in the averages. You would need a large run of tests to reduce this variation.

    I'm probably taking this a bit too seriously for a forum in the recreation section though.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 247 ✭✭IrishAirCorps


    Maybe the "Philadelphia" project? The yanks ran some "Project" with that kind of name during the Cold War i think it was in the 60's-80's definately remote viewing. They ( remote viewers ) were asked to describe certain places and give as much info as possible about what they saw even passwords/codes etc that is of course if they were able to see into the USSR and de-classified reports noted that 5 or 6 people always got their "remote viewing" correct all the time.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 17,369 ✭✭✭✭Zillah


    The Philadelphia Experiment involved an attempt to make a battleship invisible. Theres various version of the story depending on how much of a conspiracy nut you are, some involve time travel and teleportation. Both the CIA and KGB experimented extensively with remote viewing during the cold war. Their conclusions were that even if there was something to it, it was far too inconsistent to be trustworthy.

    I'll actually read about the experiment later when I'm not falling asleep...

    EDIT: Sounds complicated. I call blind judge! You know theres no way in hell I'll contact the experimentees :)


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 17,247 ✭✭✭✭6th


    SkepticOne: just coz its in Rec. doesnt means were not serious, though we do try to keep it casual and loose.

    We'll try to do these as best we can given the situation. Would like to be a RVer.

    Zillah for blind judge!


  • Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 9,688 Mod ✭✭✭✭stevenmu


    Maybe the "Philadelphia" project? The yanks ran some "Project" with that kind of name during the Cold War i think it was in the 60's-80's definately remote viewing. They ( remote viewers ) were asked to describe certain places and give as much info as possible about what they saw even passwords/codes etc that is of course if they were able to see into the USSR and de-classified reports noted that 5 or 6 people always got their "remote viewing" correct all the time.
    Ah, it was the "Stargate" project, I should have really thought of that earlier. There's a huge amount of stuff around the web on it if anyone's interested in googling it.
    SkepticOne wrote:
    I'm probably taking this a bit too seriously for a forum in the recreation section though.
    Your suggestion are certainly the most "proper" way of doing it which would be the way I'd lean too, but for something that could take a couple of weeks to do, it would be nice to have something along the way to keep people (both those taking part and those who aren't) interested. Would a good compromise be to have fixed participants who PM there descriptions to the judge, and the results are revealed after each round ?
    SkepticOne wrote:
    However, the main problem is that even if you simulated the experiment by randomly assigning the numbers, you would still get plenty of variation in the averages. You would need a large run of tests to reduce this variation.
    Yes, that is an issue. I'd been thinking of having at least 5 participants for 10 rounds, giving 50 results for the group which wouldn't be too bad, but for each indivual 10 results wouldn't really be much. Thinking about it now there's no reason we couldn't run it for longer, altough the longer we run it for the more essential I think it becomes to have some kind of feedback during the process to keep people interested. If we are to allow 2 days per round we could run say 30 rounds over two months. We would then need to allow for the fact that some people may need to miss a round or two during that time.
    Zillah wrote:
    EDIT: Sounds complicated. I call blind judge! You know theres no way in hell I'll contact the experimentees
    I was hoping you'd do it alright, and I *knew* you'd volunteer :)


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  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 17,369 ✭✭✭✭Zillah


    Noo! I'm but a pawn in his schemes! I feel used.
    Should scoring be presented after every round, or only after all rounds are complete ?

    I think a total batch of three rounds, with everything presented together would be cool.
    Should descriptions from remote viewers be presented on thread, or PM'd to the blind judge ?

    Obviously PM so as to not have them influence each other.
    Should participation by remote viewers be open to people to start and finish whenever they choose, or should we decide on a set list of participants here first before the experiment begins ?

    I'm tempted to say a set panel from the start, but it doesn't really change anything very much if we let other people in. If the person we let in half way is a phenomenal psychic then it'd skew the results towards the final round or two...but personally I'm willing to run that risk :D


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 17,247 ✭✭✭✭6th


    So steven would you be a RVer too? Shame to waste that raw psychic powah.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 17,369 ✭✭✭✭Zillah


    We need a selector as well as the judge. If Ste doesn't do it then who will?


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 17,247 ✭✭✭✭6th


    Am sure we can find someone, Stoner maybe?


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 17,369 ✭✭✭✭Zillah


    How well do we know Stoner? I'm happy to trust Stevenmu if he's willing.


  • Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 9,688 Mod ✭✭✭✭stevenmu


    Zillah wrote:
    Obviously PM so as to not have them influence each other.
    Yeah, I think that's the best way alright.
    Zillah wrote:
    I'm tempted to say a set panel from the start, but it doesn't really change anything very much if we let other people in. If the person we let in half way is a phenomenal psychic then it'd skew the results towards the final round or two...but personally I'm willing to run that risk :D
    Yep, I don't see any way it should affect things, and if there is a phenomenal psychic out there, it's better to get them in half-way through than not at all. There's also the possibility that some people will want to take part but may have holidays or other commitments that would prevent them doing some rounds.
    We need a selector as well as the judge. If Ste doesn't do it then who will?
    I'm planning on doing it myself obviously, unless someone else really wants to do it. We can always run the experiment again with someone else selecting and me RVing so I don't mind missing it this time.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 17,247 ✭✭✭✭6th


    We know and trust Stoner, been at 2 investigations with him and he's been out for drinks too. Plus like you he wont **** about - of course he might not want to do it but i'm sure he'll be on later.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 17,369 ✭✭✭✭Zillah


    All good then :)


  • Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 9,688 Mod ✭✭✭✭stevenmu


    Tbh, while stoner is a trustworthy sort, I think I'd prefer to do it myself the first time around anyway, just to make sure it all runs the way I think it should, and if I'm taking part in it then I'd have to step back from all that.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 17,247 ✭✭✭✭6th


    Sure thing boss - its your baby!


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  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 10,934 ✭✭✭✭Stoner


    no probs steve your the man.


  • Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 9,688 Mod ✭✭✭✭stevenmu


    So who's interested in taking part ?

    6th I presume you're in, and Kenneth, I'm putting your name down too.

    Stoner, SkepticOne, IrishAirCorp, are ye interested ?


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 17,247 ✭✭✭✭6th


    Yeah am definately up for it.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 43,044 ✭✭✭✭Nevyn


    /reads all of the above and wonders why they are making it so complicated.


  • Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 9,688 Mod ✭✭✭✭stevenmu


    Well the blind judging process is the best one I know of to see if it is working or not. Plus it'll give us lots of data for statistics and some nice fancy graphs and bar charts. The other bits and pieces are to some degree little more than window dressing since we can't guarantee the integrity of the whole process, but we might aswell stick fairly close to it as long as it doesn't sacrifice all the fun of it.


    /Wonders what Thaed would do instead ?


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 10,934 ✭✭✭✭Stoner


    As a Chartered non Crazy (to use someone elses wording) I dont know if I would be any use in the experiment, but I am willing to join in etc if needed/thank you for the offer, and I understand that I would be left out if a more gifted individual arrived.

    Unless I can get my hands on an infrasound gun
    http://members.aol.com/alanyu5/part1a1.htm


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 43,044 ✭✭✭✭Nevyn


    I think it is all the more reason to have you take part a null is a good idea to have if you are looking for data.

    How I would do it:

    Have one boardcaster and 6 viewers.
    Have an agreed upon time window where the person would boardcaster and the other receive/view.
    Have one indepant person who recieve and collate emails reports from the 6 viewers.
    When all the emails have been recieved the boardcaster sends the email with the data that they sending and the resulsts are posted up.

    Example:

    I could place an object on my desk at my pc and form and image of that object currenty a large blue mug.
    This would be done for 20 mins at a set time.
    Those wanting to recieve or remote view would gear themsleves up get into the zone or waht ever in the run up to the 20 mins.
    When the 20 mins have ended they record thier impression and findings of the object all off them no matter how odd or vauge and send them off in email.
    When the emails are in I get and email and then send an account of what I sent and felt and a pic of the object on the desk and the results can be posted up and compared.

    that is just how I would go about it , I find objects work better then images.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 17,369 ✭✭✭✭Zillah


    But we're testing remote viewing, not telepathy between people, so having a broadcaster changes the experiment.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 43,044 ✭✭✭✭Nevyn


    ok then no boardcaster just an object placed in a certain place for a certain ammount of time.


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  • Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 9,688 Mod ✭✭✭✭stevenmu


    Zillah is absolutely correct, what you are describing is more of a telepathic sending/receiving experiment. What we are trying is Coordinate Remote Viewing (CRV) whereby a set of coordinates is assigned to a location/object and knowing only the coordinates a remote viewer attempts to determine some information about the location/object. The photo (or possibly photos I suppose) itself is only to compare the location/object with the descriptions given.

    <edit>
    Thaedydal wrote:
    ok then no boardcaster just an object placed in a certain place for a certain ammount of time.
    Yes, that would work, altough given that 5 targets are need for each round (to allow scoring), times 30 rounds, that's going to be 150 objects, so what I'm actually going to do is just nab 150 photos off the net.
    </edit>
    Stoner wrote:
    As a Chartered non Crazy (to use someone elses wording) I dont know if I would be any use in the experiment, but I am willing to join in etc if needed/thank you for the offer, and I understand that I would be left out if a more gifted individual arrived.
    Part of the appeal of Remote Viewing is that it should work for anyone who follows the process. It would also be interesting to see if the crazies score any better than the non-crazies :)


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