Jed Rothwell wrote:
I wrote:
Of course remote viewing or the Jahn effects seem impossible based on
what we now know of biology and physics, but we know practically
NOTHING about biology. I can list dozens of ordinary, everyday
biological phenomena that seem utterly incredible, and which we
cannot begin to explain. They are as mysterious as cellular
reproduction was before the structure of DNA was elucidated in 1952.
Let me list one example which happens to resemble remote viewing:
coral reefs all over the Pacific ocean spawn at the same time --
almost all on the same night. How do they coordinate? That was a big
mystery until recently, but I think it has been established that "the
cue is November's full moon" plus 2 to 6 days. The details remain to
be worked out. You wonder how coral sense the moon, but in any case,
these primitive creatures "communicate" in a sense, or coordinate en
mass over thousands of kilometers, using very subtle clues.
In general I think I don't completely disagree with your view of "remote
viewing", but it's worth pointing out a couple of differences between
this kind of ESP, coral reef coordination, and nuclear control of cells.
Coral reef spawning time is apparently phase-locked in some way, using a
signal we had not previously identified. There is, however, nothing
especially mysterious about phase-locking to an (as yet unidentified)
external signal: evolutionarily, it's presumably an advantage for
particular corals to spawn when the main group does, so once some signal
has been "chosen" coral across the ocean will remain locked to it
indefinitely. The fact that it seems to be the moon is a surprise but
the general picture is not strange. Note that most corals live in
relatively shallow, clear water in the tropics; the notion that they can
somehow "see" the moon -- or any other light-based signal -- requires no
miraculous addition to our repertoire of things we know animals in the
sea can do, and could have been imagined (without evidence) before the
actual knowledge of what was going on was available.
Now, consider cellular reproduction. In 1950, it was already clear that
the nucleus controlled the cell through a chemical process of some
sort. It wasn't known how that worked, or what molecules were actually
involved, but no completely new physics, no totally new theory of
fields, in short, no _miracle_ was needed to explain it. People in 1950
could imagine that there was a chemical explanation. And, indeed, while
what we now know of reproduction is "miraculously" complex, none the
less it remains molecules interacting in aqueous solution in ways that
are not fundamentally different from behavior people already knew about
pre-1952.
Consider PF-style cold fusion. It requires a means for overcoming the
Coulomb barrier at a low (overall) temperature, and it requires some way
of dumping the energy of the reaction into the environment as a whole
rather than spitting it out as a gamma ray or otherwise leaving it in a
single packet. But we can picture, however fuzzily, those things
happening as a result of closely placed atoms interacting with each
other within a paladium lattice; we don't need to invoke some miraculous
process, some "new kind of energy field", in order to convince ourselves
that it could work.
But now consider ESP of _any_ sort. It requires, at a minimum,
brain-to-brain communication at a distance. What could the mechanism
be? We can rule out gravity waves, I think, and just about anything
else we know of except EM waves. But human brains seem singularly short
on radio reception gear -- and nobody's ever so much as suggested that
all the radio hash in the aether today makes a difference to the results
of ESP experiments. So, unless you can convince yourself that someplace
buried in our brains there are antennas and demodulators of some sort
which we have just overlooked up until the present, you will need to
hypothesize some new kind of "field" which is as yet unknown to physics
in order to provide a mechanism. I'd say that puts it in a different
ballpark entirely from any other example you've mentioned -- about the
only thing that comes close is lightning, back before anyone knew what
electricity was.
And if we take the jump from mind-to-mind communication, which just
requires some sort of information transmission which we haven't yet
stumbled on, to the ability to predict the future or the outcome of a
random process, as the remote viewing websites I just googled seem to
claim, then we get into a realm where there is absolutely no hint of a
possible explanation that doesn't totally nuke all we currently think we
know about physics. Once you violate causality you've gone 'way, 'way
past dime-store stuff like perpetual motion machines, antigravity, and
aliens in Area 51.
(Note that sharks (and some other denizens of the water) do have an
electrical sense which could be viewed as ESP but as far as I know
there's no evidence of any creature using it for communication. And
there's no evidence at all that humans have any such sense. And even if
we assume humans have such a sense it doesn't come close to providing a
mechanism for "remote viewing".)
Granted, evidence always trumps theory, but none the less I think it's
misleading to assert "remote viewing" is no harder to swallow now than
the examples you gave were for people back in 1945.
If remote viewing actually exists, it must have a naturalistic
explanation.
I disagree completely with your use of the word "must", and I assert
that you are stating an article of faith rather than a logical necessity.
We are talking about some kind of clairvoyance here. Any such ability
would be so far outside the science we know that I would claim we are
forced to view it with a "clean slate": It could be natural, it could
be "supernatural"; it could be the first hard evidence of a "soul" and a
world beyond the world we currently know. It could be a miracle every
time it occurs. It could be the dungeonmaster playing games with the
feedback circuit in the Matrix. We have not one single shred of a
notion as to how it might work, so to say "it must be natural" or "it
cannot be supernatural in origin" is to confuse one's _expectation_ with
what one actually knows.
I suppose it must be a subtle form of communication, or coordinated
thinking similar to the coral coordination.
No, that's "mind-reading" you're thinking of. "Remote viewing" goes far
beyond that. Here's a quote from Google's second hit on remote/viewing:
"Science has proven that a mental process called REMOTE VIEWING can be
used to accurate predict the outcome of any random or deterministic
event. [ ... ] I will be shown a random [Get that? Random! -- sal]
photo in exactly one hour. I close my eyes and using remote viewing
techniques, I visualize what that photo might look like. Then I record
my perceptions on paper."
These experiments can be done more than one way, but the more general
form -- prediction of a random process -- apparently rules out
mind-to-mind communication for the mechanism.
A person in one part of the world sees an object -- or remembers
seeing it -- and somehow that visual memory reaches another person
elsewhere.
Outcome is to be selected at random. Nobody knows what it will be (or
so they say). You are describing old-fashioned psi power, not the stuff
remote viewing afficionados claim. Here's another good quote:
"Ingo Swann and Harold Sherman claim to have done remote viewing of
Mercury and Jupiter. Dr. Russell Targ and Dr. Harold Puthoff studied
Swann and Sherman, and reported that their remote viewing compared
favorably to the findings of the Mariner 10 and Pioneer 10 research
spacecrafts."
That is NOT mind-to-mind communication, unless you care to postulate the
existence of intellects on Mercury and Jupiter which are "on the same
wavelength" as the folks here on Earth! This is new; this is totally
outside the box.
(And this is probably bogus too but that's just my prejudice speaking ;-) )
Perhaps it transmits through a chain of people. Machines positioned
outside the skull can already sense the electromagnetic radiation from
the brain, and make sense of it, so it not unthinkable that humans and
other animals have a similar capability. But it seems extremely
unlikely to me that a person could sense this radiation from the other
side of the earth!
Yeah, me too. The output of the other 5,999,999,999 brains inbetween
might provide a little interference, too, one might think.
That is a highly implausible hypothesis -- hardly to be taken
seriously -- but my point is, if remote viewing is confirmed,
eventually some hypothesis or another will explain it. When the
explanation is revealed it will probably be simple and clear in
retrospect, and we will wonder why anyone ever doubted that remote
viewing is real.
Maybe, but again, if people can "see" the surface of Mercury using
"remote viewing" then the "there will be a simple explanation" claim
doesn't exactly bowl me over with its obvious correctness...
That goes for cold fusion and other present-day mysteries, too. Gene
Mallove and other predicted that CF will cause the wrack and ruin of
present day physics. The explanation can only be astounding!
Revolutionary! Perhaps that is true, but it seems more likely to me
that once we know the explanation for CF, it will seem almost banal in
retrospect. We will say: "What was all the fuss about? Of course it
works. And it fits right in with what we already knew." DNA was a
wondrous discovery, but it did not disturb the laws of physics and
chemistry.
If remote viewing is real, however, it may be a very different kettle of
fish.
