• NEW! LOWEST RATES EVER -- SUPPORT THE SHOW AND ENJOY THE VERY BEST PREMIUM PARACAST EXPERIENCE! Welcome to The Paracast+, eight years young! For a low subscription fee, you can download the ad-free version of The Paracast and the exclusive, member-only, After The Paracast bonus podcast, featuring color commentary, exclusive interviews, the continuation of interviews that began on the main episode of The Paracast. We also offer lifetime memberships! Flash! Take advantage of our lowest rates ever! Act now! It's easier than ever to susbcribe! You can sign up right here!

    Subscribe to The Paracast Newsletter!

David's question: "How can you use it if you don't know how it works?"


The bottom line: anyone can use things without understanding how they work, but those who take the time to learn about what they're doing invariably have a competitive edge. IMO, no one here has refuted that point with any sort of relevant logic or example, quite the contrary.
dB

I think the bottom line is that we're trying to make an analogy to remote viewing, correct?

We've thrown out lots of examples, which of these examples would you consider a closer analogy to remote viewing:

-Working the internet
-Driving a race car
-Creating a work of art
-Running a marathon

I would argue that this list goes from "least relevant" to most relevant in terms of similarity to remote viewing. The top of the list involves ALL external technology and involves no physical skills. The last involves almost NO technology and is all physical skills.

Remote viewing, as I understand it, is *entirely* an internal physical skill and utilizes no outside technology. How can this be analogous to using the internet?

Notice how as we move down the list, intellectually knowing the activity (like learning from a book) becomes less important to the mastery of the task. What is more important is learning through direct usage.

As Schuyler's example pointed out, with the knife thrower and the dog's knowledge of physics, their knowledge is not intellectual and based upon words, it is subconscious and within the body.

This is why I think it is not only entirely possible to know how to RV (and be very good at it) without being able to explain how it works, but that this scenario is probably very likely.

Please lemme know how this is illogical.
 
I think the appropriate analogy is using one of our 5 senses. You can already use the senses, but I suppose you could hone your talents to become a professional wine taster, image analyst, perfume "nose", safecracker, etc...
 
I think you're trying to weasel out of the fact you asked a very pointed and, at the same time, poor question. Just admit it David; you were trying to do the "ahah" question and it made no sense. On the other hand; the "giggle factor" answer from daz was was excedingly more poor and nonsensical (to me) and kudos for taking him up on it!!
 
Your answer does not answer how knowing about the intricacies of IP address handling (the underpinning of how the internet works) would make a NORMAL internet user better?

Good Lord, Daz, you are such an asshole. I don't feel beholden to answer your exact questions. You come on here as an instant expert who knows everything about everything. I gave a couple of very good examples of how technical knowledge can improve your use of the Interent. End of story. Can you RV what I'm doing right now?
 
This is why I think it is not only entirely possible to know how to RV (and be very good at it) without being able to explain how it works, but that this scenario is probably very likely.

Please lemme know how this is illogical.

It is perfectly logical to assume one can learn and refine a process based entirely on experience, but it is somewhat beside the main point:

When you know how something works, you can use it more effectively than someone [who] doesn't know how the same item/tool works.

The bottom line: anyone can use things without understanding how they work, but those who take the time to learn about what they're doing invariably have a competitive edge.


Just to clear things up here (and putting aside the interview transcript, because we are dealing with David's assertions (above) in this particular thread): is the efficiency of a learned process not maximized with the addition of a comprehensive understanding of that process as well?
 
I think you're trying to weasel out of the fact you asked a very pointed and, at the same time, poor question. Just admit it David; you were trying to do the "ahah" question and it made no sense. On the other hand; the "giggle factor" answer from daz was was excedingly more poor and nonsensical (to me) and kudos for taking him up on it!!

So let me see, here's someone who's first post on these forums is a personal critique/attack. How about I answer in kind - frag off. You've been banned. Sayonara.

dB
 
Well, here's the point:

When you know how something works, you can use it more effectively than someone doesn't know how the same item/tool works.

dB

In general this is true...but it doesn't account for the chaotic phenomena known as "zen mind, beginner's mind." Many times, a eureka moment can come from an outsider or an absolute noob.

Sometimes old-timers or those invested in a certain system can mistake the map for the territory. Which is my issue with remote-viewing...as I have been trying to express, rather ineptly.

Remote viewing is a system. It seems like a good system. But it was not given to Moses on Mt. Sinai. It's man-made. A man-made system intended to harness a psychic ability that we do not yet fully understand. So, we are not going to know how RV works because we don't know how psychic abilities work.

One of my concerns about RV -- and I don't want to sound superstitious but maybe it's unavoidable -- is that it takes psychic abilities out of the context in which they have traditionally been used. Feel free to disagree with me on this part, and I know some of you will, but psychic ability is real. And it is not 100% safe. A sterile room and a laboratory setting will not make it any safer.

Human traditions, older than civilization itself, suggest that psychic ability is safe to use only in the context of a wholehearted and wise spiritual path. If you use it outside of that context, it can become dangerous in any number of ways. We have ten thousand years of tradition warning us about this. This is why, for instance, the Bible includes prophets but dismisses fortune-tellers.

Maybe all the stuff we think is mumbo-jumbo is really an intrinsic part of the way things work. Maybe some seers use crystals, for instance, because they are protective in a way that we don't yet understand. We don't know. This is all borderland stuff, including RV, and just because RV can wear a labcoat doesn't mean that it is not a wild animal.

I don't know how my own abilities work. When I get "answers," I'm not sure where they come from. Some crazy-Christians might hear me say that and conclude "maybe it's...SATAN." Could fucking be. I highly doubt it, but I don't know.

There's an Icarus-y-ness to remote viewing that gives me the heebie-jeebies, that's all. Shutting up now.
 
Great ideas, thoughts and comments guys.

I personally don't think there is anything special, mystical or paranormal is remote viewing and how it works. To me its just a part of physics not fully understood yet - the holographic universe theory being the best fit so far.

I feel that all information, time and space are non local and accessible anywhere by all, it the crux of psychic, creativity, collective unconcious and many more concepts and theories.

Give it a few more years and I feel science will get the makeup of all this by the balls.

All we have done as remote viewers is trained ourselves to listen just that little bit better to this information - and at the heart of it that is all the CRV (controled remote viewing) process that Ingo Swann created for the militray does.

Is it danegerous - maybe - I guess it depends on the person using it and their reality, dependencies and state of mind. The military unit (from recollections - im a littl hazy on this) did have one incident of an unstable person being negatively affected.

daz
 
Daz - one question about the process:

A client wants you to RV a target. Do they just write any number - or anything they choose - down on a piece of paper and give it to you to go off and do your thing with it, or is there more description to it?
 
Daz - one question about the process:

A client wants you to RV a target. Do they just write any number - or anything they choose - down on a piece of paper and give it to you to go off and do your thing with it, or is there more description to it?
Hi, If they are particularity new to Rv I do give some guidance on targets like telling them words and numbers are hard for viewers and sometimes you have to tell a client to only ask/want one thing answered at a time - sometimes a client will have ten or more things they expect you to be able to rv all at once. I recently had a request sent to me, for me to task remote viewers who work for me - the client wanted to know;

if her husband was having an afair?
a description of the woman?
to know where?
Dates,
how long this went on for?
and much more

So sometimes you have to manage a clients expectation level.
But if they know what they are doing - i dont want any information other than a random number. Sometimes i dont even use/have one of these I just do it (the random number has no real use other than a focal point and for admin purposes).

It usually works something like this: the client thinks about what they want to know. I.e. who will win pop idol 2009.
They then write this down on a sheet of paper.

'Describe who will win pop idol 2009'

They then assign it a random number and/or a jumble of numbers and letters. Usually the date worked fine (Today) 2904 - 2009. They keep this 'paper' to themselves and can present it to the remote viewer as feedback AFTER they have received the viewers data - and in communications they just tell the remote viewer your target is: 2904 - 2009.

There are other things, some viewers like myself like targets to be created a certain way to get the best results - others don't care, each has their own ways but in general this is an overview.

hope this helps.

daz
 
Have you ever seen 'The Gods Must Be Crazy?'
We may figure ways of using crashed Alien space-craft technology in ways that were never intended when it was designed. Namely, killing other people who don't conveniently conform to political agendas.
Give away free energy and go to the stars, or kill 'infidels' and 'terrorists'...what do you think the current leadership on this planet would do?
<input id="gwProxy" type="hidden"><!--Session data--><input onclick="jsCall();" id="jsProxy" type="hidden">
 
Here is an example of not understanding the underlying technology by users:

I've trained people on both 2D CAD and 3D software. Sometimes I see people moving vertices around and putting them on top of other vertices. Their eyeball tells them that these vertices are in the same location but, in fact, they are not. This is the difference between screen resolution and internal software accuracy.

Why is this important? If I try to dimension an object for a building it better be precise. It can't be a quarter inch off here and there or worse. But this is what you get if you eyeballed it even at the highest zoom level. If you are building 3D objects without using snap functions to precisely align objects you will get corrupted objects or find you can't perform boolean or beveling operations.

Even when I tell people the importance of using snap functions for precision alignment I still see people nudging objects based on what the screen shows not on what the numerical accuracy requires. You'll sometimes see this in Photoshop users as well.

As far as understanding IP addresses goes it doesn't matter to users BUT only if they already have a working Internet connection. Now if you are trying to install a new router at home because you bought a second computer then you are going to have to deal at the very minimum the terminalogy. Here most people will have problems getting a router working because it isn't all that easy even for the tech savvy. Most people won't know if they have a static or dynamic IP address. Most people won't know the difference between a LAN, WAN, or direct connection. Few people know what a DNS or work group is. But these are often the kind of questions that are asked in a router setup software or MS Internet Setup. Having installed enough routers for friends and families I can tell you there is a lot of inconsistencies in the different brands in how easy it is to set things up without having to go into the router's control panel settings.
 
Boolean logic has EVERYTHING to do with how Google works under the hood, and having a good technical grasp of the underlying dbase technology helps anyone become a better online researcher, as Schuyler has aptly pointed out. Sorry, Gareth, that's the simple fact.

Oh yeah, absolutely. I wasnt disputing that fact.

All I was trying to say is despite having some knowledge to do with boolean logic there is still much the average user doesnt know about how it actually works, such as the coding itself.
 
I am willing to bet my bottom dollar that David knows how to use Photoshop better than I because he knows the ins and outs of it thoroughly. Granted, I am a graphic designer and I consider myself quite good with the program, but there is no doubt in my mind he is better at using the software because of his thorough knowledge of it.

Background knowledge = better user.
Not understanding how each filter/function works make me a weaker user.

Those are my thoughts. Thanks for listening.
 
Look this is simple.

Yes if we knew how remote viewing exactly worked we would be much better remote viewers - this is a given. Total knowledge does allow this.

But the fact that we don't know doesn't mean that we cant use what we do know, and from trial and error and allot of practice to a competent level and to the best of our abilities.

daz
 
Before modern chemistry there was alchemy. It was more magical and no one really understood how it worked. (Most of the time, it didn't.) But some of the time, they knew that when they mixed up a certain concoction they got this weird reaction.

Now, the pharmaceutical industry has nearly perfected its ability to manipulate molecules and tailor effects -- even targeting specific portions of an organ. They better understand their instrument than ever before.

Assuming RV is a legitimate phenomenon (and not just some new form of mentalism), then eventually it must be better understood. And as Daz suggested, it may prove to not even be a paranormal phenomenon at all.

But as in the alchemy example, even not understanding it, you can still benefit from it. Although, like the alchemy example, until you do, a huge proportion of it will remain nonsense.
 
But as in the alchemy example, even not understanding it, you can still benefit from it. Although, like the alchemy example, until you do, a huge proportion of it will remain nonsense.

Well its only nonsense to the uneducated. There is tons of information on remote viewing and psi, theories for its makeup, best practices, best targets, the best conditions, affecting factors (sun flares, LST, others). This list is huge - in fact 89,000 pages (what the CIA releasde) which is allegedly only a small portion of what they actually have. Plus much more thats been doe since by indiviuals and other labs.

To most of us - who are immersed in the field and who have read this research that some of you have not or care not to - its not nonsense, we actually have some good ideas of how the processes work - we just cant prove it.

I understand what you guys are saying - but I alo think you may be missunderstood in how much we do know about psi/rv - we dont know it all but we do know allot.

all the best...

Daz
 
Gen wrote:
Sometimes old-timers or those invested in a certain system can mistake the map for the territory. Which is my issue with remote-viewing...as I have been trying to express, rather ineptly.

'The map for the territory' is a good way to put it.

Remote viewing is a system. It seems like a good system. But it was not given to Moses on Mt. Sinai. It's man-made. A man-made system intended to harness a psychic ability that we do not yet fully understand. So, we are not going to know how RV works because we don't know how psychic abilities work.

I agree.

One of my concerns about RV -- and I don't want to sound superstitious but maybe it's unavoidable -- is that it takes psychic abilities out of the context in which they have traditionally been used.

I agree with this as well. On one hand, I am RV's hugest fan, mostly for the science aspect; I feel it 'rescued' psi from the 'muck' of social culture it's been entwined with since the dawn of time, on several levels. On the other hand, as a viewer I see there are places where to some degree, you might say that a bit of baby got thrown out with that bathwater (I'm sorry I didn't use an IT analogy, heh). While the world of the mystic may have a lot of issues that cause problems in utilizing psychic functioning, that world also has several thousand years more experience with the subject--and some of that is pretty important.

A sterile room and a laboratory setting will not make it any safer.

Traditional efforts that placed psi in a magical (or in occult frameworks, magickal) context had a lot more awareness of the "who is to be Master" question. This is something that in RV is seen in science (the 'sheep and goats' effect they dubbed it) and is seen in layman applications work (usually in 'tasker overlay' and other related issues), but is barely even addressed let alone comprehended in the more 'objective, clinical' settings. This has had significant effects even in science, where 'experimenter-effect' and 'DAT' have become so obvious that even rudimentary (let alone detailed) statistics spell it out in small words with big letters.

As another related issue, most people want to examine psi as if they can put it in a test tube; you can doubleblind the situation but that's all you can really do. The reality is that every mind who is part of something, with particular influence/weight given to those 'in charge' in some fashion, can affect an overall psychic result. I might add that the most successful viewer and lab in the world in this area actually published a paper titled "Intention, Attention and Expectation" specifically addressing this as something they had observed very clearly over 25 years of time.

Now it would be fair to expect any skeptic to say, "What? Me thinking badly about it makes someone else less effective? Bosh!" but it's a matter of the context here: IF psi has reality, then it IS logical that this would be the case because everybody is psi and every situation has those dynamics--if one steps back from the woo-woo element psi unavoidably gives things, and thinks of it in terms of "social dynamics and the psychology of dominance" it's about the same. If psi has NO reality, then the approach of "nothing matters" (such as the situation and mindset of persons involved let alone in charge of an experiment) would be accurate. But you cannot objectively test something 'to see if it exists' while utilizing an approach which if it DID exist would be most likely to reduce or suppress it; it's the scientific equivalent of throwing the witch into the water with rocks and if she drowns, congratulations she was innocent.

Anyway, I mention those things only a small summary example of some of the kinds of things I think relate to your comment; this is a fairly huge topic that can't be well addressed in a single forum post.

Human traditions, older than civilization itself, suggest that psychic ability is safe to use only in the context of a wholehearted and wise spiritual path. If you use it outside of that context, it can become dangerous in any number of ways. We have ten thousand years of tradition warning us about this.

Seriously, I have not seen any sign that persons using remote viewing without 'spiritual enlightenment', or using it for practical reasons, have fared any worse than others in the art. In all honesty, I think *some* of this is a cultural artifact akin to people who truly believe that poor people are more spiritual and wealthy people are de-facto amoral sinners, greedy, etc. This is really not accurate at all but it persists as a cultural norm, probably in great part because there is an element of psycho-social buffering (making people feel better) involved with that.

However, I have observed--and some intelligent viewers dispute this I might add, so my opinion is just one--that psychic functioning, particularly in RV since 'hard feedback' has a vastly more impactive effect on belief systems (hence change of fundamental psychological constructs which literally are about 'the nature of reality' and 'identity'), is inherently 'destabilizing'. This doesn't mean that it makes people crazy, it just means that you can't mess with core belief systems without literally causing some turbulence in the psychology. Healthy people "adapt"; it's a matter of 'keeping your balance' and learning adaptive behaviors at times, even though the ground is moving a bit beneath you, so to speak. Some people have genuine psyche issues though--the very sort associated with psychic work throughout time. To the degree of actual psychotic breaks and other stuff you will probably never hear about publicly (a sort of field-wide adaptive dsyfunction... on some psychic level we agree not to talk about this LOL).

Generally, I mean culturally here, the whole "pure heart" bit is thought to be more protective, and perhaps it is. I have not noticed it though. I suspect IF it is, it is for reasons having to do with other aspects of 'intent' and 'positive correspondence with self' than the psi part. In other words, it's a little like working with subconscious, say in Jungian-style archetype work. People who have a very positive framework for that feel safer and more positive, and unusual experiences get a positive interpretation, and frightening things are buffered. People who don't have that framework, particularly who have existing issues with fear, can just spiral down into psychological disaster frankly (and man, paranormal side effects are out the wazoo when you combine the power of an emotion like fear with psi stuff).

But that isn't so much the psi element, as that working with the subconscious (let alone messing with core belief systems) is powerful stuff, and how one deals with that, models it, is a big part of how well they weather it. Much like learning some sports, some is boring, some is thrilling, most is just-doing-it, and once in awhile something slams your face into the dirt and drags you several yards and then dogpiles on you (LOL - rugby/football analogies!). It isn't that one wants a perfectly safe world; it's that one wants to be flexible and strong and healthy enough to "deal with it" and move on without crying about it or taking their ball and going home or freaking out entirely.

Maybe all the stuff we think is mumbo-jumbo is really an intrinsic part of the way things work.

Some might be.

Maybe some seers use crystals, for instance, because they are protective in a way that we don't yet understand.

Maybe. RV as taught is actually a little bit separating; close rapport is discouraged mostly because of (a) the effect on the viewer and (b) the effect on the session overall. However close rapport is often where the best data is. So it's a fine line to walk and viewers make their own decisions about it. Witness-based psi formats such as scrying, tarot, tea leaves or whatever, "project" the data into something "other"; as opposed to the viewer being "of" the target and the only 'witness'--objective 'thing representing psi data'--is the session itself.

We don't know. This is all borderland stuff, including RV, and just because RV can wear a labcoat doesn't mean that it is not a wild animal.

Nice way of putting it.

I don't know how my own abilities work. When I get "answers," I'm not sure where they come from. Some crazy-Christians might hear me say that and conclude "maybe it's...SATAN." Could fucking be. I highly doubt it, but I don't know.

Most psi data is both much simpler and much more complex than assigning any 'identity' to the process in my opinion. Information/energy just "is". One can group it into forms (or identities) that appear to be innately 'bad vs. good' (and I am not suggesting I don't believe in this by the way), but information itself does not, in my view, have any inherent good or evil. (Aside maybe from "eat the apple, Eve" LOL.) However any kind of information, particularly the more violent, volatile or emotional, can have problems even via "quantity" if too much comes through at once; even too much of a good thing can be a problem.

(Not to mention really obscure stuff can affect you. In one session years ago I got this feeling that "this huge darkness is coating my heart"--a sort of "emotional analogy"--and GRIEVED as if heavily depressed for three days before I shook it off. The target was the Exxon Valdez disaster. Er, yeah. Try telling anybody "I grieved because years ago some ship spilled oil" and they'll definitely think you're nuts. Not to mention some of the really GROSS things that trauma targets can give you for an instant.)

There's an Icarus-y-ness to remote viewing that gives me the heebie-jeebies, that's all.

Life is risk. You can't steal second with one foot on first. :)
 
daz wrote:
Yes if we knew how remote viewing exactly worked we would be much better remote viewers - this is a given. Total knowledge does allow this.

But the fact that we don't know doesn't mean that we cant use what we do know, and from trial and error and allot of practice to a competent level and to the best of our abilities.

Something people outside the field may not be aware is that RV really is a *new* field particularly with the public. There is a lot of growing experimentation as people honestly try to learn more about not only how their own mind works but how the larger dynamic of RV works in a team or applications context for example. Sometimes more is learned by how things get messed up, than any other path.

The (mis)"education" provided by government people as part of 'training' the public set the field back quite a ways in some regards and has kept it going nowhere in circles for over a decade, but fortunately at least a few people have managed to gain some accomplishment despite that, and sloowwwlllly but surely a science-based protocol everyone should have started with is getting better understood and utilized, at which point things are actually beginning to go better, and I think the future will see more applications work that will be educational to everyone exposed to it.

There are some things we are seeing, for example with databased target pools (no matter how large), that are showing us stuff nobody thought or talked about 10 years ago and that we probably need to work into a better model for the future. Not until someone got out and "did something" proactively and long term did we have enough information to start seeing patterns. Up until now, RV has never been done in a big public way so the info didn't even exist, and what might have was usually buried in the lab, some unmentioned side-effect of some obscure paper published 22 years ago or whatever.

Anyway, nobody really understands psychic functioning. What we do know a little about is stuff that can make the overall process "more prone to" go better or worse; and we know how to reduce certain kinds of noise and amplify certain kinds of signal. A little bit. So part of RV protocol is using the knowledge of the past for a decent protocol in the present. But it's not perfect because we're only at the beginning of this.

"Psi" is a warehouse-word. It gets all the things that have no other definition. When something gets a definition (such as how in the 80's, frequencies in the human voice, and pheremones, gained huge understanding in those areas of physiological research), then those things get their own term and they are moved OUT by the Remote Viewing protocol--which is designed to "exclude everything that is known to NOT be psi". It's possible that eventually everything will have a label and explanation and there will be nothing left to call 'psychic'.
 
Back
Top