From The NY Times: The Pentagon's Secret UFO Program

[Irreligious Survivalist]

Have you read the articles concerning ufo phenomena published in the Journal of Scientific Exploration? That journal has a long history and is academically sound.

What is your opinion of a journal whose Editor-In-Chief has publicly reported that he (Braude) changed an article that he had written to "match one (Nahm)" had written on the same subject at the same time?

 

[Realm]

Does 'Science' recognize yet the reality of psi phenomena studied by parapsychologists? Decades ago the American Association for the Advancement of Science included parapsychological research within the disciplines it recognizes as scientific.

What they actually did was to give Parapsychological Association an affiliate status in their organization. If only they had actually managed to get a single positive result that would hold up to scrutiny in the entire history of such research, they could actually market themselves with that, instead of with highly questionable affiliate status within one organization.

Have you read the articles concerning ufo phenomena published in the Journal of Scientific Exploration? That journal has a long history and is academically sound

It's basically a pseudoscience publication that tries to imitate real scientific publications. Its editor-in-chief is Stephen E. Braude, who also happens to be a past president of Parapsychological Association, and yet another believer in psychics caught in fraud.
Stephen E. Braude - Wikipedia

Speaking of which, John Greenewald from The Black Vault has published a couple of papers by Eric Davis, that predate AATIP, but which he suspects may represent similar ideas they were dealing with the AATIP. His intro and links can be found here:
Some examples of the "38 Reports" Created by the Advanced Aviation Threat Identification Program (AATIP)? • r/UFOs

That first paper about teleportation contains the following recommendations:

There are numerous supporters within the U.S. military establishment who comprehend the significance of remote viewing and PK phenomenon, and believe that they could have strategic implications. Bremseth (2001), a U.S. Navy SEAL, attended the Marine War College and studied the Remote Viewing program, and interviewed many of the former program participants. Bremseth then wrote his thesis on the topic, and concluded that the evidence supported continued research and applications of remote viewing. A research program improving on and expanding, or implementing novel variations of, the Chinese and Uri Geller-type experiments should be conducted in order to generate p-Teleportation phenomenon in the lab. The performances and characteristics of p-Teleportation need to be delineated in order to develop a refined hypothesis. Such a program should be designed so that an operational model for p-Teleportation can be developed and implemented as a prototype. An experimental program similar in fashion to the Remote Viewing program should be funded at $900,000 – 1,000,000 per year in parallel with a theoretical program funded at $500,000 per year for an initial five-year duration.

He also talks about Uri Geller's spoon bending as if it was some real psychic phenomenon instead of a trick:

Psychic Uri Geller (1975) is the original model for demonstrating PK metal bending. During a talk that he gave at the U.S. Capitol building, Uri caused a spoon to curve upward with no force applied, and then the spoon continued to bend after he put it back down and continued with his talk (Alexander, 1996).

That paper is from 2004. Do I need to say anything more?

 

[SRL+]

But of course we must assign it a very high MPBI because Hal explains the discrepancy here and even gets backed up by global advanced intelligence agent, Jack Sarfatti (get it? GAIA!!!! Nyuk! Nyuk! Nyuk!)
The Forbidden Knowledge of Secret Societies - 18

QUOTING FROM THE SITE:

The scientist often used by Laurence Gardner and others in their work is Dr. Hal Puthoff, director for advanced studies in Austin, who was quoted by Gardner as backing his theories.

Here’s what is supposedly said by Puthoff:

“Since gravity determines space-time, Puthoff concluded that the powder was ‘exotic matter’ and was capable of bending space-time.”

As Puthoff is so often used as backing the substance, I decided to ask!

I actually discovered to my surprise that Dr. Puthoff was not at all happy, and is a little perturbed at having to keep answering questions regarding the matter, especially as he never backed the theory in the first place.

However, I convinced Hal to give me a quote:

================
Hi Philip.
The Story is this. Early on (several years ago) someone brought Dave Hudson [who helped Gardner write his book] by and he told me about anomalous effects concerning his white powder.

One of his claims was that under certain conditions the mass decreased, i.e., an antigravity effect showed up. In response, I said that, from a physicist’s viewpoint, IF that were true, then there would have been a spacetime effect. (This is probably the source of the oft-stated quote attributed to me “The powder bends the spacetime metric.”)

Of course, I said no such thing about the powder because I do not know whether the statement about the powder is true. I offered that if he provided me a sample of the powder, I would check it out. He said he would. He never did. I never heard anything from him after that visit. But I hear a lot about the attributed quote from my colleagues, which I keep correcting!
Best regards,

Hal Puthoff,

Ph.D. Director, Institute for Advanced Studies at Austin
=============

As can be seen by this quote, Dr. Puthoff never backed the theory, and even wanted to help to see if there were any truth behind the claims by testing the substance claimed by Gardner to be derived from gold. I was told by Edmund Marriage of the Patrick Institute, who helped Gardner on the book, that it was tested by Oxford University and no gold was found.

So what is the truth?

Dr. Sarfatti of the Global Advanced Intelligence Agency (a mock and comical title) also said that,

“I think this is a false allegation….I know Hal very well and this is an obvious distortion, if not a bald lie.”

Puthoff also said,

“I have absolutely no idea what David Hudson’s white powder does. Don’t know where this quote comes from, which keeps showing up in the Internet, presumably from David Hudson. I am totally skeptical.”

I have had all manner of claims given to me via e-mail, and none of them have any scientific basis.

While in the cult of Scientology, Harold ascended from level OT I to OT II, for the total sum of $7,975.

It seems somewhat expensive, but look at what you get!

“By confronting hidden areas of one's existence on the whole track [that is, by confronting past incarnations], vast amounts of energy and attention are released. Those on this Solo-audited level experience a resurgence of self-determinism and native ability. OT II unlocks the aberrative factors on the whole track that have allowed the thetan to lose his innate freedom and ability and one achieves the ability to confront the whole track.”

IMHO, he should have stayed and gone for the gusto.

Beyond Operating Thetan:

“Beyond the attainment of the state of Operating Thetan is that of Cleared Theta Clear, which Hubbard describes as such:"

"A thetan who is completely rehabilitated and can do everything a thetan should do, such as move MEST and control others from a distance, or create his own universe; a person who is able to create his own universe or, living in the MEST universe is able to create illusions perceivable by others at will, to handle MEST universe objects without mechanical means and to have and feel no need of bodies or even the MEST universe to keep himself and his friends interested in existence.”

Unfortunately, spanning over ten years, these facts speak directly to belief systems & gullibility.
Then again, everyone's got their Gris-Gris ...

— L. Ron Hubbard, Scientology 8-8008, p. 114 (1st ed), p. 151 (1990 ed.)

Operating Thetan - Wikipedia

 

[Thomas R Morrison]

While in the cult of Scientology, Harold ascended from level OT I to OT II, for the total sum of $7,975.

So you'll reach back over 40 years to smear somebody who's only tangentially related to the bombshell NYT story about the AATIP. Man, you character assassins are beneath contempt. I wonder how proud you'd be of the mistakes that you were making 40 years ago, S.R.I. Too bad we don't have that on the public record.

 

[Realm]

While in the cult of Scientology, Harold ascended from level OT I to OT II, for the total sum of $7,975.

It seems somewhat expensive, but look at what you get!

Cheap for that cult, Leah Remini has said to have spent around $5 million in total:
Leah Remini Says Scientology Cost Her a Total of $5M

"A thetan who is completely rehabilitated and can do everything a thetan should do, such as move MEST and control others from a distance, or create his own universe; a person who is able to create his own universe or, living in the MEST universe is able to create illusions perceivable by others at will, to handle MEST universe objects without mechanical means and to have and feel no need of bodies or even the MEST universe to keep himself and his friends interested in existence.”

Those ideas from scientology seem to have a lot in common with the ideas Puthoff has been selling since then. That MEST has interesting similarities to all that talk about space-time metric engineering:

MEST is an acronym Hubbard coined which stands for matter, energy, space and time, the component parts of the physical universe.[1] It is claimed that by completing Scientology courses, it is possible to eventually attain "cause over MEST" — the ability to control matter, energy and spacetime in the physical universe, free of the encumbrance of the body.

Supernatural abilities in Scientology doctrine - Wikipedia

And this doesn't fall too far off from the zero point energy stuff:

Speaking on the subject of "Exteriorization - communication in Theta and MEST", Hubbard said that an individual thetan (person) has the ability to generate electricity by putting a "beam" inside a vacuum tube, or a bell jar that has had the air evacuated

This isn't that close to the anti-gravity stuff, but has some similarities, and Puthoff wrote that one article that made all sorts of religious links, and even referred to the Force as in Star Wars and whatnot:

Hubbard has claimed on numerous occasions that it is possible for Scientologists to use mind over matter to increase one's body weight, although why someone would specifically want to do this is not explained. In his book Understanding the E-meter, Hubbard wrote that this assertion can be tested by "mocking up" mental pictures in one's imagination. "This test has actually been made and an increase of as much as thirty pounds, actually measured on scales, has been added to and subtracted from a body by creating 'mental energy.'"

Then there's of course this direct link:

Two Scientologists, Hal Puthoff and Ingo Swann, researched remote viewing at Stanford Research Institute for the CIA Project Stargate in the 1970s. Most of the SRI team, including project director Puthoff, and the CIA's star "psychic spies", Price and Swann, were Scientologists, a fact that skeptic Martin Gardner noted disparagingly. Puthoff and Swann were of the "original" Operating Thetan (OT) VII level (the Church has since 'changed' OT VII from the level these two completed), and credited Scientology with their success in the CIA remote viewing program.[6][7]

It's not hard to see how a physicist falling to that cult could try to transform such ideas to physics like that.

Unfortunately, spanning over ten years, these facts speak directly to belief systems & gullibility.

Sure does, and there seems to be a continuum from that to where the TTSA is now, that is, this really nailed it:

Scientology begat Remote Viewing which begat CIA at SRI which begat UFO Working Group which begat Stargate which begat NIDS which begat AATIP which begat TTSA. So, Hal Puthoff as Father Abraham but clean-shaven? (Remember, before Jesus said “Feed my sheep” to Peter, Hal Puthoff said to John Alexander: “Stare at my goats.”)

Eric Davis has apparently expressed similar beliefs and interests in telepathy and stuff. This article from 2009 already mentions that teleportation paper I quoted before:

One intriguing tale comes from Dr. Eric Davis, a physicist who had worked on a special project for Bob Bigelow of Bigelow Aerospace, then later authored an extensive teleportation physics paper under contract with the U.S. Air Force.

The Bigelow project was focused on paranormal activity at a ranch in Utah. One reported encounter involved a researcher at the site who was frozen in his tracks by an unearthly presence.

Davis described the strange paranormal phenomena manifesting in “the form of a dark shadow or cloud-type effect which had an unusual turbulence effect when it shrunk to a point and disappeared.”

Having heard similar accounts of these shape-shifting clouds, I asked Davis about the alleged telepathic voices-in-your-mind that accompanied the phenomena. Davis explained “there were multiple voices that spoke in unison” even as other sensory inputs were squashed, leaving the poor researcher frozen in his tracks, unable to move until the shadow had vanished.

Probing further, I asked Davis about the nature of the “telepathic” experience. He described the voices as being “monotone males with a very terse, threatening tone,” which does sound similar to some reports of anomalous EVP voice phenomena picked up by audio recording instruments.

I asked Davis if this phenomena had manifested any audible or other tangible effects outside of the mind of the hapless researcher held at the mercy of the paranormal effect. According to Davis, this incident, and presumably similar ones, including the alleged alien abductions of the fourth kind, are mental manifestations of an unknown source phenomena.

It is worth recalling the fate of the unfortunate and unwitting victims of CIA’s notorious MKULTRA LSD experiments, in which a source unknown to the victim (the LSD) severely compromised the victim’s conscious experience in bizarre and subjectively inexplicable ways.

Is it possible the effect described by Davis is the result of an externally applied mind-altering electromagnetic field on the human brain? Or a novel biochemical response to covertly administered drugs?

Another source knowledgeable about state of the art neuroscience seemed to think so.

The Intelligence Community is presently pursuing a wide range of brain-mind-machine interactions with an ultimate goal of reading and sending thoughts directly into the conscious mind.

Paranormal activity of the fourth kind: Aliens, demons and “Men Who Stare at Goats” | STARpod US

No wonder TTSA "science division" is all about the same stuff:

We have access to a global team of research scientists with advanced knowledge to pursue projects, which include Human Ultra-Experience Database, Engineering Space-Time Metrics, Brain-Computer Interface, and Telepathy.

To The Stars Academy

As the above article begins:

These are topics that make military men who stare goats to death seem positively normal by comparison.

It seems more and more probable we will see a sequel...

 

[Constance]

What is your opinion of a journal whose Editor-In-Chief has publicly reported that he (Braude) changed an article that he had written to "match one (Nahm)" had written on the same subject at the same time?

Not familiar with that event; do you have a link to a source where I can read an account of it, by one or the other or both? Having read Braude, I suspect that he wasn't plagiarizing but rather was persuaded by the argument of the other author.

 

[Constance]

In general, the reactions to one or two of my recent posts reminds me that I'm in the wrong room here.

 

[Realm]

This transcript from a lecture by Davis in 2010 shows how that recent talk about figuring out UFO propulsion is also continuation of similar ideas, some of which originate from Skinwalker ranch again:

Audience Question: Is there any thought to using the known properties of UFOs as a guide to your thinking and research?

Dr. Eric W. Davis: The answer is yes and no. Secretly, yes and overtly no. Because the mainstream academics don’t like the topic of UFOs and they really don’t have any credibility with them, especially with policy-makers and decision-makers in charge of funding and programatics. They don’t want to hear the topics of UFOs. So, for the purpose of doing this officially [we didn’t bring in UFOs], but we did consider it under the table.

And yes, there is a subset of us who have looked at UFO data. And we’ve looked at all the physical events and physical descriptions that have been provided by investigators from Jacques Vallee to yourself, and whatnot, and George Hathaway and so forth. And we’ve been able to use that data as input to give us an idea, and that data does drive the concepts that we did derive later on [when we did] the book and went into the original NASA program. Like warp drives and wormholes. For example, at the NIDS Utah Ranch, where I used to work for Bob Bigelow for six years, we had the experience of one scientist and one investigator seeing a wormhole – what looked like a wormhole – with a creature crawling through, and then the ranch owners had seen an opening in the sky in broad daylight with a triangular craft that came through it. Well, that’s an example of data that indicates there’s a wormhole involved. I mean, geometry tells you what a wormhole looks like when it intersects our space. It appears as a very bright – intensely bright – point of light and then, as the intersection gets larger and larger, it opens up and you begin to see the hole. And, things would be going in and out of it. So, that’s an example of two datasets that we verified at the NIDS Utah Ranch that match what I know as a physicist what a wormhole would do.

Warp drives. We haven’t seen UFOs do performances that adhere to the warp drive, because the warp drive… basically it’s just between stars and we don’t see UFOs warping anywhere or warping around. We see them doing ninety degree turns and rapid motions; they disappear and reappear. That is undetermined yet. I would think that wormhole is a big possibility still. I’m trying to think of anything else. I would think that anti-gravity – we have anti-gravity in Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity and I cover that in my chapter in the book; one of my three chapters. There are aspects of anti-gravity, the properties of negative vacuum energy that would create a repulsive force that allows something to levitate up. And UFOs do exhibit that. So there’s Hal Putthoff’s Polarized Vacuum Model. It’s a different form of Relativity where instead of a space-time you envision space-time as a polarized vacuum of a quantum zero point fluctuations. And, if you exert a field on that medium, the fluctuations are polarized, that creates a space-time bending effect similar to warp drive and wormholes. So, we see that. We see that in aspects of what’s predicted.

Dr. Eric W. Davis, of NASA's Breakthrough Propulsion Project, discussed UFOs during lecture • r/UFOs
(There's also a link to the video, if you want to see Davis saying those things himself)

It seems they are basically just restating their old ideas in relation to the videos that have been released. So nothing new there either.

 

[SRL+]

Cheap for that cult, Leah Remini has said to have spent around $5 million in total

Five rocks..., yikes! That would be enough to purchase 166,666.6 media containers of Monatomic Gold, sending one past the stars …

 

[Realm]

What they actually did was to give Parapsychological Association an affiliate status in their organization. If only they had actually managed to get a single positive result that would hold up to scrutiny in the entire history of such research, they could actually market themselves with that, instead of with highly questionable affiliate status within one organization.

One more continuation to that. I did a quick search to find out why on earth that pseudo-scientific group ended up as an affiliate of a scientific organization. I thought that was off-topic, but believe it or not, it's once again linked to Puthoff.

Apparently that lapse of judgment by AAAS was because of anthropologist Margaret Mead, who was:

One of the co-founding supporters of PA (Parapsychological Association)

Parapsychological Association - Wikipedia
and also:

held various positions in the American Association for the Advancement of Science, notably president in 1975 and chair of the executive committee of the board of directors in 1976

Margaret Mead - Wikipedia
and:

Margaret Mead (1901-1978), cultural anthropologist, helped the Parapsychological Association become a member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and wrote a supportive introduction to a remote viewing book.137

Eminent People Interested in Psi | Psi Encyclopedia

So what was that book? Surprise, surprise:

137.Mead, M. (1977). Introduction. In R. Targ & H. Puthoff Mind-reach. Scientists look at psychic abilities (xv-xxii). New York, NY: Delacorte.

That introduction is available here:
https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP96-00787R000500240025-6.pdf

So she actually believed that remote viewing nonsense, and maybe it wasn't thoroughly debunked by the time she died in 1978. As for the AAAS, the reputation damage was already done, so I'm guessing they think it's better to just let the PA to hang around on their lists, as kicking it out would probably bring them more bad publicity.

A year or so after Mead died, John Wheeler (former president of the American Physical Society) tried to get them kicked out with a letter to the AAAS:

I know that the views of our late and beloved Margaret Mead were strong in getting parapsychology admitted to the AAAS. I was present at the meeting where it happened. The opinion that I had and many others had was overridden by the permissiveness of the time. The words might not have been used, but the idea was there of that old phrase, “Marry him to reform him.” Now the decade of permissiveness has passed.
...
Moreover, in the quantum theory of observation, my own present field of endeavor, I find honest work almost overwhelmed by the buzz of absolutely crazy ideas put forth with the aim of establishing a link between quantum mechanics and parapsychology—as if there were any such thing as “parapsychology.”
...
“We have enough charlatanism in this country today without needing a scientific organization to prostitute itself to it. The AAAS has to make up its mind whether it is seeking popularity or whether it is strictly a scientific organization.” Admiral Hyman G. Rickover has just this minute telephoned to back my position on making a clean break between the AAAS and parapsychology and authorizes me to quote him so.

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/1979/05/17/a-decade-of-permissiveness/

That middle part is probably the reason why Jack Sarfatti has responded to that (linked at the end of that letter), defending his ideas of sending messages faster than light and backwards in time, and how "mental" is apparently one level of reality.

So once again it seems that the world of woo salesmen is quite small and some individuals like Puthoff are somehow involved with quite a lot of it. I have also thought that the crazy beliefs of Scientology haven't had too much effect outside the cult, but now it seems I have underestimated its significance as a source of all things crazy.

 

[Erno86]

Exclusive 60 minutes interview with Luis Elizondo - Former Director of the AATIP

 

[Hollywood Tomfortas]

[

A year or so after Mead died, John Wheeler (former president of the American Physical Society) tried to get them kicked out with a letter to the AAAS:

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/1979/05/17/a-decade-of-permissiveness/

That middle part is probably the reason why Jack Sarfatti has responded to that (linked at the end of that letter), defending his ideas of sending messages faster than light and backwards in time, and how "mental" is apparently one level of reality.

So once again it seems that the world of woo salesmen is quite small and some individuals like Puthoff are somehow involved with quite a lot of it. I have also thought that the crazy beliefs of Scientology haven't had too much effect outside the cult, but now it seems I have underestimated its significance as a source of all things crazy.

All righty then, Brother @Realm! Your mention of Wheeler, Puthoff and the AAAS debacle not only activates massive memory circuits in my Pre-Internet brain mush, but also makes me realize that it is time for me to come clean and confess to you and to the rest of the Paracast Tribe —- as a gesture of full disclosure (not just “confirmation”) —- of my surreptitious and sometimes overt complicity in these para-shenanigans of the American Leisure Suit Era (Carter + Reagan time) I leave it to you to judge the level or extent of my “conflict of interest.”

Rather than bore you with the history right away which involves my philosophical research for Prof John A. Wheeler at UT Austin in 1976 to buttress his strong version of the Anthropic Principle, my first meeting with Hal Puthoff in 1984 in Northern California and our sporadic time together in Austin between 1986 and 1998, let me post for you now the meager bit of online evidence that proves my complicity.

How retro that the info appears on a quaint old Listserve. Remember them? I suppose I could call my evidence, not a “smoking gun” but rather a “smoking Listserve!” Nyuk! Nyuk! Nyuk!

So back in June 1994 in Austin, Texas I took part in the annual meeting of the SSE = Society for Scientific Exploration. But not just as a spectator. I had submitted my own proposal for a paper to the conference organizers, and Hal Puthoff chose to sponsor my talk. Here is the listing of every Abstract of every paper given that year and I copy mine out of the series. It was not published in the Journal of Scientific Exploration and I don’t have the entire paper anymore, but I suppose one day I could reconstruct from this abstract.

Google Groups

ABSTRACTS
13th Annual Meeting of the Society for Scientific Exploration
June 9 – 11, 1994
Austin, Texas

The international Society for Scientific Exploration will be holding its
Thirteenth Annual Meeting at the Austin Sheraton Hotel in Austin, Texas
from June 9-11. The primary purpose of the Society is to provide a
professional forum for scholarly presentation, critique, and discussion
of a wide spectrum of topics that presently cross, or fall outside, the
boundaries of most established scientific disciplines.

At one end of this spectrum are apparent anomalies in well established fields; at the
other are paradoxical phenomena that belong to no currently recognized
field of study. The Society takes no position of advocacy on any topic,
but supports open-minded examination of any issue on the basis of its
methodological quality and empirical evidence. In addition to its Annual
Meetings, the Society for Scientific Exploration also publishes the
quarterly, peer reviewed Journal of Scientific Exploration.

|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||


Overcoming the Triple-Nested Narcissism
of the Anthropic Principle

Tom Mellett
Department of Physics
Austin Community College
Austin, TX 78745

In the ancient Greek myth, Narcissus became so enamored of his
own reflection in the pond that he took this self-consistent
observed phenomenon for complete reality. Becoming so
self-absorbed, he thus became a perfect reflecting surface for
the calls of Echo, the wood-nymph who loved him and pined away
calling for him, hence her name. With the irreversible passage
of time, Narcissus eventually died on the spot, was buried there
and sprang up for modern times as the narcissus flower, actually
used medicinally as a soporific.

Various statements of the "anthropic principle," such as John
Wheeler's "universe as self-excited circuit" with "observership"
generating Big Bang, Hal Puthoff's "Self-regenerating
cosmological feedback cycle" as the source of zero-point
fluctuations in the quantum vacuum, or the statement of natural
selection: "survival of the fittest" all express the same
self-referential paradox that bedazzled Narcissus: namely, the
investment of a virtual image (consistency) with full reality
(completeness).

But as Goedel proved, the claim to completeness for any logical
system has its price, namely, inconsistencies, or anomalies of
logic. It can be shown that there are actually 3 cumulative or
nested levels of inconsistencies created by the anthropic
principle which lie between the (1) living, (2) conscious, and
(3) self-conscious observer and the (1) non-living, (2)
non-conscious, and (3) non-self-referential objects of such
observations.

Just as a mirror reverses left and right, so does
the self-conscious observer reverse the one-way direction of
deterministic cause and effect. The awareness of this reversal
and its implications for understanding processes of life
unfolding in time as well as the critical distinction between
consciousness and self-consciousness is the first step in the
long journey ahead to overcome the Narcissism inherent in the
present interpretations of the anthropic principle.

=================================
[Presentation sponsored by Hal Puthoff]
=================================

 

[Erno86]

Interview excerpt - USS Nimitz UFO incident"

 

[Hollywood Tomfortas]

It's not hard to see how a physicist falling to that cult could try to transform such ideas to physics like that.

Indeed brother @Realm, I am still waiting (since January 21) for Brother @Thomas R Morrison to check my calculations concerning the Mass-Energy Equivalence of Hubbard’s claim to gain or lose 30 lbs with of Mass. Put that in your MEST pipe and smoke it!
"Top questions and doubts about UFO whistleblower, Luis Elizondo "

 

[Realm]

it is time for me to come clean

Is that a prelude for going clear?

I leave it to you to judge the level or extent of my “conflict of interest.”

Of all the people in this forum, you are probably the most difficult person to judge or read (by telepathy and remote viewing of course), so that will probably remain a mystery...

Rather than bore you with the history right away which involves my philosophical research for Prof John A. Wheeler at UT Austin in 1976 to buttress his strong version of the Anthropic Principle, my first meeting with Hal Puthoff in 1984 in Northern California and our sporadic time together in Austin between 1986 and 1998, let me post for you now the meager bit of online evidence that proves my complicity.

You really have some interesting connections!

So back in June 1994 in Austin, Texas I took part in the annual meeting of the SSE = Society for Scientific Exploration.

I don't know if I should even be surprised anymore.

I had submitted my own proposal for a paper to the conference organizers, and Hal Puthoff chose to sponsor my talk.

At least that proves you are not Puthoff messing with me as an alter ego. Phew, that would have been awkward...

I'm considering asking what you think of SSE and other stuff now and how your views have changed since those times. Should I do it or would I regret even asking?

 

[Irreligious Survivalist]

Not familiar with that event; do you have a link to a source where I can read an account of it, by one or the other or both? Having read Braude, I suspect that he wasn't plagiarizing but rather was persuaded by the argument of the other author.

"I asked Braude why he had not included tests for Nahm’s suspicions in the protocol, to which he replied something to the effect that “Things come up.” So, in effect, the team has ignored their findings [on physical mediumship] and focused on Nahm’s suspicions. Very scientific indeed!"

Arrogance of Scientific Authority | Etheric Studies

 

[Hollywood Tomfortas]

Of all the people in this forum, you are probably the most difficult person to judge or read (by telepathy and remote viewing of course), so that will probably remain a mystery...

Oh, but not to Brother @Thomas R Morrison , who sees right into the very depths of my wretched being. In fact, let me take this opportunity to praise and thank brother Morrison for his magnificent elucidation of my character here on Paracast.

I reference his comment about me dated January 8, 2018
"Top questions and doubts about UFO whistleblower, Luis Elizondo 1/8/18 "

“I would argue that it makes no difference whether you're a paid disinformation agent or not, because your mind is a dumpster fire of irrationality and blithering nonsense, so nothing that you have to say holds any value regardless of your motives, and in fact your presence here represents nothing more than a regrettable contamination of the information field. Or, to put it in more constructive "feel good" terms, I think you'd find a wealth of kindred spirits over at the Above Top Secret forums - go and find thy people, brother.”

Brother Morrison, I am so moved by your beautifully expressed sentiments about me that I wish to have them appear on my tombstone, so I ask your permission to quote your words in my epitaph

I would also be very honored to have you attend my funeral to deliver a eulogy and bid me a proper Paracast farewell. Inspired by your stirring words, here is what I will engrave upon my tombstone:


HERE LIES BROTHER HOLLYWOOD TOMFORTAS

WHOSE MIND WAS A DUMPSTER FIRE
OF IRRATIONALITY AND BLITHERING NONSENSE

AND WHOSE VERY EXISTENCE WAS A REGRETTABLE
CONTAMINATION OF THE INFORMATION FIELD.

MAY HE DECOHERE IN PEACE. AMEN.

 

[SRL+]

All righty then, Brother @Realm! Your mention of Wheeler, Puthoff and the AAAS debacle not only activates massive memory circuits in my Pre-Internet brain mush, but also makes me realize that it is time for me to come clean and confess to you and to the rest of the Paracast Tribe —- as a gesture of full disclosure (not just “confirmation”) —- of my surreptitious and sometimes overt complicity in these para-shenanigans of the American Leisure Suit Era (Carter + Reagan time) I leave it to you to judge the level or extent of my “conflict of interest.”

Rather than bore you with the history right away which involves my philosophical research for Prof John A. Wheeler at UT Austin in 1976 to buttress his strong version of the Anthropic Principle, my first meeting with Hal Puthoff in 1984 in Northern California and our sporadic time together in Austin between 1986 and 1998, let me post for you now the meager bit of online evidence that proves my complicity.

How retro that the info appears on a quaint old Listserve. Remember them? I suppose I could call my evidence, not a “smoking gun” but rather a “smoking Listserve!” Nyuk! Nyuk! Nyuk!

So back in June 1994 in Austin, Texas I took part in the annual meeting of the SSE = Society for Scientific Exploration. But not just as a spectator. I had submitted my own proposal for a paper to the conference organizers, and Hal Puthoff chose to sponsor my talk. Here is the listing of every Abstract of every paper given that year and I copy mine out of the series. It was not published in the Journal of Scientific Exploration and I don’t have the entire paper anymore, but I suppose one day I could reconstruct from this abstract.

Google Groups

ABSTRACTS
13th Annual Meeting of the Society for Scientific Exploration
June 9 – 11, 1994
Austin, Texas

The international Society for Scientific Exploration will be holding its
Thirteenth Annual Meeting at the Austin Sheraton Hotel in Austin, Texas
from June 9-11. The primary purpose of the Society is to provide a
professional forum for scholarly presentation, critique, and discussion
of a wide spectrum of topics that presently cross, or fall outside, the
boundaries of most established scientific disciplines.

At one end of this spectrum are apparent anomalies in well established fields; at the
other are paradoxical phenomena that belong to no currently recognized
field of study. The Society takes no position of advocacy on any topic,
but supports open-minded examination of any issue on the basis of its
methodological quality and empirical evidence. In addition to its Annual
Meetings, the Society for Scientific Exploration also publishes the
quarterly, peer reviewed Journal of Scientific Exploration.

|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||


Overcoming the Triple-Nested Narcissism
of the Anthropic Principle

Tom Mellett
Department of Physics
Austin Community College
Austin, TX 78745

In the ancient Greek myth, Narcissus became so enamored of his
own reflection in the pond that he took this self-consistent
observed phenomenon for complete reality. Becoming so
self-absorbed, he thus became a perfect reflecting surface for
the calls of Echo, the wood-nymph who loved him and pined away
calling for him, hence her name. With the irreversible passage
of time, Narcissus eventually died on the spot, was buried there
and sprang up for modern times as the narcissus flower, actually
used medicinally as a soporific.

Various statements of the "anthropic principle," such as John
Wheeler's "universe as self-excited circuit" with "observership"
generating Big Bang, Hal Puthoff's "Self-regenerating
cosmological feedback cycle" as the source of zero-point
fluctuations in the quantum vacuum, or the statement of natural
selection: "survival of the fittest" all express the same
self-referential paradox that bedazzled Narcissus: namely, the
investment of a virtual image (consistency) with full reality
(completeness).

But as Goedel proved, the claim to completeness for any logical
system has its price, namely, inconsistencies, or anomalies of
logic. It can be shown that there are actually 3 cumulative or
nested levels of inconsistencies created by the anthropic
principle which lie between the (1) living, (2) conscious, and
(3) self-conscious observer and the (1) non-living, (2)
non-conscious, and (3) non-self-referential objects of such
observations.

Just as a mirror reverses left and right, so does
the self-conscious observer reverse the one-way direction of
deterministic cause and effect. The awareness of this reversal
and its implications for understanding processes of life
unfolding in time as well as the critical distinction between
consciousness and self-consciousness is the first step in the
long journey ahead to overcome the Narcissism inherent in the
present interpretations of the anthropic principle.

=================================
[Presentation sponsored by Hal Puthoff]
=================================

http://makeanoteofit.info/~fche/mirrors/www.textfiles.com/bbs/KEELYNET/CONTACT/sfse94.asc

 

[Constance]

"I asked Braude why he had not included tests for Nahm’s suspicions in the protocol, to which he replied something to the effect that “Things come up.” So, in effect, the team has ignored their findings [on physical mediumship] and focused on Nahm’s suspicions. Very scientific indeed!"

Arrogance of Scientific Authority | Etheric Studies

Thank you for the link. Unfortunately, the linked article does not inspire confidence that the author [or the medium in this case] understands the stringent protocols of mediumship research. But I'll follow the embedded links to the two papers by Braude and Nahm and to follow-ups by both of them regarding this case in the JSE. If you're interested in pursuing a discussion of parapsychological and psychical research, I'm willing to participate, but it would need to be pursued in a new thread since it would not be of interest to, or even tolerable by, most people involved in this thread.

 

[Realm]

Oh, but not to Brother Thomas R Morrison, who sees right into the very depths of my wretched being.

He sees the innards of all of us like that, and even knows what each of us are thinking better than ourselves.

HERE LIES BROTHER HOLLYWOOD TOMFORTAS

WHOSE MIND WAS A DUMPSTER FIRE
OF IRRATIONALITY AND BLITHERING NONSENSE

AND WHOSE VERY EXISTENCE WAS A REGRETTABLE
CONTAMINATION OF THE INFORMATION FIELD.

MAY HE DECOHERE IN PEACE. AMEN.

I think this would provide good material for mine:

If you listen to Realm he'll have you believe that there are no mysteries in the universe, nothing remains undiscovered, and every effort underway to expand the leading edge of theoretical development with an eye toward future applications, is nothing more than hopelessly misled pseudoscientific technobabble. That seems to be his sole purpose in life. And he's pretty good at it - if I didn't know that he was talking out of his ass half the time, I'd fall for it too.
...
Because there's a lot to be excited about coming down the pike, and you won't see it coming if you buy into his relentlessly negativist blithering BS.
...
Scientific progress is a difficult and messy business, and the last thing that anyone needs is some passive aggressive OCD internet heckler who's out to convince the world that the mainstream academic community has already ruled out every interesting new possibility, and that everyone striving to expand the boundaries of human technological capability are just crackpots and asshats.