Of Skeptics and Bannings

Newly? It's been nine years. But you're sort of right, except the reason for anyone to go through all these documents is not to rebut me, but to have an opinion at all. You can't judge my work, or the writings of Targ, Puthoff, McMoneagle etc either. Without that background knowledge, you can only say "I don't know" which is absolutely fine. But in the thread in question, no one was saying "I don't know," they were saying "Hey look at all this evidence!" When I replied with more evidence, that's when the tone of the debate changed.

I can't speak for anyone else, but I don't have to go through all the parapsychology literature to believe them. I've met Russell Targ and Ed May. They both live around here. The idea that these two people or their teams could be fooled over the years just doesn't pass the most basic smell test. You're basically floating a version of the everyone-involved-must-be-an-idiot theory. Since I know that they are not idiots, I see no need to doubt everything they did in the first place.

This is possibly true. Tell you what, though, it's pretty interesting off the beaten track.

Yup. It is interesting. I'm working on First Sight by James Carpenter. The trouble is that there are many different directions off that beaten path.

That's a good start, but in my experience it only gets you so far.

It is possible to go on and on forever with doubt. Our different positions on this have a lot to do with our personal experiences. I know what psychic ability is. It's not something mysterious or ephemeral to me. It's just there. As long as the evidence falls in line with what seems to be doable, I don't have a problem with it. I'm assuming in your case that you either haven't had any psychic experiences at all, or you have, but not enough to get comfortable with them. Our underlying assumptions are going to be very different.
 
I can't speak for anyone else, but I don't have to go through all the parapsychology literature to believe them.

You believe them because you've met them. I see. I guess our personal experiences are very different.

Let me try to explain. I agree that Targ and Puthoff are not fakes, but that doesn't mean they are right. The stories they tell in their presentations are misremembered versions of what they wrote in their books. They're not based on what actually happened. I've read the first hand contemporary reports. Hundreds of them. What have you read?
 
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I wrote about Project Star Gate, offering documentation to back up my claims that most of the hits claimed by various remote viewers were heavily fictionalised.

Glory be, son, what in the world are you going on about?

Here's access to over 200 Project Stargate files, most were originally classified "Secret" none of which are fictionalized. Seriously, get a grip and get back to us when you have read all of them, twice or more, as I have.

https://app.box.com/s/4gu9pa1g76ebj5hbshld

"Overstating one's cause can cause serious damage to one's credibility." ~Tyler Snotgern 10Dec13 0724

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You believe them because you've met them. I see. I guess our personal experiences are very different.

That's a rather simplified way of putting it. Like I said, my threshold for believing in stuff like remote viewing, which doesn't seem all that extraordinary to me, isn't all that high to begin with. Given what I know I can do myself, it doesn't seem like a stretch to imagine someone getting a whole lot better at it through training.

What I do find unbelievable is the idea that a changing team of smart, diverse people who are being held accountable for their results over the course of 20 years can be fooled like a group of middle school children..
 
Glory be, son, what in the world are you going on about?

Here's access to over 200 Project Stargate files, most were originally classified "Secret" none of which are fictionalized. Seriously, get a grip and get back to us when you have read all of them, twice or more, as I have.

https://app.box.com/s/4gu9pa1g76ebj5hbshld

"Overstating one's cause can cause serious damage to one's credibility." ~Tyler Snotgern 10Dec13 0724

I have all of the Star Gate Archive. 17,801 files. I've read about half. That's a lot more than 200, even if you read them twice.
 
What I do find unbelievable is the idea that a changing team of smart, diverse people who are being held accountable for their results over the course of 20 years can be fooled like a group of middle school children..

There are so many avenues for deception, it's hard to know where to start. And they are not just the province of middle school children. It is absurd to think that they are.

If you find my claim unbelievable, then consider this. You're in the same position as a devout materialist is when faced with evidence for psi. As long as he doesn't examine the evidence then his world view is safe.

When I got the Star Gate archive, I expected most of the famous hits to be genuine, but for them to be swamped by a large number of poor results. I did not expect that the famous hits would almost all be exaggerated, fictionalised, due to methodological defects or (in a couple of occasions) completely untrue.
 
You believe them because you've met them. I see. I guess our personal experiences are very different.

Let me try to explain. I agree that Targ and Puthoff are not fakes, but that doesn't mean they are right. The stories they tell in their presentations are misremembered versions of what they wrote in their books. They're not based on what actually happened. I've read the first hand contemporary reports. Hundreds of them. What have you read?
I have all of the Star Gate Archive. 17,801 files. I've read about half. That's a lot more than 200, even if you read them twice.
ersby, you've read nearly 9,000 files? That's over two years of reading, 40hrs/wk. Either you are a liar or a nutjob, either way, we are through.
 
One of the people debunking him was Keith Harary, one of the remote viewers he employed.
It was published in the JASPR. Schwartz wrote a reply, which Harary did not consider adequate.
Mine too.

That's Stephan Schwartz, not Gary, to whom I was clearly referring in my post.

I read your blog post - as I understand it, you didn't read the JASPR paper, you found 'snippets' of it. As far as I can see, nowhere did Harary claim to debunk anything, he just offered some criticisms which you then called debunking. Schwartz responded. Harary disagreed. That sounds like the way science moves forward.

With respect ersby, claiming to 'debunk' serious science (Schwartz probably reads more than 'snippets' of his references) says more about you than it does about your target.
 
That's Stephan Schwartz, not Gary, to whom I was clearly referring in my post.

I read your blog post - as I understand it, you didn't read the JASPR paper, you found 'snippets' of it. As far as I can see, nowhere did Harary claim to debunk anything, he just offered some criticisms which you then called debunking. Schwartz responded. Harary disagreed. That sounds like the way science moves forward.

With respect ersby, claiming to 'debunk' serious science (Schwartz probably reads more than 'snippets' of his references) says more about you than it does about your target.

Ah, you're right about Gary Schwartz. My bad.

But you're putting on a very positive spin about Stephan Schwartz's work, and doing so with no evidence at all.

Stephan Schwartz claims to have found a ship, The Leander, using remote viewers who lead him straight to the spot. Harary says that they were never looking for the Leander. Rather, they put down a lot of buoys in an area known for lots of shipwrecks, and they found one which they later tentatively identified.

I can get hold of the papers in question in a couple of weeks. Shall I do that, and then we can discuss it in detail?
 
You believe them because you've met them. I see. I guess our personal experiences are very different.

Let me try to explain. I agree that Targ and Puthoff are not fakes, but that doesn't mean they are right. The stories they tell in their presentations are misremembered versions of what they wrote in their books. They're not based on what actually happened. I've read the first hand contemporary reports. Hundreds of them. What have you read?

No first hand reports. As I said, I don't have a very high threshold for believing them. Why should I when I know that psychic ability is real? so I haven't devoted myself to going through the documents.

Here's the deal. I can be persuaded by evidence, but I'm not going to go out of my way to get it in this case. If it's important enough to you, or anyone else, to go through the thousands of documents and make a clearly laid out case that it's all bunk in a well written blog post or something similar, I will read it and the source material that's provided. It's not high enough on my radar to do otherwise.

If you want to blow me off because I'm not reading the same material, that's fine. It may be a waste of your time to engage me in this situation. At least you know where I stand.
 
Glory be, son, what in the world are you going on about?

Here's access to over 200 Project Stargate files, most were originally classified "Secret" none of which are fictionalized. Seriously, get a grip and get back to us when you have read all of them, twice or more, as I have.

https://app.box.com/s/4gu9pa1g76ebj5hbshld

"Overstating one's cause can cause serious damage to one's credibility." ~Tyler Snotgern 10Dec13 0724

Sweet archive, Dude. Thanks for sharing.
 
Ok.

Well, what's the take on it from the anti-materialism perspective?

To my knowledge, there is no perspective that defines itself by being anti-materialism. There are many philosophies and theories that incorporate consciousness into reality.
 
To my knowledge, there is no perspective that defines itself by being anti-materialism. There are many philosophies and theories that incorporate consciousness into reality.

We're kind of running around in circles here.

Let me ask it like this:

How do people who completely reject materialism interpret research and data on consciousness which is based on experiments where brains get zapped with electricity, "simulating" things like OBEs?

Or, is the answer "they don't"?
 
Ersby, speaking about Stargate and and one of its main remote viewers Joe Mcmoneagle, McMoneagle has done several public remote viewing demonstrations, one for example for National Geographic Channel which was very well controlled indeed. For me his demonstrations are wonderful displays of his capabilities. I assume, where you are coming from, you see every one of them as fraud?
 
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