Talk:Remote influencing

For a January 2005 deletion debate over this page see Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Remote influencing

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NPOV notice

Entirely one-sided article. Advocacy piece for the existence of "Remote influencing." No discussion or citation of opposing views. Dpbsmith (talk) 01:35, 13 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Right, thats three skeptical references, including an article from the Skpetical Inquirer directly challenging one of the peer review papers quoted. I'll try and dig up some more shortly. Its certainly no longer pure advocacy. Point taken. Okay, just re-wrote the first para, to make it more skeptical as well. Long standing government support / funding does not prove it works of course, only that officials think it works, which is an important difference. Timharwoodx 17:09, 13 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Just a note about 1 things said in the article. 1) In "The Seventh Sense", the part about influencing Gorbachov ends by saying that I (the author) doubt that I caused the fall of communism in any way. The process was already on-going. It says that maybe, just maybe, the part I played was to provide the words to be used. 2) I was also careful (maybe not careful enough, because people keep missing it) to point out that all RI work was done on a personal basis, and did not involve the government team in any way. All the members of the government's remote viewing unit were under very strict orders to not try to use any "active mental work" in any of our sessions or missions. - Lyn Buchanan

Well, so far as I can tell, its normal to get a pseudo flame war break out, whenever you try and upload an article like this. RI clearly is possible, and its a well funded operation in intelligence circles these days, with the Indian government allegedly now funding its own version of goat lab. I'm sure the Chinese and others will follow shortly. Just part of the intelligence tool kit these days, available to Rumsfeld, and a small number of other top officials, to use as they see fit. However, concentrated in such a small group of people, and still more or less top secret, there is significant scope for abuse. You could for example get the team to focus on a Presidential candidate, during a live TV debate. You could get a team to focus on the quarterback of a football team, during the Superbowl final. You may not be able to strike a man down with thought alone, but the scope for mischief is still significant. A 30% loss in concentration, to a professional sports player, would be simply disastrous. Timharwoodx 03:39, 15 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I think myself and others, believe 'prayer' is a group form of meditation. You sit down, focus your mind on a person not present, and wish a certain outcome for them. In military remote influencing, you focus on a person, and wish a certain outcome (their hearts stops, their blood clots, etc). It seems to me the basics, focussing on a person, wishing a certain health outcome, are the same. I think the evidence also goes both ways - I take evidence you can improve coronary outcomes, or dissolve clots, as reasonable grounds to suppose clots could be formed, or coronary outcomes negatively impacted. The point is, do you think anyone will ever fund studies to see if a human can be killed by psychic blood clotting? You are never going to get peer validation of that, for obvious reasons. Interestingly, the prayer studies seem to confirm the same performance envelope for the effect, as the military studies i.e. predominantly coronary and clotting based applications. For me, that to a certain extent, validates the analogy I drew in the article. If people want more information in Wiki about RI, I suggest they add a comments to this discussion page, and register their interest in a fuller discussion of RI, as a matter of historical record. I feel the skeptics oblige the article to be somewhat dry, and over cautious, years behind the actual state of art in this research area. But it is better to have an entry, than no entry. Timharwoodx 11:11, 15 Jan 2005 (UTC)