For those who want to consider the mundane explanation about remote viewing: remember that humans can still be surprised by the birthday paradox and other synchronicities that occur when sampling data at large scale. So across thousands of sessions, the weak coincidences documented by the Stargate project are expected.
For those who want a skeptical & cynical view: if remote viewing works, it would be part of the standard strategy of every hedge fund. Remember that theses are groups who pay millions for millisecond advantages in information. And you only need an ~51-55% success rate to make a killing in HFT (vs a 50% success rate from a coinflip). The fact that hedge funds don't have remote viewers on staff is evidence against RV providing utility greater than an RNG.
And for curious people who want to try a scientific approach, I suggest joining https://www.social-rv.com/ which is collecting data about RV and trying to make the experiment ironclad via blockchain authentication of predictions.
pmontra 5 hours ago [-]
Hedge funds? Yes but before than that, armies would use RV to get targets, secrets, etc. There are plenty of wars around the world and a lot of money involved.
gtdhvy 4 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
bfuller 4 hours ago [-]
What would be the price of revealing this information advantage?
sxp 3 hours ago [-]
There have been hedge funds and other investment groups that claim to use RV. (At least according to Google and pro-RV books.) They also claim to be able to beat the market. Based on those anecdotes, I think any hedge fund that thinks they can use RV will publicly brag about it to get more investors.
None of these groups can replicate their results beyond the initial claims. This is strong evidence that positive results in RV are just due to selection bias, specifically https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Publication_bias. If those investment groups could actually replicate their results, they would still be major names and others would be actively trying to copy them since it should only take a couple of millions of dollars to find capable RV candidates.
The non-skeptical view is that if people try to predict the stock market via RV, they will interfere with the future and their prediction ability will decrease. But when weighing this hypothesis against the hypothesis that RV is just selection bias, the latter wins due to Occam's Razor.
lofaszvanitt 5 hours ago [-]
Or certain knowledge is just not available for anyone. No matter how much power and money you have. There are a lot of areas that are buried underneath technology, while it is an innate ability to certain individuals. Most people do not really understand how their gadgets work or what they are capable of beyond what is advertised....
kjkjadksj 4 hours ago [-]
The issue with remote viewing as the CIA understood it was not that it didn’t work. By all means there are documents that indicated it did work. The difficulty however was that the training program was unreliable and insufficient to establish a reliable pipeline to competency like other military skills.
the_af 3 hours ago [-]
The "difficulty" with remote viewing is nonsense pseudoscience and crackpottery.
It absolutely does not work. Not "unreliably", but not work at all.
This reminds me of that one time on HN when someone tried to convince me that ritual witchcraft (I think they called it blood magic) on servers was a real thing, necessary to make them work, and my dismissal was typical of narrow minded people.
There just as much completely unrelated to the incident in that as there is related.
Also, what guarantee is there that whomever created that document didn't just date it two days prior to acquire more funding for doing spooky things?
noworld 4 hours ago [-]
I don't think there's a "guarantee" that it wasn't backdated, but there isn't any evidence of that either.
FuturisticLover 7 hours ago [-]
This is so shocking, considering the similarities.
Reality is indeed stranger than fiction.
perfmode 7 hours ago [-]
Interesting indeed. Thanks for sharing.
namanyayg 7 hours ago [-]
What does the first pdf mean?
(And does it remind anyone else of an ee cummings poem or is it just me)
noworld 7 hours ago [-]
The first PDF is the record of a remote viewing session from 2 days before the USS Stark incident, and it is eerily similar to the incident. The feelings and "atmosphere" (can't think of a better word for it) sound like what you might expect on a ship being attacked by a random missile.
For example:
1. The drawing on p. 7 looks like the superstructure of a warship.
2. The next few pages might describe what it feels like to wonder if your ship is actually under missile attack.
3. On page 10 it records "aircraft--large, multiengined; distant; orbiting; distraction controlled, directed. 'Under orders.'" This USNI article has a little more detail on the AWACS plane detecting the incoming attack: https://www.usni.org/magazines/naval-history-magazine/2017/j...
There are other similarities, but the CIA report predates the attack, which is especially strange.
akatechis 6 hours ago [-]
> the CIA report predates the attack, which is especially strange
It's only strange if you believe the CIA released notes from their super-secret psychic program rather than the more plausible explanation that this is disinformation that was backdated for a boost of prestige.
noworld 5 hours ago [-]
Can you give me some evidence that this document was backdated? I'm not saying the government isn't shady AF, but I just wonder what's behind the immediate jump to "this has to be BS" rather than keeping an open mind.
the_af 3 hours ago [-]
Extraordinary claims (that RV is a real phenomenon) require extraordinary evidence. The null hypothesis is the default position, it requires no extraordinary evidence; the opposite does.
This is scientific method 101. Let's not pretend we're not familiar with it just because some dodgy CIA document surfaced.
FuturisticLover 6 hours ago [-]
Yeah, Remote Viewing should be a real-time event. This is Precognition.
therobots927 3 hours ago [-]
Why does it need to be real- time? If rv is possible then it’s naive to assume that time is somehow “special” vs 3D. It’s possible that time is not unfolding linearly, that is only an illusion. “Remote” could involve accessing information from along the time dimension.
FuturisticLover 16 minutes ago [-]
I guess that makes sense. My tiny brain is still processing all the information. Thinking beyond 3D or space/time is impossible for me.
squigz 6 hours ago [-]
How many of these 'remote viewing' sessions didn't bear any similarities to anything?
If you throw a bunch of stuff at a wall, some of it is going to stick. Especially when it appears to be random words that can be applicable to millions of situations.
an0malous 6 hours ago [-]
> Using the standards applied to any other area of science, it is concluded that psychic functioning has been well established. The statistical results of the studies examined are far beyond what is ex-
pected by chance. Arguments that these results could be due to methodological flaws in the experiments are soundly refuted. Effects of a magnitude similar to those found in government sponsored research at SRI and SAIC have been replicated at a number of laboratories around the world. Such consistency cannot be readily explained by claims of flaws or fraud.
From Jessica Utts, who was the president of the American Statistical Association and asked to review the Stanford Research Institute psychic programs (including Star Gate).
> Using the standards applied to any other area of science
Assuming this is true, I have to wonder why it would be that the science community apparently places a higher burden of proof on this sort of research, and whether that higher standard has been earned or not.
the_af 3 hours ago [-]
> If you throw a bunch of stuff at a wall, some of it is going to stick. Especially when it appears to be random words that can be applicable to millions of situations.
Indeed. I'm amazed so many HN regulars are surprised by this. It's how horoscopes work, we've known this for centuries now.
Have people forgotten the scientific method, the standards of proof, etc?
finalarbiter 7 hours ago [-]
The first PDF is the results/notes of someone attempting remote viewing. Given the dates, I agree with the above poster that the similarities are impressive.
escanda 1 hours ago [-]
I am from Spain and know some agents. Those are also known events under the freemasonry term umbrella.
I have seen, after writing through Tor to a known intelligence agency, a ministry of a cabinet through my inner eye, or whatever you may call it.
Black and white video so to speak. I was even threatened by a twice loaded gun so I could go away to my own businesses in that affair.
I can talk without being in the same room with a lot of cni agents, and interestingly, this is not a known fact of the intelligence community outside it.
I can even receive and transmit figures using my mind alone. Tested with a CIA agent. Greets to the spy museum series.
I would predict in the past, a year ago or so, a future event seen as it was filmed. Also diverted pathways in the past: if I could have went into the foreign legion I could be dead at the time and my mother could had defenestrated herself after being noticed by two officers: movie style too.
Sometimes I have listened to people thoughts, small phrases without them noticing.
Disclaimer: I am not on any agency payroll at this time.
sph 12 minutes ago [-]
Given that you yourself have admitted you have schizophrenia in a recent comment, I find it hard to give much weight to your “paranormal” experiences. Confirmation bias affects all, those that can hear voices and those that can’t. I hope you understand.
cushychicken 6 hours ago [-]
It's only dumb if it doesn't work.
If it works... well, congratulations. You now have an edge that no one else knows about.
I am amazed that people take Hal Puthoff at his word that he has worked on all these secret projects for decades even though he cannot describe in definitive terms what the actual outcomes of those programs were. But he is able to talk about them for hours in the vaguest terms possible. How is that even possible. I mean I worked for an aerospace company for 5 years and could go into great and boring detail about what I did while I was there. But all these people supposedly worked on things much more exotic and can’t remember anything. This is the greatest psyop of all time.
tiku 6 hours ago [-]
Also it would be very easy to proof that it really works.
Instead they remain vague. They remind me of the dropship sales boys, that mainly sell courses on how to dropship instead of dropshipping themselves.
If you find a believer they will worship you with no hard questions.
franky47 7 hours ago [-]
Disappointing they didn't have their research facility in Cheyenne Mountain.
The movie was based on the work of a journalist investigating the topic and wrote a non-fiction book on the subject.
krapp 7 hours ago [-]
"real" in that the program existed and research was done? Yes.
"real" in that remote viewing and psychic powers actually exist? No.
The CIA researched a ton of "mind-control" techniques under MKULTRA too but that doesn't mean they can control your mind.
The government has programs to research UFOs but that doesn't mean aliens are buzzing our skies and kidnapping our cattle.
I think what we're really seeing here is just money laundering and confirmation bias.
5 hours ago [-]
kubb 7 hours ago [-]
It’s hard to believe that so recently, “serious” people would fund research of literal mumbo jumbo. By all means, the 90s was a different time epistemologically.
We aren’t immune to this today, far from it, though the hoaxes have become way more believable in my assessment.
willis936 7 hours ago [-]
The CIA has been this way since basically its inception. It's where a bunch of lead-lined brains are given unreasonable budgets and discretion.
It appears this was actually authorized by Congress.
“ In the FY 1991 Defense Authorization Act,
the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) was identified as executive
agent for initiating a new program to investigate
parapsychological/ anomalous phenomena. A funding level of $2
million was authorized for DIA to undertake specific research and
other activities relative to this activity. Objectives of this
authorization were to enable a systematic and scientifically
sound approach to the R&D effort, to permit wider and more
systematic review of potential intelligence applications, and to
assess foreign developments in this area.”
It was taken serious enough to be funded for two decades starting in the 70s. Eventually it was terminated when the strategic pressure eased.
AIR was commissioned to look at the research and says in this [1]
“A three-component program involving basic research, operations, and foreign assessment has been in place for some time… beginning in the 1970s, it has conducted a program intended to investigate the application of one paranormal phenomenon — remote viewing, or the ability to describe locations one has not visited.”
“The AIR review found that remote viewing produced occasional hits that were statistically better than chance, but it remains unclear whether the observed effects can unambiguously be attributed to paranormal phenomena, and the laboratory conditions under which effects were seen do not generalize to real intelligence problems. The information provided by remote viewing was judged vague and ambiguous, making it difficult or impossible for the technique to yield information of sufficient quality and accuracy for actionable intelligence.”
In government terms that's pretty small. I guess even if there's a low chance of working, the payoff if it did would be huge.
firesteelrain 6 hours ago [-]
I agree. $2million is small. Where I work, I am regularly given budgets well over that to buy software or hardware.
lagniappe 6 hours ago [-]
At the time, 2 million was an appreciable sum. Maybe not to a government, but that wasn't chump change back then the way it is now.
firesteelrain 5 hours ago [-]
That is true. I didn’t take into account inflation.
lagniappe 5 hours ago [-]
Sadly, I don't think any of us did or do.
drpepper42 6 hours ago [-]
Yeah pretty much this unfortunately. Imagine some person tasked and genuinely interested in helping the united states but they do it all with subterfuge which backfires more than it helps anything. Such a person must experience a lot of cognitive dissonance and would generally be susceptible to conspiracy theories such as this which only reinforces the cycle of meddling.
namanyayg 7 hours ago [-]
How do we know if something is "mumbo jumbo" until we actually check and verify it?
kubb 7 hours ago [-]
I see you’re interested in epistemology yourself. You should study it.
dwroberts 5 hours ago [-]
Another element that is ignored in all of this is: How much of this is really intended to be genuine research? The CIA is an intelligence agency, and misdirection is part of counter-intelligence.
Putting legitimate resources into a phony cause could be an effective way of leading an enemy astray, if you know they are intercepting or replicating the same research you're doing (or if you happen to " leak " details to them).
TheAceOfHearts 7 hours ago [-]
It's perfectly rational to allocate a bit of money towards investigating unlikely phenomenon. In this case, it started around the 70s and it was believed that the Soviet Union was also doing research into paranormal effects, so even if people were skeptical it seems prudent to allocate funds and research if there's anything there.
ifh-hn 7 hours ago [-]
The benefits of hindsight. I'm sure in 30 odd years someone will be making the same comments about our current hoaxes.
kubb 7 hours ago [-]
And we will have new hoaxes by then.
The embarrassing part is that we can identify many of them already, before the historical consensus catches on.
Teever 6 hours ago [-]
Do you have any examples of these easily identifiable contemporary hoaxes?
kubb 5 hours ago [-]
Are there any areas in which you'd feel attacked if I poined out a hoax?
Teever 5 hours ago [-]
Not at all.
I enjoy the subject of conspiracies and hoaxes without holding a strong personal affinity towards any particular one.
That's the whole thing about consensus tho, it's hardly embarrassing
PaulRobinson 6 hours ago [-]
Congratulations, you're the new head of the Department of War. It's Day 1 in your new role.
An admiral walks in and sits down and tells you that he'd like some money to research some unidentified aircraft that are buzzing US Navy pilots. Shaped like "tic tacs", that seem to defy physical laws - they accelerate incredibly fast and seem to be able to move between air and water without damaging their structure, even at high-speed. They've been caught on camera multiple times, and pilots don't know what to make of them.
You ask what is this "mumbo jumbo", and whether he is "serious". He points out to you that if these aircraft are Russian or Chinese in origin, given there is no defence against them, they pose a major threat to national security and your refusal to take them seriously will not bode well for you in the annals of time if they do turn out to be a threat.
You agree to funding a small program to research further.
Then an Army General walks in. He wants $2m for a program to research "remote viewing" and "psychokinesis". You sit in awe as he explains: multiple independent laboratories have been able to conduct experiments that show Extra-Sensory Perception, Remote Viewing and Psychokinesis may be real despite not being explained by any current physical model. There is intelligence to suggest that Chinese and Russian militaries are investing in these techniques and the US military is not able to defend against them if they're real and exploited by adversaries, or for the USA to exploit them either, because they have no understanding of them.
You hand wave it away as "mumbo jumbo" and state this is not the work of "serious people". You demand a physical model to explain it before you invest.
You are reminded that there is no single physical model that explains the entirety of how an aircraft wing works, or how anaesthetics work, and that the only way such models are created is through scientific investigation. If after spending the $2m they're able to show such claims are baseless, that is a null result that has value in that it shows the Russians and Chinese are also not a threat to US National Security.
You are reminded that such techniques may pose a major threat to national security and your refusal to take them seriously will not bode well for you in the annals of time if they do turn out to be a threat.
You agree to funding a small program to research further.
And on it goes. It's Occam's razor - if you commit to the scientific method, you have to commit to it. If you are concerned there is a science and technology that others have and you don't, you need to figure out if there is value in you being able to obtain that science or technology, even if it sounds like "mumbo jumbo" today.
These weren't idiots, they weren't corrupt, they were asking for tiny slithers of money to figure out if Western Civilisation was about to collapse into the hands of a few people who asked more questions.
antonvs 7 hours ago [-]
I'm not sure it's changed that much. Look at the work around the em drive. Or fusion power for that matter. I'm not saying we shouldn't be researching fusion, but all the fusion "startups" are essentially jokes, or more charitably, monuments to the unwarranted hubris of investment capital.
exe34 7 hours ago [-]
> By all means, the 90s was a different time epistemologically
We're in an age when vaccines are treated as the enemy and the us health secretary believes paracetamol causes autism.
Mistletoe 7 hours ago [-]
The Tylenol thing is one of the least crazy things he has believed in, at least it had some initial studies suggesting it. There’s no science at all in most of his beliefs.
AniseAbyss 7 hours ago [-]
[dead]
diogenes_atx 6 hours ago [-]
No surprise here. The geniuses at the CIA failed to anticipate the fall of the Soviet Union, ignored the warning signs about 9/11, and falsely claimed there were "weapons of mass destruction" in Iraq during the American invasion in 2003. Apparently the so-called intelligence agency was busy with important research on "telepathy," "psychokinesis" and other "para-psychological phenomena."
logicchains 6 hours ago [-]
>falsely claimed there were "weapons of mass destruction" in Iraq during the American invasion in 2003
This was due to malice not ignorance/incompetence.
diogenes_atx 5 hours ago [-]
Well in that case, the CIA is not merely stupid and incompetent, it's deliberately evil. How many innocent civilians were slaughtered in Iraq during the American occupation?
therobots927 3 hours ago [-]
Evil and apparently experimenting with magic. Sounds like a recipe for a good time.
m4ck_ 5 hours ago [-]
I mean yeah, that's the Americas in general since Europeans first put eyes on it. ~500 years of brutality and slaughter in pursuit of profit. We're gonna do it again in Venezuela and probably Denmark/Greenland. C'est la vie
stuffn 2 hours ago [-]
Ah yes, the quintessential noble savage fallacy.
Before the evil Europeans set their greedy eyes on the new world there was peace, love, and ecstasy every single day. Once the evil Europeans did evil European things the Americas were corrupted for profit and greed. Now the Venezuelans who live in peace and love will be colonized by European descendents, just like natives before.
kjkjadksj 3 hours ago [-]
I thought the story was the CIA and other intelligence said there are not wmds, but the bush whitehouse said there were anyhow and invaded all the same.
diogenes_atx 3 hours ago [-]
A Google search using the terms "did the CIA claim there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq in 2003?" yields the following information:
The CIA and the Bush administration claimed Iraq possessed Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMDs) in 2003, building the case for invasion on assertions that Saddam Hussein had active WMD programs and failed to comply with UN resolutions, though these claims proved to be incorrect after the invasion found no stockpiles, leading to later acknowledgments of intelligence failures...
CIA's Role: The CIA provided assessments, including classified estimates, stating high confidence in Iraq's possession of biological and chemical weapons, which formed the basis for public statements by officials...
Intelligence Failures: Investigations later confirmed that the intelligence community was "simply wrong" in its assessments, highlighting failures in analysis and sourcing, despite intelligence professionals believing their information at the time...
In summary, the CIA and U.S. government did assert the presence of WMDs, but these claims were later disproven, revealing significant flaws in the intelligence used to justify the war.
Rendered at 20:08:01 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time) with Vercel.
For those who want a skeptical & cynical view: if remote viewing works, it would be part of the standard strategy of every hedge fund. Remember that theses are groups who pay millions for millisecond advantages in information. And you only need an ~51-55% success rate to make a killing in HFT (vs a 50% success rate from a coinflip). The fact that hedge funds don't have remote viewers on staff is evidence against RV providing utility greater than an RNG.
And for curious people who want to try a scientific approach, I suggest joining https://www.social-rv.com/ which is collecting data about RV and trying to make the experiment ironclad via blockchain authentication of predictions.
None of these groups can replicate their results beyond the initial claims. This is strong evidence that positive results in RV are just due to selection bias, specifically https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Publication_bias. If those investment groups could actually replicate their results, they would still be major names and others would be actively trying to copy them since it should only take a couple of millions of dollars to find capable RV candidates.
The non-skeptical view is that if people try to predict the stock market via RV, they will interfere with the future and their prediction ability will decrease. But when weighing this hypothesis against the hypothesis that RV is just selection bias, the latter wins due to Occam's Razor.
It absolutely does not work. Not "unreliably", but not work at all.
This reminds me of that one time on HN when someone tried to convince me that ritual witchcraft (I think they called it blood magic) on servers was a real thing, necessary to make them work, and my dismissal was typical of narrow minded people.
May 15, 1987: https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP96-00789R0017000...
May 17, 1987: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Stark_incident
Also, what guarantee is there that whomever created that document didn't just date it two days prior to acquire more funding for doing spooky things?
Reality is indeed stranger than fiction.
(And does it remind anyone else of an ee cummings poem or is it just me)
For example:
1. The drawing on p. 7 looks like the superstructure of a warship.
2. The next few pages might describe what it feels like to wonder if your ship is actually under missile attack.
3. On page 10 it records "aircraft--large, multiengined; distant; orbiting; distraction controlled, directed. 'Under orders.'" This USNI article has a little more detail on the AWACS plane detecting the incoming attack: https://www.usni.org/magazines/naval-history-magazine/2017/j...
There are other similarities, but the CIA report predates the attack, which is especially strange.
It's only strange if you believe the CIA released notes from their super-secret psychic program rather than the more plausible explanation that this is disinformation that was backdated for a boost of prestige.
This is scientific method 101. Let's not pretend we're not familiar with it just because some dodgy CIA document surfaced.
If you throw a bunch of stuff at a wall, some of it is going to stick. Especially when it appears to be random words that can be applicable to millions of situations.
From Jessica Utts, who was the president of the American Statistical Association and asked to review the Stanford Research Institute psychic programs (including Star Gate).
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/333228024_An_Assess...
https://ics.uci.edu/~jutts/air.pdf
This goes into way more detail and covers Utts's work.
https://www.priory-of-sion.com/biblios/images/mumford.pdf
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jessica_Utts
Assuming this is true, I have to wonder why it would be that the science community apparently places a higher burden of proof on this sort of research, and whether that higher standard has been earned or not.
Indeed. I'm amazed so many HN regulars are surprised by this. It's how horoscopes work, we've known this for centuries now.
Have people forgotten the scientific method, the standards of proof, etc?
I have seen, after writing through Tor to a known intelligence agency, a ministry of a cabinet through my inner eye, or whatever you may call it.
Black and white video so to speak. I was even threatened by a twice loaded gun so I could go away to my own businesses in that affair.
I can talk without being in the same room with a lot of cni agents, and interestingly, this is not a known fact of the intelligence community outside it.
I can even receive and transmit figures using my mind alone. Tested with a CIA agent. Greets to the spy museum series.
I would predict in the past, a year ago or so, a future event seen as it was filmed. Also diverted pathways in the past: if I could have went into the foreign legion I could be dead at the time and my mother could had defenestrated herself after being noticed by two officers: movie style too.
Sometimes I have listened to people thoughts, small phrases without them noticing.
Disclaimer: I am not on any agency payroll at this time.
If it works... well, congratulations. You now have an edge that no one else knows about.
If you find a believer they will worship you with no hard questions.
The movie was based on the work of a journalist investigating the topic and wrote a non-fiction book on the subject.
"real" in that remote viewing and psychic powers actually exist? No.
The CIA researched a ton of "mind-control" techniques under MKULTRA too but that doesn't mean they can control your mind.
The government has programs to research UFOs but that doesn't mean aliens are buzzing our skies and kidnapping our cattle.
I think what we're really seeing here is just money laundering and confirmation bias.
We aren’t immune to this today, far from it, though the hoaxes have become way more believable in my assessment.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Directorate_of_Science_and_Tec...
“ In the FY 1991 Defense Authorization Act, the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) was identified as executive agent for initiating a new program to investigate parapsychological/ anomalous phenomena. A funding level of $2 million was authorized for DIA to undertake specific research and other activities relative to this activity. Objectives of this authorization were to enable a systematic and scientifically sound approach to the R&D effort, to permit wider and more systematic review of potential intelligence applications, and to assess foreign developments in this area.”
It was taken serious enough to be funded for two decades starting in the 70s. Eventually it was terminated when the strategic pressure eased.
AIR was commissioned to look at the research and says in this [1]
“A three-component program involving basic research, operations, and foreign assessment has been in place for some time… beginning in the 1970s, it has conducted a program intended to investigate the application of one paranormal phenomenon — remote viewing, or the ability to describe locations one has not visited.”
“The AIR review found that remote viewing produced occasional hits that were statistically better than chance, but it remains unclear whether the observed effects can unambiguously be attributed to paranormal phenomena, and the laboratory conditions under which effects were seen do not generalize to real intelligence problems. The information provided by remote viewing was judged vague and ambiguous, making it difficult or impossible for the technique to yield information of sufficient quality and accuracy for actionable intelligence.”
1. https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP96-00791R0002001...
In government terms that's pretty small. I guess even if there's a low chance of working, the payoff if it did would be huge.
Putting legitimate resources into a phony cause could be an effective way of leading an enemy astray, if you know they are intercepting or replicating the same research you're doing (or if you happen to " leak " details to them).
The embarrassing part is that we can identify many of them already, before the historical consensus catches on.
I enjoy the subject of conspiracies and hoaxes without holding a strong personal affinity towards any particular one.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_conspiracy_theories_pr...
An admiral walks in and sits down and tells you that he'd like some money to research some unidentified aircraft that are buzzing US Navy pilots. Shaped like "tic tacs", that seem to defy physical laws - they accelerate incredibly fast and seem to be able to move between air and water without damaging their structure, even at high-speed. They've been caught on camera multiple times, and pilots don't know what to make of them.
You ask what is this "mumbo jumbo", and whether he is "serious". He points out to you that if these aircraft are Russian or Chinese in origin, given there is no defence against them, they pose a major threat to national security and your refusal to take them seriously will not bode well for you in the annals of time if they do turn out to be a threat.
You agree to funding a small program to research further.
Then an Army General walks in. He wants $2m for a program to research "remote viewing" and "psychokinesis". You sit in awe as he explains: multiple independent laboratories have been able to conduct experiments that show Extra-Sensory Perception, Remote Viewing and Psychokinesis may be real despite not being explained by any current physical model. There is intelligence to suggest that Chinese and Russian militaries are investing in these techniques and the US military is not able to defend against them if they're real and exploited by adversaries, or for the USA to exploit them either, because they have no understanding of them.
You hand wave it away as "mumbo jumbo" and state this is not the work of "serious people". You demand a physical model to explain it before you invest.
You are reminded that there is no single physical model that explains the entirety of how an aircraft wing works, or how anaesthetics work, and that the only way such models are created is through scientific investigation. If after spending the $2m they're able to show such claims are baseless, that is a null result that has value in that it shows the Russians and Chinese are also not a threat to US National Security.
You are reminded that such techniques may pose a major threat to national security and your refusal to take them seriously will not bode well for you in the annals of time if they do turn out to be a threat.
You agree to funding a small program to research further.
And on it goes. It's Occam's razor - if you commit to the scientific method, you have to commit to it. If you are concerned there is a science and technology that others have and you don't, you need to figure out if there is value in you being able to obtain that science or technology, even if it sounds like "mumbo jumbo" today.
These weren't idiots, they weren't corrupt, they were asking for tiny slithers of money to figure out if Western Civilisation was about to collapse into the hands of a few people who asked more questions.
We're in an age when vaccines are treated as the enemy and the us health secretary believes paracetamol causes autism.
This was due to malice not ignorance/incompetence.
Before the evil Europeans set their greedy eyes on the new world there was peace, love, and ecstasy every single day. Once the evil Europeans did evil European things the Americas were corrupted for profit and greed. Now the Venezuelans who live in peace and love will be colonized by European descendents, just like natives before.
The CIA and the Bush administration claimed Iraq possessed Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMDs) in 2003, building the case for invasion on assertions that Saddam Hussein had active WMD programs and failed to comply with UN resolutions, though these claims proved to be incorrect after the invasion found no stockpiles, leading to later acknowledgments of intelligence failures...
CIA's Role: The CIA provided assessments, including classified estimates, stating high confidence in Iraq's possession of biological and chemical weapons, which formed the basis for public statements by officials...
Intelligence Failures: Investigations later confirmed that the intelligence community was "simply wrong" in its assessments, highlighting failures in analysis and sourcing, despite intelligence professionals believing their information at the time...
In summary, the CIA and U.S. government did assert the presence of WMDs, but these claims were later disproven, revealing significant flaws in the intelligence used to justify the war.