Remote Viewing as Applied to Futures Studies
📄 Original study ↗Plain English Summary
This opinion piece in a mainstream forecasting journal asks a wild question: could psychic "remote viewing" be useful for predicting the future? The author walks through several remote viewing protocols and highlights eye-catching past results. In one study, remote viewing was used to predict silver market prices, nailing 9 out of 9 correct calls. A large meta-analysis of over 300 precognition experiments found that when four key success factors aligned, 87.5% of studies reached significance. Strangest of all, one researcher found psychic performance spiked 340% at a specific time relative to the stars. The author is a futures studies student rather than an experimental psychologist, so this reads more as enthusiastic synthesis than hard-nosed critique.
Actual Paper Abstract
Remote viewing is set of related protocols that allow a viewer to intuitively gather information regarding a specific target that is hidden from physical view and separated from the viewer by either time or distance. Research suggests that the same processes used to gather spatially non-local information can also be used to gather information that is temporally removed from the observer. This paper reviews the most common protocols for remote viewing — including Coordinate Remote Viewing (CRV), Associative Remote Viewing (ARV), and Extended Remote Viewing (ERV). This remains a controversial field of study. While over 30 years of data has been gathered with statistically significant results frequently occurring under laboratory conditions, skeptics are not convinced that RV is a useful pursuit. In addition to this, some of the output from RV can be vague and subject to personal interpretation. A number of factors have been shown to improve the success rate for remote viewing, including the use of experienced subjects, individual testing, feedback of results, and a short time-interval between the percipient response and the targeted future event. Finally, there also appears to be a relationship between the effectiveness of remote viewing efforts and sidereal time, which may be interpreted as evidence that some aspects of RV are subject to the same physical laws as are other phenomena studied by science. Remote viewing and related processes merit further exploration and study. While remote viewing may never be completely understood, it has the potential to make a meaningful contribution to the professional futurist′s toolbox.
Research Notes
Opinion column in a mainstream Elsevier forecasting journal, providing a rare application-oriented perspective on RV. Authored by a graduate student in futures studies, not an experimental psychologist — accessible but lacking critical rigor. Useful for its synthesis of CRV/ARV/ERV protocols and the Spottiswoode sidereal time finding.
Reviews remote viewing protocols — Coordinate Remote Viewing (CRV), Associative Remote Viewing (ARV), Extended Remote Viewing (ERV), and Virtual Time Travel — as potential tools for technological forecasting. Summarizes key findings from Targ and Puthoff's SRI experiments (p < .05 in 5 of 6 experiments), Targ's ARV silver futures application (9/9 and 11/12 correct predictions, p = 0.003), Honorton and Ferrari's meta-analysis of 309 forced-choice precognition experiments (87.5% significant with all four success factors present), and Spottiswoode's discovery of a 340% increase in anomalous cognition effect size at 13.5h local sidereal time (p = 0.001). Concludes remote viewing merits further exploration as a futurist tool.
Links
Related Papers
Cites
- A Perceptual Channel for Information Transfer over Kilometer Distances: Historical Perspective and Recent Research — Puthoff, Harold E (1976)
- An Assessment of the Evidence for Psychic Functioning — Utts, Jessica (1996)
- "Future Telling": A Meta-Analysis of Forced-Choice Precognition Experiments, 1935-1987 — Honorton, Charles (1989)
- Apparent Association Between Effect Size in Free Response Anomalous Cognition Experiments and Local Sidereal Time — Spottiswoode, S. James P (1997)
- The Capricious, Actively Evasive, Unsustainable Nature of Psi: A Summary and Hypotheses — Kennedy, J.E (2003)
- Information and Uncertainty in Remote Perception Research — Dunne, Brenda J (2003)
- Information transmission under conditions of sensory shielding — Targ, Russell (1974)
Companion
- Greg Kolodziejzyk's 13-Year Associative Remote Viewing Experiment Results — Kolodziejzyk, Greg (2012)
- Explicit Anomalous Cognition: A Review of the Best Evidence in Ganzfeld, Forced-choice, Remote Viewing and Dream Studies — Baptista, Johann (2015)
- A Preliminary Survey of the Eastern Harbor, Alexandria, Egypt, Including a Comparison of Side Scan Sonar and Remote Viewing — Schwartz, Stephan A (1980)
More in Remote Viewing
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Follow-up on the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency's (CIA) Remote Viewing Experiments
The Location and Reconstruction of a Byzantine Structure in Marea, Egypt, Including a Comparison of Electronic Remote Sensing and Remote Viewing
Extraordinary Claims Require Extraordinary Evidence: The Case of Non-Local Perception, a Classical and Bayesian Review of Evidences
An Evaluation of Remote Viewing: Research and Applications
📋 Cite this paper
Lee, James H (2008). Remote Viewing as Applied to Futures Studies. Technological Forecasting & Social Change. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.techfore.2006.09.001
@article{lee_2008_remote_viewing_futures,
title = {Remote Viewing as Applied to Futures Studies},
author = {Lee, James H},
year = {2008},
journal = {Technological Forecasting & Social Change},
doi = {10.1016/j.techfore.2006.09.001},
}