Arguably the best thing you can do is simply keep a dream journal (aside from deliberately waking up in the middle of the night and falling asleep with a clear intention - but that is more invasive in one's schedule and can also trigger nightmares).

Would you say the same thing about the covid vaccination campaigns during the Biden administration? Because billions of dollars were poured into those as well, with record profits for big pharma.

[And no, I am not anti-vax, nor anti-gene-editing.]

It's not made up. Plenty of people here who tried breathwork can attest to its power to bring you in strong trance-like states.

Try it yourself. Ideally in group setting, because doing this on your own (with a YouTube video or whatever) won't give you the same experience at all, and could be dangerous if you take it too far.

Regardless, if you read the paper, you'd learn that they did do objective measurements, namely etCO2 levels and bio-markers from saliva.

Of note: "when etCO2 fell below approx. 20 mmHg, it was virtually guaranteed to trigger at least some (and often a strong) departure from ordinary waking consciousness. This effect is particularly intriguing because in non-breathwork-related circumstances, an etCO2 of 20 mmHg or less would be considered a sign of severe physiological malfunctions, e.g. of the heart or lungs"

But anyone who tried breathwork, especially in group settings with accompanying music, knows such practices can lead to intense trance-like states.

Jumping to conclusions, much?

> If your bar to helping others is ending all suffering within yourself, then I'm afraid we're all going to be living a very lonely existence if we followed your lead.

Logically that does not make any sense. If everyone is able to relieve themselves of their own suffering (no one else can anyway, in an ultimate sense), which includes loneliness, then there would be no more suffering. This is a Buddhist mindset that seems kind of harsh at first, but it's a reality people benefit from once they accept it: you must become your own savior. And once you are in good place, even just mentally, it becomes very natural and easy to help out others.

Problems only start when people reject this idea, and think they have all the answers to all the problems, and start enforcing their beliefs on others using violence - which is a trend we're seeing more & more these days.

As opposed to state-funded software development, which is renowed for its high quality and innovation.

Arguably, even if you are not prohibiting the content itself, if you take away the means for your content to spread far & wide, that's the same as censorship.

I find this quite disturbing.

I'd highly recommend reading the book "Broken Money" by Lyn Alden for understanding the dynamics of what played out.

This is like saying science and technology should stay out of the area of... whatever, say, running. Nobody forces you to wear high-tech gadgets while running.

Dream reality works by association and expectation rather than having a strict ruleset.

And about the economic argument: let's continue the thought experiment I suggested above. Imagine a universe where psi exists as a real phenomenon of anomalous information transfer & manipulation. Assume anyone has some level of psychic influence on everything else. Let's say this explains the phenomenon of "hey I was thinking of this person and now they're suddenly calling me" (instead of it being purely confirmation bias).

In such a universe, you wouldn't want to publish much about your psi-based hedge fund, lest your profits would come under attack from the psi-influence of the active disbelievers... No, you'd keep it under wraps and do your recruiting secretly and selectively. And any disclosure would need happen very slowly and in the right way.

The rabbit hole goes deep :-)

It's true the placebo effect affects other research too (and honestly I think the explanation for why it does so, isn't different than in parapsychological research, but I digress). It's also true studies (including the study I cited) try to account for this, so I don't understand why you bring this up as if it's a counter argument for what I wrote?

If psi doesn't exist, then it shouldn't matter if you believe in it or not - empirically we would observe the same outcomes for both groups, no? That's one starting point.

And while you are claiming you aren't dismissing it because it's controversial, I feel like you are literally doing so.

No, the results published so far aren't conclusive (I stated this as well in the post you are replying to), but again, if you are truly impartial, how can it not be evidence that it may be worth exploring further? It's okay to say it doesn't interest you and not have an opinion on the matter, but I think, if you are dismissing it as invalid, you should at least provide arguments for why the evidence is invalid, so enthusiasts like myself can learn from it & help improve future studies.

I mean, if you assume psi is possible, sure, then it's a valid criticism that this is a confounding variable that causes the believers to score better.

However, if you're a skeptic, it shouldn't matter. I mean, if you assume psi is BS, then why would it be obvious image target X23AY would be easier to "guess" as an image of a hospital instead of getting the coordinates (39.2965, -76.5915)?

If you read what I wrote, you would've seen the reference to one example published in Brain & Behavior, so yes, there is peer-reviewed research.

There are more examples, more datapoints, but I don't think it's very useful to share those in a discussion where you know the other person already made up their mind and isn't willing to engage very productively.

Assume "psi" exists. Purely as a thought experiment. What does this mean?

One key implication would be that consciousness can somehow access information beyond normal sensory channels. If this ability exists, it would likely be influenced by psychological factors - just like any other cognitive function. This leads us to a fascinating paradox: Our beliefs and expectations about psi would logically affect our ability to demonstrate it.

This is exactly what researchers have found with the supposed "sheep-goat effect" - where belief in psi correlates with performance in psi experiments. While skeptics often dismiss this as special pleading, the ultimate cop-out for negative results, it's actually a logical consequence of the initial premise. Strong skepticism could act as a psychological barrier, while openness might facilitate the phenomena.

This creates an interesting epistemological challenge. Unlike testing a new drug where belief shouldn't affect the chemical reaction, testing psi inherently involves consciousness - and therefore belief systems. The field has faced intense scrutiny because of these challenges and its implications. When Bem published his precognition studies in 2011, it sparked unprecedented criticism and launched psychology's replication crisis.

However, this scrutiny has led to increasingly rigorous methods in the field - despite this controversial topic being a potential career-ender and underfunded (although there are some private initiatives...).

So, having said all that as an important preface, in my opinion... One answer to your question: a recent example is the 2023 study in Brain and Behavior examining CIA remote viewing experiments (Escolà-Gascón et al.). Using extensive controls and blind conditions, they found significant above-chance results in high emotional intelligence participants. The authors - who describe themselves as skeptically oriented - conclude their data shows "robust statistical anomalies that currently lack an adequate scientific explanation and therefore are consistent with the hypothesis of psi." They argue for continued rigorous research while acknowledging the philosophical challenges these findings present.

This isn't hard proof of psi, yet, but it's evidence that there may be more going on than skeptics may think. We shouldn't dismiss it out of hand, just because it's so controversial, and because it seems incompatible with a materialist worldview that says "mind" must be spatially and temporally localised, and cannot access or manipulate information elsewhere.

The government programs (like STARGATE) actually produced some compelling results according to their declassified documents. The issue wasn't that they were "debunked" - the programs ended largely due to inconsistent results and questions about operational usefulness, not because of exposed fraud.

I'd encourage looking at the peer-reviewed research rather than relying on stage magicians' critiques. While healthy skepticism is good, dismissing the entire field based on cherry-picked cases misses the nuance in the data.

The book "Phenomena" by the investigative journalist Annie Jacobsen is a fantastic and fascinating starting point.