Many of us have wished for the ability to use psychic powers. After all, wouldn't things like telekinesis be wonderful? No need to get up to get a beer. Just wave your hand and the beer will drift through the air to land at your side. And remote viewing, well, let's not even go into what that would allow, since some of it is pretty disturbing and/or illegal.
But it's not just of interest to fans of the paranormal, or professional ghost hunters, or what-have-you. Your tax dollars have funded research into things like, yes, telekinesis, mind control, telepathy, remote viewing, even psychic teleportation.
Did anything useful come out of this research? Well...
There's a classic experiment, the Ganzfeld experiment, that's often discussed in psychology textbooks. Ganzfeld is German for "whole field", and I believe (correct me if I'm wrong) that this is because the whole field of sensory perception is isolated, or at least as isolated as can be, given the modest research budget. The way it works is something like this: there are two subjects, a sender and a receiver. The sender has a pack of cards with distinctive designs on them (not playing cards, just cards). The receiver, meanwhile, is in a soundproofed and radiation-shielded room with darkened lighting, with halves of ping-pong balls on his eyes, and heavy ear protectors that radiate white noise over his ears. The sender must pick a card and concentrate on sending some identifying information about it to the receiver; the receiver must then choose which of the cards the sender was thinking about, based on thoughts and perceptions he has had during his isolation period.
One of the things the psych textbooks point out is that there is no explanation of how this kind of telepathy would work, although that is not in and of itself a scientific problem; after all, lithium appears to be an effective medication for bipolar disorder, and nobody really knows how it works. The other thing that psych textbooks point out is that while the results were intriguing - taken together, the receivers picked the correct card more often than chance would have had them do so - but also that the studies were flawed in a number of ways, including technical details of how soundproof is soundproof, and so on.
But that's an academic debate, compared to the government-funded research into this kind of topic.
There was a book printed not too long ago about a mind-over-matter study in which people were recruited to try to kill with a thought. They practiced on goats. To my knowledge, none of the goats ever got anything except fed.
Our Air Force spent a fair amount of money (tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars) for a feasibility study on psychic teleportation, too. How does that work? Fundamentally, it's like this. You perceive that You Are Here. You wish for yourself to be There, and suddenly, there you are. Then you can wish yourself back, and lo and behold, you've moved. You can even do this with objects or people around you. It's pretty impressive, right? Well, in 2004 the Air Force wanted to see if there was a way to capture Osama bin Laden by simply teleporting to his side, grabbing him, and then teleporting him (and the capture team) back to some reasonably secure location. They might even be able to turn themselves invisible, with their minds, for increased safety throughout the mission (because if you can't see it, it's harder to shoot it). Once he'd be formally booked, the capture team could then go hunting for goats.
Well, here too, as in my earlier article on the hafnium bomb, and unlike other fantastic mad science projects like Project Pluto (my next article, maybe) there was a problem: there's no real evidence that any of this stuff actually works. There's not much evidence to suggest that it can, either. So - there's reason to be concerned about warrantless wiretapping, say, but less about warrantless remote viewing, or having your files teleported to NSA headquarters.
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Previous MSPW diaries can be found as follows (and don't read them if you're trying to preserve your unwarped mind):
MSPW 13: Transgenic biosynthesis of useful compounds
MSPW 12: Lightning in a jar
MSPW 11: If you can control machines, they can control you
MSPW 10: Powered armor leads the way
MSPW 9: Noise-Marines, forward!
MSPW 8: Rapid prototyping brings engineering to the masses
MSPW 7: Putting Mentos and Diet Coke to good use
MSPW 6: Why Bjorn the Fel-Handed is probably unhappy
MSPW 5: Combining the latest concepts in farming and power generation
MSPW 4: Project Orcon, or why pigeons make good pilots
MSPW 3: Can cuttlefish drive?
MSPW 2: The hafnium bomb
MSPW 1: Building a better skunk