"Remote viewing has demonstrated it is of value and has a high rate of success... We do not evaluate our product. All evaluations are done by the professional intelligence analysts who assign the project. Collection of intelligence through remote viewing is not an experiment. It is a successful collection method. The army effort is not research and development, it is operational collection..."
More probably the conclusions from the project manager are positive exaggerations because it would directly benefit from the continuation of the project but let's consider the possibility that RV works! This would be a fantastic evidence of psychic/paranormal phenomena that would make anyone reconsider other paranormal/spiritual claims that we're previously dismissed. Which creates a dilemma because if I'm non-receptive to paranormal phenomena it will not work and there's no point in trying and if I'm receptive then it's unwise because divination is sinful according to the majority of religions.
I imagine there's a "reality" be it real or fictitious where RV and other forms of divination works but ain't widespread enough to be scientifically acknowledged because those really capable of it knows it leads to eternal damnation so they don't practice it or share it publicly. In this same "reality" it's possible that the CIA as other intelligence agencies successfully used divination to acquire intel but discontinued it as they did with Blackbird because nowadays the have much better ways like software backdoors, spy satellites and even OSINT. And to note at best RV produces subjective intel which is non-optimal.
An interesting point on religion and surely behind some of the push back. Mostly tho it's simply conflict with materialism priors. But the prohibition on psi among world religions is by no means universal: it's mostly Abrahamic; Hindu and Tao take a much more nuanced take. As do folk religions and native traditions, that are typically much more engaged.
Even so, prohibitions sometimes contain truths: the Jewish one against pork could prevent parasites. What if forbidding psi is similarly well intended? Opening awareness can be gnarly (the yoga and seeker paths in India know this), and it might happen that "when you see them, they see you" adding to difficulties. Even so, many things are difficult at first. But worthwhile things take effort.
That said tho: it's not as if religions are the paragons of virtuous behavior they may wish to be seen as, so it may not do to simply accept prohibitions on faith alone. And remember prohibitions evolve with time, even religious ones. Also, you cannot discount the possibility that not wanting to democratize access to the divine, or even spiritual, is simply about centralizing power and control.
Your point on advances in other collection is well taken tho! But some factual errors require correction: you don't need to be 'receptive to psi' to have it work, just try (unless faith precludes you to, and I don't suggest violating what you believe); also it's not 'subjective' in the sense you want - it's people looking at data, and they're interpreting it. That's the subjectivity, and that's like every analysis ever.
It helps to consider it just another sensor, or sense organ, or skill. It's not supposed to be sole source. It's not pretending to be infallible. Can you sink 100 3 pointers in a row? Not even the best NBA can all the time, every human skill is dynamic and on a bell curve. Regarding philosophical prohibitions, consider like access to data to help you make better choices.
How about an analogy? You are a person looking at a wall. Along the wall walks a caterpillar. It goes from left to right. Standing where you are, you can see its objective. Some tasty leaf sprouting from a gap a few feet away. The caterpillar senses it, but does not see as clearly as you - if for no other reason than your 3D perspective - from on the wall, it can really only grasp a small way in front. What the caterpillar doesn't see is a large vertical crack, impossibly to pass, that breaks its path just ahead. You tho, do see that crack. Because of your perspective. You see the little guy heading towards it, whereas if he just took 30 degrees to the right he'd be able to go around it. From where he is tho, he can't see it. So without the knowledge of another perspective, without other data, the little guy is gonna waste more time. And might even run into trouble in the big crack!
That's like psi. Dive in! Unless your beliefs about risk preclude that - in which case I'd say, be more careful, because those prior beliefs could cause you to have ideas which would get in the way and might be challenging for mental health.
Thanks for the conversation. It's fun to talk about different things and explore new ideas even if hypothetically.
To clarify, for a Christian the issue wouldn't be that doing A is forbid or that the belief of it being wrong would be challenging for mental health. The issue would be simple that doing A is wrong.
I also had similar good experiences buying batteries on Aliexpress. The issue with those typically isn't intrinsic quality as the batteries are most of the time good but lack of quality control. Bad batteries will reach the market and this is specially dangerous with packs with many cells like e-bikes packs.
Hydreletric have big negative impacts on local environments. Enormous areas are flooded, the course of a river is diverted, during droughts the operator will restrict the flow of water exarcebating the drought and vice-versa during floods. It's bad for fishs and other animals, it mess with their reproduction habits. It kills river navigation. The decomposition of forests and vegation under the flooded area will release a lot of methane offsetting it's "green characteristic". It puts the local population at risk because a dam can burst and wreak havoc downstream destroying everything and killing those close with no chance to escape. That's rare but pretty common if compared to nuclear accidents both on frequency and average magnitude.
For comparison:
Chernobyl disaster: 2 killed by debris (including 1 missing) and 28 killed by acute radiation sickness. 15 terminal cases of thyroid cancer, with varying estimates of increased cancer mortality over subsequent decades.
Derna dam collapse: 5,923 (confirmed). 14,000–24,000 (estimated).
The main reasons why Brazil invested in hydros instead of nuclear are:
- US embargoed Brazil's nuclear program.
- It's more attractive for those making the decisions to build dams. Brazilian civil engineering companies like Odebrecht already have the know-how to build dams and the extraoficial pocket filling channels that make politicians & authorities happy.
Enviromentalism typically is a retarded ideology that does more harm than good.
I have an induction cooker. It doesn't have the gas issue but magnetic, eletric and eletromagnetic fields are orders of magnitudes above the safety values according to my measures. I don't know how safe that is on the long run (and AFAIK nobody does). Yet the scientific consensus is slowly changing to show that non-ionizing radiation isn't as safe as previously thought and is linked to brain cancer and male infertility among other things.
> "As Brazil intensifies its crackdown on companies tied to illegal deforestation, this ruling could help pave the way for future legal action, including against JBS, the world’s largest meat-processing company."
This will never happen. JBS is a big financer and friends with the ruling mafia (government).
Just to give you an idea. The owner of JBS bought a bankrupt energy distributor for a bargain and soon after, the government announced a recovery plan for this distributor through a fee that is being paid on the electricity bill by consumers across the country. Also JBS became big as it is today due to generous over-the-counter loans with negative rates by a state bank (BNDES) during the Worker's Party (PT) previous governments.
Cash is superior to crypto for anonymity and most people have it, know how to use it and accept it. Bitcoin and the majority of other coins will leave a permanent trail which can be easily associated to the person due to KYC policies and onchain analysis firms. Sure there are privacy coins like Monero but they aren't trivial to acquire without KYC and to find someone that accepts it. So I'm happy that people still use cash despite not doing anything illegal (or immoral) and mostly making payments with card and instant payments.
While I understand the concept of A, B and C employees to the employer from the PoV of the employee there is also management attrition and lack of incentives.
This concept of A, B and C employees is just ordinary dose of propaganda. A is a salaried employee who is expected to put in extra time and effort as if their livelihood depends on the success of the company, whereas type C employees poison the mindset by doing what they were hired to do. Bs are Cs with inherent sense of pride in delivering excellence who can be coached to become A.
I totally agree. This "excellence" ideology preaches unvirtuous self-sacrifice. Putting extra time and effort means that the employee is sacrificing himself to improve a result which will not benefit him but only a select few.
I argue that in many cases owners and managers, those who are posed to benefit from this ideology, are the ones which poison the mindset by punishing proactivity and being arrogant. There's also D employees, those that are unable to create value by the conditions set forth, they recognize the pointleness of their job and actively do the minimum and create excuses just to not get fired.
This isn't from wider society, it's a bunch from a niche of socialists that made a career preaching against big tech. It's basically a call for state censorship because big tech is bad and government good, "obviously". At least one of the names can be directly related with the current administration, Jose Graziano da Silva was a minister of Lula. Take it with a lethal dose of sodium chloride.
