[HN Gopher] National Cryptologic Museum (NSA/CSS) New Temporary ...
___________________________________________________________________
National Cryptologic Museum (NSA/CSS) New Temporary Exhibit on
Project Stargate
Author : keepamovin
Score : 62 points
Date : 2024-12-24 07:12 UTC (15 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.nsa.gov)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.nsa.gov)
| wizardforhire wrote:
| Worth the risk/read purely for the wtf factor. #nospoilers
| mikewarot wrote:
| >Project Star Gate was used by the U.S. Government during the
| Cold War. Many of the psychic spies were at Ft. Meade, tasked
| with collecting intelligence, locating enemy agents and
| determining American vulnerabilities by using "remote viewing."
| Remote viewing is mentally viewing a distant location they have
| never visited to gather insights on a person, site, or specific
| information. As outrageous as it sounds, the secret program was
| very successful and was in use until 1995
|
| Checks calendar..... nowhere near April!
|
| My understanding of "remote viewing" is it's actually about time
| travel, and recall of the future. In order for a "viewing" to
| work, it was found that there needed to be a report to the
| "viewer" at the end of a given "run", which included all the
| details were needed to make the mission successful.
| adriancr wrote:
| This could have been a parallel construction mechanism, if they
| had sources too sensitive then they could feed data via this
| project and have it successful.
|
| Bonus points for having enemies trying to replicate the
| technology and observing that progress and espionage around it.
| perihelions wrote:
| But disinformation doesn't accomplish much if the adversary
| disbelieves it, and ignores it--as anyone with an ounce of
| common sense would. If you're trying to deflect from your
| real information source, it helps if the fake one you invent
| is a _plausible_ distraction.
|
| Hanlon's razor says the unfireable career bureaucrats
| overseeing this project were genuinely incompetent, and
| authentically stupid.
| krapp wrote:
| I think a lot of it was Cold War paranoia. The US
| government got into a lot of weird stuff like MKULTRA just
| because there were rumors the Soviets were working on the
| same thing, and no one wanted to risk the possibility,
| however remote, that there might be something to it.
|
| Also probably money laundering. Apparently there were a lot
| of connections between the USG's various psi programs and
| Scientology.
| wat10000 wrote:
| It seems that the American efforts were the victims of
| disinformation rather than the instigators. They were
| started after reports that the Soviets were already engaged
| in such research.
| rurban wrote:
| There is a book about it, called PSI. They started it
| because the Soviets also leaked info that their telepathy
| program, necessary for submarine comms, was successful.
| Also their aura viewer and what else.
|
| So they assembled a team of scientists and psychics and
| learned that the success rate resembled the random sample.
| Some psychics were also good magicians and scammers
| 082349872349872 wrote:
| so -- what happened in 1995 that provided a better laundry?
|
| (or was the critical date 25 Dec 1991, and the program just had
| inertia? 1995 is mid-Yeltsin and mid-Clinton, so those can both
| be ruled out?)
| ustad wrote:
| Oh come on! You must expand on your theories of remote viewing.
| Did you mean that after a remote viewing session the subject is
| shown a true report of the target location?
|
| For example, a subject is told to do a remote viewing of Trumps
| toilet. After the session or sometime later they are shown
| evidence of Trumps toilet. Or even get a vip tour. Is that the
| gist?
| zackmorris wrote:
| There are countless repeatable psi experiments that show
| unusual deviations from probability, but very few that have
| been conducted with a large number of viewers by institutions.
| My favorite is the Ganzfeld experiment:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ganzfeld_experiment
|
| Unfortunately the more it's replicated, the smaller the
| deviation seems to become. But if there is a deviation above
| random, say 1%, then we could use a large number of viewers and
| an error correction coding scheme to transmit a binary message
| by the Shannon-Hartley theorem:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shannon-Hartley_theorem#Power-...
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Error_correction_code
|
| At 1 impression per person per second, it might be on the order
| of 1.44*(1/100) or roughly 1 bit of data per minute per viewer.
| I'm sure my math is wrong. But a few dozen people might be able
| to achieve primitive Morse code-style communication across the
| globe or even space.
|
| It would be interesting to see if/how results differ when
| participants are shown the answers after the experiment, like
| with your comment about time travel.
|
| Governments probably worked all of this out decades ago if
| there's anything to it. But it might mean that aliens have
| faster than light communication. We can imagine petri dish
| brains or neural nets trained for remote viewing. Sort of an
| FTL dialup modem.
|
| As long as we're going off the deep end, I think this works
| through the magic of conscious awareness, that science may
| never be able to explain. Loosely it means that God the
| universe and everything fractured itself into infinite
| perspectives to have all subjective experiences and not have to
| be alone with itself anymore. So rather than being a brain in a
| box/singularity, source consciousness created all of this when
| something came from nothing. Consciousness is probably
| multidimensional above 4D and 5D, able within the bounds of
| physics to select where it exists along the multiverse, like
| hopping between the meshing of gears that form reality. Or Neo
| in The Matrix. So thought may make life energy ripples like
| gravity waves on the astral plane where time and distance don't
| matter. So feelings may be able to affect the probability of
| quantum wave collapse.
|
| https://hackaday.com/2021/03/04/can-plants-bend-light-to-the...
|
| This has all sorts of ramifications. Time seems to have an
| arrow even though quantum mechanics is mostly symmetric in
| time. If we assume that free will doesn't exist, then people
| would make the same choices if we got in a time machine and
| watched them choose repeatedly. But if we assume that free will
| exists, then people would seem to choose randomly with a
| probability distribution, which would make time travel
| impossible since no sequence of events could be replayed with
| 100% accuracy. Similarly to how the 3 body problem can't be
| predicted beyond a certain timeframe. So we could have time
| travel or free will, but not both. This latter case seems to
| more closely match how the universe works with observing stuff
| like the double slit experiment, and our subjective experience
| of having free will that so-called experts tell us is only an
| illusion.
|
| It could also mean that synchronicity and manifestation are
| more apparent to someone having the experience than to the rest
| of us in the co-created reality. So the subject and conductor
| of an experiment might witness different outcomes from their
| vantage points in the multiverse, with echoes of themselves in
| the other realities, even though the total probability adds up
| to one. Like how you are still you now and one second before
| now or after now. It's unclear if subjective mental efforts can
| hold sway over the shared reality. That gets into metaphysics
| and concepts like as above, so below.
|
| Happy holidays everyone!
| YesThatTom2 wrote:
| "Remote viewing" is a scam, debunked time and time again by
| psychic debunkers like James Randi and others.
|
| The people doing the "remote viewing" use vaudeville tricks but
| pass it off as real.
|
| Sadly the US government has spent millions on programs like this.
| The programs always fall apart when someone, usually a
| professional magician, steps in and shows the researchers how
| they're being fooled.
|
| In other news, the lady isn't actually sawed in half.
| LawrenceKerr wrote:
| This oversimplifies decades of research. While early remote
| viewing studies at SRI had methodological flaws, later
| experiments at SAIC addressed these issues and produced
| statistically significant results that haven't been adequately
| explained. Randi's million-dollar challenge isn't considered
| scientifically valid - it's more publicity stunt than proper
| experimental protocol. The circumstances and rules for awarding
| his prize were opaque, controlled by Randi, and has nothing to
| do with how science tests hypotheses.
|
| 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.
| gus_massa wrote:
| > _I 'd encourage looking at the peer-reviewed research_
|
| I'm very skeptical. Do you have a good one?
| LawrenceKerr wrote:
| Phew... where to start? I think before randomly citing
| research, it's best to approach this subject theoretically
| first.
|
| 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 (Escola-Gascon 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.
| krapp wrote:
| OK cool. Now please cite some of that peer-reviewed
| research you mentioned.
| wat10000 wrote:
| That sounds like a gigantic pile of rationalization for
| why proof is unobtainable. It sounds a lot like my
| religious school teachers telling us about "Do not put
| the Lord your God to the test." This powerful being is
| totally real and definitely takes visible actions in the
| world _but don't try to check this fact because it stops
| working if you try to check it_.
|
| Tons of human abilities are affected by our belief in
| them. Medicine is more effective when the patient
| believes it's effective, to the extent that pills with no
| medicine in them can still have an effect if the patient
| believes it will. Do we just throw up our hands and say,
| crap, it's super hard to figure out of any of this
| medicine actually works? No, we sit down and design
| experiments that account for it and end up with a massive
| library of proven drugs.
|
| We don't dismiss this stuff because it's controversial
| and seems incompatible with a materialist worldview. We
| dismiss it because there's no good evidence for it and no
| proposed method of action despite decades of trying.
| Arguably millennia of trying; "remote viewing" and
| similar things are just new framings of ancient religious
| ideas. There's no actual difference between attempting
| "remote viewing" and praying for a vision.
|
| And sure, it's possible this stuff is real. But when
| there's no conclusive demonstration of it after thousands
| of years, the burden of proof is firmly on the people who
| think it's real, and it is definitely not the job of the
| rest of us to take this stuff seriously.
| some_furry wrote:
| > And sure, it's possible this stuff is real. But when
| there's no conclusive demonstration of it after thousands
| of years, the burden of proof is firmly on the people who
| think it's real, and it is definitely not the job of the
| rest of us to take this stuff seriously.
|
| Yeah, I've got a simple way to test this:
|
| Go win the powerball lottery using whatever techniques
| you believe in. Then, even if nobody believes you, you
| have the proof in your wallet.
| stonogo wrote:
| You could have just said 'no'.
| gus_massa wrote:
| Is this study? https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC1
| 0275521/#brb33026-...
|
| They give 347 nonbelievers and 287 believers a set of 32
| locations. They must clasify them as (a) military bases,
| (b) hospitals, (c) schools (or education centers), or (d)
| cemeteries. The expected average is 8 but they get 8.31
| and 10.09 respectively.
|
| [I'm skiping a lot of confusing parts, like figure 4 and
| 5 that I can't understand what they mean and how are they
| related.]
|
| Anyway, 8.31 for believers vs 10.09 for believers is
| interesting.
|
| But ... from the article:
|
| > _A total of 347 participants who were nonbelievers in
| psychic experiences completed an RV experiment using
| targets based on location coordinates. A total of 287
| participants reported beliefs in psychic experiences and
| completed another RV experiment using targets based on
| images of places._
|
| These are two different tasks! It's impossible to know if
| the difference of the result is cused by
| nonbeliever/believer or cuased by coordinates/images.
|
| As a technical opinion: This inmediately invalidates the
| whole study. I don't understand how this was even
| published.
|
| As a personal opinion: It's obvious that the guys/gals
| with the photos would get better results than the
| guys/gals with only the coordinates. The CIA should build
| more spy planes and satelites.
| YesThatTom2 wrote:
| SRI was scammed.
|
| Randi literally walked in, showed how vaudeville magicians do
| spoon bending (spoiler alert: the spoon is swapped for one
| that's already bent using sleight of hand) and the
| researchers blushed in embarrassment.
|
| They'd been HAD!
|
| Cite this so called research you claim to have.
|
| ps: your uncle didn't actually steal your nose. That's his
| thumb.
| paleotrope wrote:
| The secret programs with lots of money little oversight, and
| the normal bureaucratic inertia. Plus, people in that realm
| like to play political games where they imply that they have
| access and power to things other people aren't even allowed to
| know the names of the programs. Secret squirrel stuff goes to
| their heads.
|
| "Major Dumbass is researching what?" "Well we didn't have any
| actual useful work for him so we figured this was harmless"
| JoeDaDude wrote:
| What seems to be a related project, Project Scan 8, is mentioned
| briefly in this 1980's Nova episode about scientific research
| into ESP. See it at about the 44 minute mark.
|
| https://archive.org/details/TheCaseofESP
| mmcconnell1618 wrote:
| This museum, just outside of DC, is worth the visit if you enjoy
| encryption and learning about code breaking. They even have a
| pair of enigma machines that let you encode a message on one and
| decode on the other. It is small but packed with some unique
| artifacts including some of the earliest super computers.
| snakeyjake wrote:
| The best exhibit at the National Cryptologic Museum is the WWII-
| era ENIGMA (3-rotor, but still!) machine that is on display.
|
| In the open.
|
| With instructions on how to encode/decode messages using it.
|
| And little slips of paper and tiny golf pencils right there
| encouraging you to use it.
|
| This and the National Electronics Museum (colocated with the
| System Source Computer Museum [which also houses most of the
| DigiBarn collection]) about an hour north have more hands-on
| exhibits of actual vintage technology than practically every
| other museum in the country combined.
| AzzyHN wrote:
| That's incredibly cool
| igleria wrote:
| There is a movie that makes fun of project stargate:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Men_Who_Stare_at_Goats_(fi...
| fulafel wrote:
| It's ostensibly based on Jon Ronson book of the same name but
| it falls pretty far, and is much less funny, vs the book.
| rdl wrote:
| I love that museum; try to visit whenever I'm nearby.
|
| During Covid, the new director of the museum changed policy
| substantially -- primarily focusing on original artifacts, rather
| than the "displays" which had been built before to illustrate
| concepts (when something wasn't available, or where the original
| artifacts weren't impressive or illustrative enough). As someone
| fairly familiar with the field, seeing the actual objects is much
| more worth a trip than seeing a museum display illustrating a
| concept which I could see better in a wikipedia article or a
| book.
|
| Both approaches work for museums, but I'm glad his one changed.
| The most striking thing for me was seeing the actual computers
| used in SIOP and nuclear war initiation a couple decades earlier
| (fairly run of the mill high end DEC Alpha boxes).
| mturmon wrote:
| Just another comment that this small, niche museum is worth a
| visit. I've been twice, once when visiting Ft. Meade on business
| and once when passing through DC.
|
| The thing that impressed me is the typewriter-size Enigma
| machines of legend, and the multiple-refrigerator-size Bombe
| nearby that decoded the Enigma output. Seeing the actual hardware
| makes an impression that reading stories can't get to.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2024-12-24 23:01 UTC)