Cognitive Biases and Remote Viewing, part one.

The human mind is quite an intricate mechanism. It is also quite fragile and subject to much potential dismay and aberration. Being human leaves one vulnerable to foibles and aberration of clear thinking that affect the entire strata of human thought.

Remote viewing requires that the viewer have facile control over conscious thought in order to discern sense impressions perceived during session.

Understanding cognitive biases that disrupt rationality should help burgeoning remote viewers in their development to better integrate the relationship between analytical mind and the sense impressions bubbling up from the "subconscious".

While biases can be useful in avoiding grave situations, they do cause us to make mistakes. Errors in judgment are the fruit of cognitive biases.

1.  Cognitive dissonance is also thought of as confirmation bias. This is agreeing with those who agree with you.  This reinforces your own pre-existing views. We agree with those that think like us.  Robert Cialdini found this years ago in his research on persuasion and influence. Cable news and Internet media unfortunately have reinforced this tendency in recent years. 

For remote viewing, adhering that one viewpoint is better than another merely fixates you into a certain paradigm. While this may leave you with more efficient personal practice, it fixates you within that paradigm, leaving you unaware of other potentialities.  When faced with errors in judgment, your tendency will thus be to waffle -that is, make excuses or justifications for your errors in trying to make them less wrong- or even right.

2. In-group bias, like confirmation bias, reveals our tendency to stick to groupthink. This is much more banal in nature in that it tends to mollify our personal need for survival. Hanging with those that think like us stokes the ego's need for acceptance, safety, and survival. I could write essays on the danger of the ego's- and individual's- need for approval, but I'll leave it for another day.

I don't get involved in the chatter that has existed between remote viewing groups, as I see much of it as nonsense.

To help with this, I would suggest that those who are aware of it and seek to overcome the need for approval or feel trapped in a paradigm, to read "The Mental Codes ", by Michael Duckett, PhD.

3. Gamblers fallacy.
In controlled remote viewing I see gamblers fallacy, or the tendency to put weight or expectations on what has occurred previously, as being a driver of analytic overlay (AOL) or the preview of coming attractions (POCA)/advanced visuals in the early part of a session. 

In my operations CRV portion of my career, I get tasked with medical applications or human target sessions. The tendency to think "who could the client or target be?" occurs more often than I like. Here the tendency to guess with bias results. Just because the last three targets were over 50 years old, or all male, or all Caucasian, doesn’t mean the next new target will be as well. But the bias to think so lurks about. And if you haven’t developed the relationship or understanding between analytic thought and sense impressions coming from the ‘signal line’, you are vulnerable.

This is extraordinarily dangerous as it then can seep into the session, creating all type of squirreling (SCWERL) problems and castle building. This results in an easy way to ruin a session from the start.

As in all things, Practice is the universal solvent. Practice gives you the experience to learn the art of remote viewing. Taking the time to review your practice sessions, does so even more. Glossing over your practice sessions doesn’t cut it. You’ve got to study your practice to learn what your tendencies are, your strong points, and your weak points. This is one of the reasons why a post-session analysis and databasing your scores is so important. It gives you measurable feedback on how you perform when practicing.

Golf legend Ben Hogan once said something to the effect that the more he practiced, the luckier he got. Strange, isn’t it?