Whimsical Beliefs in Ghosts and Supernatural Anecdotes

In this episode, we explore the fascinating yet controversial realms of telepathy, remote viewing, and other supernatural claims. We take a look at the Stargate Project, a secretive U.S. government experiment aimed at investigating paranormal phenomena during the Cold War. We discuss key figures involved, including advocates who believed in abilities like phasing through walls and remote viewing secret installations. We delve into the credibility of these projects, touching upon elements such as the involvement of high-ranking Scientologists and various debunked claims. Additionally, we analyze the telepathy tapes, mind reading claims, and the influence of mysticism on modern thought.

Malcolm Collins: [00:00:00] he was a key sponsor and advocate for the Stargate Project, he believed soldiers could phase through solid objects by harnessing natural power and positive thinking. Okay, I'm picturing so many people just running into walls hold. He reportedly attempted this himself in his office, repeatedly running into a wall and injuring his nose.

Oh yeah. 'cause you gotta believe it. So you gotta lead with your face. Positive thinking. I just can't let it get me down. But it's just I bet if I have positive enough thoughts, I'm gonna phase through a wall. Like, where's the metaphysics of that? What religion believes this?

The telepathy tapes Simone is actually diagnosed autistic

Speaker 6: You can read minds.

Simone Collins: And people are having the same reaction.

Would you like to know more?

Hello Simone. I'm excited to be here today. Today we are gonna be talking about two things.

Malcolm Collins: The telepathy tapes [00:01:00] and the various government projects that claim to see the supernatural. Project Stargate

I'm going into both of these because these are two areas where I have seen otherwise rational people like Rudyard, for example, one of all his who's been on the show he has one like episode that like very earnestly looks at these government programs. Oh, and listen to that one on an airplane. Yes.

Speaker: Premier me. A solution of Annica Montana Stack. Strength. One point in a million are sure it looks serious. You're right. We need to strengthen the dose. One point in 10 million the chakras are fading. We need some crystals that there should be some purple T quartz. Damnit, you're right. Make that aquamarine quartz. .

Speaker 2: Have a look at this, Simon.

What is it? Don't think this poor chap's got long to live. Why not? It's lifeline very short.

Speaker: Unless. Wait, why we could try drawing a bit more lifeline on with Biro? It didn't ever work.

You got a better idea.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. And I'm just like, [00:02:00] oh. Boy you maybe should have dug a bit deeper on this before taking this at face value. Basically when we get to it, what you're gonna learn is like all of the high level people were also high level people in Scientology

Okay. To clarify here, only like half were in Scientology. The other were in other weird mystical traditions, but we'll get into those specifically when we get to it.

Malcolm Collins: and in Scientology

Simone Collins: specifically. Yeah. It was basically a Scientology into the US government.

Malcolm Collins: Um, It was, it was basically a, a a, a small branch of the US government that Scientologists extremists took over. And how do we get this? Made a bunch of reports. And the people like Rudyard then come across them and take them seriously. But it's the same as we go into the telepathy tapes, we're gonna go into, Why people believe them because you, the way they present them, it can seem plausible. And then we're gonna go over historical cases that were similar to this, like the case of clever. How do you know? Clever. Clever Hans? Maybe clever how the horse that could do math. [00:03:00] No, basically this exact same thing happened before, and it's funny because in the, in the telepathy tapes, they take the methods they're using on humans and they apply them to animals in one episode.

Oh no. And they're like, animals are telepathic too. It's like, oh my god. Literal, clever hosing it here. Well, you know what,

Simone Collins: this like, I can't help but think of this concept of people thinking that autistic people can, can read minds or are telepathic. Because of that one lander line where the female journalist is like, she confesses, she says, I.

Was bulimic. What? And lander's like you can read minds. And Hansel has this great like, and that's, I feel like I am autistic

Speaker 6: You can read minds.

Simone Collins: And people are having the same [00:04:00] reaction. You can read minds,

Malcolm Collins: oh my god. By the way, Simone is actually diagnosed autistic as are. I thought you were gonna say, I'm

Simone Collins: actually telepathic.

Malcolm Collins: Actually. Telepathic. Okay. So parents and caregivers report that their children can quote, unquote read thoughts such as guessing random numbers, words, or colors that someone else is thinking of, even when separated by rooms or distances. For instance, it experiments described children reportedly achieved 95% accuracy in guessing.

Three digit numbers or specific details. EG, parent's mental image without any verbal or visual cues. Dr. Powell, a former Harvard faculty member and Parapsychologists claims to have documented this in controlled settings suggests it's not random, but a form of mind to mind transition. And he goes on here to say that there's other gifts as well that these people have.

They can see auras. Colored energy fields around people and animals and plants that help diagnose things, speak or understand [00:05:00] multiple languages they've never learned. Play musical instruments per at a perfect pitch and recall a song instantly Predict future events and visit people in their dreams.

Perceive time. Now, I, I'd always note on the predicting future events, one, like whenever somebody's like X person can predict future events, I'm like, why aren't they rich? Why, why aren't they rich? If they can do this accurately, why aren't they rich? You know, they should be incredibly easy to play markets if you can predict future events.

And they're like, markets aren't personally meaningful to them. And I'm like, okay, put their life savings on a market. Now it's personally, now it's emotionally salient if they lose in the future.

Simone Collins: It'd be really cool though if like all the secret billionaires in the world just actually are. They can just see into the future.

They just keep their mouth shut. You know, like the way it's gonna be when someone like cracks quantum computing and they just start, you know, mining a bunch of Bitcoin, but they keep it quiet. They don't go too far. So no one notices. And then a bunch of people like act as though they can do this and they can't really, you know, all the financial, you'd actually be able to

Malcolm Collins: tell really quickly.[00:06:00]

Simone Collins: Well say that's, that's a, that's a relief.

Malcolm Collins: Enough people monitor the way billionaires invest, that if they were doing something like that, they'd immediately be flagged for insider trading. And I mean, they, they could develop an algorithm that prevented that from happening, but I don't think they'd get away with it for like, it, it would be more difficult.

Yeah. Just 'cause you

Simone Collins: can tell the future doesn't mean you're good with algorithms,

Malcolm Collins: but I, I'm talking about these people aren't even, like, their main income sources isn't even investing and at the very least it should be. Yeah. You know, perceived time non-linearly, eg. Foreseeing accidents weeks in advance or since energy flows in geometric patterns that align with concepts from quantum physics or ancient mysticism.

So how does he explain this? Dr. Powell proposes that autism isn't just a quote unquote disorder, but a neurodivergent state where the brain filters less information allowing access to a shared informational field or collective consciousness. She links this to brain structures like en large ventricles high.

Heightened midline activity or overactive [00:07:00] pineal gland, often called the third eye in spiritual traditions. And you see, this is why we shouldn't let women be doctors. This is a, this, this was a mistake here.

Speaker 8: Well he was riding his bike when there was a lightning strike And now he rigs real fast, he's good at science and math, black doctor I'm gonna go out on a limb here, where exactly did he get the bike? He stole it! Right, that's what I thought.

Malcolm Collins: No, but joking.

Some episodes suggest that this be an evolutionary trait with autistic individuals as tuned receivers for subtle energies and neurotypical people ignore. Due to reliance on language and logic, context and popularity.

It had gained traction through endorsements like Joe Rogan who discussed it on his show in 2024.

Simone Collins: No. And

Malcolm Collins: Russ Shart, a UFO journalist who interviewed OWL in 2025. Oh. So this is thank you Joe Rogan. I was actually just talking with a [00:08:00] reporter from Politico and she goes, well, you know, who could, like, who's a new right figure who could beat JD Vance in the next election cycle?

It's like Joe Rogan probably could.

Simone Collins: Rogan for president. Really? Well,

Malcolm Collins: presidential candidate, I think he clean up. Yeah. And it would help his career as well. So you know why not?

Simone Collins: Oh no. Alright.

Malcolm Collins: You didn't think about that, but it would,

Simone Collins: didn't, it would. Well, I mean, I think, you know, I, the Trump's first run was largely inspired by that too. Like at least it's good for press. Mm-hmm.

Malcolm Collins: All right, so, let's go into some of the episodes and claims in the show.

Simone Collins: Okay.

Malcolm Collins: Starting with the one that I think people find most compelling.

Mind reading was near perfect accuracy and control tests. One standout story involves a 13-year-old nonverbal girl named Mia, who reportedly demonstrated tele leprosy by accurately identifying words, numbers, and objects that were shown only to her mother while Mia was blindfolded in a separate [00:09:00] space.

In Tess. Filmed by podcast host Key Dickens and psychiatrist Dr. Diane. Hennessy Powell Mia achieved 100% accuracy, such as spelling out random numbers or words like those on hidden slips of paper. Her mother described this as a shared consciousness where Mia could tap into her thoughts effortlessly. I think a control protocol.

Okay, so Mia was blindfolded and separated from direct view of the stimuli. Her mother was shown a target, EG, a random three digit number, like 6, 9, 8, a word slip on a slip of paper or a page from a book showing a character like a per. Or pirate the mother might react verbally, EEG exclaiming, oh, in excitement or physically touch me at EEG on the hand or forehead or jaw for support, quote unquote.

This a diversity of places to touch someone for support. You're beginning to see why people are like. Why didn't you just leave the mother in the other room? Why did you let her come back [00:10:00] and interact with the child? After the mother internalized the information, Mia removed the blindfold and it spelled out the answer by pointing at letters on the board held by her mother as well.

By the way, you just, you know, if you're creating one of these, you, you wouldn't have the mother doing all of that if you actually

Simone Collins: yeah. Mother stays in the separate room. Daughter never sees mother.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Variations In one test, the mother opened the book to a random page and asked Mia to identify the character Mia spelled Perta, which matched another involved sorting colored Popsicle sticks while blindfolded.

The mother handed Mia a stick. Why does the mother keep interacting with her in these? Well, we'll see why in just a second kept her hand on Mia's forehead or blindfold and Mia moved her hand, her hand, left or right to drop it in the correct spot. Tess was the father used similar random stimuli, but Mia either stopped mid response or failed to answer.

It only works with the mother. How curious, how curious that doesn't it all minstrel mirror the clever [00:11:00] how? The way clever how was debunked? Duration and repetition sessions included multiple trials by footage, but footage shown was selective. EG they always showed it working but they didn't show the full footage.

Now they say, oh, the reason we had to show it to you in short clips. Was one so that it could be a paywall, but for 9 89 to view it on the podcast site. Oh, but Mia's anxiety was noted as a factor, increasing her need for physical support from the mother. But then why did physical support from the father who she apparently trusted as well also work?

Simone Collins: No comment.

Malcolm Collins: Anyway yeah, the, the father thing to me is a big hole in that one.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Um,

Malcolm Collins: And they're like, oh, well there were, there were witnesses. And I'm like, yeah. And all the witnesses careers required this working out in a specific way. Like, why don't you do this with skeptical people?

Why don't you, it'd be an easy thing to do, to do with one of the debunkers, right? Like, there's people who. Make their career debunking paranormal frauds. Why not just call one of them in and, and, [00:12:00] and if it works in the way you say it works, they would immediately convert to your way of thinking and you could convert a lot of disbelievers.

But they don't do that. They keep it only within the realm of other believers. Now we've got another one here. Composing music through Lucid Dreams. Now, some of these are, are most of these, other than that first one, it's like, I don't even need to debunk something. It's just pretty obvious what's going on.

Okay. So in this one, a mother in England shared a vivid account of her nonverbal autistic son communicating with her via dreams to co-create music. Starting at age 11, the sun would appear to her in Lucid Dreams handing her. Symbolic items like an Ace of Spades card to convey .

Needs such as specific supplements over time this involved in him. So basically she thought her son was coming to her in her dreams and telling her supplements and stuff that she needed to give him. Which is kind of sad 'cause that's probably not what was happening. She was giving her son random supplements.

[00:13:00] But you know, kooky granola people be kooky granola people, right. Over time, this evolved into him, quote unquote, delivering full musical compositions directly into her mind. During these dream states, the son now a respected musician reportedly uses this message to collaborate with her transmitting melodies and lyrics that she then records.

This story was highlighted as an example of telepathy blending with creativity, suggesting nonverbal individuals can access and share ideas non physically. This is just a sad case of the mother crediting her music to her nonverbal autistic son.

Simone Collins: Oh, nonverbal.

Okay, so, so more information on this particular case. The son can actually sing. He just can't compose the music on his own. So his mom composes the music and then gives the music to him, and, , he copies her to learn how to sing it. , And some of these songs have become famous of, like, autistic guy sings supposedly about having autism.

The mom writes the songs about having autism [00:14:00] inspired by her son's life. , What's interesting about this case is never before 2014 when the telepathy tapes came out. Had this, this kid or mom, both of whom were fairly famous for their songs, ever mentioned this communication from , through dreams or anything like that.

This is completely unique to the telepathy tapes and sort of comes outta nowhere. I.

Simone Collins: Yeah. I was gonna ask if the son had attested to this, but he can't because he can't talk.

Malcolm Collins: Very convenient.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Hmm.

Malcolm Collins: Right. Telepathic romance and communication with the deceased. So here's a, here's a fun one. Okay. Particularly emotional tale. Oh this. Mm. This. It's questionable here. Oh no. Two nonverbal autistic teens, 20-year-old lily and 17-year-old JP were said to have fallen in love primarily through mind to mind communication.

They [00:15:00] reportedly talked telepathically, synchronizing actions like texting to meet at the exact same moment.

Simone Collins: That's something

Malcolm Collins: all people do when they're dating is teens. They're just like, oh my gosh, they're dream. We texted each other at the same moment. Oh, okay. That's just proof that, that we can, and then, and shared interests like biking or poetry, though They're very unique.

Simone Collins: You like long watching walks on beaches as well. Oh my God. It could only be the work of, it's crazy. Tell me, no paranormal. Do you like pumpkin spice? Is this also a thing that you're crazy about?

Malcolm Collins: Yep. I dunno. I, I, I, I imagine like they sit across from each other. Do you like pumpkin spice lattes too. And then it plays that music done.

Done. Like, like something scary. Poetry, Don.

Oh God. Anyway, tragically after JP P'S death, we really continued to communicate with him spelling messages. Like I see him as energy. He [00:16:00] tells me he loves me and for me to tell our story.

Simone Collins: Oh, just let her believe that. That's

Malcolm Collins: sad. Yeah, but not a lot in there that I can't explain. Like this is the thing.

There's just not a lot of great evidence in here. No. Here's another one. Accessing knowledge through other senses and predicting the future. Several families recounted their children, borrowing other senses, such as a nonverbal child, reading entire books like Harry Potter by tapping into his siblings mind while they read.

Okay. Others claim to see through teachers' eyes or hear through their ears compensating for their own sensory challenges. Additionally, kids reportedly predicted events like warning parents about a bad land purchase via messages from the other side.

Simone Collins: I love that the ghost are, are getting into to real estate.

This is an only

Malcolm Collins: sound purchase [00:17:00] or new historical facts. There's a fun, no historical fact. One of this woman who lives in Egypt and thinks she's like a reincarnated Egyptian. Oh, that's fun. Yeah, it is fun. She's living her best life. She dresses up like a, like a ancient Egyptian and lives in Egypt now.

Simone Collins: Yeah,

Malcolm Collins: go for it. You go for it. Yeah. Yeah. We need

Simone Collins: more of that in the world.

Malcolm Collins: Absolutely. I haven't looked into what's ridiculous about the, these ones? I like the, the, the warning about a bad land purchase. Did the land purchase turn out to be bad

So this one took place in India, and , it turns out that what the kids said was something like that the well on the land is bad, , or that the land purchase was going to be bad. And then the parents did another inspection and they found a bad well on the land. I mean, it's anecdotal, but it's, you know, something.

Simone Collins: yeah. Feel like these days, more often than not, it's, it's a negatory, but my gosh, this is. This is so interesting. Yeah. Know it

Malcolm Collins: actually [00:18:00] but apparently this has been very convincing to post rats.

Simone Collins: Well, you know what's interesting actually though, now that I'm thinking about like our kids' explanations for a lot of things.

Mm-hmm. What do they pretty much always say when we ask them, who took this thing? Who did this thing? Ghosts. Who broke ghosts? It is, it is

Malcolm Collins: ghosts. Oh yeah. Our family. If we were inclined to believing in ghosts, our kids, I get you. Not every time, every time ghosts, we ghost down and there's a mess. The kids will say, we didn't ghost did it.

We'll be like, you did

Simone Collins: it the ghost. Ghost is,

Malcolm Collins: yeah.

Simone Collins: It was the ghost. Which Ghost is,

Malcolm Collins: ghost is. Gosh. They even said when you asked them what do you think mommy does all day? And they said, fighting ghosts.

Simone Collins: You know, it's true. Right? It's what us artists have to do. I wonder if like Yeah, maybe The thing is the parents are.

Unknowingly autistic too, and therefore too credulous, and they just kind of believe stuff too [00:19:00] easily. And and that's also an understated factor here. Yeah. Where they're not trying to mislead people, they just literally don't get it. That like when their kid says or expresses that something is coming from beyond the veil.

Their kids just saying stuff.

Malcolm Collins: So, so the thing is was this, is, this isn't the first time this has happened either. No, this happened in, when I was growing up with something called Indigo Children. Do you remember Indigo Children?

Simone Collins: The, it rings a bell. I can't define it though. So

Malcolm Collins: parents didn't wanna beg believe their children were just like.

Autistic or slow or something. Okay. And so they believed that they were a new generation that had been gifted, like a unique amount of empathy. Oh, and intelligence and like the ability to like see the future and stuff by like aliens or something. Okay. Or like mystical forces. And they thought that humanity was waking in.

To like a new hyper evolved age.

Speaker 11: Sarafina was diagnosed as indigo at a young age by her mother

Speaker 12: I began delving into [00:20:00] spirituality and vibrations past lives.

Simone Collins: Oh, fun. Indigo children. I mean, now I, I think, yeah, this, this is, and you see other forms of this cope showing up with terms like two E or twice exceptional, where parents are like, oh, it's not just that my son is autistic, he's two e. And that like, okay, yeah, he's autistic, but he's like also really good at math or like amazing at the violin.

'cause they're trying to say that they're twice exceptional. Like they're, they're. Okay. Maybe there's this one thing where they're like, really, like he's nonverbal, but like he is really good at this and that makes him notable. But I feel like that's the modern version of that. But then the telepathy tapes is this, well,

Malcolm Collins: but it isn't because these kids aren't exceptional in any way.

They are just autistic. Just

Simone Collins: admit that your kids are who they are. Like stop trying to make them into something they're not. Let them lean into their strengths and their strengths are not supernatural.

Malcolm Collins: Well, you know, this one, unless you can

Simone Collins: sell them, like I know, like if you can set up an Etsy shop for your autistic [00:21:00] kid where they do their readings, as, as you know, we were looking yesterday, people were selling spells for $345.

Mine mind. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Mind breaks. So let's go to that day delivery thing again. Yeah. I wanna, I wanna go into this because I wanna go into how ridiculous it is. Okay. Okay. In Mia's test, her mother or other facilitator physically supports her by holding the letter board, grasping her chin. Oh, placing a finger on her forehead or making contact while Mia points to letters.

Simone Collins: It's a human Ouija board.

Malcolm Collins: She's

Simone Collins: just.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Podcast show the mother adjusting the board's position loo her body or pushing me in ways that could subtly guide her towards the quote unquote correct letters, even if unintentionally. And when we get to the Clever Hal case, it was unintentional. So we know this can happen unintentionally.

Simone Collins: No, I think most of this is innocent. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Video analysis by Mentalist Peter Turner revealed the mother's hands guiding me as movements.

So to be clear what I'm saying here, a guy whose full-time job is tricking people with magic tricks, [00:22:00] watched even the limited and edited video that we have access to of this and was like, oh, here's how she's doing it. Here's exactly what she's doing, and this is a very common way of performing this particular trick.

Malcolm Collins: This is classic fc, which was popularized in the 1990s and debunked by over 60 double-blind studies showing that when the facilitator doesn't know the answer, EG has shown a different issue than the child.

The communication fails entirely. Pals, powell's similar early experiments with a child named Haley. In 2014, used a divider for quote unquote separation, but the facilitator still had the stencil and knew the answers. Allowing for unconscious queuing through posture shifts, verbal prompts, eg.

Announcing decimals or waiting for. Quote unquote correct selections before proceeding. These weren't truly blinded and results couldn't be replicated under stricter conditions. While the podcast claims separation, Mia blindfolded the area prevents signaling, we know this is not the case. So, this is where I wanna get to clutter, Hans.

'cause I think [00:23:00] that this, this, it's a story that everyone should know because it helps you see similarities like this. So around 19 hundreds, a retired math teacher named William Vaughn Austin acquired a horse named Hans and trained him over several years to perform seemingly advanced task. Hans would answer questions by tapping his hoof a certain number of times, or nodding slash shaking his head.

For example, he would be asked to add three plus five. Hans would tap eight times. He could reportedly solve more complex problems like square roots, fractions, or even non mass tasks, such as identifying musical notes, telling time from a clock, spelling words in German. Or distinguishing colors. Vaughn Austin genuinely believed Hans was intelligent and demonstrated this publicly in Berlin attracting crowds, scientists, and media attention.

Hans performed for free and Vaughn Austin never charged money, insisting it was proof of animal cognition. The horse's ability drew international. So you say he not trying to make.

He is trying to [00:24:00] show I got a smart horse. Check it out. Or, yeah, he's

Simone Collins: like, he seems like some kind of proto pita person to be like, listen, animals are are intelligent. Although I'm looking at pictures of clever Hans right now and I think that horse is under fed. I don't know. He looks a little, maybe the horse is today

Malcolm Collins: are too fat, but he looks a little too spelt for me.

So, in 1907, psychologist Oscar Funt conducted a more rigorous investigation. 'cause there had been light investigations before this, but this guy's like, okay, let's, let's actually put controls in place. He discovered Hans wasn't actually doing math or thinking independently. Instead, the horse was extensively sensitive to subtle, unintentional cues for the person asking the question.

Cool, quote, unquote handler or questioner. Key findings. Hans would start tapping when a question was posed and stop when he reached the correct number. Funks notice that the questioner, including Austin, would unconsciously tense up, shift posture slightly, or raise eyebrows, or even alter their breathing.

As Hans [00:25:00] approach the right answer, these micro signals often invisible to the naked eye. Prompted Hans to stop tapping, for instance, a slight forward lean or widening of the eye signaled. That's it. The control experiment. When the questioner didn't know the answer, eeg, the problems were hidden from them.

Hans's accuracy dropped in near zero, no. Similarly, if the questioner was out of sight, behind a screen, or were a blindfold, Hans failed. But if a new handler was introduced, who knew the answer? Han regained his skills showing it wasn't specific to Von Austin, but that any human providing clues would cause this effect.

Importantly. So Hans

Simone Collins: was clever. He was a clever boy. He was clever, just

Malcolm Collins: not in the way they thought. And this created something called the Clever Hans Effect. And the, the guy, clearly if you had a horse and anyone you put in front of this horse, it would get to the right number. You're gonna be like this horse.

No mother. Ah. But apparently it didn't know. It was just very good at telling. And, and these sorts of controls are [00:26:00] what was not put in place with the telepathy files. And so we literally just have clever huns over again now that they're applying their same experimental protocol to animals.

Simone Collins: Horses really are smart though.

Every time I've ridden a horse, it's gone terribly wrong, and it's because they can smell fear. They just know. There was Fritz the the fat pony, my first ever horse experience riding him in the Santa Cruz mountains and he just exhaled. Really heavily and the saddle loosened up and after riding sort of upside down on the saddle, clinging to it for as long as I could on a steep hill side, I just, I came falling off.

Fritz lost me. And then there was buzz opposite. He wasn't himself a fat horse, but he was a very, very large horse for obese people in Hawaii that I found myself riding. He discovered that I absolutely had no assertiveness or ability to exert control. And so he just ran away from everyone galloping very quickly.

So Buzz and Fritz, clever [00:27:00] buzz, clever Fritz, clever horses not, not psychic.

Malcolm Collins: So now let's go to Project Stargate because, 'cause I, I promised you guys we'd get into that stuff that they called it Stargate. Yeah, they called it Stargate. That ARD thought meant that we have if you're gonna say that like telepathic phenomenon exists, you need enormous proof for this, right?

Yeah. And the US government running stuff would be enormous proof. I mean, yeah, if the US government hadn't shut it all down specifically because it wasn't producing results if it was producing results, they would've kept it going and you wouldn't know about these programs. And the thing is, is that the people who were high up these programs and like talking about these programs, it's not like these programs were because each of these programs had been secretly successful.

And it turns out that what they were doing was just making it look like they failed and then taking the higher ups and putting them on more advanced stuff. Yeah. The higher ups wouldn't be on talk shows complaining about the program that's being shut down. Right. That's fair. And, and, and being Scientologists and other sorts of like wacko stuff saying [00:28:00] that demons talk to them and stuff like that.

No, wait, they're Scientology is demons. No, no, no. These are other people involved. Oh. There was a lot of crazy people involved in this. Alright, this is, great project. Stargate was a secretive US government program, primarily run by the US Army and defense intelligence. That investigated paranormal phenomenon for potential military and intelligence applications active around the 1970s until its determination.

In 1995, the program's core focus was on quote unquote remote viewing the alleged psychic ability. To perceive distant or hidden events, sites, or information through extrasensory means without physical presence. It began amid the Cold War over fears that the Soviet Union was advancing. Parapsychology prompting the United States to explore similar capabilities for espionage such as locating enemy installations or missing persons.

The program involved experiments conducted at the Stanford Research Institute. SRI International and later Fort Mead, Maryland with a small team of quote unquote viewers who claim to sketch or describe targets based on coordinates or vague prompts. Okay. [00:29:00] Project Sun Streak was a smaller part of this based on remote viewing.

It operated the DIA from 1989 to 1990. It presented a continu refinement of earlier programs like grill flame and center Lane emphasizing psychogenics mental processes for the intelligence gathering. So Psychogenics, they wanted to see if, if they could like view Soviet installations and stuff like that from far away using psychic powers.

Isn't it sweet

Simone Collins: that we can just. We can just do that now with like modern technology. One

Malcolm Collins: notable declassified example was a 1988 attempt to physically locate the biblical arc of the covenant aw ordinance to quote unquote view it's supposed resting place in Ethiopia or elsewhere. That's so sweet.

They're like, well, if we could find anything. Let's find the arc. Well, it would prove them, right? Like this is the thing, right? If this stuff worked, you should be able to do things like find the arc. The fact that you can't find [00:30:00] the arc shows that it's not working. I don't know.

Simone Collins: What if you're, you're finding abilities are based on, like, I know the shape of it.

You know, I, there's a, you know, the dimensions, or I know what it feels like textually or I. You know, I, I don't, I don't, I don't buy that 'cause no one knows exactly what the arc looks like. I know the Bible has this very specific descriptions, but. By the

Malcolm Collins: way, it was shut down after $20 million in two decades of, oh,

Simone Collins: oh.

This makes USAID look saintly. Oh, dear. No.

Malcolm Collins: Remember this is the program where they would do stuff like stare at goats to try to kill him to see. Did that for work?

Simone Collins: Did the ghosts just die of boredom?

Okay, so the official sources say no goats died. But, , people who were involved say goats died. So, , guy C's claim Elli, a martial arts instructor recruited for the program, asserted he killed a goat by staring at it during an experiment with 30 numbered goats. So basically he [00:31:00] was, you know, so we don't have a goat die randomly and then say, Hey, I killed that goat.

So he targeted goat number 16, but claimed that an accident caused him to. Accidentally kill goat number 17. Instead,

a separate video of a goat experiment showed its heart rate dropped temporarily from 65 to 55 beats per minute. , what I love so much, it's a ge claim, which appears to be false because it's not in the, the military records, , that, that he did this. He didn't even do it right in his made up claim. He, he targeted the wrong goat. I, I guess that's to make it sound more believable.

Malcolm Collins: If we had invented the Death Dare, we'd be using it in battle. We'd have our psychic troops like, like Yuri does from Red Alert too going into battle, like, if this was something we could do.

So let's talk about the people involved in this. Okay.

Simone Collins: Okay.

Speaker 16: the device is called a psychic dominator. There is a network of such devices spread across the globe. More of your mind control tricks. Not [00:32:00] tricks, Mr. President. In a few moments, I will unleash a tidal wave of psychic energy designed to dominate the minds of an entire planet.

There will be no more free will. Only my will.

Simone Collins: So,

Malcolm Collins: How. Per off the physicist and SRI project director per off who led the SRI viewing experiments funded by the CRA was deeply involved in Scientology in the 1960s and seventies. He reached the advanced open Faan OT level. Seven.

Wow. Really high. By 1971 a stage. How high does it go? I don't, how is that? I can't remember. I think it might only go to eight.

So at this level, uh, you would definitely know about Zou. The highest level is eight. So he was one level away from the highest possible level.

Malcolm Collins: Oh. Okay. Eight. Eight or nine a stage in Scientology involving beliefs in body setons, disembodied spirits attached to humans, and auditing to remove them for spiritual enlightenment.

POV [00:33:00] credited Scientology was giving him absolute fearlessness and wrote positively about it. Though he severed ties in the late seventies, his Scientology background influenced early experiments as he incorporated techniques resembling Scientology's e-meter, a device for measuring spiritual states into psychic research.

So this wasn't just a government researching psychic stuff. They were using the literal emmets that Scientologists use in their research to prove that this stuff was real. And I know that this was actually true. Throughout this so, we've got another guy here I io Swan. So, Swan claimed to, he, he was the key remote viewer, the guy who did like, seeing things far away.

So when you're, like, when you hear about somebody did remote viewing correctly, you're hearing about this guy often. And he might have even developed the term remote viewing. And he was the co-developer of the remote viewing protocols. So sort of the, the lead both participant and researcher on a lot of these projects.

Simone Collins: Okay.

Malcolm Collins: [00:34:00] So, he was a celebrity Scientologist in the 1970s where he achieved high OT levels and wrote essays on how Scientology's techniques could enhance psychic integration and consciousness exploration. Swan viewed himself as a consciousness researcher who experienced altered states blending psychology, Scientology Seton based cosmology.

With his claims of astral projection and astro terrestrial encounters, seeing alien bases on the moon. He featured in Scientology publications and defended his paradigms for SI research. Though he laid his distance himself for it somewhat, note that that was not his only crazy things. He claimed to have psychologically explored the dark side of the moon during a session allegedly tasked.

By a secret government agency, so the government was paying him. He's exploring the far side of the moon. What does he see there? He describes seeing alien bases with structures like towers and domes, where humanoid figures engaged in mining operations using advanced machinery. He believes these beings were extra extraterrestrials monitoring earth.

And he detailed encounters wisdom [00:35:00] in his book Penetration, suggesting a hidden UFO presence with that govern that governments were covering up, SWAN also reported telepathic interactions with those entities, viewing them as part of a broader cosmic intelligence. How did he get

Simone Collins: away with that book title?

Good God.

And note here, I'm not scoffing here because he believes in aliens or UFOs or something like that. All that stuff is perfectly reasonable to have skepticism around, but believing that there are aliens that look humanoid with large mining operations on the dark side of the moon is something quite different.

Why would they set something like that up? We'd almost certainly have the technology to detect that at this point. And why would they look like humans? I mean, I can see plausible reasons for each of these things. It's just one of those, it's a bit too big and a bit too specific and a said with a bit too much confidence to not just come off as crazy town.

Malcolm Collins: But what I'm pointing out here is if [00:36:00] these had actually worked, like if the lead guy in this actually was able to do this. And then they had decided to cover it up, which is what would have to happen. 'cause the program was for public knowledge shut down in disgrace. This guy would not be making his money on like.

Going to paranormal conferences and writing book tours. Right. And, and doing the Scientology rounds. Right. He would be, he would be at, don't you understand? He lives

Simone Collins: this illustrious TV style double life whereby day he's on the talk shows. And then it doesn't take that long to astral project and explore the dark side of the moon.

I mean, please, you can do it in five minutes. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: So, ed Dames so much

Simone Collins: money. Oh my God.

Malcolm Collins: Oh, Edie Dames was one of the others in this. So, Dames conducted what he called the most dangerous experiment Mm. Attempting to remotely view Satan or the devil himself. Oh. He described the [00:37:00] entity not as a biblical demon, but as a fallen angel who delights in orchestrating human suffering and global catastrophes.

During these sessions, Dame reported terrifying visions of demonic forces and warned that psychic exploration. Could invite spiritualists. The government didn't

Simone Collins: pay someone to look at Satan. Wait, was this

Malcolm Collins: government funded? Yeah, government funded. He also predicted apocalyptic events through remote viewing, including a massive solar kill shot that would devastate the earth alien invasions and other domesday scenarios tied to extraterrestrial threats and biblical prophecies.

I hope you're getting an idea here. I think when people like Ruby Yard discuss this. No, nothing about Ruby Yard. I made a mistake in a recent episode too. I, I looked into all the money that Qatar was spending on US universities, and I assumed they were doing it for influence, but it turned out they were doing it to set up universities in their own country.

But it was branches of US universities and so that wasn't actually a smoking gun for influence. And I said that just because I didn't. Do the second step in the research. 'cause I didn't think to, I, it's like, why else would they be [00:38:00] giving so much money to US universities? You know, they do appear to also give the, the, you know, Hamas' major donor, like the universities are going into lined up in my mind, but it was wrong.

In, in this case not that Qatar isn't influencing US policy to be more pro Hamas or that they don't have an interest in doing that. It's just the university donation thing was not the smoking gun. I thought it was. But with, with so I'm, I'm pointing out here. I make mistakes too. I can see you're Rudyard, you're somebody else.

This stuff is presented to you by somebody who's pro this stuff, right? And so they come up to you and they're like, well, they were able to see like these, these distant crashes, and then they went and they visited the crash and it was exactly where they said it was. And you're like, oh, that's really cool like that, that's, I, I have no other way.

And the government was doing this. The CIA was doing this. Like, man, that sounds super legit. And then somebody else says. And everyone involved was a high ranking Scientologist, [00:39:00] and they thought they were talking to demons, and, and then you're like, whoa, why didn't, first, why didn't you mention this to me?

No, not everyone involved with a high ranking Scientologist, but a, a, a number of the leading figures were. And typically when you go into this government stuff and then you just need to like research who was doing it, who was running it, what other crazy things did this person say, oh, aliens are about to take over the earth, and the son's about to shoot us, and he talked to the devil, maybe.

Maybe I'm gonna take this.

The plane was exactly where I thought it was with a bit more of a grain of salt after I see the other stuff.

All right. Let's go into some of the cases that people are like, this stuff just can't be explained any other way. So first, , io Swan, the Scientology guy we talked about before was tasked, was describing Jupiter's rings. Before any spacecraft had imaged them closely, he reported a ring system around the planet describing it as [00:40:00] a band of crystals.

Alright, great. , The problem , is that jovial rings had actually already been predicted to be made up of particles, , , in scientific literature from occlusion data in the 1950s. , And all, most of the other information he gave about the planet was wrong. They, they don't mention that. They mention, oh, , the explanation of the rings, but he got a bunch of other stuff wrong about the planet.

Okay, price was given coordinates. This is, , pat Price for a Soviet nuclear test site in Kazaki Stan. He described Undergrown facilities, a large crane, spherical tanks, particle beam research details matching classified US intelligence later confirmed by satellite imagery. , Unfortunately. This is what price told people until things were declassified, and it found out that this particular viewing was considered a failure.

, The stuff he described, like a large cran and spherical tanks were pretty much ubiquitous across the sites at the time. , And the information he gave in [00:41:00] terms of like layout of the facility and everything was wrong. All right. What about this one? McGonal remotely viewed a Soviet shipyard describing a massive new submarine with 20 missile tubes, a flat deck, and twin nuclear reactors.

He predicted its launch date was in days satellite photos later can confirm. The typhoon class sub existed as described except the typhoon class, , was very similar to just like a larger version of preexisting Soviet types. And we already had some intelligence, , leaks on the typhoon type class, , that it's very likely he might have had access to, , given the guy who is running this, which we'll get into in a second and would've just pretend that he didn't know about, , for the launch date coincidence.

, I mean, they're like, it was close. It wasn't right on the dot. Okay. Next. What, what about, . McGonigal when he helped, , dozers captivity in Italy where he was held by Red Brigade terrorists, , including building details and nearby [00:42:00] landmarks this aided in his rescue. Okay, so this one is often, , mistold here.

, The psychics did participate and people did listen to what the psychics told them in terms of trying to find the guy. The problem , is that everything that they listened to, like going to Verona instead of Ottawa. Led to a dead end. , He was actually found through conventional police methods and himself.

The guy who was found said the psychics had nothing to do with me being found. , But because the psychics were involved. And a few of the building details matched up. Even though all the information they gave that was followed, turned out to be a waste of time, , they claimed that they, , actually helped find this.

Now let's go to the guy who was running all of this so we can understand why when you hear things like, oh, there's no other way to explain that, you can't exactly trust what was written down or reported until we got the leak documents.

Malcolm Collins: So let's keep going here. Major General Albert Burt Stub, Lamine II with a high [00:43:00] ranking US Army officer who served as a commander of the US Army Intelligence and National Security.

From 1981 to 1984, he was a key sponsor and advocate for the Stargate Project, pushing for its funding and integration into military intelligence operations beyond Stargate. He was involved with other government backed paranormal investigations, including predecessors like Girl Frame and center lane, which evolved into Stargate as well as High Performance Task Force.

So another thing that's important to note is. All of, or almost all of these projects that the government had that showed paranormal stuff were run by one guy who was a true believer and willing to just hire anyone. In terms of like the credibility of these people. Mm-hmm. You think if you're trying to prove paranormal things, the last person you'd hire is a high ranking Scientologist or much less multiple high ranking Scientologists.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Skeptics would

Simone Collins: be better,

Malcolm Collins: but. Yes. So he was notorious for promoting a range of outlandish and fringe [00:44:00] ideas rooted in psychic and paranormal phenomenon, often inspired by new age concepts like First Earth Battalion Manual by Lieutenant Colonel Jim Chatan, which envisioned Warrior Monks using nonviolent mind based tactics.

Some of his most. Crazy ideas were he believed soldiers could phase through solid objects by harnessing natural power and positive thinking. Okay, I'm picturing so many people just running into walls hold. He reportedly attempted this himself in his office, repeatedly running into a wall and injuring his nose.

Oh yeah. 'cause you gotta believe it. So you gotta lead with your face. Positive thinking. I just can't let it get me down. Whack. Whack. I can just imagine somebody else like whatcha doing? I'm trying to run through the wall with the power of positive thinking. Oh my God. But it's just some metaphysic sense this, how do you even get to stage one with this?

How do you even go from [00:45:00] like, I bet if I have positive enough thoughts, I'm gonna phase through a wall. Like, where's the metaphysics of that? What religion believes this? What weird practice believes this? Anyway,

Simone Collins: this was the eighties. There were there were various substances out there at the time if memory serves that

Malcolm Collins: Oh.

That does make sense. Now they're thinking about some of other things.

Simone Collins: It's a lot of power possibly. He required

Malcolm Collins: his battalion commanders to learn how Tobin spoons with their minds, Allah, Yuri Geller, as part of training their psychic abilities. I, I do love this idea. And he thought. He, it's literally like that South park where the two groups of psychics fight against each other

Speaker 18: All right, everyone.

Oh goodness. What's going on? Stand Back mother. We're having a telekinetic Battle of men.[00:46:00]

Enough.

Malcolm Collins: whoa. Exactly what he is doing. Building a crew of these. Like he recruited that group of psychics to like go up to other military people. And then, and then of course what happens to them is what happens when, when we see them on the battlefield, what happens to the psychics in South Park where they just immediately get shot?

Speaker 22: Get your head down. Spread up. Stand back. Don't make me do it. Don't make me do it.

The psychic Detective's horrible crime was found out by Psychic Detective Eric Corman. Who is now the only psychic not behind bars? What an amazing coincidence.

Simone Collins: Well, you know, yeah, like, I mean, there's so many projects like this. There was acoustic kitty, you know, just immediately got ran over.

Malcolm Collins: This is when they spent millions of dollars attaching equipment to a cat so that it could hear like what was going on around it, use it as a spy, and it was immediately run over.

He endorsed experiments where soldiers [00:47:00] tried to stop the heart of goats or other animals like hamsters, purely through intense mental focus and staring, aiming to develop non-lethal psychic weapons.

Simone Collins: Sounds very non-lethal, I guess. So it would stop the heart of a hamster, but it would just cause palpitations in a human, presumably, I guess.

Malcolm Collins: He advocated for training programs involving biofeedback, meditation, yoga, and extrasensory protection to create super soldiers capable of remote viewing mind control and pacifying enemies with harmonic sounds or positive vibes instead of traditional warfare.

Simone Collins: What's so interesting though, is that we have like these like targeted microwave attacks allegedly from the Russians now, and I mean, already, I, I can.

Typically non lethally compromise, actually a human within staring distance by using a taser. So there we have some solutions out. I think these solutions, the microwave

Malcolm Collins: attacks that you're talking about the ones that people thought happened in Cuba apparently [00:48:00] never happened.

Simone Collins: No,

Malcolm Collins: I'll double check it in post, but if I remember correctly, it came out that they, they were just being spazzes

Simone Collins: people.

They were just like psychosomatic nonsense.

Malcolm Collins: Psychosomatic nonsense. Oh,

Simone Collins: okay.

Okay, so apparently they did a number of investigations. All the investigations came back saying that it was psychosomatic, but some people still believe it's real. As you know, anyone would with something psychosomatic.

Simone Collins: Well,

Malcolm Collins: but and not that we don't have microwave weapons, and the Russians don't have microwave weapons that could f with a person. They just, this was not an instance of them being deployed. And I'm all for, I actually don't mind that they spent this money, and I'll tell you why.

What, what, no, Malcolm. Because, because. We need to know that this stuff doesn't work. Okay. Okay. We ran the stuff, the, the Never once was there a single thing of utility that came out of it. Mm-hmm. People can be like, oh, what about this individual thing? What about this individual thing that the core reports on it produced by people who weren't this one general say, there was nothing in the program we were able to [00:49:00] use.

So only the true believers. Found this stuff and you could be like, oh, well, like bad vibes are, are messing it up or something. Well, it had all of the best vibes. Okay.

Simone Collins: Right. And all of the true believers, it wasn't even like, oh, well, it's because the, their lack of faith caused the whatever to not work.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Mm-hmm. And it still wasn't able to produce anything that anyone else could use.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: It really worked. The military would've kept it. Yeah. These people wouldn't be on talk shows today. Okay. Yeah. They would be, I'm not denying that the government might cover it up and pretend it failed, but I am saying that everybody who left let, it wouldn't have like this guy did.

The, the core guy who funded all of it had to resign in disgrace.

Simone Collins: Yeah, that makes sense. And also. I don't, I don't imagine we would've developed military technologies that are now used to do much of the same things, like see what's going on within buildings, monitor things remotely, et cetera. Had we had [00:50:00] already such a strong and robust solution for them, so.

Yeah, if, if we'd figured out a way in the eighties to consistently do these things, we wouldn't have all of these other very expensive capabilities.

Malcolm Collins: That's a really strong point actually. There wouldn't be, like, if the government secretly had this capability, they wouldn't have concurrently invested in something that duplicates the capability.

Very

Simone Collins: expensively. Yeah, very

Malcolm Collins: expensively. Our spy satellite network, so it's, I I think we have pretty concrete evidence that this stuff didn't work. Mm-hmm. And with this stuff not working, that unfortunately blows up one of the core arguments people have for psychic stuff. And okay. So it's useful.

Simone Collins: Oh, you, you've given me a silver lining here 'cause I was getting a little. Well, no depressed. I mean,

Malcolm Collins: it gives us more evidence that psychic stuff probably isn't real. That there is not, you, you cannot make psychic weapons. You cannot I'm super okay

Simone Collins: with that.

Malcolm Collins: Yes. And, and yeah, it's, it is just like, again, was this general, like everybody hears.[00:51:00]

Oh, they found this plane this one time in like a rare location and I was like the guy managing that report severely injured his nose from running into a wall multiple times trying to run through. It was the power of positive thought points

Simone Collins: for really being a believer though, right. The

Malcolm Collins: point I'm making is.

These reports weren't exactly being treated with a lot of scrutiny at the time. Yeah. And the people who were involved, like some of the farrs were even professional, like illusionists, IE fake magicians before going into this. Now they'll say, oh, well the stuff I did for them wasn't fake. Well, you were getting a paycheck buddy.

I have seen the stuff that magicians pull off and it looks pretty good. They just can't do it when they're against. A anti paranormal list. IE the people who are meant to detect this stuff, and I'll note that it was the CIA stuff, they never put in these, these anti-people to, to attempt to check or vet when they said, oh, this thing actually works.

Which would've been an easy thing to do, you know, that could've convinced people that could've gotten other people in the military on [00:52:00] board. But I think the people who are involved in this all know in the back of their heads that none of this is, is real. And I also see this when it comes to religious types who are like, well.

Some people are so pious that they can murder someone with a thought. And then, and I'm like, okay, or, or tell the future or see the future. And I'm like, okay, maybe that was true in the past, but if that was true today. You know, why aren't, why aren't these people super rich? Like, why aren't these people running their religions, right?

Like, and, and then showing us that they can do this stuff. Presumably that would help people's faith. And then they might be like, well, you can't do this stuff for personal gain. And I'm like, well, if you're a Jewish mystic, I'm sorry buddy, but your tradition doesn't say that. If you look at li b been LA.

What is it? Rabbi Ellie Eiser from the snake oil oven story, the snake oven story. Oh. He ended up killing the rabbis he was mad at for no reason other than being right. And God admitted that they were right, and he was so mad [00:53:00] that God admitted he was right, that he they had somebody follow him around so he wouldn't pray that they died.

And then one day the person like was pulled away from him or something, and so then he immediately got to them, starts praying that they die and they all die. Because he is a psychopath. But but, but clearly, you know, at least the Jews believe you can do this in a self-interested manner. And it works.

So what I'm saying is if these powers ever existed they certainly don't exist in populations today. Now, I, I, I point out that I do not believe they existed. And the people will be like, but you believe the Bible. And I believe, I believe that at the time these stories were written, people believed this stuff.

But I don't, I don't think that that's what it actually was. You know, one of the stories I always note from the Bible is, and I think that it's, it's a miraculous that this is preserved for us is Simon Magus you know. You as, unless we think that there were actually like multiple magicians, Christian and non-tradition people who had like real magical power walking around Israel at that time.

Okay? Maybe you can believe that. But you can believe, okay, there were a bunch of fraudsters, IE [00:54:00] magicians, which today we would call like paranormals I, we call them today, illusionists. Who, who walked around. And these people are what people would call magos, right? Like magicians at the time period.

Simone Collins: Right.

Malcolm Collins: We can be like, what, what happened if a, if a professional illusionist saw Jesus's magic? And we know from the story of Simon of Magos, he saw it and he goes, can I buy that trick? And Jesus really mad about this. But we know that a professional illusionist of that time period when he saw what Jesus was doing, thought it was an illusion.

And no, I don't see this as a bad thing at all. Like I don't see this as disconfirming that Christ was a Messiah or anything like that. You could go into our track series. But I don't think it was genuine magic. And I think that the Bible records it for us so that we won't think that, I mean, like obviously the Bible's meant to be interpreted by different people during different time periods.

Somebody during that time period was supposed to believe that it was magic. Somebody during the medieval period was supposed to believe it was magic. Somebody of today is supposed to be able to recognize. What did a professional illusionist think when he saw this? Oh, that is miraculously recorded for [00:55:00] us.

Simone Collins: Yes.

Malcolm Collins: That's interesting. Yeah, that's sort of my thought on all this. I'm, I'm rabidly anti mystic as a lot of people know, but I also think just reality is rabidly anti mystic. And that what happens when you go down the mystical pathway is truth becomes a subjective internal experience. And so when two people disa disagree about something because they gain their information about reality through, you know, whether it's corrupt and mental states like.

Sitting in odd poses or twirling or taking drugs they're just like, well, my subjective interpretation is right, and the other person's like, my subjective interpretation is right. And whoever gets more followers or is more popular, that's his subjective interpretation is right. And now they get to dictate what's true and what's not true, dear.

And, and this is what you keep seeing with cults and stuff like leverage, et. Anyway. Yeah. Any final thoughts, Simone?

Simone Collins: No, this was just equal parts enlightening and horrifying. But yeah, mysticism sucks The worst. Yeah, a guy get ever

Malcolm Collins: disagree with us, he's gonna be like, oh, it doesn't matter that there were all these Scientologists involved, or that the guy running it kept running into walls or [00:56:00] that it, it, there's this one or two instances in it, which seem really suspiciously hard to disprove.

Simone Collins: Mysticism, mystics got a mystic, like they're, they're gonna, they're gonna do it regardless, because they can't be reasoned with, that's, that's the problem with mysticism. Like you're, you're trying to provide a logic based argument against mysticism. When mystics don't believe in logic. Yeah. So it's not like this is gonna change anything there, but it's still interesting.

Malcolm Collins: I mean, Rudyard believes in logic. The, the problem is, is that he believes that he can get information from states other than the logical, empirical observation of reality through repeated testing. Right. You know, and, and the, the fact, and one of the reasons I warned people against this, and I made this warning before Ruby Yard went on the whole Thor thing it was like, if you try to chase down these states, if you try to engage with the mystic.

Let's suppose the mystical world does exist, even if it does exist. It only seems to scramble people's brain, [00:57:00] everyone or almost everyone. There's a couple of people I know who have been engaged with mysticism and still are able to rationally think even, even those

Simone Collins: people are like they, they have said things to us along the lines of, this is not something that the normal person can safely engage with.

Like they themselves acknowledged this is not for the vast majority that

Malcolm Collins: happened to him. I was like, this type of idea in stuff will scramble your brain if you keep doing it. And it, I, my warnings in the episode were proven right. Everyone's thought, I gloat, I don't gloat about it. You know, like he's a, a young person.

He, he, I think, reacted to the incident really professionally and well, through just sort of deleting it, moving on, you know, a kid's allowed to try a mystical, like, I don't, I, I can be here and warn somebody and say. Trying to explore the mystical realm will lead to long-term negative consequences for you or lead to short-term negative consequences for you.

But somebody can then say, yeah, but I still want that information. I [00:58:00] still want to explore that. Right? Like, maybe you are wrong. Maybe I'm the one who gets through, right? Like this is how we come up with new discoveries and everything. Yeah. You know, I shouldn't, I don't like, I wouldn't ever feel good about somebody attempting to explore the, the reaches of what we're allowed to talk about in polite society.

And this stuff is I I don't think that, that, that, that attempting that and having that backfire is something that, that we should take advantage of as a community at all. Because if people are Yeah, allow

Simone Collins: people to take risks, we won't advance if you don't. So that's, yeah, it's fine. Oh, thanks for this, Malcolm.

I love you so much. Love you too. Hmm. Twitter or ex post on the Ai ai video. And someone was like, you're wrong on this one. Unfortunately, it's a lossy compression algorithm with a novel retrieval method saying AI is smart. It's the same as saying a library is smart. And I am, [00:59:00] tell me if this is too snarky or wrong as a response, but I wrote a lossy compression algorithm with a novel retrieval method.

Oh. Like a human mind. We've had much for us. Have they?

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. No, that's accurate. That's not too snarky at all. That is. I, I, people think the mind runs on Magic and Fairy does. Yeah. Instead of on an actual, like neural mechanism. And all of the complaints I see about AI just fundamentally misunderstand how the human brain works.

Simone Collins: Yeah. I mean, or like any dig at the ai, like intelligence of AI is a dig at our intelligence. I just find it really funny.

Malcolm Collins: Study after study after study. Oh, it looks like the human brain works on a token predictor model. Yeah. AI is helping us so much in understanding how we learn and think and people are like, wow, that's a coincidence that when we applied the AI models to the human mind and we, they ended up matching exactly where, like we show surprise tokens and stuff like that.

Oh well.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: But how, how were [01:00:00] the comments generally where people like, because I know people get annoyed at our pro AI stuff.

Simone Collins: I, I haven't gotten to them yet, so I was seeing if I, I could outline an out an episode on this thing that really bothers me. On social media, the inspirational quotes thing, like the brain rot, inspirational quotes.

Yeah. Like why

Malcolm Collins: are people doing that? That's a big bizarre. Yeah. But also,

Simone Collins: like, I'm looking at the history of it. I mean, because obviously people have used inspirational quotes for a long time. I mean, it used to be Confucius and it used to be like lines from the Bible. Yeah. And then it was, you know, it was, it was Ford, it was Coco Chanel.

And, and, and I'm. It's very clear that originally they were, they were dispersed as a form of, of creating cultural conformity and, and inseminating people with values that were seen as beneficial to society. Now I feel like they've evolved into something very different, very like. Memetically virus. I'm finding these Facebook pages and so I fell down this rabbit hole.

Meanwhile playing in the side, I fell down this separate rabbit hole with return to land that like white [01:01:00] nationalist ish. Yeah. Settlement. 'Cause I, I found their YouTube channels and I was like, I wanna watch their videos and see what they have to say. And what's so funny is like, one, they're super explicit.

This is, this is for white people. Like, they're like, we just, we wanna do this for white people, but like.

They come across as both so sad and so earnest. Mm-hmm. That I, I can't feel anything but bad for them. Like, they, like, they're, they're showing, you know, like the, the settlements that people are starting to build on this development that they're building in the Ozarks in Arkansas. And you know, like there's one guy who's just living in a tent.

He is like, all I've got here is my tent and my Pullup bar and like literally it's like a branch that he like nailed between two trees so he could do pullups 'cause he's very masculine. And. Like, these are tough lives, and I'm just like, leave the white nationalists alone. Like they're, they're not living your aspirational life.

Like really, like stay in your city. Live with the [01:02:00] urban model. Like you are happy there. You, you want them to go away, let them live in their ghetto, like. Leave them alone. These are, and they're just, they're just so earnest, like there's not an ounce of malice as far as I can detect, and I am a little autistic, but as, as far as I can detect, there's not an ounce of malice toward any other race.

It is simply this like sad wistful desire to return to some form of like. Western civilizational greatness that isn't really real, but they believe to be real. Kind of like Santa Claus. Mm-hmm. It's kind of like a bunch of people building a settlement in the North Pole being like, it's like build it and they will talk Santa and the elves used to be here.

Yeah. We're just gonna have to do what it takes. Santa's not gonna come back unless we show that we believe in him, and I'm just like, okay, go ahead. Stay warm guys. Like maybe I'll go on your Amazon wishlist and buy a jacket because. I just hope you're okay. Like, I feel bad. So I fell down those rabbit holes and so I don't, I know I'm gonna look at [01:03:00] comments later, but I'm, I'm excited to see how it does.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, because I, I, I, I suspect a lot of people are gonna be very mad that we're like, Nope, AI is not a bubble in the traditional setting.

Simone Collins: Hey, we'll see guys. Well, you just love telling us how wrong we are.

Malcolm Collins: No, but hold on. We do, we do say it's an investment bubble, but it's not a bubble in terms of its use.

Yeah,

Simone Collins: yeah. We're not, we're not saying buy AI stocks and you can't even really, like all the ones that are good to buy are like private investments. Like the, the best you can do to invest in this space is literally to build a career. Around it and to, to start a startup that rides this wave. But

Malcolm Collins: anyway.

Speaker 21: Oh.[01:04:00]

Oh no. Brutal attack. Brutal attack. I got a double tickle attack right here. Double tickle.

Uh oh. Oh, you're the, what's gonna happen?

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