~C4Chaos

In the last couple of weeks I’ve been following the TED saga on the Sheldrake and Hancock TEDx controversy. For the most part I’ve been harsh on TED’s knee-jerk decision to pull out Sheldrake and Hancock’s talks and their lame and unsubstantiated justification for doing so. But in fairness to TED, I think they have every right to filter the talks that get published on their official distribution channel. TED has a tough job of protecting its brand from being diluted by nonsensical ideas masquerading as science. And even Rupert Sheldrake sympathizes with TED. As Sheldrake has eloquently said in his response to the controversy:

There’s a lot of rubbish and there has to be some kind of filter. So I’m not against the idea of a filter but what I am against is the idea of applying the filter in a very partial kind of way.

So it’s not the filtering per se that got me disappointed with TED but the manner in which they have done the filtering and the sloppy justification after the fact.

But just when I thought that the Sheldrake-Hancock TED controversy was about to die down, TED made another douchey move when it revoked TEDxWestHollywood’s license because their program was unscientific. According to TED’s email to TEDxWestHollywood event organizer, Suzanne Taylor:

We disallow speakers who use the language of science to claim they have proven the truth of ideas that are speculative and which have failed to gain significant scientific acceptance.

Then TED named names with the word “pseudoscience” in the same paragraph.

We will be especially interested to hear about the ideas that  Marianne Williamson, Russell Targ, Larry Dossey, Paul Nugent, and Marilyn Schlitz will be presenting.We feel that the pseudoscience struggle is an important one. TED and TEDx cannot be platforms that give undo legitimacy to false evidence and selective logic — regardless of brilliant packaging.

I’m familiar with most of the names mentioned above but I don’t know enough details about their work to agree or disagree with TED’s assessment.  However, I strongly object to lumping Russell Targ into the category of “pseudoscience.” The fact that TED has pointed a finger to Russell Targ leads me to speculate that the TED staff are ignorant (or maybe just dismissive) of the Remote viewing literature. I don’t claim expertise on the subject of remote viewing but I’ve been familiar with the literature for more than two decades now.

I understand the remote viewing protocol — it’s double-blind. The late Ingo Swann was instrumental in designing the protocol. Then it was taught to a few intelligence personnels in the military (one of them is remote viewer #001 Joe McMoneagle). I’ve always focused my attention to the original people who started it all because they did solid research on the phenomenon and they’re the ones who designed the original protocol. Russell Targ and Hal Puthoff had a deal with the CIA and the Defense Department that in return for funding they helped the military with intelligence work (e.g. locating people and cites of interests). Another condition was that Targ and Puthoff were given free rein by the military to publish their work in scientific journals. The classified project — Stargate Project —  lasted for more than two decades. I don’t know about you but I don’t think Targ/Puthoff/Swann could’ve hoax the Defense Department, CIA, FBI, and even NASA for a long time, especially when millions of money were involved. The Defense Department might be wasteful in their spending but I don’t think the people running it were that stupid to be fooled for two decades without them getting valuable results.  Continue reading >

I’ve been following the latest TED shenanigan since Day One. It gets more interesting day by day. See my post here and here.

After almost a week since TED “censored” Rupert Sheldrake and Graham Hancock’s TEDx talks, the organizers of the TEDxWhitechapel finally responded to its parent organization with a very eloquent Open Letter. It’s posted on the TEDxWhitechapel Facebook page but I’m also posting it here for everyone to see. Read below.

***OUR OPEN LETTER TO TED*** Please join our call to TED to reinstate Rupert & Graham’s talks onto TEDxyoutube and TED.com

Dear Chris, Lara, and the TED team

We, the TEDxWhitechapel team – the initiators and co-curators of the event – have deeply reflected on your actions to remove the talks of two of our speakers Rupert Sheldrake and Graham’s Hancock from the official TEDx Youtube channel. We wish to clearly and openly express our views on the matter with the intention of constructively contributing to the discussion as well as to highlight potential pathways for moving forward which are mutually beneficial to all parties involved; our speakers, the TED corporation, and the TED community.

We want to begin by sharing what TED means to us.

We have been genuinely transformed through many of the inspiring TEDTalks; they have profoundly challenged our perceptions of and assumptions about the world, opening us up to new perspectives outside of the established mainstream thinking. Moreover, we really believe TED to be an ingenious medium to spread ideas across the globe. As such, TED represents the free and open flow and exchange of ideas globally, enriching and empowering an increasingly connected global community.

And it is with this passion that we decided to host a TEDx event with the theme “Visions for Transition: Challenging Existing Paradigms and Redefining Values (for a more beautiful world)’. We believe that in order to deal with the diverse and complex crises converging on our planet, we need to challenge the dominant thought paradigms and radically reassess the values which govern our world. In line with Einsteins wisdom “problems cannot be solved with the same level of thinking that created them” we saw TED as a truly special platform.

Continue reading >