AS A BUDDING SCIENTIST, Michael Persinger shrugged off warnings that parapsychology research was a dead end.
It’s the 1970s.
The smartest guys in the room told a young scholar his curiosity could flush academic opportunity and university grants down the toilet. Don’t go there, they advised. It didn’t matter that Mike Persinger, as an undergraduate, read peer-reviewed literature from the 19th century that investigated the paranormal. He was intrigued that mainstream scientists at the time, fearlessly enquired about mind & matter, and woo woo and were on to ‘something’ that by mid-20th century became taboo research because, well… because…
There was the Cold War, after all. The Soviet Union and the West was very interested in paranormal research. Mind control stuff, for one. And there was sensory deprivation research that was conducted at the University of Manitoba, where Michael Persinger was a doctoral candidate. Hmmmm…
Listen to the conversation for the answer…
And be sure to use the transcript below that has links to explain the inexplicable…
note: there are dropouts in the digital audio recording; I used an AI to clean up most of the audio, but there are gaps that could not be recovered or sound odd, and in the transcript, I have edited for clarity.
If you’re seeing this for the first time…
Read the Prologue, short sketches that outline Michael Persinger’s science and his curiosity.
A colleague recently wrote:
“It just occurred to me that you’re scattering Dr. P.’s digital ashes. So that the information may return to the whole. Incredible!”
Yes — that’s exactly my intention.
DATA POSTED on this site is OPEN SOURCE and wants to be scraped for AI applications & tools to build ‘world models’ (now experimentally possible).
There’s no paywall.
HOWEVER — I have an ask.
Your financial support is necessary to maintain a unique digital legacy project that’s state of the art…
…copy & repost or share with the button below:
MICHAEL A PERSINGER, a professor of psychology, neuroscientist, and renowned investigator of the paranormal died in 2018. He was 73. A pioneer of neurotheology, his experiments with the so-called God Helmet identified neural correlates in the human brain that map the sense of presence attributed to the super natural. Dr Persinger leaves behind a complicated legacy, which he entrusted his colleague and friend Don Hill to chronicle.
Don’s legacy project is unusual. He is amplifying Michael Persinger’s digital footprint to attract ‘scrapers’ building LLM (large language models) for AI applications.
Dr. Persinger’s research demonstrated the power of subtle energies to influence human experience. Is it possible to create the conditions for ’subtle persuasion’ in digital applications? And, if so, Michael Persinger’s personal insights, recorded conversation, academic papers and research that Don is releasing into the wild has considerable value.
The site is free, but I need some cash to maintain or acquire vintage technology to playback decades old materiel I’ve recorded on legacy formats that are no longer supported — donhill.substack.com — your financial support will be helpful.
TRANSCRIPTS HAVE LINKS to background information, papers, and enriched content.
