Joe Rogan Experience #2288 - Jacques Vallée

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The Joe Rogan Experience.

Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night, all day. (rock music) What up, sir? Very good to see you.

Good to see you.

I really enjoyed our conversation last night. We all went out to dinner and Hal Puthoff blew my mind.

I, as you know, I've known him for a long time. Uh...

Yeah, when did you meet him? What year?

Uh, I knew him at SRI. Actually I was at Stanford Research Institute before him, um, uh, in one of the very early internet research teams when, uh, there was no internet. It was called the ARPANET. It was a-

Wow.

... a network of the advanced research project agency and it was all, you know, computer experiment and so on. It turned into... We had, um, engine number three on the internet at, at SRI.

Wow.

In California.

Engine number three-

So it was part of the-

... on the ARPANET.

By the time I joined them, there were like 30 machines already, so, uh, and it was exciting and then, um, you know, uh, Dr. Puthoff and Russell Targ came in with a proposal to SRI to do, uh, parapsychology research at SRI, which had never been done. And it was funny because the... So I was already there, you know, in, in a team.

What year was this?

Hm?

What year?

Oh, God. Um, uh, '74.

Wow.

'73... Yeah. '74, '74.

So the ARPANET was around '74?

Yeah.

Wow.

And, um, the... It was funny because I was in, in my office and the vice president of SRI came in, uh, closed the door, and said, um, "Jacques, uh, you know, you've published some things, uh, controversial under your name on UFOs. Um, and, uh, you haven't lost your scientific reputation which is why you're here working for us at SRI, uh, on, on the ARPANET. But, um, you know, there's a proposal from, uh, Dr. Puthoff and Dr. Targ to do parapsychology research here and we've never done that." And I said, "Well, you know, it's, it's a very valid... I, I think it's a very valid area of research. We should, you know... We're in the kind of institution that should do that." He said, "Well, let me, let me draw something on your whiteboard." And he drew a scale, a horizontal scale. And on, on one side there was a, a, a little square. He said, "This is the most we can expect in terms of funding for research in parapsychology. You know, it's maybe at most a million a year, okay? And here is what I manage, you know, in this division." He drew a huge cube, you know, it said $150 million. "Should we jeopardize the research we do for Xerox and IBM and AT&T and Bank of America and so on, just to do some research on, you know, uh, uh, psychic things?" And I said, "Well, um, you know, the, the re- the reason we, we get all this money from DOD and Bank of America and so on, is that we do the research that they can't do themselves. We do, we do the... You know, we go out and we take risk, and, uh, I think we should, uh, take the same risk with, uh, uh, with Hal Puthoff and Russell Targ because this could be very big. You know, there is a lot of literature on this already and we can bring science into it, and they can bring the science into it, you know?" And he said, um, "Well, there is a meeting of the board of directors of SRI, you know, in two days, and most of them are against it. What do I tell them?" And I said, "Well, I can, you know, I can write up the, the reasons why in science you have to take chances and this is science. I mean, this isn't just engineering." And he said, uh, "Well, um, give me a memo by, by tomorrow at 12:00." So I went home and I, I wrote a two-page memo, which was confidential, I don't, don't think anybody has seen it, for the, for the board, explaining why there was scientific evidence, you know, enough of it so that good research could be done and, uh, I, I, you know... Obviously that, that may have helped in, uh, getting, getting the approval for them to come in. And then after the first year, you know, they were there because, uh, you know, the, the, the money kept coming and the results can... you know, good scientific results came, c- came in, came out of it.