Hi @ScottWilber ,
I was wondering over the years and numerous companies that you’ve founded/run, have you ever experienced a negative effect (e.g. customers not willing to do business, cancelling their relationship, reluctance to take you seriously etc.) to the non-MMI side of business due to the association with the ‘controversial’ nature that is MMI?
This is a hard question because I wouldn’t know if I didn’t get specific feedback, but I would say the answer is generally, “no.” As far as I know, I never lost any business in other areas by being involved in MMI. I never sought notoriety, so I don’t know if I lost reputation points.
Since I have been at this for so long, most of the time no one had even heard of MMI or any technology that relied on mental influence. The result of that is many, or I would even say, most people I demonstrated applications to would say they were “interested,” but I never heard back from them. This includes people who successfully performed the test or demo themselves. So, the attempt to get an MMI business going was thwarted by belief barriers – not a failure of the tech to work for them.
I do know one person who was reticent to have his name associated with the work because he was concerned about his reputation among his peers. This of course depended on the scientific conservatism of those peers. It didn’t drive him away from his interest or participation in the work.
Things seem to be considerably different today, since a large portion of the population has at least heard of MMI. However, there is still a strong bias amongst “scientists” and people with a reputation to sustain to put down anything not already mutually agreed as “acceptable” in their belief systems. This has not changed since the beginning of human civilization. There has always been strong, even violent, resistance to any new and significant innovation or technology.
Though MMI is still in its infancy, I believe it is and will become a crucial part of technological and social evolution. It’s just too important to allow “fear of the new” and scientific elitism to suppress its development.
Thank you, great to know.
Psi groups in general are stereotyped for discord happening within the group
More internal than external 