by Twitch 13 Replies latest social entertainment
http://www.whatthebleep.com/whatthebleep/
Not your average movie in that car chases do not seem to exist, such as to be perceived anyways :-) Though i wouldn't agree with some of the more "new age" viewpoints, it's a nice piece of mind candy, that quantum mechanics/metaphysics thing. And a few interesting opinions on the nature of god,.....
A day in the life,.....
Yes, an interesting movie.
Existentialism, epistemology, the nature of being, possible non-Creator origins of the universe: perhaps mere speculation, but all of which was verboten as a JW.
It's been awhile since I saw the movie, but my memory of 'the moral of the story' is: We know nothing, nor can we ever really know anything.
Craig
We've been meaning to see that one, but haven't picked it up yet... hubby is reading the book, though, and is really enjoying it. He says they make a lot of good points but push it to the point of sounding like propaganda at times.
I think I'll wait and watch the movie
Misty
Eh, I didn't care for that movie too much. I enjoy the point about being able to determine your own destiny by positive thought etc BUT they had so many QUACKS on there (in the "interviews" parts) that the moviemakers presented as authorities in the field.
These were folks that were "channeling" totally make believe figures from the past etc. I mean that water experiment??? Totally debunked. Not even remotely true. It made me lose respect for the filmakers that they would put stuff like that in the movie.
I did take away something good, but those "experts" REALLY detract from the movie.
Twitch,
Here is an excellent review of the movie that you should definitely read
Sorry if it is a little long but it is really good -has lots of interesting stuff about quantum phx and how it relates to stuff in that film. And it's kind of funny. :)
-Kudra
What the (Bleep) Were They Thinking?
I decided to see “What The (Bleep) Do We Know!?” (sic!). I had avoided this film, as it looked like what Murray Gell-Mann calls quantum flapdoodle - distortions of quantum physics to support a mystical viewpoint. But the “what the bleep” meme is growing, so I decided I should see it for myself. Now I’ve seen it I can confirm that it does distort quantum physics to support a mystical viewpoint. But it is much more than that. Much worse. Hilariously so, in fact.
This post is rather long, but please read it to the end – there is a surprise there that will astonish you, I promise. But I should start with the science. Or, I should say:
The “science”
The premise of the film is that quantum mechanics proves a conscious observer is necessary to create reality. The conclusion is we literally create reality with our thoughts.
Unfortunately the theory of quantum mechanics does not say this. The film makers are confusing the theory of quantum mechanics with an interpretation of quantum mechanics. This is an explanation to help understand what might be going on, but it is not part of the theory because it is not falsifiable: it cannot be tested in such a way that, if it were false, it would fail the test (without falsifying the whole of quantum mechanics, and therefore all the other interpretations too).
To falsify this interpretation you would have to see what would happen without a conscious observer monitoring the experiment. But that’s Catch-22: you need a conscious observer monitoring the experiment to see what happens. You can’t look at the experiment without looking at it so no one can ever know if this interpretation is true. Even if it were true, extrapolating to “we literally create reality by out thoughts” is applying reductionism to an absurd level.
Don’t believe me? You don’t have to because David Albert, the professor from the Columbia University physics department who was featured in the film, is quoted in Salon.com saying:
I was edited in such a way as to completely suppress my actual views about the matters the movie discusses. I am, indeed, profoundly unsympathetic to attempts at linking quantum mechanics with consciousness. Moreover, I explained all that, at great length, on camera, to the producers of the film ... Had I known that I would have been so radically misrepresented in the movie, I would certainly not have agreed to be filmed.
(My bold.)
The ironic thing is that the film makers tell us quantum mechanics is oh-so-mysterious and can’t be explained - and then they explain it. I am reminded of Richard Feynman’s famous quote, "If you think you understand quantum mechanics, you don't understand quantum mechanics". These film makers think they understand quantum mechanics. They don’t, but that doesn’t stop them from making a film explaining it. But it’s just a consciousness-of-the-gaps explanation: we can’t explain it so it must be consciousness.
Any one of the many interpretations could be correct. Or none of them might be correct, and the correct explanation is something not yet thought of. Quantum mechanics is not telling us this is the way the universe necessarily is.
Baaaad examples
So they have the theory wrong, but they must have some good examples, right? Wrong. They have three bad examples. Appallingly bad, actually.
The first was the claim that when Columbus arrived in the West Indies, the natives were literally unable to see his ships. Why? Because they had never seen ships before, so ships did not exist in their reality.
I had to rewind the film to make sure I hadn’t missed the part where they said this was just a fable. But they were stating it as fact. This idea is just too dumb to be considered seriously. Even if true, how could anyone verify it? I have searched the web for the source of this story to no avail, and conclude the film makers just made it up.
The second example was of the supposed “Maharishi Effect.” John Hagelin of the Maharishi University, described how in 1993, violent crime in Washington D.C. was reduced over a two month period, by 4000 people practicing transcendental meditation (TM).
There were many problems with this experiment. One was that the murder rate rose during the period in question. Another was that Hagelin’s report stated violent crime had been reduced by 18% (in the film he says 25%), but reduced compared with what? How did he know what the crime rate would have been without the TM? It was discovered later that all the members of the “independent scientific review board” that scrutinized the project were followers of the Maharishi. The study was pseudoscience: no double blinding, the reviewers were not independent, and the experiment has never been independently replicated. Hagelin deservedly won an Ig Nobel Prize in 1994 for this outstanding piece of work.
The third example was the work of Masura Emoto, who tapes words to bottles of water. The water is chilled and forms into crystals descriptive of the words used. For example, if the word “love” is taped to a bottle, beautiful crystals form; if the words “you make me sick” are used, ugly images appear.
What the film makers didn’t say is that Emoto knows the word used, and looks for a crystal that matches that word (biased data selection). To demonstrate a real effect, Emoto would need to be blind to the word used. James Randi has said that if Emoto could perform this experiment double-blinded, it would qualify for the million dollar prize. (He has never applied.) Such a protocol would show there is no correlation between the words taped to a bottle and the crystals formed within. These experiments have not been performed to a scientific protocol and have never been independently replicated.
Pert scam
The next segment was about neuro-peptides, how they are created in the brain, and regulate other cells in the body. This was presented as another example of how the human brain (consciousness), creates reality. None of this would be new to anyone who has read Candace Pert’s “Molecules of Emotion”. Pert is a talented scientist who went woo woo many years ago for reasons I don’t have time to go into here. (Edited to add: see my May 2005 review of Molecules of Emotion.) Suffice to say she has made many dubious claims, including this in the film:
Each cell has a consciousness, particularly if we define consciousness as the point of view of an observer.
I think what she saying is that when one cell interacts with another, it fulfills the role of the “observer” in quantum mechanics. Well OK, but by that definition my toaster is conscious. It’s such a general definition of consciousness as to be meaningless: consciousness has to include some degree of self-awareness. There is no evidence I’ve heard of that individual cells are conscious.
This was followed by someone claiming he literally creates his day with his thoughts, plus some feel-good drivel about god and self that almost put me to sleep. At the end, the main character in the film throws away her prescription meds because, since she creates her own reality, she doesn’t need them. (Don’t try this at home.) And that was it.
Channel No. 5
One thing that puzzled me was who were all the talking heads? I recognized a couple, but who was the bizarre guy who claimed he creates his day just by thinking about it, and who was the heavy-set blonde woman in the boxy red suit making the weird pronouncements in a funny accent? Normally in a documentary, the experts are introduced when they first appear. But here they introduced them after the end of the film. I was amused to see the guy who creates his own day, was a chiropractor. But when I found out the identity of the blonde woman, my eyes nearly popped out. I figured you wouldn’t believe me if I just told you, so I took a screenshot of it:
In case you can’t read the text, it says:
Ramtha
Master Teacher – Ramtha School of Enlightenment
Channeled by JZ Knight
They are stating as a fact, that one of the people you have been listening to for the previous 90 minutes, a main authority for the information being presented, is a 35,000 year old warrior spirit from Atlantis, being channeled by this Tacoma housewife turned cult leader. The woman pictured is JZ Knight, but you are not listening to JZ Knight. You are literally listening to Ramtha. There were people who saw this film and didn’t say, “That’s just a woman putting on a funny accent”. Scary, huh?
At this point the film lost any remaining pretence of being based on any kind of science or facts.
I did a little digging on Ramtha:
Ramtha is a 35,000 year-old spirit-warrior who appeared in J.Z. Knight’s kitchen in Tacoma, Washington in 1977. Knight claims that she is Ramtha’s channel. She also owns the copyright to Ramtha and conducts sessions in which she pretends to go into a trance and speaks Hollywood’s version of Elizabethan English in a guttural, husky voice. She has thousands of followers and has made millions of dollars performing as Ramtha at seminars ($1,000 a crack) and at her Ramtha School of Enlightenment, and from the sales of tapes, books, and accessories (Clark and Gallo 1993). She must have hypnotic powers. Searching for self-fulfillment, otherwise normal people obey her command to spend hours blindfolded in a cold, muddy, doorless maze.
Upon further investigation I find the films’ producers, writers, directors, and a number of the featured “experts” are members of the Ramtha School of Enlightenment. The film is a propaganda piece for a cult.
What the (Bleep) Were They Thinking?
I can answer that now. They were thinking that if they made a film using the word “quantum” a lot, plus plenty of feel-good drivel they would (a) make a ton of money (not that they are short of the stuff), and (b) gain more recruits to their loony-tunes cult. This is probably one of the few things they got right.
References
Some further reading if you’re interested. First a good expose of the film as infomercial for Ramtha, by Salon.com.
A site with masses of information about Ramtha.
A blog with information about some of the talking heads.
A blog with some comments about Hagelin. Read the comments section.
An amusing review of the movie by Orkut Media.
CSICOP’s review of the film.
Skeptic Magazine’s review of the film.
A really good explanation of the real science involved, as opposed to the fanciful "what The Bleep" version of it.
And for the other side of the story, read the film makers’ reply to their critics. If you have any remaining doubt about the criticisms of this movie, read this. It is an (unintentionally) hilarious martyr piece where they blame the media for “publicly crucify(ing) people with new ideas”, and where they say the US government and way of life, not Ramtha, is a cult. All the usual fallacies are in evidence: scientists were wrong before so they are wrong now, we only use 10% of our brain, the film’s critics feel discomfort in their mindset (ie it is not the film makers’ fault the film makes no sense, it is our fault). Plenty of fallacies and playing victim. Nothing to refute the criticisms.
LOL
Thanks Kudra. Great review actually. I have much the same opinions on the "experiments" and historical events\myths. My radar caught a few blips such as the tie-ins between physics, biology and consciousness but especially with how the various sources seemed to be edited together to support the rather mystical, pseudoscience viewpoint of the movie which by the way seems to have a nice marketing and distribution system in place.
What appealed to me about it though were the existential undercurrents, the uncertainty principle and naturally the speculation on the nature of god from the non-believer, per se.
Hesitant in joining the "bleep" community,
T
:-)
That movie is just a hook to get you into yet another cult. I live right in the heart of JZ Knight's AKA "Ramtha" little kingdom. That shame is the movie had some very good info but mixed in alot of BS with it. JZ Knight pretty much owns the town I live near and anyone that wants to open a business is in for some problems if not part of her school of enlightenment. They are very much a cult and operate much like a mafia would. They believe in just about every conspiracy theory that is out there. The many members that are friends of mine are most certainly brainwashed.
I very much liked the message in the movie about creating your day. My own expereinces have been very positive by using that approach.
lol, ya it's funny.
the first time i saw this movie i was on lsd and i was like "whooaaa man! crazy sh!t!" lol - it was a fun trip, but... you know, what the bleep!
and then the second time i saw the extended edition and i was sober and i knew that if i went looking online i would find a lot of skeptical treatment of the movie. and sure enough, it's there. and all pretty valid, although skeptics (myself included) are sometimes some of the most pedantic literalists of them all. literal to physical objectivity. it gets boring, which is why i like doing psychedelic drugs sometimes. frankly. but reality is boring! i really don't buy this "awe and wonder" crap that us skeptics spout off about all the time, LOL.
anyways, in the extras on the extended edition, they have extended interviews. and the one with the physicist, forget name and school, was hilarious, because he had been so horrified that he was so misrepressented in the movie, and he wanted to say some extra stuff. he proceeds to blast the original movie and realign himself with a sense of reality that he feflt was lost in the first film. ha ha~! it was great. said some very interesting things about god.
i like what the movie is attempting to represent, even though i am skeptical of its manifest objective reality. if reality turned out to be like that, i would be cool with it. but until then, it's just a flick.
i was impressed with the water crystal thing, but frustrated with the lack of variables described in the experiements. i see the japanese guy has several books out about it. i assumed that he describes more detail, but i haven't really looked into them far. again, i would be very impressed if there was something to write home about this.
oh well (sigh)
bleepity bleep bleep,
tetra
The third example was the work of Masura Emoto, who tapes words to bottles of water. The water is chilled and forms into crystals descriptive of the words used. For example, if the word “love” is taped to a bottle, beautiful crystals form; if the words “you make me sick” are used, ugly images appear.
What the film makers didn’t say is that Emoto knows the word used, and looks for a crystal that matches that word (biased data selection). To demonstrate a real effect, Emoto would need to be blind to the word used. James Randi has said that if Emoto could perform this experiment double-blinded, it would qualify for the million dollar prize. (He has never applied.) Such a protocol would show there is no correlation between the words taped to a bottle and the crystals formed within. These experiments have not been performed to a scientific protocol and have never been independently replicated.
for sure. although, i do not believe that the crystals are forming in the bottles. rather the water is influenced in the bottles, and once it is "healed" water is sampled for crystalization.
if this is the case, this skeptic needs to get his facts straight before sitting down to type.
either way, if he won randi's million dollar award, it would be a big first, and something to write home about. i don't see why he won't try it. i would if i were him.
tetra
the first time i saw this movie i was on lsd
Now that's my idea of spiritual food! Down here in Washington, you would think the work was under ban. Hook a brother up!
