I watched a movie last night called “What the Bleep Do I Know,” that had grand claims about what science says about the nature of consciousness, reality, and religion. I was wondering how much is factual.
Some of the claims (paraphrasing based on my memory of the program):
The hypothalamus produces a host of chemicals that are directly responsible for just about every emotion we feel. These chemicals adhere to receptor sites on every cell in our body. We are capable of getting addicted to these chemicals (the uptake of heroin works the same way as these chemicals), and many people craft their lives to create a steady supply of the particular chemical that they are addicted to via the hypothalamus.
If cells get saturated with one of these chemicals repeatedly, when they divide, the resultant cell will have more receptors for that chemical, which means less receptors for other important chemicals, including nutritional proteins. This can lead to a biological state of being unable to uptake what your body needs to be healthy, even if you eat plenty of healthy food.
Sorry not more detail here, but: some guy took photographs of resonance in water and found that the water looked completely different in different photographs. He then subjected the water to various “psychic states” including: having a buddhist monk bless it, and putting the water in plastic bottles with various text on them such as “Chi of Love,” and “You make me sick. I will kill you.” The water that had positive things done to it produced beautiful hexagonal pictures, and the water that had negative things done to it produced ugly slimy looking pictures.
Scientists have been able to produce particles in the laboratory that can be looked at through a viewer, and are actually visually in two places at the same time: that is, you can see two fuzzy sources of light, and the scientists have demonstrated that they are both the same thing, which is in two places at once.
There were many other claims in the movie, but these were the most juicy I think. Anybody else seen the film? Can you debunk any of the claims above? By the way, I recommend the film regardless of its veracity; it has a lot of good ideas for a positive outlook.
This one is sorta true. They are referring to the well-known Young double-slit experiment, which shows wavelike interference patterns caused by passing light through a pair of thin slits. When the light source was arranged in such a way as to only allow a single photon at a time to strike the slits, and the resulting pattern captured over time on film, the interference pattern was still present. This appears to show that a single photon is capable of being in multiple locations simultaneously. This experiment is frequently cited in quantum mechanics texts.
He then subjected the water to various “psychic states” including: having a buddhist monk bless it, and putting the water in plastic bottles with various text on them such as “Chi of Love,” and “You make me sick. I will kill you.” The water that had positive things done to it produced beautiful hexagonal pictures, and the water that had negative things done to it produced ugly slimy looking pictures.
Number 3 is really a good point…for me to poop on!
Any movie that cites a woman chanelling a 4000 year old guru named “Ramtha”, which is also funded in part or in whole by the “Ramtha Institute” is suspect.
Run far far away.
I was excited when I first saw this movie, and the longer I watched, the more annoyed I got.
But then I just created the memory of not watching it, and made that into my reality, and I’m much better. :rolleyes:
Ugh. I was hoping they were talking about something more exotic. I’m familiar with the double-slit experiment, but in the movie it didn’t sound like they were talking about that at all.
It’s just retreaded “New Age” bullshit. None of the “experts” are experts in any kind of objective real world; only in their own and each others’ heads. No one who’s an actual real-world expert in any of those fields has ever heard of any of them.
Plus, as pointed out, this is basically a propaganda piece funded by Ramtha’s School of Enlightenment. Ramtha is "*a 35,000 year old spiritual being who was, according to Knight *[who 'channels Ramtha for cash], *'a Lemurian *[ :rolleyes: ] *warrior who conquered the continent Atlantis *[ :rolleyes: ] *and later *[later? :rolleyes: ] became enlightened."
JZKnight/Ramtha were among the most visible proponents of the post-hippy, crystals-and-Shirley-MacLaine, harmonic-convergence, “newage” (rhymes with sewage) movement of the Eighties. In case any of you think that “movement” is as dead as disco, I have some friends (in Seattle, natch) who are fully, totally invested in it. I’m indulged as the benighted skeptic of the group; they tease me for not being open to greater truths, yadda yadda yadda. But that’s OK; they pay me to design their Burning Man outfits.
Which reminds me: why is most “psychedelic,” druggy art symmetrical?
I went to the movies last night to see “Looking for Comedy in the Muslim World” and one of the previews was for “What the Bleep: Down the Rabbit Hole”, some sort of sequel/extended version of the first film.
You’ve been warned.
I suppose it’s possible they were talking about something completely different, but the Young experiment was the first thing that came to mind. Also, bear in mind that the experiment can be (and has been) done with entities other than photons. I know it’s been done with electrons and protons, and quantum theory strangely suggests it could be done with anything, given sufficient space and time for results to manifest themselves–even Buicks and grand pianos.
#1 is pretty reasonable, neurotransmitter mediation of emotion as well as thought and movement is pretty much accepted. Some would say we were addicted in a fairly literal sense to the chemicals associated with success. I can dig up some more specific info and cites upon request. #2 I’m pretty skeptical of this.
Heh. That’s why I saw the first movie in the first place. A friend of my girlfriend’s highly recommended the movie and invited us to a free advanced screening of the sequel, and so we watched the first movie for prep. I think I’m beginning to get the picture now. If I start proselytizing for Ramtha on my return, I’m relying on you guys to forcibly enter me into deprogramming.
A sequel? Are you kidding me? So, the first festering turd wasn’t enough?
What kind of steaming pile of pseudoscience will they dig out of their bowels this time?
Og help us all.
I was so excited when I rented it a the video store. I thought, “Ooh, theyr’e going to discuss quantum physics and psychology. and oh, spiritual stuff too. Well, ok, I can deal with that. Ooooh!” Then I watched it. Then I wept. I wouldn’t use that tripe to scoop catshit out the litterbox.
If this is what they were referring to, then they got it wrong. If you do anything to detect the photon at the slits (seeing two fuzzy spots of light, or whatever), then it’s definitely in one and definitely not in the other, and you no longer get an interference pattern. There is indirect evidence that the particle, in some sense, goes both ways at once, but there is not and cannot be direct evidence of it.
Point #3 is even more ridiculous than the usual homeopathic claims: What if you wrote something on the bottle that’s positive in one language, but negative in another? I can think of a number of examples which would work for that. How is the water supposed to know which language it’s supposed to read?
And I don’t know enough to comment on the points about chemicals and receptors.
#1 is sort of true in a very high level way. It is saying that emotions and feelings are centered in the brain. What were the other options to choose from? Neurotransmitters do cause behavioral changes (that is what they do) and illegal drugs do bind to the same sites as regular neurotransmitters. However, these effects are located all over the brain and nervous system. The hypothalamus is part of a system called the limbic system. However, it is the whole system rather than just the hypothalmus that has a large role in emotions.
#2 is all screwed up. High exposure to things like neurotransmitters usually results in fewer and weaker receptors not more of them. Neurons cells don’t divide at all. There aren’t a finite number of receptors. Cells upregulate and downregulate them based on lots of factors.
Furthermore, the bizarreness of this “photon taking all multiple paths” comes from the incorrect conception of a photon (or any fundamental particle) as being a discrete particle. If you start thinking of photons as wave packets that only exist at discrete energy levels and collapse whenever something interacts with them then the whole thing becomes much more explicable. Then, of course, you have to figure out why they are quantitized and what causes the waveform collapse event, but at least you translate an incomprehensible, intractable problem into a different incomprehensible, slighty less intractable problem.
The movie is bunk of the same sort that hijacks quantum mechanics to explain consciousness, et cetera.
