What the Bleep Do We Know!?From Wikipedia, the free encyclopediaWhat the #$*! Do We Know!?

What the Bleep Do We Know!? (also written What tн #$*! e⃗Dө ωΣ (k)πow!? and What the #$*! Do We Know!?) is a controversial 2004 film that combines documentary interviews and a fictional narrative to posit a connection between science and spirituality.Topics discussed in the film include neurology, quantum physics, psychology, epistemology, ontology, metaphysics, magical thinking and spirituality. The film features interviews with individuals presented as experts in science and spirituality, interspersed with the story of a deaf photographer as she struggles with her situation. Computer-animated graphics are featured heavily in the film.The film has received criticism from several scientists, including Dr. David Albert, who was featured in the film.

SynopsisFilmed on location in Portland, Oregon, What the Bleep Do We Know blends a fictional story line, documentary-style discussion, and computer animation to present a viewpoint of the physical universe and human life within it, with connections to neuroscience and quantum physics. Some ideas discussed in the film are:

The universe is best seen as constructed from thought (or ideas) rather than from substance.

What has long been considered "empty space" is anything but empty. see Dark energy Our beliefs about who we are and what is real are not simply observations, but rather

form ourselves and our realities. Peptides manufactured in the brain can cause a bodily reaction to an emotion, resulting in

a new perspective to old adages such as "think positively" and "be careful what you wish for."

In the fictional segments of the movie, Marlee Matlin portrays Amanda, a deaf photographer who acts as the viewer's avatar as she experiences her life from startlingly new and different perspectives.In the documentary segments of the film, experts in quantum physics, biology, medicine, psychiatry, and theology, along with spiritual commentators, discuss the roots and meaning of Amanda's experiences. The comments focus primarily on a single theme: We create our own reality.

MovieAccording to Publishers Weekly, the movie was one of the sleeper hits of 2004, as "word-of-mouth and strategic marketing kept it in theaters for an entire year." The gross exceeded $10

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million, a good showing for a low-budget documentary in which, "scientists discuss the ramifications of recent discoveries in quantum physics and neuroscience." [4]The critics offered fairly mixed reviews as seen on the movie review website Rotten Tomatoes.[6] Dave Kehr of the New York Times described in his review of the movie, the "transition from quantum mechanics to cognitive therapy" as "plausible", but went on to state that "the subsequent leap—from cognitive therapy into large, hazy spiritual beliefs—isn't as effectively executed. Suddenly people who were talking about subatomic particles are alluding to alternate universes and cosmic forces, all of which can be harnessed in the interest of making Ms. Matlin's character feel better about her thighs."

BooksThe filmmakers worked with HCI Books to expand on the movie's themes in a book titled What the Bleep Do We Know!?—Discovering the Endless Possibilites of Your Everyday Reality. According to HCI president, Peter Vegso, "What the Bleep is the quantum leap in the New Age world," and "by marrying science and spirituality, it is the foundation of future thought."[4]In a Publishers Weekly article about the book, New Page Books publicist Linda Rienecker says that its success is part of a wider phenomenon. "A large part of the population is seeking spiritual connections, and they have the whole world to choose from now," she says. "They're beginning to realize that there is a universal force and it doesn't matter what you call it, it's how you connect to it." [4] Author Barrie Dolnick adds that "people don't want to learn how to do one thing. They'll take a little bit of Buddhism, a little bit of veganism, a little bit of astrology... They're coming into the marketplace hungry for direction, but they don't want some person who claims to have all the answers. They want suggestions, not formulas."[4]In the same article, Bill Pfau, of Inner Traditions, says "New Age community have become accepted into the mainstream," attributing the acceptance of the ideas in the movie to the baby boom generation, which grew up alongside the New Age movement from the late 1960s onward.[4]

Featured individuals Dr. Amit Goswami has been described as "One of the rare scientists that do not leave out

consciousness in explaining quantum physics." Dr.Goswami appears in What is Enlightenment magazine, authored the book The Self-Aware Universe: How

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Consciousness Creates the Material World (ISBN 0-87477-798-4), has worked with Deepak Chopra and is employed by the Institute of Noetic Sciences.

Dr. John Hagelin , Director of the Institute of Science, Technology and Public Policy at Maharishi University of Management, professor of physics at MUM since 1984, and Minister of Science and Technology of the Global Country of World Peace.

Dr. Stuart Hameroff , an anesthesiologist, author, and associate director of the Center for Consciousness Studies at the University of Arizona, has worked with Oxford mathematician, Roger Penrose, on a speculative quantum theory of consciousness.

JZ Knight , is a spiritual teacher; also identified as the spirit "Ramtha" whom Knight is channelling.

Dr. Andrew Newberg , assistant professor of radiology at the University of Pennsylvania Hospital, and physician in nuclear medicine, is coauthor of the book, Why God Won't Go Away: Brain Science & the Biology of Belief (ISBN 0-345-44034-X).

Dr. Candice Pert , a neuroscientist, discovered the opiate receptor, the cellular bonding site for endorphins in the brain, and in 1977 wrote the book Molecules of Emotion.

Dr. Fred Alan Wolf , a doctor of philosophy in theoretical physics, recently wrote The Yoga of Time Travel: How the Mind Can Defeat Time. (He is also known by the name "Captain Quantum" — an animated character that was created for the movie but not used in the released version.) He is also author of The Eagle's Quest, The Dreaming Universe and The Spiritual Universe. [12]

Dr. David Albert , a philosopher of physics and professor at Columbia University. While it may appear as though he supports the ideas that are presented in the movie, according to a Popular Science article, he is "outraged at the final product," because the filmmakers interviewed him about quantum mechanics unrelated to consciousness or spirituality,and then edited the material in such a way that he feels misrepresented his views.

Other interviewees in the film include Joe Dispenza, a chiropractor, author, and a devotee of Ramtha's School of Enlightenment;[14] Miceal Ledwith, author and former professor of theology at Maynooth College in Ireland; Daniel Monti, physician and director of the Mind-Body Medicine Program at Thomas Jefferson University; Dr. Jeffrey Satinover, psychiatrist, author and professor; and William Tiller, Professor Emeritus of Material Science and Engineering at Stanford University, and employed by the Institute of Noetic Sciences.

ControversyAccording to Physics Today Online, the film invokes quantum physics to promote pseudoscience. The article also states "the movie illustrates the uncertainty principle with a bouncing basketball being in several places at once. There's nothing wrong with that. It's recognized as pedagogical exaggeration. But the movie gradually moves to quantum "insights" that lead a woman to toss away her antidepressant medication, to the quantum channeling of Ramtha, the 35,000-year-old Atlantis god, and on to even greater nonsense."John Gorenfeld reports that three directors are devotees of Ramtha's School of Enlightenment and JZ Knight/Ramtha.The Guardian Unlimited published an article summarizing the reactions to the film by some British scientists. Richard Dawkins states that "the authors seem undecided whether their theme is quantum theory or consciousness. Both are indeed mysterious, and their genuine mystery needs none of the hype with which this film relentlessly and noisily belabours us", concluding that the film is "tosh". Professor Clive Greated writes that "thinking on neurology and addiction

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are covered in some detail but, unfortunately, early references in the film to quantum physics are not followed through, leading to a confused message". He also questions whether modern physics cannot be married with institutional religion as the film implies. Simon Singh called it pseudoscience, and said the suggestion "that if observing water changes its molecular structure, and if we are 90% water, then by observing ourselves we can change at a fundamental level via the laws of quantum physics" was "ridiculous balderdash." According to Dr Joao Migueijo, reader in theoretical physics at Imperial College, the film deliberately misquotes science. An article published by Australian Broadcasting Corporation reports that Associate Professor Zdenka Kuncik, Professor Peter Schofield and Professor Max Colthear have criticised the film's ideas that quantum mechanics means an observer can consciously affect reality, saying: "The observer effect of quantum physics isn't about people or reality. It comes from the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, and it's about the limitations of trying to measure the position and momentum of subatomic particles". They also maintain that quantum effects have little influence on everyday objects like stones, and only apply to sub-atomic particles. The article also discusses Hagelin's experiment with Transcendental Meditation and the Washington D.C rate of violent crime; they note that "the number of murders actually went up". They also comment on the film's use of the ten percent myth.The Australian Broadcasting Corporation and the Fortean times have both discussed the story of the Native American's "perceptual blindness" to European ships. Both agree that there is a real psychological phenomenon of perceptual blindness, but find the historical details of the account given in the film to be unconvincing. The Fortean Times concludes that the story originated with Captain Cook.

Cast Neurologists, anesthesiologists and physicians

Marlee Matlin as Amanda Elaine Hendrix as Jennifer Barry Newman as Frank Robert Bailey as Reggie John Ross Bowie as Elliot Armin Shimerman as Man Robert Blanche as Bob Jeff S. Dodge as Extra (on train)

Physicists William A. Tiller Amit Goswami John Hagelin Fred Alan Wolf David Albert

Dr. Masaru Emoto Stuart Hameroff, M.D. Dr. Jeffrey Satinover Andrew B. Newberg, M.D. Dr. Daniel Monti Dr. Joseph Dispenza

Molecular biology Dr. Candace Pert

Spiritual teachers, mystics and scholars JZ Knight speaking as Ramtha Dr. Miceal Ledwith

Wednesday, February 8, 2006

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Arts David Albert: ‘What the BLEEP’ Is Wildly and Irresponsibly Wrong Posted by ANNIE WAGNER on February 8 at 18:08 PMLast Friday, I mentioned an email I received from What the BLEEP director/producer William Artnz. He took issue with my complaint about his inclusion of a Columbia University professor of the philosophy of physics, David Albert, in the new version of the film. (Albert had previously denounced the filmmakers’ misrepresentation of his views about the intersection between quantum physics and spirituality.)I emailed David Albert to ask what was up, and he wrote back with an explanation of why he agreed to appear in the new version, the actual events that transpired at the conference Artnz referenced, and what he thinks of the claims made by the movie. His verdict: What the BLEEP is “swarming with scientific inaccuracies, and its overall thesis is (in my opinion) wildly and irresponsibly wrong.” Artnz’s initial letter, my response, and Albert’s elaboration appear behind the jump.

ARTNZ:As one of the filmmakers of Down the Rabbit Hole I read with interest your review. A few observations: Most of the people interviewed are in fact "legitimate scientists". If you check the credentials you will see that, and of course if you have any scientific proof of the invalidity of their claims, that would make interesting reading indeed.

For the purposes of this discussion, I'll define "legitimate scientist" by the following: Being presently employed as a professor in the hard sciences at a research university (Albert, who is a professor of philosophy of physics, almost qualifies; there are a few other legitimate MDs at accredited research universities, but no PhDs and certainly no physicists) OR having published in a peer-reviewed scientific journal in the last five years. As far as I can tell, the film contains few or no "legitimate scientists" besides Albert, though I'm open to challenges. Amit Goswami, Dean Radin, and William Tiller are all employed by the Institute of Noetic Sciences, which, according to its website, "explores phenomena that do not necessarily fit conventional scientific models." (Mmm.) John Hagelin, a former Natural Law candidate for president, is a professor at Maharishi University of Management, where you can presently earn a PhD in one of two programs: "Maharishi Vedic Science" and "Management."ARNTZ:

As for David Albert. Dr. Albert was invited (not by us) to give a presentation at a conference last year with most of the other interviewees. We were going to re interview everyone so I contacted David. We had a long talk about the previous film. I said we were going to issue an extended version, but would not include him against his wishes. However I said that his views were extremely interesting and I thought it would be a loss. We then came to the agreement that we would re-film but, but would only include footage of him in the Rabbit Hole subject to his OK. He was sent a DVD of those interview segments, with interviews before and after so that he could see the context. He approved all of them. He came to the conference and gave a presentation on what he thought was incorrect about what we had in the first movie. All of us filmmakers were impressed by his willingness to come before a BLEEP crowd and contradict them and make them think. Instead of us focusing on our difference and conflict (which the media feeds on), we focused on what we had in common - an inquiry into the way the world

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works, and a refinement of that view in accord with the true workings of the Universe. Personally having watched many hours of the interviews with Dr. Albert, I can say that he has pushed me to examine more closely the ideas put forth. As Dr. Hameroff says during the credits in Down the Rabbit Hole - "I want to thank David for his healthy skepticism".

David Albert responded.[I had asked whether 1) whether Arntz's version of events was correct.]

(1): Mr. Arntz's version of events is more or less correct. I would only take issue with his remark that "we focused on what we had in common" at the conference he mentions. We have very little in common, and my remarks at that conference amounted to a very strong denunciation of the film.

[2) Was your appearance in this version of the film coerced? and if not, 3) Why were you willing to contribute?]

(2) and (3): My appearance in the second film was not coerced. What happened was this: When I was interviewed for the first film, I had no idea what sort of a film it would turn out to be, and I had no clue as to the background or the agenda of the producers. This may have been at least in part my own fault. I was not as skeptical, I was not as inquisitive, as I ought to have been. Had I known then what I know now, I would certainly not have agreed to appear in that film. Once that had happened, however, I decided to participate actively in the ensuing public discussion, and to do whatever I could to insure that the sequel (or the director's cut, or whatever it is) contained at least a suggestion - however short and fragmented and out of context and pushed off to the side - of what an intellectually responsible treatment of these questions might actually sound like. Whether or not that attempt was a success, whether or not it did any good, whether or not it would have been better (in the end) for me to insist that I be withdrawn from the sequel altogether, only time will tell.

[4) Have you seen the new movie? What do you think of its thesis?](4) I have seen the second film. It is swarming with scientific inaccuracies, and its overall thesis is (in my opinion) wildly and irresponsibly wrong. Let me elaborate on that a bit. The argument of these movies (and of the second one in particular) runs something like this:Up through the end of the 19th century, science (and physics in particular) was at work on the construction of a thoroughly MECHANICAL, thoroughly CLOCKWORK sort of a picture of the universe - a picture that seemed to have no room in it for God and spirit and freedom and mystery and all sorts of other stuff that we thought we wanted. And in the 20th century, with the advent of Quantum Mechanics, there was a great crisis in that project, and there were announcements, from many quarters, that the project had broken down, that it was now at an end, that it would need to be replaced by something else. And the argument of the movie is that this crisis somehow obviously amounts to a dramatic and long-awaited re-affirmation of the truth of this other, ancient, pre-scientific world-view, a re-affirmation of the existence and of the centrality of God and freedom and spirit and mystery and so on.

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And there are two very large and very serious problems with that argument:1) The film neglects to make any mention whatever of the fact that there has been a growing consensus among serious investigators of the foundations of Quantum Mechanics for 30 or 40 years now that this crisis of mechanism has PASSED, that we now see a way OUT of it, that (in so far as we can tell at present) the original, mechanistic, scientific project is very much alive and well. (The second film actually does a reasonably good job, with some help from me, of explaining how that crisis arose. But, as I said above, it makes no mention at all of the fact that that crisis has now passed. All of my numerous attempts to explain to the producers how we have now found our way OUT of that crisis were cut out of the final versions of both movies.)2) Both of these films are wildly wrong about what a collapse of the project of mechanism (if such a collapse had indeed occurred, which it did not!) would have MEANT. Both of these films are wildly wrong (that is) about where a collapse of the project of mechanism (if such a collapse had indeed occurred, which it did not) would have LEFT us. The film makers are apparently convinced that such a collapse would straightforwardly resuscitate the old metaphysics of God and spirit and so fourth, but they offer no reasons whatsoever for thinking that, and I cannot imagine what such a reason might be.It seems to me that what's at issue (at the end of the day) between serious investigators of the foundations of quantum mechanics and the producers of the "what the bleep" movies is very much of a piece with what was at issue between Galileo and the Vatican, and very much of a piece with what was at issue between Darwin and the Victorians. There is a deep and perennial and profoundly human impulse to approach the world with a DEMAND, to approach the world with a PRECONDITION, that what has got to turn out to lie at THE CENTER OF THE UNIVERSE, that what has got to turn out to lie at THE FOUNDATION OF ALL BEING, is some powerful and reassuring and accessible image of OURSELVES. That's the impulse that the What the Bleep films seem to me to flatter and to endorse and (finally) to exploit - and that, more than any of their particular factual inaccuracies - is what bother me me about them. It is precisely he business of resisting that demand, it is precisely the business of approaching the world with open and authentic wonder, and with a sharp, cold eye, and singularly intent upon the truth, that's called science.

-David Albert

Comments1 Amit Goswami was a physics professor for a long time at the University of Oregon, which is a research university - he's now retired. I guess that might not count. But he's a very smart guy. I'm not standing up for the film, either - haven't seen it, and the first one bugged the shit out of me. But Mr. Goswami's a friend of the family, so I'm piping up for him.Posted by Tina | February 8, 2006 7:34 PM 2 I'm curious about both movies now. The blurbs for the first movie gave me something of a cross between curiosity and the ebby-gebbies. The ebby-gebbies won, so I didn't see it. Now I'm

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wondering what new warped New Age thought is making it's march - especially sense I think science actually DOES support the notion of spirituality. Posted by BLEEP curious | February 8, 2006 10:14 PM 3 Thanks for posting this, Annie. I haven't seen What the Bleep, because I suspect it would only make me angry, but I could read/talk about this controversy all day. My biggest concern is that there may be some very useful and interesting ideas currently considered New Age or supernatural, but because of popular anti-intellectual New Age fare like WTB, these ideas will find it harder to get a serious look from rigorous scientists.Incidentally, if anyone else is interested in the intersection between science and spooky, and willing to actually think critically about it, I recommend the work of David Hufford; his book The Terror That Comes in the Night is a good place to start.Posted by pliny | February 9, 2006 8:05 AM 4 I say see it, just so you can shit talk it with reference to the actual film. trust me, it's baaaad. wait for the dvd and get it on netflix .. or from the library.Posted by seattle98104 | February 9, 2006 8:17 AM 5 Thank you for being a level-headed reviewer. My girlfriend and I wasted our first NetFlix rental on the original version of this flick and were shocked at how awful it was within the first half-hour. While we're both open minded, one atheist and one religious, we're also scientifically friendly, rational thinkers (and, gasp, lawyers). The moment this movie starts trying to extrapolate the interesting parts of quantum theory into wild claims about water molecules that react to emotions, Native Americans being unable to see boats, and other such on-its-face laughable bunk, we knew that something was up with this movie. Your links slam dunked our own theories on its origin. While I believe the human mind is limited by our just-past-ape evolution, I can say this: What the Bleep do I know? I know enough to say this movie is a pseudo-scientific cult film that genuinely feels insulting to intelligent, rational viewers. Posted by Bobak | February 13, 2006 11:27 AM http://slog.thestranger.com/2006/02/david_albert_wh_1

24 Comments on “Making Demands of the Foundation of All Being”

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John Branch on Feb 26th, 2007 at 3:19 pm Somewhere in Stanislaw Lem’s novel Solaris, there’s a remark to the effect that what man is really looking for in the universe is not some other form of life but only a mirror of himself. I had never seen a statement quite like that (not that I can claim to do very much reading) until encountering this paragraph from David Albert. Thanks for posting it.andy.s on Feb 26th, 2007 at 3:32 pm The names of the talking Heads in a documentary never stick in my memory. Good thing too; if I had remembered him from his segment in WTB? I never would bothered to pick up his excellent book “Quantum Mechanics and Experience”.WTB? was hilariously idiotic. I remember them talking about how happy thoughts will influence the arrangement of water molecules and proving it by showing a bunch of blown-up photographs of snow flakes. The central thesis of New Age beliefs is that Wishful Thinking works. The evidence always requires a hefty dose of it to believe.Elliot on Feb 26th, 2007 at 4:12 pm I followed the link. From my reading it appears that Prof. Albert claims that there is a consensus understanding of the philosphical substrate of QM. That would be news to me as I have considered this an unresolved issue.Elliotnc on Feb 26th, 2007 at 4:17 pm Dr David Albert is right about science being about taking an unprejudiced approach, instead of placing the human at the centre of the universe and trying to “explain” ESP by mental vacuum state speculation.I wonder what Dr Albert thinks of Nobel Laureate Professor Brian Josephson’s paper http://arxiv.org/abs/physics/0312012Physics, abstractphysics/0312012String Theory, Universal Mind, and the ParanormalAuthors: Brian D. JosephsonA model consistent with string theory is proposed for so-called paranormal phenomena such as extra-sensory perception (ESP). Our mathematical skills are assumed to derive from a special ‘mental vacuum state’, whose origin is explained on the basis of anthropic and biological arguments, taking into account the need for the informational processes associated with such a state to be of a life-supporting character. ESP is then explained in terms of shared ‘thought bubbles’ generated by the participants out of the mental vacuum state. The paper concludes with a critique of arguments sometimes made claiming to ‘rule out’ the possible existence of paranormal phenomena.This is nicely illustrated by a Garfield cartoon at http://www.xanga.com/m759/571049774/the-stuff-that-dreams-are-made-of.htmlQuasar9 on Feb 26th, 2007 at 4:30 pm Hi Sean, I haven’t read his book (yet)But, what is your take on the arrow of Time.I am inclined to ‘believe’ there is an arrow of Time.That we cannot rewind Time (like on film, video or DVD) and, it would be peculiar to see people and cars walking backwards or rain pouring skyward - or fast forward.

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We cannot ‘travel’ back in Time, after all even if we could travel at the speed of light and lived for a 163,000 years - it is unlikely that Supernova 1987A would have stood still waiting for us. We would still arrive there in 163,000 years Time or 326,000 years after the event took place.Doug Natelson on Feb 26th, 2007 at 4:48 pm Wow. The text style makes me think of Robert McElwaine. That’s not a good thing, and doesn’t make me want to rush out and by the book.Ponder Stibbons on Feb 26th, 2007 at 4:59 pm Eliot:Albert isn’t saying there aren’t any philosophical problems with QM, but that the idea that QM in some way undermines the mechanistic project and leaves room for spiritual forces and stuff like that has been largely agreed to be nonsense. I have only a passing acquaintance with the philosophy of quantum mechanics, but I believe there is a consensus that mechanism does not imply determinism, and hence quantum indeterminacy does not undermine that view. Roughly speaking, mechanism entails only that all natural phenomena can be explained by physical causes. Whether the laws that underlie these causes are deterministic is a different matter.Ponder Stibbons on Feb 26th, 2007 at 5:02 pm Doug:I agree with you about Albert’s style of writing. I read Time and Chance and while the philosophy in it was interesting and the arguments were clear, his over-enthusiastic italicising of words to emphasise them (in the link he capitalises them instead) got rather annoying after a while.Pingback from Our place in the Universe « Late Night Wanderings on Feb 26th, 2007 at 5:53 pm […] I believe that we, the human race, are part of Nature, not just any part as some scientific results would make the unlearned feel. We are a unique and great part, and even though our lives might turn out to be only a chapter in history of the Universe, it is a pretty interesting chapter. Our complicated life as part of the Earth’s Ecology is an example of a state which Smolin Lee likes to call a self-organizing stable non-equilibrium system, which one of the Nature’s favorite and repeating tunes. A galaxy as whole is an example of this. I stumbled upon this Cosmic Variance post by Sean Carroll about the popular film “What the bleep do you know?” (Sean wrote a great General Relativity textbook which my GR course along with many others are using now). Apparently a physicist called David Albert didn’t like the way the film makers “abused” his quotes. I must admit I haven’t watched the movie myself, but I don’t think there is any connection between Quantum Mechanics and human existence, even though on occasions of long winding nights of QM homework I have glimpsed into how miserable this connection might have been if there was one. If it took me 2 hours to solve 4 problems of undergraduate QM, how long would it take me to change my life and reality and all that? Now that would be a nice PhD thesis project. […]TomC on Feb 26th, 2007 at 6:58 pm Nothing to add to the debate other than that I took David’s class based on an early version of QM and Experience as a German Lit major at Columbia in 1991, and it was a significant factor in getting me excited about science again. (I had been a math/science geek in high school and strayed from the fold. I’m 100% back now, as a postdoc in observational cosmology at Chicago.) I’d highly recommend the book (and the class, if David still teaches it) to anyone curious about the topic, scientists and laypeople alike.Moshe on Feb 26th, 2007 at 8:22 pm

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I see that Doug above already beat me to it, but this writing style is incredible, and not in a good way. Are his books really written this way, all the way through? because I was thinking about picking one of them up at some stage…Ponder Stibbons on Feb 26th, 2007 at 8:59 pm Moshe:Time and Chance is, as I said above. Italics are somewhat less irritating that CAPS, but not much. I think it’s still worth reading though.Moshe on Feb 26th, 2007 at 10:42 pm Ponder, sorry, I missed your previous comment. I feel that as a reader I should have a final say on what parts of the text are important, but maybe I’ll get over it…tyler on Feb 27th, 2007 at 1:12 pm What an interesting little post. I learned a lot. Such as:- Prof. Josephson gets to post whatever he wants to the arxiv. Prof. Josephson is a very fine Science Fiction writer, and I enjoy his speculations almost as much (and in the same spirit) as I have enjoyed surfing the PEAR website from time to time, but this was a bit surprising.- Dr. Albert is yet another clever, insightful scientist that can’t write worth a damn. Thanks for saving me from the disappointment of buying an unreadable text! Dear smart people: editors are your friends. Listen to them.- Stanislaw Lem, as usual, expresses succinctly what other smart people take whole books to convey.- scientists hate What the Bleep. Wait! I knew that. I can’t bring myself to watch it - I’m still traumatized by The Tao of Physics, and that was 15 years ago - so I will continue under my current assumption, which is that working QM physicists probably understand QM and its implications better than the vapid New Age muffinheads I’m so familiar with as a resident of Oregon.On a more serious note, I think the unfortunate tendency towards metaphysical quasi-solipsism that Sean correctly calls on the carpet is the natural result of people having experiences which lead them to believe, rational scientific thought notwithstanding, that an inner part of their being is best described by the old and value-loaded term “soul.” Having had such experiences myself, I can say that they are somewhat disorienting, and hard to reconcile with consensus reality. These experiences are quite common and do have a sort of universal quality to them, the sort of thing that can make one feel that one’s own existence is somehow central to the world’s, in a kind of ontological anthropic principle I suppose. The need to identify oneself with something larger or central to reality is largely just another psychological reflex of aversion to the fear of death - which doesn’t mean there isn’t some real basis to the “soul” experience - just that I think it is being misinterpreted. These poor folks have had experiences that they can’t explain, so they’re looking for a framework to hang them on, to make sense of what’s happening. To their credit, I suppose, they at least try to look for what they think are scientific explanations, only to run into this misguided gibberish.I myself place such experiences in more or less the same bin as dark energy: there seems to be something real happening, I have no idea what it is, I see no reason to think that its cause or operational modality is contrary to physics as we currently understand it, and I’m aware that I might be operating on faulty data or assumptions somewhere along the line and the whole experience could be illusory. I’m also very comfortable with unexplained phenomena; it doesn’t trouble me to file things under the We Don’t Know Yet category and leave them there until a

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solid hypothesis is put forward. I’ve been aware for a long time that most people are not like me in this regard. I would assume that if there is any reality to the concept known as a soul, it is most likely an emergent property of the universe, like life itself. But We Don’t Know Yet.mtraven on Feb 27th, 2007 at 3:51 pm Great post, and great comment by Tyler above. Very clarifying.Let me muddy the waters a bit — there is the physical world, which the hard sciences study, and the mental/social/cultural world, which is indeed part of and emergent from the physical world but is also in some sense a separate sphere, striving for independence from its physical substrate. This is the world people spend most of their time in, even physicists. In this world, people ARE the central and most important feature.The relationship between these two worlds is hard to understand and What the Bleep sounds like an example of how NOT to think about it clearly.Jack on Feb 27th, 2007 at 8:36 pm Sean — is Albert’s book about the arrow of time all that great? Doesn’t he just say that there must be a law of nature which dictates that entropy had to be low at the beginning of the universe? A valid point, but nothing new, right?dm on Feb 27th, 2007 at 9:23 pm The problem is that reality (whatever that is) cannot be separated from your conciousness. Not to mention the problem of why you are you, and not someone else (which is the first question you are confronted with after rejecting solipsism).Flash Starwalker on Feb 27th, 2007 at 10:37 pm Garrett Moddel at U. Colorado has an interesting idea about this.Flash Starwalker on Feb 27th, 2007 at 10:56 pm I guess I should say more. Garrett gave a talk at the AAAS meeting at UCR in June 2006. I think he is head of the electrical engineering department at Boulder? Anyway I think he said that if you make a measurement there is always a signal transmission and that the entropy of the system measured (the receiver) decreases whilst the entropy of the sender increases i.e. the cost of making the measurement. OK, I started reading Hawking and Ellis on the deSitter dark energy universe.Fig 19 p. 130 (paperback) The observer O has both a finite future event horizon and a past event horizon. Using the general idea of Wheeler and Feynman, if advanced light signals went from the future horizon back to the past horizon, then the future horizon should have the large entropy ~(Lp^2/\)^-1/2 ~ 10^122 in Bekenstein bits and the past event horizon’s entropy should be small, i.e. one Bekenstein bit pre-inflation. So at some point we need to sew dark energy deSitter metric to the inflation metric to get this idea to work. It’s only a rough half-baked idea at this point that retrocausality explains the arrow of time, i.e. why the early universe has small entropy and the future universe has large entropy. Thus the universe bootstraps itself into being and becoming by a kind of Novikov globally self-consistent loop in time, but from the future deSitter horizon. This is not the same as Gott’s model.Simon DeDeo on Mar 1st, 2007 at 3:59 pm At the risk of sounding like a nut, take Alpert’s statement, where he complains about:1. “what has got to turn out to lie at THE CENTER OF THE UNIVERSE, that what has got to turn out to lie at THE FOUNDATION OF ALL BEING, is some powerful and reassuring and accessible image of OURSELVES.”One could easily rephrase this to describe physics today:

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2. “what has got to turn out to lie at THE CENTER OF THE UNIVERSE, that what has got to turn out to lie at THE FOUNDATION OF ALL BEING, is some powerful and reassuring and accessible image of MATHEMATICAL OBJECTS.”It’s the old “unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics” problem. I think #2 has gotten us a lot farther than #1 in terms of enriching exciting stuff, but I think it’s important to be clear that what physicists do at heart is no more metaphysically justified than what crazy people do.Neil B. on Mar 1st, 2007 at 9:47 pm Excuse me, but you shouldn’t assume that what someone else says is an assumption. For example, we have found out, not assumed, that the universe’s constants are just what they need to be to be life-friendly (e.g., the dimensionless fine structure constant, just sticking out there at around 1/137 “appropos of nothing” in logical terms, but just right for us or other thinking creatures.) This is often met with hypocritical claims of a massive undetectable and theoretically baseless other universes with different laws, something that would be pilloried if it wasn’t “politically” useful to those attacking the anthropic principle outlined above. And, why stop with things like a universe, why not reified Road Runner cartoons, heavens and hells, etc? What runs the actualizing of the possible? If modal realists are right, we have minimal Bayesian chance of being in a consistent possible world that has all the same electron masses, theoretically satisfying force laws, etc, because there is no inner “virtus” or law giver to define such sensibility. Every describable pattern of motion and relation is viable, and “exists” somehow. There are many more possible images for example that start out patterned and then fall apart, than continue in like manner throughout. To have order goes even beyond the luck of the right “constants” into the near impossible. There is a reason for it being orderly; that I think has to do with what order allows to be.Furthermore, the quantum situation really is weird. Really, what does come out of an electron or photon emitter? What happens to “that” when the particle is localized? Decoherence doesn’t even deal with the simple basics of collapse of a given single emission, nor can it deal with the much neglected Renninger negative-result experiment. (If a reliable detector show that a particle was *not* absorbed at a particular point, then the wave function must be redistributed accordingly. For example, all of it now in one leg of a split beam course. Yes, it isn’t just “detection” that collapses the wave function…) Great minds like von Neumann thought of consciousness being involve in QM because we just can’t make it comprehensible or sensible on its own, not from narcissm.ken on Mar 2nd, 2007 at 10:50 am Is there anything in physics that deals with the concept of “now”? Relativity seems to deal with the simultaneity of possible “nows”, but not the concept of an actual “now”, which is fundamental to conciousness.Pingback from What the bleep does David Albert know?, 2007-03-03 « Skeptigator on Mar 3rd, 2007 at 6:33 am […] Posted by Skeptigator on March 3rd, 2007 Here’s a great post over at Cosmic Variance shedding some light on at least one person who was mischaracterized by the “What the bleep” movie. […]Pingback from It Does Matter What People Think About How the World Works | Cosmic Variance on Jun 4th, 2007 at 1:02 pm […] a decision to put aside evidence and deduction in favor of wishful thinking, and an insistence on a picture of the universe that flatters ourselves. The kind of reasoning that leads one to conclude that we can’t explain human evolution […]

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http://cosmicvariance.com/2007/02/26/making-demands-of-the-foundation-of-all-being/

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