I bought the Video..$25. down the drain? Don't, think so!

[Guest guest]

This was published in today's New York Times. I like the Times and I

like " What The Bleep " too. I guess that's me just absorbing and

emmiting at the same time. Though there is no me and there is no time

something finds something intersting to no one in particular or in

general either. Hope all who are not here too find it stimulating

also. hehe...

..........bob (the mystical physicsical man)

try to say That two times fast or one time slow.

 

 

Essay

Far Out, Man. But Is It Quantum Physics?

 

By DENNIS OVERBYE

Published: March 14, 2006

 

Can physics save your soul?

 

Two years ago, a movie with the unpronounceable title " What the #$!%*

Do We Know!? " became an underground new-age phenomenon, raking in $11

million out of midnight screenings and word of mouth, spawning an

industry of books, tote bags, clothing, DVD's and " biofield " jewelry.

 

It purported to argue, based on the insights of modern quantum

physics, that reality is just a mental construct that we can

rearrange and improve, if we are enlightened or determined enough.

Science and spirituality have tied the knot, and the world is your

infinitely deformable apple.

 

This winter an expanded version, " What the Bleep, Down the Rabbit

Hole, " began to play to audiences who say that the movie confirms

what they already thought about the cosmos, some vibe they had that

it is a slippery, woo-woo-woo kind of place. The movie just finished

a two-month run in New York and is to be shown in May at the Quest

for Global Healing Conference, in Ubud, Bali, with luminaries like

Walter Cronkite and Desmond Tutu attending.

 

Like its predecessor, this film features a coterie of talking heads:

physicists with real Ph.D.'s, biologists, philosophers and a woman

who claims to be channeling a 35,000-year-old spirit warrior from

Atlantis. It tells the story of a sourpuss photographer played by

Marlee Matlin who learns to love herself and take a chance on life.

 

Like its predecessor, the film touts the alleged power of meditation

to affect the crystalline structure of water, as revealed in

photographs by Masaru Emoto, a doctor of alternative medicine in

Japan. Love and gratitude make for symmetrical and intricate

crystals, according to the film, while hatred produces an ugly mess.

 

If thoughts can do this to water, imagine what they can do to humans,

who are, after all, mostly water — at least so runs the mantra

repeated several times in the film.

 

When I first heard that Marlee Matlin had made a movie about quantum

theory, I was excited. (Total disclosure: Ms. Matlin once bought an

option on the film rights to an essay of mine about Albert Einstein

and his wife.) What could be more deserving of wide-screen cinematic

treatment than the weirdness and mystery of the laws that sculpture

our space-time adventures?

 

But hours and hours spent watching the two films and navigating their

splashy Web site have tempered my enthusiasm. These films and the

quantum mysticism industry behind them raise a disturbing question

about the muddled intersection between science and culture. Do we

have to indulge in bad physics to feel good?

 

The " rabbit hole " in the title refers to the philosophical muddle

that the contemplation of quantum mechanics, the paradoxical laws

that govern subatomic life, can lead to. And it is a legitimate and

maddening one. Quantum physics proclaims, for example, that an

electron (or any object, elementary particle or not) is both a

particle and a wave before we look at it, a conundrum neatly

illustrated by a cartoon featuring " Dr. Quantum " in the new film.

 

Physicists have been at war for the last century trying to explain

how it is that the fog of quantum possibilities prescribed by

mathematical theory can condense into one concrete actuality, what

physicists call " collapsing the wavefunction. " Half a century ago the

physicist and Nobel Prize winner Eugene Wigner ventured that

consciousness was the key to this mysterious process.

 

Wigner thereby, and inadvertently, launched a thousand New Age

dreams. Books like " The Tao of Physics " and " The Dancing Wu Li

Masters " have sought to connect quantum physics to Eastern mysticism.

Deepak Chopra, the physician and author, has founded a career on the

idea of " quantum healing, " and a school of parapsychology has arisen

based on the idea that things like telekinesis and telepathy were a

result of probing minds' manipulation of the formless quantum

potential. And now the movie.

 

All of them promote the idea that, at some level, our minds are in

control of reality. We are in charge of the holodeck, as one of the

characters in " Down the Rabbit Hole " says. And if it doesn't work for

you, it's probably because you don't believe.

 

So what's wrong with that? Like everyone else, I am inspired by

stories of personal change. The ideas that consciousness creates

reality and that anything is possible make for terrific psychology.

 

We all know that self-confidence breeds its own success. I wish I

were a member of that club. But physics has moved on. The

parapsychologists were booted from the American Association for the

Advancement of Science 30 years ago. It has been even longer since

anybody took Wigner's idea seriously, said David Albert, a professor

of philosophy and physics at Columbia, who has the dubious honor of

being one of the talking heads in both " What the Bleep " films and is

not pleased with the results.

 

Many physicists today say the waves that symbolize quantum

possibilities are so fragile they collapse with the slightest

encounter with their environment. Conscious observers are not needed.

As Dr. Albert pointed out, Wigner framed the process in strict

mathematical and probabilistic terms. " The desires and intentions of

the observer had nothing to do with it, " he said.

 

In other words, reality is out of our control. It's all atoms and the

void, as Democritus said so long ago. Indeed, some physicists say the

most essential and independent characteristic of reality, whatever

that is, is randomness. It's a casino universe.

 

Not that there is anything wrong with that. There's a great story to

be told about atoms and the void: how atoms evolved out of fire and

bent space and grew into Homer, Chartres cathedral and " Blonde on

Blonde. " How those same atoms came to learn that the earth, sun,

life, intelligence and the whole universe will eventually die.

 

I can hardly blame the quantum mystics for avoiding this story, and

sticking to the 1960's.

 

When it comes to physics, people seem to need to kid themselves.

There is a presumption, Dr. Albert said, that if you look deeply

enough you will find " some reaffirmation of your own centrality to

the world, a reaffirmation of your ability to take control of your

own destiny. " We want to know that God loves us, that we are the

pinnacle of evolution.

 

But one of the most valuable aspects of science, he said, is

precisely the way it resists that temptation to find the answer we

want. That is the test that quantum mysticism flunks, and on some

level we all flunk.

 

I'd like to believe that like Galileo, I would have the courage to

see the world clearly, in all its cruelty and beauty, " without hope

or fear, " as the Greek writer Nikos Kazantzakis put it. Take free

will. Everything I know about physics and neuroscience tells me it's

a myth. But I need that illusion to get out of bed in the morning. Of

all the durable and necessary creations of atoms, the evolution of

the illusion of the self and of free will are perhaps the most

miraculous. That belief is necessary to my survival.

 

But I wouldn't call it good physics.