Does What the Bleep do we Know actually open the door to deeper understandings of the quantum and hormonal

actions of the world around us or simply use science as a parlor trick to sell its own agenda of mysticism?

Introduction
This was an interesting selection for me to review and I felt extremely inspired by the piece to prepare this report. To properly understand the things which I will comment on and the point of view from which I have arrived at my beliefs, it is important that the reader first know three important things about myself.

1.) I am a life-long atheist. Neither of my parents nor any of my grandparents believed in a God, afterlife or spirituality. Because of this, I have absolutely neutral feelings about the mystical and the spiritual. While I am an Atheist, I am not an anti-theist. I am not antireligion and, in fact, am open to the notion of spirituality for the practical fact that it describes how I relate to and interact with the aspects of reality which cannot be presently explained by the knowledge of science which I have amassed. 2.) I am an avid student of science and since 1992 have read every published edition of the respected magazine Scientific American cover-to-cover each month. Nothing of the quantum physics or brain function activity covered in the movie/book was in any way new to me, or particularly interesting or groundbreaking. 3.) I am a stone-cold rationalist. I seek and accept facts at all times and openly welcome facts that challenge my pre-existing beliefs. I call this the definition of a true liberal. A conservative fights to keep beliefs that they have held since an early age or were taught were somehow immutable and sacred of changing. I am actually very excited and proud to be able to gather enough new evidence to change an existing point of view I may have held. I stand by my beliefs about the universe and existence to the extent

that I possess factual data to support such beliefs. Show me enough contrary data and I will adapt, or abandon my belief. I am fundamentally fair.

So what happens when a person who already has an open mind and a scientific understanding of quantum mechanics and brain physiology experiences this film?

Body
I can certainly empathize with those who would recommend it because I know that the average knowledge seeker who does not have an educational background based in the sciences may indeed be awed and amazed by the scientific components presented. I, on the other hand, am a rational scientist and I actually found some of the factual evidence in the movie to be lacking or actually insulting to a person of intelligence.

Bearing those things in-mind, let me get on to what I saw when I watched the movie What the Bleep Do We Know. I will begin with my basic visceral reaction to the film, which I watched 3 times and took detailed notes on, by saying that I find this film to be a shoddy work of absolute hokum and I would firmly advise any scientifically savvy person I know to avoid it. It is poorly done, riddled with inaccuracies, full of false connections that may indeed be based on demonstrable phenomenon but without any viable rational arguments that connects them to the macro world around us. It is a shining example of new age bunk attempting to lure the truly curious into making false analogies between genuinely fascinating micro-scientific occurrences, both in the sub-atomic world of quantum mechanics and the micro structures of the brain, to real life integrated human existence, reality and interaction.

At this point, let me make clear, I did not immediately discredit this product or the makers of it. I watched it with an open and accepting point of view, three times, but I am extremely

disappointed that this was assigned to me as work for a Doctorate in Philosophy at university level. Perhaps the intention of your institutions curricula is to encourage people to open their eyes to the plethora of absolute bad data wrapped in science that is peddled in the world as scientific. If taken as such, I would say that What the Bleep Do We Know perfectly fits into that category. I saw through it as a sham movie in the first 10 minutes of the piece, which I shall further elaborate upon in subsequent sections. I am, however, somewhat concerned that many of the Phase II Preparatory Courses seem to be built around a similar mind set.

Firstly, if you are going to have credentialed experts as background narrators you are required to say (in sub-scripts) just who they are and what their qualifications are to be commentating on such heady subjects AT THE TIME that they actually appear on-camera. The movie does identify the quoted experts but only as a preamble to the production credits. It is widely demonstrable that academic professionals can often be philosophically, and genuinely, far removed from rationality and reality. I find some of the commentators to be rational and sensible. This movie presented something that if I had seen the sub-script when I first watched it, would have made me possibly stop the entire experience. I am talking about the hefty middle-aged woman who claims to have been channeling Ramtha. Remember, I am a person who does not believe in God or a soul. Since this persons words must be the words of Ramthas soul speaking through her, I am left with one of two possibilities. 1.) She is insane and delusional or 2.) She is a complete bunk artist trying to gain professional, and financial, gain from claiming to channel a spirit 35,000 years past.

You cannot mix rationality, superficially what this film is trying to promote, with mystic hokum and fairy tales, like channeling another spirit. It simply cannot be done and effectively negates the scientific credibility of anyone else who participated in this project. If I were to watch an educational show on Discovery Channel that was to talk about the depth,

wonders and age of the universe, I would certainly be intrigued to see that Neil DeGrasse Tyson, Alex Phillipenko and Stephen Hawking were some of the expert contributors to the film. However, if there were to be a fourth person, of no personal repute themselves, who claimed to be channeling the spirit of Albert Einstein, I would change the channel or possibly just turn-off the TV.

The second example illustrated the "Maharisi Effect". For those unfamiliar with the experiment, in 1993 four-thousand people practiced transcendental meditation in an attempt to lower the crime rate in Washington DC. After the "experiment", the data was analyzed, tweaked and otherwise manipulated to reveal, amazingly, that violent crime was down 18% (though the film claims 25). This was viewed as proof of the power of group meditation and positive thinking. Sadly, this example also fails to satisfy the rigorous criteria of science. First, there was no control group, and as such no way of knowing what the crime rate would have been without the meditation. This implies that the lowered crime rate could be the result of several, unrelated factors. Also, the crime rate was only 18% lower than what was predicted by analysis of previous criminal trends in the area. Violent crime increased from the previous year, just not as much as was expected by experts. Second, the murder rate during this time actually increased, so while violent crime as a whole increased less than was predicted, more murders were being committed during this time than were predicted. Thirdly, the panel who reviewed the data created by this experiment were followers of the Maharisi and could not be counted as impartial, non-biased observers.

This is a glaring example of misuse of science to further an irrational agenda. Let me not just pick at the factual problems with this piece (there are not too many but I will deal with some later) but with the logic problems embodied by it. If had to summarize this work in only 2

words, they would be FAULTY LOGIC. Statistics are frequently used by deceivers to convince their intended audience that their subjective conclusions are actually objective conclusions backed up with misinterpreted statistical data. So what is wrong with this way of presenting data? In a perfect world where the people receiving the data actually had the education and objectivity to properly process and look at it there would be no problem.

When you use a group of facts to inspire a particular reaction in people, and frequently when people use facts overlaid with a narrative storyline, they often are not trying to educate but rather to incite. You use a technique that creates the illusion that the final mindset was arrived at by their objectively reviewing the facts when, in-fact, it was a manipulated response. Thats why so many people think statistics are lies, when they are definitely not. Heres a good trick that builds upon this. First, relate a truly graphic story about a subject that all people have a common reaction to. Second, make sure it is so emotionally powerful that anyone receiving the message will become emotionally fired-up. When youre emotionally fired-up your rationality is not very active and the communicator basically has an open door into the receivers brain. What do you do next, since youve already opened the door? You place a non-scientific, but rational sounding postulate, that has nothing to do with the anecdote that got you fired-up in the first place, right next to it and let nature take its course. When we are emotionally intrigued about one thing, we have a strong tendency to let that emotion spill over onto the next thing that lands before us, even though there is no relationship whatsoever between the two things. The technical term for this is nonsequiter logic. You may have never thought of this in such terms before but it is used every day by trial lawyers, politicians and clergy to sneak their actual message, or intent, through our logical safeguards. Kind of like how you give a large and dangerous dog a pill that the vet has prescribed for it. Dont hold them down and try to force it down their throat (youll get bit) just wrap it in a big ball of cheese or hamburger meat and watch them swallow it willingly.

What the Bleep do We Know. Smacks of this approach and that is the fundamental reason why I disliked it so much.

This movie is a perfect example of what Nobel Prize Winner Murray Gell-Mann calls "Quantum Flapdoodle", i.e. an attempt to use Quantum Theory to support a metaphysical, even mystical, view of the world. This is often the result of confusing Quantum Theory with the interpretation of Quantum Theory. The premise of the movie seems to be to prove that we create our own reality through the observation of it. What follows is a lengthy pseudoscientific explanation of specific elements of Quantum Theory placed in a light that supports a distorted mystical view.

One of the first and most glaringly aggravating points about this movie is the editing. Many of the physicists in this movie were filmed for hours explaining Quantum Theory and the mechanics behind it, but only select pieces of the footage were used out of context to make it seem as if these experts were supporting a mystical world view, when in fact they almost universally scoff at it. Coupled with that is the fact that many of these "experts" actually have no physics credentials, Quantum or otherwise.

But what about the science, you may wonder. Unfortunately, the science in this movie is abysmal. First, as mentioned before, they confuse the theory with the interpretation. This is simply because they advocate the "observation is reality" idea, which isn't part of the theory of quantum mechanics. For a theory to be considered science it must be disprovable. Observation creating reality cannot be disproven simply because it would require an observer to validate, which would then invalidate the "theory". So from the beginning we have a faulty basis for science.

Following that, the movie then cites its "proof", which is also scientifically invalid. The first was the popular fable that when Columbus arrived in North America that the natives could see "the ripples in the water" but couldn't see the ships. Nowhere in the movie does it state that this is a fable... its actually presented as literal fact (though I should note it isn't implicitly stated in the film that this is a fact, it is certainly implied). This example fails to hold up to scientific standards for various reasons. First, its hearsay. There aren't any written records or verifiable evidence supporting the story. Its a legend, pure and simple, and as such proves nothing. Second, it fails entertain the more logical reasons, such as the ripples appearing in the water before the ships had actually arrived, a distinctly logical conclusion.

The third piece of "proof" supplied is Dr. Emoto's famous Water Tests in which he tapes words to containers of water and freezes them into crystals that, supposedly, create beautiful images when nice words like "love" and "thank you" are taped to them and horrible, ugly images when mean words like "I hate you" and "I want to kill you" are used. These words were tried in several languages and sometimes images are used as well. Unfortunately, Dr. Emoto's amazing work has never been independently recreated in a scientific setting. In fact, the James Randi Educational Foundation has offered a $1,000,000 prize to Dr. Emoto if his data can pass a double blind test, a prize which he has refused to even attempt to claim.

After this there is a long discussion about cellular peptides and how these are responsible for all observation, emotion and, in essence, reality. This was the only part of the movie that had some sound basis in reality and could be backed up with science. It is 100% true that the

chemical processes in our brains can vastly effect how we view reality, which is the basis of psychiatric pharmacology. The movie then moves on to use this as proof of the power of positive thinking, i.e. "Our brains control how we view reality so we don't need mind-altering medications to be happy!" Yay! Except when there's something wrong with our brain and those chemicals are out of balance. I'd like to see somebody tell Charles Manson that all his insanity could be cured by the power of positive thinking!

One of the many straws that breaks this movie's credibility back is the inclusion of Ramtha, the 35,000 year old Atlantian warrior spirit brought to us courtesy of a Tacoma housewife named JZ Knight (his "channel" in New Age circles). In a thick, Hollywood-esque Eastern European accent, Ramtha tells us about the wonders of Quantum Physics and how it is the first science to even come close to explaining magic and miracles. Okay... I don't even know where to begin with this. First of all, if this is a movie about science, why are they including the claims of a New Age cult leader who can't be verified one way or another. Also, what are this person's credentials. If its just JZ Knight pretending to be some ancient Atlantian, does she have a Quantum Physics background? Second, if she IS some ancient Atlantian warrior, what are HIS Quantum Physics credentials (which could be easily verified with a series of Doctorate level tests)? In fact, the mythos of Ramtha is well known of outside this movie. It is commonly referred to as The Cult of Ramtha with all of the made-up-religion connotation that accompanies the word cult. The JZ in JZ Knight stands for Judith Zebra. Judith was her birth name but the Zebra is something she legally changed. She is from Roswell, New Mexico, world-famous home to legions of hoax perpetrators who generally run a thriving cottage industry on the perpetuation of UFO, alien visitation hoaxes but I am sure the fundamental lessons of how to exploit peoples vulnerability to the unexplained being supernatural/extraterrestrial in origin is a life lesson she readily learned while growing up.

Now, Ramtha is a supposed Atlantian Warrior. The lost culture of Atlantis has been extensively explored, and universally discredited by all reputable scientists and historians who have explored it for centuries. Want to know more about Ramtha? He is supposed to have led an army of 2.3-million persons 35,000 years ago. By all archeological and genetic (mitochondrial DNA) evidence in the scientific community, the total approximate human population 35,000 years ago was just over 1-million individuals. A claim of an army more than twice the human population is yet another of the numerous facts that debunk JS Knight as a fraud.

Of course, her/his authority is never questioned, and there's a reason. It took a little digging (OK, 5 minutes on Wikipedia.org) to find, but the vast majority of the people involved in making this film are followers of Ramtha. When this came to light, I was flabbergasted. The fact that most of the movies views fall right in line with her group's New Age philosophy puts an entirely new spin on the movie. Suddenly this looks like nothing but one, big recruitment piece for Ramtha.

Perhaps I could possibly try to give this production some credit for one thing; it gets people thinking about Quantum Physics and reality. Make no mistake, there are some valid pieces of science to be found in the film, but on the whole the representation of Quantum Physics is ridiculously distorted into some pseudo-scientific new age cult mysticism. That partial valuation is rapidly negated by another overriding negative aspect of What the Bleep Do We Know. If you use the fascinating and sometimes bewildering worlds of quantum physics and the electro-chemical operations of the brain to open a persons mind to different ways of perceiving that is fine. Presenting shorts snippets of it side by side with a message of mysticism is an underhanded way of opening peoples minds in one second and shoving

fabricated spirituality in and slamming the door shut in the next. Some people who see this movie might be interested to dig deeper into the actual science and check out John Gribbin's excellent series of books about Quantum Physics for the layman. I recommend "In Search of Schrondinger's Cat" most highly. To the pure layman, I would recommend Bill Brysons allaround science primer, including the development of modern scientific method, A Brief History of Nearly Everything. These, and many other, works objectively present facts about the physical world that could accurately be characterized as mind-blowing to the science noninitiate.

As Richard Feynman said, "If you think you understand quantum mechanics, you don't understand quantum mechanics", and that sums up the major problem with this movie. It provides a view of quantum mechanics that is absurdly simple and abysmally unscientific. The beauty of particle physics is magical in and of itself; it doesn't need to be married to philosophy and New Age metaphysics to be amazing.

I cannot discredit the notion that we indeed play a large part in the outcomes of our existences simply by the orientation of our world view towards random occurrences. Despite being the objective rationalist that I am, I do sometimes consider myself to be lucky. Deep down, I know that there is really no such thing as luck (at least when used in its good connotation) but there is random happenstance that befalls all of us. Fundamentally people do tend to perceive and believe exactly what they wish to. In other words, if you go through life expecting bad things to happen to you, you tend to only notice and dwell upon the negative random happenings which occur, often to the point of dismissing or not even noticing all of the good things which occur. Conversely, if you expect good things to happen, you have a tendency to recognize a good thing when it comes along and minimalize or work through the bad ones. No more good things, or bad things, happen to me than happen to anybody else on

the aggregate. I, and other optimistic people, simply recognize good fortune when it presents itself and actively pursue and develop those opportunities. If believing that somehow you are causing these things to occur through the action of quantum mechanics or the emotional flavor of the words you focus on, like the ice crystal experiment, brings about the subconscious mindset that sharpens your ability to recognize and capitalize upon good random occurrences that is not entirely a bad thing. Scientifically its completely un-sound but if the net effect is to start enjoying the good fortune that does present itself, thats not the worst thing that could happen to a person. I simply feel that to believe you are somehow using any type of mystical, supernatural, or sub-atomic connections to achieve these ends is ultimately to sell yourself short.

Possibly the most salient point of the film, and one which I wholeheartedly embrace, is that we do create our own reality. It is particularly odd that as adults, many people seek out creations just like What the Bleep do We Know to open their minds to deeper truths like selfcreating reality when in childhood we already were open to such things and suppressed it as nonsense when we moved into societal dictated adult reasoning. In grade school we learn about the eye and how it uses a photochemical reaction in the retinas cone cells to selectively react to different wavelengths of light to create neurochemical signals which are transmitted through the optic nerves to the brain, which then interprets these signals as colors. It must have been 3rd or 4th grade for me when I had the thought, What if the color I call green is seen by another person as the color I refer to as purple?. How would anyone know that this was happening? We all know that a watermelons exterior is green and its interior is either red or yellow, depending on the species of plant. If another person perceived the green exterior as my color of purple and the red interior as my blue, what difference would it make in the grand scheme of things? My reality is being constantly created within my brain and

could indeed be different from others reality. Over my life, I have told this story to many people and found that almost everybody has had a similar thought in their childhood.

The Conclusion
The thoughts we develop and nurture are indeed very much products of the reality we expect to see around us. So many random occurrences happen around us from the quantum through the atomic to the chemical level that their very randomness nulls them out as actual causative factors in our macroscopic reality. Occasionally a stray cosmic ray may make it through the earths atmosphere and strike a portion of the molecule we call DNA. The result of that change could be that we have a child born with a congenital defect, or the IQ of an Einstein. But as over 85% of our DNA is non-coding (it doesnt produce any effect one way or another) even there the odds are still overwhelming that our chance encounter with the cosmic ray will not have any noticeable effect. Looking at the world from different perspectives and acknowledging that each of us has their own unique reality created personally and continuously for them within their own minds is a valuable concept to embrace and can help us greatly in not being intellectually oppressive towards those around us. If people can take that lesson away from What the Bleep, than the experience is not entirely wasted. A major hurdle many intelligent and passionate people face in their personal interactions is the belief that if they could just transfer their knowledge and experience about a particular viewpoint that they hold to another person, that person would logically have to alter their beliefs and views to match. This is definitely not the case. The more likely outcome of attempting this approach is a person who is a bore at parties, annoying to work around, and ignorant idealism in young adulthood. Watch What the Bleep Do We Know if you must, but in trying to gain profound insight into our beliefs and behaviors, it is much better to constantly strive for a greater understanding of all areas of scientific knowledge from an

objective source who may fill your mind with more information than you can absorb at the moment but which can be gradually assimilated over time and integrated into a truly personal and meaningful world view.