What The Bleep Do We Know Debunked
Telly Piatt
The NIH set up the National Center for Complementary & Alternative Medicine to help research and vet some of these Mind-Body treatments, and so there has been some science-based research done in this area.
And alternative medicine should be discussed elsewhere. I personally have no problem with the idea that the mind-body interaction is trickier than modern medicine sometimes thinks, but have never seen any evidence that this has anything to do with quantum mechanics. This is a blog about physics, not about biology or medicine.
Peter Woit said:I personally have no problem with the idea that the mind-body interaction is trickier than modern medicine sometimes thinks, but have never seen any evidence that this has anything to do with quantum mechanics.
You may want to check out the dissipative quantum model of the brain: -ph/0002014
I have neither seen the Bleep nor its sequel, and I am perfectly willing to accept that its treatment of quantum mechanics is unsatisfactory. But I did see the much touted Elegant Universe on the PBS, and its treatment of quantum mechanics was also extremely unsatisfactory.
Given that there are diverse interpretations of qm, ranging from positivist to hidden variable, to many-worlds held by serious scholars, not to mention the invoking of consciousness by qm theorists like Wigner and Stapp and neurophilosophers like Pribram, perhaps all one should hope for is a narrative that leaves the viewer with more questions than what he started with before the movie.
Peter Woit said:I personally have no problem with the idea that the mind-body interaction is trickier than modern medicine sometimes thinks, but have never seen any evidence that this has anything to do with quantum mechanics.
You may want to check out the dissipative quantum model of the brain: -ph/0002014
Based on a calculation of neural decoherence rates, we argue that that the degrees of freedom of the human brain that relate to cognitive processes should be thought of as a classical
rather than quantum system, i.e., that there is nothing fundamentally wrong with the current classical approach to neural
network simulations.
Many people appears to misunderstand long-range correlations doing the brain work as a whole and the so-called non-markovian dynamics (introducing memory effects) with quantum nonlocality or any other exotic quantum effect.
There have been several quantum models of consciousness in the literature, including work by Hameroff and Penrose (coherent states of microtubule tubulins) and Nanopoulos et al (based on string theory).
In short,
the question of whether or not consciousness is a quantum phenomenon is still an open one,
and (in my opinion) theoretical model-building and experimental testing of such model components is a good thing that might lead to useful insights.
I do not ignore the possibility for some adittional now unknown quantum effect in brain, in fact, the electronic structure of molecules into brain is just modelled via quantum mechanics and, hidrogen bonding and others are just quantum effects.
I clearly disagree is that the whole brain may be considered a quantum body or that consciousness was quantum in essence. This kind of speculation began after of incorrect understanding of quantum measurement processes just after QM was formulated.
The elegant yet poorly understood ballet-like movements and geometric organization occurring in mitosis have suggested guidance by some type of organizing field, however neither electromagnetic nor chemical gradient fields have been demonstrated or shown to be sufficient.
it appears that my previous comment on that many people appears to misunderstand long-range correlations doing the brain to work as a whole with quantum nonlocality or any other exotic quantum effect gains support.
It sounds reasonable, and familiar. We're always being told we don't use our brain to its full capacity. And any Cognitive Behavioural Therapist can help us to change the way we see things by changing our thought patterns.
"Quantum physics calculates only possibilities... Who/what chooses among these possibilities to bring the actual event of experience? Consciousness must be involved. The observer can't be ignored." Amit Goswami (PhD) in What the Bleep Do We Know?.
Not exactly, Amit. 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. Gripping stuff, but nothing to do with our daily lives.
The bits and pieces of matter that make up sub-atomic particles (protons, neutrons and electrons) don't exist in any handy, measurable way unless they're interacting with one another. Once they do bump into each other they form their regular little selves.
And it certainly doesn't depend on an observer to make this happen. As long as a sub-atomic particle is interacting with another sub-atomic particle, they'll both exist regardless of where you are or what you're doing. (Physicists should take part of the blame for this confusion. When they use the word 'observe', they actually mean 'interact with', not look at or think about.)
The only problem with Andrew Newberg's statement is that it suggests our subconscious brains are doing really interesting stuff and we're somehow missing out; if only we could harness that other zillion gigabits or so we'd be masters of our destinies. If it's true, no one's been able to measure it or see the effects.
It's hard to say where Candace Pert got the low-down on what the Native American Indians did or didn't see when Columbus and the gang hit the horizon. Columbus certainly didn't speak the language, and the locals didn't keep written records. Only the Shaman knows, and we're about 500 years too late to ask him.
But she is right about us not seeing things in front of our eyes if we're not looking for them. A classic experiment on visual processing involves asking people to watch a video of 6 people passing a basketball, and press a button every time a particular team has possession. Invariably only about half the people tested ever notice a woman in a gorilla suit walking across the middle of the screen during the game. We're such a shallow people.
If you wanted to study the impact of spoken, drawn or written sentiments on the formation of crystals in freezing water, you'd have to do a slightly more rigorous study. For starters you'd have to take a lot of samples from different parts of each ice specimen. And you'd do the study without knowing what had been 'said' to the water specimens, so your subjective opinions wouldn't colour the results.
Magician and skeptic James Randi, famous for debunking performers like Uri Geller, has offered his standard prize of $1 million cash money to Dr Emoto if he can get the same results when doing the water study this way. To date, Dr Emoto has not taken up the challenge. He has however just released his third book of pretty crystal pictures.
"What I am going to tell you about is what we teach our physics students in the third or fourth year of graduate school.... It is my task to convince you not to turn away because you don't understand it. You see my physics students don't understand it.... That is because I don't understand it. Nobody does."
Particles embracing all possible states until they are forced by an experiment to assume one state, one particle being in two adjacent places simultaneously, the inability to precisely measure a particle's position and momentum at the same time - these are just a few of the weird manifestations of quantum physics.
The film "What the Bleep Do We Know?!" does a reasonable job of presenting some of these quandaries, researchers say. But they add that the film shows quantum mysteries selectively to shore up metaphysical points. Those points suggest that quantum-derived "possibilities" affect the wider world, that human thought is the ultimate arbiter of physical reality, and that by manipulating thought properly, people can achieve harmony and even shape the structure of matter.
"Contrary to ordinary beliefs, quantum physics is very predictive," Dr. de Gouva continues. "The theory can't predict with precision what will happen, but it knows everything that can happen and it will tell you the probability of all these things happening."
Thus, if a scientist repeats an experiment with subatomic particles often enough, the results will closely match the probabilities quantum theory predicts. This is one reason physicists studying a subatomic particle create large numbers of them in particle accelerators. As the sample size grows, so does the scientist's confidence in the statistical inferences drawn from the large sample.
Also, the movie suggests that the quantum idea of matter embracing all its possible states at once applies to the larger world of people and rocks. But above a tiny size range, quantum properties collapse, and particles start to behave in the way described by classical physics - more like bowling balls than fuzzy clouds of "wave functions."
"The movie is saying that somehow we can all get together and, with our collective thought processes, we can influence the outcome" of physical events - be they life experiences or scientific experiments, notes Bruce Schumm, a particle physicist at the University of California at Santa Cruz. "But that's two leaps beyond what scientists believe to be true."
First, such claims rely on "hidden variables" susceptible to influence, he says. But quantum mechanics rules out the possibility of hidden variables. Moreover, the movie proposes no plausible physical mechanism by which thoughts influence matter.
To accomplish that, you would have to invoke "new physics," Dr. Schumm says, in which the explanation can be verified or falsified through experiment. Otherwise, the process falls "outside the realm of physical statements and has entered the realm of spiritual belief."
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