What The Bleep Do We Know Movie Download

[Elly Ker]

"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."

Monitor journalism changes lives because we open that too-small box that most people think they live in. We believe news can and should expand a sense of identity and possibility beyond narrow conventional expectations.

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.

Why does anything exist? How do I know it exists? What do I mean when I say "I?" It's convenient to pin everything on God, but if there is a God, he provided us with brains and curiosity and put us in what seems to be a physical universe, and so we cannot be blamed for trying to figure things out. Newton seemed to have it about right, but it's been downhill ever since. And with the introduction of quantum physics, even unusually intelligent people like you and me have to admit we are baffled.

"What the #$*! Do We Know?" is a movie that attempts to explain quantum physics in terms anyone can understand. It succeeds, up to a point. I understood every single term. Only the explanation eluded me. Physicists, philosophers, astronomers, biologists and neurologists describe their strange new world, in which matter can (a) not be said to exist for sure, although (b) it can find itself in two places at the same time. Time need not flow in one direction, and our perception of reality may be a mental fabrication.

Among the experts on the screen, only one seemed to make perfect sense to me. This was a pretty, plumpish blond woman with clear blue eyes, who looked the camera straight in the eye, seemed wise and sane, and said that although the questions might be physical, the answers were likely to be metaphysical. Since we can't by definition understand life and the world, we might as well choose a useful way of pretending to.

Sounded good to me, especially compared to the cheerful evasions, paradoxes and conundrums of the other experts. Only after the movie was over did I learn from my wife, who is informed on such matters, that the sane woman who made perfect sense was in fact Ramtha -- or, more precisely Ramtha as channeled by the psychic JZ Knight, who would seem to be quite distinctive enough without leaving the periods out of her name. And who is Ramtha? From Cathleen Falsani, the religion writer of the Sun-Times, I learn that Ramtha is a 35,000-year-old mystical sage from the lost continent of Atlantis. Well, weirder authorities have surfaced. Or maybe not.

"What the Bleep Do We Know," as it is referred to for convenience, is not a conventional documentary about quantum physics. It's more like a collision in the editing room between talking heads, an impenetrable human parable and a hallucinogenic animated cartoon. The parts have so little connection and fit together so strangely that the movie seems to be channel surfing. This is not a bad thing, but wondrously curious. There are three directors and I wonder if they made the movie like one of those party games where you write the first sentence of a story and pass it along, and someone else writes the second sentence and then folds the paper so the third person can't see the first sentence, and so on.

We meet many wise men and women from august institutions, who sit in front of bookshelves and landscapes and describe the paradoxes and inexplicabilities of quantum physics. They seem to agree that quantum physics accurately describes the universe, but they don't seem sure about the universe it describes. Perhaps the universe is going into and out of existence at every moment, or switching dimensions, or is a construct of our minds, or is mostly made of nothing. Perhaps we cannot observe it but only observe ourselves as we think we're observing it.

The experts do not know the answers to these questions, and admit it. They have quixotic little smiles as they explain why it is that there are no answers. What makes them experts? I guess it's because they have been able to formulate the questions, and intuit the ways in which they are prevented from being answered. Gene Siskel ended every interview by asking his subjects, "What do you know for sure?" These people know for sure that they can't know for sure. At some point in the movie I would have enjoyed, as a change of pace, a professor of French who explains he cannot speak the language, that perhaps nobody can and cautions us that France may not exist.

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