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Walter Watts
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virus: Quantum Quackery
« on: 2005-02-10 18:08:42 » |
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Quantum Quackery
A surprise-hit film has renewed interest in applying quantum mechanics
to consciousness, spirituality and human potential
By Michael Shermer
*Skeptic*
January 2005 issue <http://www.sciam.com/issue.cfm?issuedate=Jan-05>
In spring 2004 I appeared on KATU TV's AM Northwest in Portland, Ore.,
with the producers of an improbably named film, What the #$*! Do We
Know?! Artfully edited and featuring actress Marlee Matlin as a
dreamy-eyed photographer trying to make sense of an apparently senseless
universe, the film's central tenet is that we create our own reality
through consciousness and quantum mechanics. I never imagined that such
a film would succeed, but it has grossed millions.
The film's avatars are New Age scientists whose jargon-laden sound bites
amount to little more than what California Institute of Technology
physicist and Nobel laureate Murray Gell-Mann once described as "quantum
flapdoodle." University of Oregon quantum physicist Amit Goswami, for
example, says in the film: "The material world around us is nothing but
possible movements of consciousness. I am choosing moment by moment my
experience. Heisenberg said atoms are not things, only tendencies."
Okay, Amit, I challenge you to leap out of a 20-story building and
consciously choose the experience of passing safely through the ground's
tendencies.
What the #$*! is going on here?
The work of Japanese researcher Masaru Emoto, author of The Hidden
Messages in Water, is featured to show how thoughts change the structure
of ice crystals--beautiful crystals form in a glass of water with the
word "love" taped to it, whereas playing Elvis's "Heartbreak Hotel"
causes other crystals to split in two. Would his "Burnin' Love" boil water?
The film's nadir is an interview with "Ramtha," a 35,000-year-old spirit
channeled by a woman named JZ Knight. I wondered where humans spoke
English with an Indian accent 35,000 years ago. Many of the films'
participants are members of Ramtha's "School of Enlightenment," where
New Age pabulum is dispensed in costly weekend retreats.
The attempt to link the weirdness of the quantum world to mysteries of
the macro world (such as consciousness) is not new. The best candidate
to connect the two comes from University of Oxford physicist Roger
Penrose and physician Stuart Hameroff of the Arizona Health Sciences
Center, whose theory of quantum consciousness has generated much heat
but little light. Inside our neurons are tiny hollow microtubules that
act like structural scaffolding. Their conjecture (and that's all it is)
is that something inside the microtubules may initiate a wave-function
collapse that results in the quantum coherence of atoms. The quantum
coherence causes neurotransmitters to be released into the synapses
between neurons, thus triggering them to fire in a uniform pattern that
creates thought and consciousness. Because a wave-function collapse can
come about only when an atom is "observed" (that is, affected in any way
by something else), the late neuroscientist Sir John Eccles, another
proponent of the idea, even suggested that "mind" may be the observer in
a recursive loop from atoms to molecules to neurons to thought to
consciousness to mind to atoms....
In reality, the gap between subatomic quantum effects and large-scale
macro systems is too large to bridge. In his book The Unconscious
Quantum (Prometheus Books, 1995), University of Colorado physicist
Victor Stenger demonstrates that for a system to be described
quantum-mechanically, its typical mass (m), speed (v) and distance (d)
must be on the order of Planck's constant (h). "If mvd is much greater
than h, then the system probably can be treated classically." Stenger
computes that the mass of neural transmitter molecules and their speed
across the distance of the synapse are about two orders of magnitude too
large for quantum effects to be influential. There is no micro-macro
connection. Then what the #$*! is going on here?
Physics envy. The lure of reducing complex problems to basic physical
principles has dominated the philosophy of science since Descartes's
failed attempt some four centuries ago to explain cognition by the
actions of swirling vortices of atoms dancing their way to
consciousness. Such Cartesian dreams provide a sense of certainty, but
they quickly fade in the face of the complexities of biology. We should
be exploring consciousness at the neural level and higher, where the
arrow of causal analysis points up toward such principles as emergence
and self-organization. Biology envy.
Michael Shermer is publisher of Skeptic (www.skeptic.com) and author of
The Science of Good and Evil.
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Walter Watts
Tulsa Network Solutions, Inc.
No one gets to see the Wizard! Not nobody! Not no how!
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RE: virus: Quantum Quackery
« Reply #1 on: 2005-02-11 06:30:49 » |
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Yeah, that movie is junk. We walked out after 20 minutes. The review
however, fails to point out that quantum physics is becoming, to some
extent, quackery as well.
This explains why it was so easy for the filmmaker to find plenty of PHD
physics researchers willing to talk nonsense in a movie.
Our institutions of science have become vastly corrupted by nonsense.
Moreso every day.
I've written quite a few articles on it.
> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-virus@lucifer.com [mailto:owner-virus@lucifer.com] On Behalf
> Of Walter Watts
> Sent: Thursday, February 10, 2005 6:09 PM
> To: undisclosed-recipients:
> Subject: virus: Quantum Quackery
>
> Quantum Quackery
> A surprise-hit film has renewed interest in applying quantum mechanics
> to consciousness, spirituality and human potential
> By Michael Shermer
> *Skeptic*
> January 2005 issue <http://www.sciam.com/issue.cfm?issuedate=Jan-05>
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First, read Bruce Sterling's "Distraction", and then read http://electionmethods.org.
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