What the Bleep?

I just finished watching possibly the strangest docudrama I have ever had the misfortune of seeing, What the Bleep Do We Know!? The movie was even stranger than I thought it would be. I knew that it had all kinds of weird quantum-consciousness-positive-thinking-magic-powers stuff, but I had never heard about all the other weird stuff in it. There is a misuse of quantum physics, psychology, neuroscience, biology, topped off with some wishy-washy spiritualism. Woven through it all is a bizarre story about a deaf girl.

It is hard to construct exactly what the thesis of the film is. I will, to the best of my ability, attempt to outline it. For the first while, every sentence has at least one mention of "quantum physics" in it. It builds up how strange physics is (although they do so in an often very inaccurate way). It makes the weird claim that Native Americans were unable to see Columbus' ships as they approached, because they had no concept of the ships they were in, and this goes to show that what we see is determined by our preconceptions of it (or some such thing). They then claim that the brain has no way of telling the difference between mental images and sensory perceptions (which is simply false - many of the same mechanisms are used in imagination as they are in actual sensory perception, and this is an interesting and hot topic in cognitive science, but just because some of the same mechanisms are used does not mean they are identical), and then therefore our minds can create our perceptions. This is, somehow, tied to the observer effect in quantum physics (in a way that isn't particularly specified). I have no idea how these two are related - on the one hand, the film seems to be claiming that we can change what we perceive, which would supposedly change the universe for us. On the other hand, it seems to be claiming we can change the universe for other people as well (it claims that people meditating can reduce crime), and this is supposedly due to (a misunderstanding of) the observer effect. Regardless, the bottom line is that we can (the film claims) change the universe through thought.

I was prepared for that sort of stuff. However, it goes on to make some other very strange claims. It speculates based on Hebbian Theory (that which fires together, wires together) that we can affect which of our concepts are interconnected, and attempt to disconnect the positive ones from the negative. It goes on to talk about addiction. It is rather odd the way they flip between nerve cells and normal cells, and between nutrients and neurotransmitters - it claims that we can become addicted to emotions because emotions release chemicals the same way drugs do, and as we become more addicted, the number of receptors for each of these chemicals will decrease. These cells with reduced receptors will then replicate, making more cells with fewer receptors, and OMG THIS MEANS THAT IF YOU ARE ADDICTED TO EMOTIONS THEN YOUR CELLS WILL NOT HAVE THE RECEPTORS THEY NEED TO GET NUTRIENTS AND YOU WILL GET OLD AND DIE. Wait, what? Somewhere we went from claims which might be somewhat plausible (some emotions are correllated with certain neurotransmitters, and I am actually uncertain whether feeling an intense emotion for long periods of time may reduce the number of receptors a neuron has - I need to learn more physiological psychology) to claims that are certainly false (this reduction is receptors will somehow affect how all cells, including ones outside the nervous system, uptake nutrients). The biology is so wishy-washy it is hard to say what exactly their misconceptions are.

Speaking of wishy-washy, the film ends with a bunch of very odd wishy-washy spiritualism. There are claims like that "God is the superposition of all the spirit from all things", and "You are a god in the making". One man claims that he creates his day every morning using his magical powers, and does so by asking "the ultimate observer" (what the bleep does that mean?) to affect the quantum field in such a way to make his life better, but to do it in such a way that it is unexpected. This must make things really convenient - if something good happens, he can claim it was his quantum-magic that did it, but he never has to actually predict what will happen.

The storyline woven into the film was possibly the strangest part. At one point the protagonist is at a wedding, and seems able to see the addictions (or something?) of all of the other wedding guests, and seeing how they are controlled by such addictions. This makes it sound coherent, but the way it is presented is just bonkers. It is amusing to watch, anyways.

In the end, What the Bleep Do We Know!? is a heap of random pseudo-science and misconceptions, presented in an incoherent jumble. I'm not sure why it ever became as big as it was.