I saw What the Bleep many years ago and recently viewed this extended version. Most of the reviews here fall generally into two categories; those who are searching for and finding herein a confirmation for the notion that it's super cool that we create our own reality, and those who take up the "real science" camp position or who may have a more refined understanding of quantum physics and know that the application of quantum mechanics to consciousness is still possibly quite the quantum leap. Unfortunately, this latter group suffers from much of the same extreme thinking as the former group; the former not engaging in enough critical thinking, and the latter claiming that it's all pseudoscience by non-scientists. Neither of these extremes is anywhere near accurate.
For me, there were some real gems in this movie. The cartoon demonstration with Dr. Quantum of the double slit experiments was the best description I've ever seen of them. I wish something this amenable to common sense was available to me any of the many times I had to suffer through abstract explanations of this model in school. In fact, I think that the film makers should rent/license this segment of the film to universities. Once students gain this common sense understanding of these experiments, then the math of it becomes easy. This appreciation goes doubly for the great graphics explanations of neural networks and the neurochemical feedback from the cells demanding satiation [and who doesn't love a Polish wedding]. This is a reasonable and literature supported model of cognition and addiction that is presented here in a way that is completely accessible and very well done. I have often referred people in my care to this segment of What the Bleep? because it's such a great explanation of neural networks and the relationships among brain, belief and behavior, and I feel it's handled even better in this extended edition of the film. My best friend, an academic physicist, said to me a couple of decades ago that science is completely amenable to common sense understanding. We all interact with science all day long in every common thing we do. If someone can't understand science it's because the scientist has failed to properly explain it. I have found this to be absolutely true as it relates to my field of biology. These two demonstrations in this film are excellent teachings of REAL science.
I'm one who bristles regularly at the new agers around me who chirp on about quantum physics and yet wouldn't know Schrodingers cat if it threw up a hairball on them. But I take even more exception to the critics writing here who dismiss everyone in the film as pseudo scientists, or non-scientists, with the exception of the real scientists who supposedly all complained about being misrepresented in the film. Really? Candace Pert is not a real scientist? She was only the director of an NIH lab and discovered the enkaphalin [opiate] receptor. Amit Goswami? He was only a distinguished professor of quantum mechanics for three decades, and wrote two text books [one used on the graduate level] on quantum mechanics. Just because these have retired from their establishment positions doesn't detract from their entire lifetime of experience as scientists, and people who have said such things as "not currently earning a paycheck in a scientific job" as a credible critique of their appearance are merely taking cheap shots. I guess Einstein's not a real scientist either because he's so retired he's dead. Stuart Hameroff? Are you kidding me? This guy is *currently* testing a hypothesis that the collapse of the wave function occurs in the cytoskeletal proteins of the neural microtubules, and therefore, that consciousness *is* the collapse of the wave and it occurs in these brain structures. This hypothesis is co-authored by Roger Penrose for heaven's sake, the all but sainted Oxford mathematician and physicist, and the math of it - especially the temperature issue, is currently being duked out in those circles. The Google corporation is sponsoring a meeting on their campus this coming October [2010] on this very issue of robust quantum effects in warm biological systems, at which Hameroff will participate. This is a truly hot topic in neurology right now, developed by Hameroff's decades of experience as a physician and anaesthesiologist. In the film he articulates very reasonable ideas about the interface between quantum effects and brain microarchitecture.
All the bruhaha in these comments about the real scientists all complaining about their appearances is false. Yes, David Albert complained about his appearance, but both Pert and Goswami list their appearances on their websites. Hameroff, in answering a critical review of the movie in Scientific American, told people to lighten up because entertainment often opens minds to new ideas. And it is also a false claim made here that many of the presenters in the movie are affiliated with the Ramtha School of Enlightenment [the film makers are RSE affiliated]. Only Joe Dispenza seems to have an actual relationship to RSE, which is unfortunate because he's a smart guy who well articulates brain learning systems. Others, such as Goswami and Hagelin have been invited speakers at RSE but are not otherwise involved. An ex-student of RSE, a neuroscientist, invited them to speak when he was with the school, but as he discusses in a film clip on Factnet dot org, none ever joined or taught there. IMO, the problem with the "science camp" reviewers here is that they can't curb their dogma long enough to remember that all the current scientific ideas once came from people thinking way outside the box, and that this is exactly how science moves forward. Scientists are often not afraid of exchanging ideas with others who challenge their assumptions about reality, and in doing so, a scientist does not lose credibility. These scientists have not lost their credibility just because they have exchanged thoughts in a public way with meditators, or disembodied entities or other scientists who are attempting to apply the experimental method to psychic phenomenon. The ideas about consciousness as a quantum phenomena pondered in this movie are deeply provocative, not just to new agers. Listen to Roger Penrose in the movie A Brief History of Time based on Hawking's work; he ponders this relationship between quantum findings and consciousness. So our BEST scientific thinkers think about these things and feel there is a worthy connection.
As for the Ramtha issue, well yeah, that's big time problematic for me. It's not even so much the channeling of a disembodied entity, but there's just so much information about JZ Knight being such a scam and RSE being a truly abusive cult that it fatally burdens this film with baggage making it too difficult to define the film as a documentary. Although it is not true as claimed here that the film can then be deconstructed to be little more than a support for her cult's views because we hear nothing in the film of some of RSE's teachings that evil lizard aliens will come and defeat our world and that only her initiates will survive because they've tunneled into copper-lined caves where the lizard aliens cannot find them. My main problem with the film is that I take huge exception with the conflation made by the movie's premise that consciousness as a quantum event means that science and spirituality have met, which is obviously the whole sell of the movie. There is absolutely nothing necessarily spiritual about any of this, even if it is shown that consciousness is a quantum event, even if it is shown that consciousness is the observer and can influence the eventual collapse of superposition and that it is the mechanism through which entanglement unfolds. If these things prove true, it means that the brain is awesome which still has nothing to do with left over church fables about a god or about a spirit.
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