What the Bleep!? - Down the Rabbit Hole (QUANTUM Three-Disc Special Edition)
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Movie Reviews of What the Bleep!? - Down the Rabbit Hole (QUANTUM Three-Disc Special Edition)
Movie Review: jumbled
Summary: 3 Stars
The underlying message of the movie was amazing. The movie itself seems to try to be too many things. The halfway developed story of the photographer has no relationship to the brilliant scientists. The animated sequence of human cells addicted to certain emotions seems superimposed on the story in a careless way. Basically, all the seams, stitches and bolts are showing. This is unfortunate because the interviews with the scientists really elucidate the staggering importance and implications of quantum physics in very easy-to-understand language. The animation of the cells, neurons and hypothalamus also makes things clear. If nothing else, see it for the subway scene with the Japanese Water Experiment. That was a paradigm shift in and of itself!!! The movie as a whole is just put together poorly.Movie Review: This has got to be a joke..... Right?
Summary: 1 Stars
I just have to say that this is my very first review on Amazon.
After reading reviews on this movie I chose not to buy it but bought "You can Heal Your Life" instead. However I was still curious about "what the bleep". I found it on a website where I could view it for free. Thank God 'cause I would have been pissed with a capital P had I paid $$ to buy it. I can't believe this. I would NOT recommend this movie ever. Rent it for $3-4 bucks and save yourself the agitation of feeling jipped.
What I can say is that the most interesting part is when the scientists/experts give their explanations and references of how our minds create our envioronment and how it effects our bodies but it seems to be about 25% of the movie. The rest is unnecessary elongated filming that is supposed to describe/support the experts views. All it is doing is filling up space between experts speaking to make it seem like a full length movie. It didn't seem to match and flow with the experts; not as far as content but presentation.
As Siskel & Ebert would say " THUMBS DOWN"
Movie Review: Thought provoking and potentially life changing
Summary: 5 Stars
I think that like many theories (science or otherwise) Quantum physics produces a mental model or conceptual model of how reality is. In this case it's a way of visualizing what is happening in the experiments in those particle accelerators. Language, including mathematics (wich is just a language too,) is more or less a set of symbols that point to that wich they are describing. A way to fit what is experienced into a framework we can wrap are heads around. The verification for it, like most theories about how reality works, comes not from the irrefutable proof that our way of thinking of it is the be all end all deepest most complete mental model of the world there is... But rather, it's verification comes from the fact that like any theory that stands the test of time..... It allows for predictions that are consistently congruent with our experience. In other words, they calculate the answer we are looking for, and they do so very well. If it didn't work for practical intents and purposes, we would have moved on to a model that gets the correct predictions. Or at least we'd be trying to move toward one. Like language, mental models of what happens in the sub-atomic realm are not the thing itself to wich it points. But a set of symbols to explain what it is pointing to.
Does the math behind it being consistent with the results of experiment REALLY mean that matter is spread out in all the probable locations, spins, velocities etc at once like a number matrix? Until a measurement is made? That, I can't tell you. But the equations do seem get the result that agrees with what we experience in experiments.
But what I DO know is this: In regards to the questions of consciousness.... My EXPERIENCE of what appears to me to be reality "out there" is profoundly effected by MY "mental model" of how reality is, and how things are "supposed to be". If I become convinced of new way of looking at the way the world is, then regardless of weather my perceptual differences and habit's of thought patterns actually have an effect on the "out there" (matter, events, etc) it's undeniably effected the way I'VE experienced that event. Wich for most people is highly relevant to their ability to be happy in the present moment. Does experiencing reality in a new way equate to changing it? Maybe or maybe not. It seems that at this point in the evolution of our consciousness, we can't get out of our finite brains and bodies and experience to test what we experience against ultimate reality, to confirm that it was purely the perceptual, or if some effect on the events was induced by that perception.
If we (any individual person) choose to be totally honest with ourselves, we will acknowledge that whatever our current world view is, we don't absolutely KNOW that it's the deepest most perfect model of the highest most complete in-alterable truth of everything there is, was or will potentially be. But rather that it is merely the world view that SEEMS to be the most plausible given our current level of consciousness, and the information we have available, and how well we can reduce our bias's when analyzing our experience. And that goes for ANY person and ANY honest assessment of one's one world paradigm. It seems there is always a possibility that a deeper or more complete view of ultimate reality exists than whatever our current one is. Brainwashing oneself to believing that there could be no question that there is any inaccuracy or lack of completeness in ones world view may serve to make that person feel comfortable by taking the out of control feeling that is all to familiar to any person who has searched for a way to exist happily in the world, (wich I deeply empathize with BTW), still, it is not being very honest with oneself unless it is backed by experience. Not necessarily using exclusively a realist/materialist method of experience, but just experience of some kind.
To me, this movie is mostly about various phenomena of experience (Weather it be quantum mechanics, neuroscience, out of body, or psychic experience, emotional or psychological experience,spiritual experience or WHATEVER type) any phenomenon that makes us keep re-evalutating our "Paradigm" or model of how we think different aspects of reality are like. If it changes the reality "out there" to look at it in a different or more empowering way, then great. If not, then at least it clearly effects how we live our life, and how happy we are (while we're stuck living in this meat-suit) for the better. And that seems pretty important to me. Even if the particular world view espoused is later updated, or changed. If a paradigm becomes obsolete, then you move on. That doesn't change the fact that the old paradigm was useful for a time, and helped you get to a new and hopefully better one. And in that way, the old paradigm need not be a time to regret. But rather a time to let go of and move on in light of a new way of understanding your place in existence.
Movie Review: New-Age Pseudo-Science Fluff - Terrible Whether It's Being Watched or Not
Summary: 1 Stars
I'm not really sure why I'm bothering to review this film. Except that I heard a woman on the radio the other day referring to this film as if it were a source of knowledge. This concerns me. It (like creationism/ID) is another example of the scientific illiteracy in the US. I'm not going to try to catalog the silliness of this film, but I'll hit some of the "high" points.
The main feature of this film is a series of talking heads that spout sound bites that are meant to sound "scientific" and mysterious and amazing. I'm not surprised they don't identify them; why should we listen to anything these people say? They provide no data and make many bald-faced assertions that are false, misleading, and unsupportable. They spout fluff like: "this requires a whole new science," "we can't explain X," "if you look into it carefully, it's so strange that there's just no way science can explain it," "Heisenberg himself said ...," "scientific experiments have shown ..." [why do they never cite the journal article for these "amazing facts?"], ad nauseum.
All this "information" is supposed to make you think (at least this is the message I heard):
1. Dualism is true [it's not]
2. You can create your own reality by conscious will [you can't]
3. You can time-travel, change the form of matter, etc. [you can't]
4. Science actually doesn't support naturalism; but rather some kind of new-age spiritualism/mysticism [it doesn't; scientific knowledge supports naturalism in every detail]
The silly non-sequiturs include, primarily:
1. Certain very strange things happen with matter at the subatomic level, therefore they can occur at the middle-world scale of our bodies. For instance: the fact that you can't measure both the location and velocity of a subatomic particle at the same time means that the middle-world objects around you don't exist until you observe them. [We experience is the SUM of trillions of motions of subatomic particles that actually does act just like we perceive it does, on our scale. The fact that you can't localize an electron does not mean we don't understand the macro (middle-world) behavior of matter very exactly. People in China do actually exist and live their lives whether you observe them or not. You may be ignorant of them; but that has no causal effect on their actual existence.]
2. "X" is deeply perplexing or difficult to understand, therefore it's a "mystery," therefore something supernatural must be going on, therefore that's somehow comforting. ["X" includes (of course!) quantum physics, human consciousness, the subatomic world, etc. These things are perplexing because our brains evolved to help our DNA replicate in our "middle-world" of objects from the size of sand grains to mountains (as opposed to the atomic/subatomic or very large (stars/galaxies/the universe) scale.) The subatomic world is completely different from middle-world, as is the very large. We only needed a useful (for propagating DNA) model of the world in our consciousness, not an accurate model of all reality. Your or my lack of intellectual skills does not warp space-time, nor does it imply or require ANYTHING about the nature of reality.]
3. Science doesn't have the perfect model of how sub-atomic and astro-physical scale events behave, therefore your brain creates its own reality and you can travel backward or forward in time, walk on water or whatever. [Do I need to even comment?]
4. The mathematics that describe the physical world have a time scale (dimension) that mathematically allows "motion" in both directions. Therefore we can time travel using our minds. And the corollary: the direction of time seems real; but is arbitrary and we can't prove why it goes the way it seems to us that it does. [The first statement is trivial, since math always allows this. There IS a real direction to time: It is most forcefully pointed by the increase of entropy of the universe as a whole.]
5. In the past we used to think that the earth was flat, then we thought it was round, now (in the post-modernist miasma of the film) we can't be sure that it really IS round, since we were wrong about it being flat. [Again, there is a direction to our accumulating real knowledge of the world. We do know that the earth is round and revolves around the sun, it's not a guess. And it will be round and revolving long after we are gone.]
The "dramatized" parts, that purport to show Marlee Matlin making some kind of "spiritual journey" replete with time-travel and Matrix-like special effects, are just amazingly lame. This film isn't just lame, it's supine. It doesn't need a cane or a walker, it needs a complete ICU. The acting is abysmal, as is the dialog.
This film purports to address the "Big Questions," like, why are we here [it's not a question that requires or deserves an answer], how did we get here [we evolved from earlier mammals in Africa], the meaning of life [if there is one it's: replicate your DNA], the nature of consciousness [If you actually want to learn something, please read "Consciousness Explained" by Dennett and Pinker's books on consciousness]: you know, the usual suspects. But, again, it just lamely tries to make it all mysterious and pseudo-scientific by innuendo. This is the very worst kind of new-age fluff and pseudo-science magic that tries to replace the comfort of religion with the comfort of some other sort of supernatural delusion. As science has found actual, useful, verifiable knowledge about the world/universe/life, the magical "explanations" of religion have been replaced. But most people seem to desire the comfort of religion, mystery, whatever. This film is the kind of thing that results. Don't fall for this snake oil. Read some books of real science instead.
Movie Review: Awesome movie!
Summary: 5 Stars
This movie is really food for thought! Sometimes we think our society in this age is so advanced, but we really have so much more to learn.
Watched it several times and now am passing it around!