What the Bleep do we know

[Apex]

800 megs eh? I have that kind of bandwidth, if you get my drift.

[sash]

There are plenty of places to download ISOs online. It's more like 700MB btw.


Warm Regards,
Sasha

[Celeborn]

knucklebrain got it right, this movie was writen, produced, and directed by the Ramtha School of Enlightenment, and many of its "experts" were actually just RSE members.
If you look carefully at the end of the movie, they tell you who everyone is...and the blond woman is clearly listed as Ramtha, the 30000 year old Atlantian, being channeled by JK Knight.
JK Knight, by the way, is the founder of RSE. Before making "what the bleap" she had already racked in millions off of the Ramtha cult. The movie was just one long commercial.

Also, beware the pseudo science. None of the experments that are showcased were performed double blind, and none of them have ever been reproduced. Also, the bit about the Islanders not seeing Columbuses ships was "channeled" information with no basis in historical record.

Honestly, I believe the basic thesis of this film. However I beleive that this film gives all New Age/Spiritualist movements a bad name.

If only Discovery Channel had made a movie on that idea instead...


Edit: I forgot to mention that one of the scientists that was interviewed wrote many letters to magizeens and such over having been grossly taken out of context. Apparently, the directors spliced the interview to twist what he was talking about. He was very clear in his letters that he does not support the conclusions that this movie came to.

[sash]

Also, the bit about the Islanders not seeing Columbuses ships was "channeled" information with no basis in historical record.

I took this idea as more of a metaphor, as much of the film inclines one to think.
Specifically, the fact that we don't see everything in front of us. The mind is conditioned by its present nature to perceive only a certain amount of information based on pre-judgement that already exists within it.
There has been a lot of research into this hypothesis outside of the context of What The Bleep. It has been stated in many sources that we only "see" 50% of what is actually in front of us. I would argue that it is actually much less then that.

It is interesting why some people claim to see alien spacecrafts when others do not, or when someone sees a spirit being but no-one else can see it.
This also applies to how we perceive information, not just physical sight. It all draws from one of the main conclusions in the movie of just how self-limiting human beings are in not realizing their full potential in the context of a quantum reality.


Warm Regards,
Sasha

[Planet_Jeroen]

Also, the bit about the Islanders not seeing Columbuses ships was "channeled" information with no basis in historical record.

Tho it has been prooven that the brain delete's any incomming sensory data that doesnt match your beliefs of what is true / is happening / is important to you.


Regards,

Jeroen

[mick]

Also, the bit about the Islanders not seeing Columbuses ships was "channeled" information with no basis in historical record.

Yes, I have also read that ships were not an unknown to the region prior to the arrival of Columbus. There was already an established sea going trade along the coastlines.

Is there a record of the same effect when a car or cycle or train was first seen and what would they have seen, a silhouette of the unknown object or it is transparent perhaps?

[sash]

The silhouette effect is interesting as this seems to be what most people see when starting out practicing seeing auras. Auras, of course could be just another part of reality that is unseen because they are uncommon. This can be applied as a direct extension of the concepts in the film. Silhouettes and outlines of spirits and energies is another example.

This effect can be likened to one of those pictures that you can stare at for ages, but eventually you see something in the image and to see it again all you have to do is look at the same image and your mind automatically registers it.
It seems that the mind only pays attention to what it knows, and what it doesn't know is bucketed into a "category" of something like that which it knows until a better alternative is found.

I suppose the mind also works on multiple levels of sensory perception, so for example if it hears something it automatically logically thinks that there must be an object orientated with that sound. For example, movement along train tracks, causing it to see a train there. Or the ripples across the water, causing the ships to become visible.
Interestingly enough, another of the main conclusions in the movie suggests that all perception is externalized from within the self, contrary to the common supposition that all reality is an object of subjective perception. There is quite a kool portrayal of this as when the main character opens her eyes and a grid is formed and pieces of her reality fall into place in front of her eyes effectivly forming the world around her.



Warm Regards,
Sasha

[CFTraveler]

".....and many of its "experts" were actually just RSE members.
If you look carefully at the end of the movie, they tell you who everyone is.."

So, does that mean that Dr. Alan Wolfe is not really a quantum phycisist? And Dr. Masaru Emoto really didn't get repeatable results with the water crystals? And that Dr. Candace Pert isn't the same neurochemist that discovered and mapped endorphins in the human body for the first time in the eighties?
It seems to me that if a film uses science to demonstrate spiritual theories,(even new-agey-channeled kinda stuff) the science in it shouldn't be automatically considered not valid.

[Celeborn]

Again, I agree with and personally believe in the thesis of the movie, but if something is going to claim to be science it must use the scientific method. Also information presented as fact must be backed up in some way. If you wish to argue that it is a good movie, this is fine. But it is not a good documentary. I hold the same opinion of the Michael Moore movies.

Here is a quote from Wikipedia on Mr Emoto:

Masaru Emoto's work (The Hidden Messages in Water) plays a prominent role in a scene set in a subway tunnel, where the main character happens upon a presentation of displays showing images of water crystals. In the movie, "before" and "after" photographs of water are presented as evidence that specific words written on pieces of paper and affixed to different containers of water have the power to transform the water into beautiful crystalline shapes. Examples include "You make me sick", "Love and Gratitude", and "Merci". The procedure followed by Emoto can be found at this site. In the movie, it is claimed that "non-physical events" of "mental stimuli" are the cause of this transformation, but skeptics have pointed out that the "after" photographs are microscopic images of the water after being frozen (aka snowflakes) — a step not disclosed in the movie.

Additional problems arise when it becomes clear that Emoto's work is more artistic than scientific. For example, Emoto never submitted his work for peer review, and he did not utilise double blind methodology. If this had been the case, the individual providing the specimen (i.e., the person who selected the water sample, poured it into the container, labeled the container with a message, and froze it) would need to be a different person than the individual who later received the ice for analysis and photography. This second individual would also need to be unaware of what each specimen had been labelled. If the same person performed all of these tasks, this individual could easily select sections of the frozen water that matched what they wanted to see, perhaps unconsciously (a phenomenon otherwise known as confirmation bias). In other words, if the individual wanted to demonstrate that happy words produced aesthetically pleasing shapes, they only needed to find a section of the ice which was aesthetically pleasing. Conversely, if they wanted to demonstrate that angry words created aesthetically displeasing crystals, they again just needed to search until they found a section that did not look as good. Emoto also claims that polluted water does not crystallize. Depending on the properties of the pollutant, heavily polluted water will still form crystals, though the crystals may contain more crystallographic defects than pure water would. These changes in the way the crystals form can be readily explained using basic chemistry and physics.

Emoto essentially appears to have arbitrarily decided what constitutes a "brilliant crystal" and an "incomplete crystal", but in a movie claiming a scientific base grounded in quantum mechanics, a quantification of what defines such crystals is required.

So, no. Mr. Emoto did not get repeatable results because no one other then him has ever repeated it.

And as for one of the other real experts:

Dr. David Albert, a philosopher of physics and professor at Columbia University, speaks frequently throughout the movie. While it may appear as though he supports the ideas that are presented in the movie, according to a Popular Science article, he is "outraged at the final product." [4] The article states that Dr. Albert granted the filmmakers a near-four hour interview, which was then edited and incorporated into the film in such a way that misrepresented his views that quantum mechanics is not related to consciousness or spirituality. In the article, Dr. Albert also expresses his feelings of gullibility after having been "taken" by the filmmakers.

[Planet_Jeroen]

Nice read on water:

Water memory' theory revival boosts homeopathy

Pratap Ravindran

Pune , July 20

THE emergence of homoeopathic medicines as over-the-counter (OTC) products in India coincides with the presentation of a paper by Swiss chemist Dr Louis Rey. The paper, which is to be published in the reputed Physica A journal shortly, says even though they should be identical, the structure of hydrogen bonds in pure water is very different from that in homeopathic dilutions of salt solutions.

This view assumes significance in the context of the fact that scientists reject the theory that water retains a memory of substances dissolved in it — a theory central to homeopathy, the practitioners of which treat their patients with formulations so dilute that they may not contain even a single molecule of the active compound. In fact, the proposition that water has "memory" had cost one of France's top allergy researchers, Dr Jacques Benveniste, his funding and his reputation in 1988.

Dr Rey has now revived the "memory of water" theory with his findings based on the use of thermo-luminescence to study the structure of solids and technique involving bathing a chilled sample with radiation. When the temperature of the sample increases, the stored energy is released as light in a pattern that reveals the atomic structure of the sample.

The Swiss chemist, in order to test the basic tenet of homoeopathy that patterns of hydrogen bonds can survive successive dilutions, tested samples diluted to a notional 10-30 grams per cubic cm — far beyond the point at which any ions of the original substance could remain. When he compared the ultra-dilute lithium and sodium chloride samples with pure water subjected to the same process, he found that the difference in their thermo-luminescence peaks was still present. According to Dr Rey, this finding proves that the networks of hydrogen bonds in the samples were different.

But not all are convinced. Some experts on water and hydrogen bonding argue that Dr Rey's rationale for water memory is not very persuasive as most hydrogen bonding in liquid water rearranges when frozen and that the thermo-luminescence peaks observed by the Swiss chemist occurred at about the temperatures where ice is known to undergo transitions between different phases. Others, however, believe that Dr Rey's findings fall well within the parameters of good physics.

The last time homoeopathy received a fillip from mainstream science was in 2001 when a research team in South Korea made a chance discovery that challenged the conventional wisdom that dissolved molecules may not spread farther apart as a solution is diluted and that they may, in fact, come together, initially as clusters of molecules and then as bigger aggregates of those clusters.

A German chemist, Dr Kurt Geckeler, and his colleague, Dr Shashadhar Samal, chanced upon this wholly counter-intuitive effect when investigating fullerenes at the Kwangju Institute of Science and Technology in South Korea. They reported that the football-shaped buckyball molecules formed untidy aggregates in solution.

This finding caused a lot of excitement among chemists as they believed that it provided the first scientifically valid insight into how some homoeopathic remedies work. Homoeopaths dilute medications several times over as they believe that the higher the dilution, the more potent the remedy. Some dilute to "infinity" — that is, until no molecules of the remedy remain. They maintain that water holds a memory, or "imprint" of the active ingredient which is more potent than the ingredient itself.