Archive: What the Bleep

First posted 17 Feb 2004 - This film covered a lot of ground. It may have lacked rigour. It may have made insinuations that outreached any fact base. But you can't deny it prompted questions and presented interesting material in relatively digestible form. My own views have shifted significantly from those I held at the time of this review. Some are now closer to the film's, some still not.

Having seen 'I Heart Huckabees' on Sunday, I saw a preview screening of 'What the Bleep Do We Know' this evening - quite a philosophical week.  'Bleep' will probably launch properly in London in March or April.

Well, Bleep certainly covers a lot of ground.  I am on board with the need for a paradigm shift - from one dominated by the residue of our longstanding and recently ended infatuation with major western religions to something that retains the connection with the numinous while using what modern science has to offer. 

I have to say that the paradigm I envisage differs in a fundamental way from that suggested by the film, but it also shares much ground.  Irrespective of whether I or anyone else actually subscribes to the film's specific direction, it is a must see - simply because it is so thought-provoking.

Particular items that caught my attention or stirred a reaction were:

• The interpretation of Quantum Mechanics as demonstrating the pre-eminence of mind and asserting the observer's role in creating and defining reality;
• The asymmetry of the arrow of time;
• The neuro-electrical and neuro-chemical constituents of learning, habituation and addiction; and the implications for how we can improve ourselves;
• The description of the visual process, or more broadly, the assimilation of new information;
• The chemistry of our cells and implications for overcoming internal and external chemical addictions;
• One specific statement regarding cells being conscious (because each 'takes a perspective');
• The rejection of an objective good and bad;
• The rejection of western conceptions of a personal God and the support for an eastern or pantheistic approach to spirituality.

Quantum mechanics (QM)
The film starts with a strong version of the Copenhagen Interpretation of QM, which says that sub-atomic particles cannot be said to exist independent of observation.  Unobserved, 'they' exist only as potentials, the probabilistic evolution of which is well defined by a mathematical construct called a wave function.  In this wave form, the 'particle' exists as a weighted superposition of all its possible selves (with different positions and momentums for each potential self).  Only upon measurement by an observer does the wave function 'collapse' to a unique particle with definite characteristics (not all of which can be known to arbitrary accuracy at the same time).  This interpretation obviously gives a special role to the 'observer' in nature.

This is combined with a specific view of the self, one in which Mind stands outside the laws of material nature and in a position of primacy relative to the material world - literally Mind over Matter.  I guess you could say the film was espousing an Idealist as opposed to a Realist (read materialist) view of the world: thoughts, ideas, intentions and emotions are the primary building blocks of the world, not atoms, molecules and cells.

The film intertwines these two propositions and draws the conclusion that we each create reality everyday.  Further, by adopting more positive attitudes and engaging in more positive thought patterns, we can impact the material world around us to make our world a better place.

As you'll know if you've read my articles on QM (If you think you understand this, then you don't, Quantum Determinacy, Problems with Quantum Orthodoxy, and Revisiting the Quantum - information please) and the Self (Who Am I?, Destiny, Subjective Objects), I disagree fundamentally with each of the two propositions above.  I am a causal realist at heart, believing that there is an objective material world that exists independent of us and that subsumes us.  And although I think that the Mind is awe-inspiring, I think that it is wholly resident in and reliant on the body.

So without going into any refutations of the film's positions (because I've discussed that in the articles I've mentioned), I'll just say that the film's position on those dimensions does not resonate with me.  I don't view either of them as absurd in their own right.  However, I do think that the leap to the overall conclusion about our ability to literally impact matter and space with our minds is a bit far.  QM's interpretation is still a mystery, with many holding views close to the interpretation cited in the film and some holding views closer to mine.  Consciousness is also a puzzle, with clear-thinking people on each side of the Idealist - Realist debate.  However, just because QM and consciousness are both unexplained doesn't mean that they are related to one another in any way, let alone a causal tie as blunt and direct as the film proposes.

The Arrow of Time
One of the contributors pointed out the peculiar asymmetry of time.  Most (I don't know whether we call say 'all') of the mathematical formulae that so accurately describe the world around us are indifferent to the direction of time, working just as well backwards as forward.  Yet we can only experience time in one direction.  We can (if we can trust our memories) have knowledge of the past but not of the future.  We are troubled by the thought of our not living into the unending future, but we have no problem with the fact that we were not alive for the many thousands of years before our birth.

Some (but not this contributor) have suggested that time's arrow is tied to the second law of thermodynamics, which says that in a closed system, entropy increases over time.  Entropy MUST increase as time moves forward, so perhaps this irreversibility drives the same irreversibility in time.  But upon closer inspection, entropy's increase is not absolutely necessary: it is only probabilistic.  It just so happens that the universe began in a relatively ordered state.  Since there are many more (uncountably so) disordered states than there are ordered ones, entropy's march is staggeringly probable - NEARLY assured.  Yet that is not the same as being necessary, absolute.  So... if we are to tie time to entropy, we would also have to accept that time's direction is not irreversible in theory, but is only practically guaranteed by the high probabilities discussed above.

The Brain and learning, habituation and addiction
Several contributors discussed the role of neural pathways or networks in our behaviour.  We reinforce the formation of certain sets of connections through our habits.  The reinforced sets 'wire' themselves to respond to the frequent call for their combined performance.  Other possible combinations, if not called upon, do not wire themselves up.  We can, through conscious habituation, re-wire some of these networks (e.g. the ones associated with more positive outlooks, more pleasant moods, more confident postures and more successful behaviours).

And this electrical component is accompanied by a chemical one, with parts of the brain creating (or causing to be created) different chemicals for different needs.  Just like we can become addicted to external drugs, we can become addicted to some of these internal, home-made concoctions.  We then engage in the behaviours and nurture the states of mind that give us our fix.

The important point is that a bit of us can stand outside the fray, perhaps up on the mental balcony, observing and intervening to break the vicious cycle.  But we have to recognise and support that bit, exercise it and have confidence in it.

I don't know the science well enough to comment on the accuracy of this 'folk' version of it, but it doesn't seem outlandish; in fact, it jibes quite well with the rough understanding I have from some previous reading.

I'll see it when I believe it
One scene is built around the story that the natives in the  Caribbean did not see Columbus's ships as they sailed in, because they had no visual or mental construct for a ship.  The more general point is that we cannot see or accept things that do not already exist in our mental model or paradigm.

To be honest, I don't buy the foundational story at all.  I can accept that the natives would not know that the ships WERE ships.  I can understand that they would be confused as to what these dark patches on the horizon were, confused by the shapes they became as they grew closer.  But I cannot believe that they literally did not SEE them.

Like everything else in the film, though, it is thought provoking.  It recalls to mind a vague picture I have of how we deal with sensory input and with anomalies in particular.  We are bombarded with sensory input, with much more than we can process, in every waking moment.  Our brains are partially hard-wired through evolution (i.e. natural selection) to help discern the useful info from the 'white noise', and our particular experiences further shape the more plastic aspects of that filter.

From our earliest days, we begin to assemble our working model of the world.  What matters?  What does not?  What framework allows us to maintain internal consistency across the broadest range of our experience - to make sense of the world?  When new input arrives that is labeled as irrelevant, we do not attend to it (unless perhaps we pay the price for ignoring it and our brains pick up on that fact and adjust the framework).  When new input fits the paradigm and is labeled as important, we attend to it. 

But what happens if new information is so far outside our accumulated experience and reasonable extrapolation from it that we can make no sense of it at all?  We tuck it away into a certain bit of the brain where it sits in a cache; at night, while we sleep and dream, among the routine brain maintenance that takes place is a re-assessment of the framework (or paradigm) in the light of any new anomalous information.  What is the smallest adjustment that can be made to the overall model in order to accommodate, make sense of, this new input?  Do we need to scrap the whole model and start anew (when rocks begin to talk or we find out that we are just carnival entertainment for some other, alien and invisible race!)?  If the accommodation necessary is too large, we may well end up just disregarding the anomaly (the Red Sox didn't REALLY win the World Series) and just continue with the paradigm intact.

So you can see that I identify more than a grain of truth in the film's underlying point here.

Junky cells
Back to the addiction theme, another segment looked at it from the somatic cell perspective.  Every cell has loads of receptors for receiving information from its environment, including the chemical drinks discussed above.  If the receptors are incessantly bombarded by some protein 'hit' they shrink and become less responsive to it, meaning it takes more of it to give the same 'fix'.  Cells can then become so engrossed in getting their next 'high' that they neglect other important functions like communication with neighbouring cells and even elimination of their own waste products.  Keep in mind that I'm talking about 'internal', not 'external' drugs here (although I wouldn't be surprised if the story were much the same for external ones).

You can tell by my over-use of analogy that I'm not up to speed with the proper science here, so I can't judge the accuracy of the scientific claims.  It does, though, appeal to common sense.  (Yeah, yeah, I know, common sense often leads us astray when we venture away from the normal life scales and conditions in which it developed.)

Conscious Cells
One contributor spoke (a bit too loosely, I think) about cells being not only alive - an assertion with which I wholly agree - but also conscious.  She said a cell was conscious because it interacted with its environment and processed chemical information.  This doesn't, for me, suggest consciousness.  Or, to put it another way, if it DID qualify as consciousness, then we would have to admit that computers and computer networks are conscious.  Perhaps we should...

No good, no bad
Several contributors pointed out that there is no objective good or bad 'out there' in the world.  A belief with which I am in agreement, as you can read in my articles: Right and Wrong, Sources of Morality, Ethical Notes, Disobedience, Pragmatic Ethics and Nietzsche's Call to Creativity.

No Personal God
All contributors who discussed religion found the creation of a person-like personal God harmful to mankind and in many instances antithetical to what they saw spirituality as. 

I tend to agree that, however powerful, insightful and well-intended the original spiritual messages are, when organised religion accretes around them, the foibles of man dilute, pollute and hijack them.

This isn't at all to say that all clergy are guilty or that all followers are silly. I just think that the more organised a belief structure is, the more likely it is to lose sight of the wood for the trees.

Re-cap
As I said, there were a number of things with which I agreed and a number of things - including the major thesis - with which I didn't.  Still I can heartily recommend 'What the Bleep Do We Know' as an interesting, challenging, thought-provoking film that may well make you want to sit down and put your thoughts to paper.