WickedEye's Quotient

{rant}
I should say, at the outset of this tirade- it will be nothing less- that I am, in many ways, an unapologetic snob.

Those of you who drop by on a regular basis know this already. Those who don’t will discover it forthwith and be either enraged or amused.

I cannot stand many things. Blatantly poor grammar and spelling from those who claim to be highly educated, people who play music that registers on the Richter scale, neon-colored non-safety clothing, racial slurs, the taste of liver, trying to dry my clothes on an indoor line in monsoon weather.

One of the things- if not the very thing- I detest most on this earth is people who purposefully abuse the truth.

When I say ‘truth’, I am not talking about philosophical truth of any kind- religious, political, literary; I am talking about scientific facts, empirically established and tested, wrested from the deeps of the universe by the consummate ingenuity of mankind. This sort of abuse occurs constantly in human society, but the extreme ends of it- and those who warp subjects close to my heart- infuriate me in a way few other things can.

Everyone close to me knows by now that if they wish to hear me rant until I start foaming at the mouth, there is no better trigger than the mention of the movie named in the title above. I won’t write the name again, because it may very well set off an oral rant in which I fill in the aural blank created by those non-letter symbols very creatively, and then proceed to demonstrate my considerable vocabulary in a precise explication of why the movie to which it is attached, and the people who made that movie, are verminous, imbecilic, and execrable- and I’m at work. I really don’t want to get in trouble over these detestable liars.

I should also disclose my special interest here, which is that quantum theory fascinates me- both in the areas of mechanics and in mechanics’ larger applications to field theory. It has fascinated me since I was 8 years old, and I am familiar with its basics and conversant with its principles, and they have been shredded and shat upon by these despicable dolts.

For those of you who are not interested in any area of quantum theory, have no fear. I’ve no intention of expounding on it here. What I am going to do, with some semblance of calm and while avoiding as many epithets as possible, is point out why these cretinous crooks are an insult to any thinking person and a blot and excrescence on human history.

In case any of you don’t know the basic facts about the film already, here they are: this film is the product of a cult in the Pacific Northwest, Ramtha’s School of Enlightenment, which believes that a woman named JZ Knight can channel a 35,000-year-old continent-near-Atlantis-conquering sage named Ramtha. No, really. You can read the Salon article on the cult and the movie here. If you want to read JZ’s gibberish, do a Google search- I’m not polluting my blog with a link to purveyors of this kind of offal.

Every “scientist” who spoke in the film is associated with this cult, with the exception of David Albert, who is a Professor of Philosophy at Columbia University and director of Columbia’s graduate program in the philosophical foundations of physics. He has repeatedly and publicly insisted that his views are entirely misrepresented by the filmmakers, who cut and spliced his 5-hour-long interview- in which he explained that their view of quantum theory has no support in the scientific community- in order to make it appear that he supported their beliefs. This, then, is but one example of the kind of desecration of fact consistently displayed throughout the movie.

The central contention of the movie is that, because of the quantum property of superposition, human beings have the ability to consciously, deliberately choose the way they want their lives and the world they live in to be, and that the choice thus made makes itself a reality.

In other words: Choose to believe anything you want, believe it fervently enough, and it will come true.

Now, statements on belief and the realities of the human mind are more susceptible than most to the kind of reductio ad absurdum demonstrated in the last statement. Except that, in this case, it isn’t a reductio ad absurdum. This case is unique, because this really is the premise of the movie. These perjuring thieves twist and despoil the tested, beautifully elaborated triumph of human thought that is quantum theory in an attempt to show that thought can change measurable physical properties.

They mean this statement to be taken literally, though it is utter and complete nonsense. It has never been demonstrated, though people have been trying to prove it for, literally, centuries. But, since the Ramtha gang and their dupes pursue the same noble quest in order to advance the boundaries of human knowledge, I invite any of the proponents of that idea to try the following experiment:

1) Approach a high drop.
2) Consciously decide that g (the acceleration of gravity) is no longer equal to approximately 9.8 meters per second squared.
3) Set g equal to 0.05 meters per second squared.
4) Convince yourself of this truth.
5) Walk off the drop.

Actually, “invite” is the wrong word. “Beg” is a better one. Try it, please. Please. For the sake of all that is good on this earth, try it. For all that is worthwhile in the human mind, try it. In the name, and for the protection, of truth and sense and reason, please, please try it.

Just think of how greatly your efforts will advance our understanding of human consciousness.

I have stated before that science, as practiced via the scientific method, is the greatest attainment of all the measureless wonders of the human mind. The elucidation of quantum theory, from Planck to Einstein to Schrodinger to Dirac to Feynman, and onward, is the crowning triumph of the greatest physical scientists of the twentieth century- figures who stand as tall or taller in the halls of history than scientists like Democritus, Galileo, or Newton.

It is this triumph, these men, and all the history of scientific genius before and after that these vandals- and others like them- are defacing.

And despite my vocabulary, I really have no words for the depth of contempt I feel for that.
{/rant}