Blackmoor Vituperative

Susan and I just got back from seeing What The Bleep Do We Know at the Naro Expanded Cinema, and we can’t stop talking about it. For the most part, we have been using words like “unwatchable”, “flakes”, “spiritualist mumbo-jumbo”, and “scientifically illiterate”.

It would be tempting to call What The Bleep Do We Know the worst movie I have ever seen, but it’s not really a movie. It’s one part infomercial for pseudo-science cults, one part bad home movie, and one part PBS elementary school special which tries to explain a complicated field of study without using any actual facts. I am embarassed for Marlee Matlin: she hasn’t been in much recently, and I hope that this drivel doesn’t poison her career. I feel even worse for any real scientists or mathematicians who may have been involved in this garbage. But the people I feel sorriest for are those who come out of this movie and think that they have learned anything about quantum physics.

This isn’t a new phenomena, of course. When radioactivity was new and little understood, quacks came out of the woodwork, proclaiming it a cure for everything from hot flashes to the common cold. Before that, the same thing happened with electricity: by plugging electrodes to your wrists, you could cure insomnia, gout, and arthritis. It’s no surprise that quantum physics has become the vehicle for superstitious nonsense and half-baked theories concocted by charlatans and bought into by scientific illiterates. Same thing, different decade: people are morons.

If you genuinely want an introduction to quantum mechanics, rather than 111 minutes of spiritualist gibberish, read Alice In Quantumland, by Robert Gilmore. Now that would make a great movie. It would even be educational, in stark contrast to What The Bleep Do We Know.