"What The Bleep Do We Know" movie thread

http://www.holisticnetworker.com/messages/

AFTER PRAYER

LEFT: "SOUL"
RIGHT: "DEMON"

Is this some old crap I just haven't heard about yet? If it was for real, I presume I would have read about it before and it might have won some scientific type of prize or something.

http://www.holisticnetworker.com/messages/images/messages03.jpg
BEFORE PRAYER
\http://www.holisticnetworker.com/messages/images/messages02.jpg
AFTER PRAYER

http://www.holisticnetworker.com/messages/images/messages09.jpg
LEFT: "SOUL"
RIGHT: "DEMON"

Is this some old crap I just haven't heard about yet? If it was for real, I presume I would have read about it before and it might have won some scientific type of prize or something.

http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20041003/ANSWERMAN/410030301/1023

haha

I'd be skeptical enough if he were talking about chiropracty.

It very much struck me as Hindu occult stuff. I wonder if Ramtha is Hindu...

The parts that I found particularly hokey: the mini-Morpheus on the basketball court and the sunny artist roommate painting with her feet while listening world dance music.

Book review of "Messages In Water" by Dr. Emoto:

Pseudoscience at its best, June 17, 2004
Reviewer: A reader
"I first became aware of Dr. Emoto's claims through the subway scene in the movie "What the BLEEP do we know?" I applied several tools from Carl Sagan's Baloney Detection Kit to the claims. I searched the peer-reviewed scientific literature in the PubMed database at National Library of Medicine and, among the 12 million or so articles there, I found a single report by Dr. Emoto in what appeared to be a reputable journal. However, upon closer inspection, the article was described in this journal as a "Photoessay" and did not even come close to meeting the criteria for a true scientific study. If anyone can validate the results of Dr. Emoto's version of homeopathy, James Randi may have a million-dollar prize for you. If you want to be truly inspired by the awe and mystery and spirituality of nature, check out Ursula Goodenough's book."

Can't get anything past you, it appears...

You know, I admit I haven't seen it, but everyone I know who saw it says it makes a terrible case, and that the movie mostly shows that it doesn't have a strong grasp on what it's talking about.

But they were physics majors in college, so what do they know?

Ramtha is a 35,000 year old Cro-Magnon warrior from Atlantis, which I guess is a "no" to that question.

http://skepdic.com/channel.html

(Note to self: why am I scrounging for tech writing jobs, when all I need to do is develop my phony accent skills to make a fortune?)

Not in mine. I see that your intentions are good in thinking this, but they are misguided, I believe. Ignorant people without any power are just as danderous as ignorant people *with* power. Ignorant people without power, if they are numerous and impowered enough, eventually gain power in one way or another. I do not mean that Ramtha will gain political office, but I do worry that the popular perception will shift against science, and toward the perception that all is unknowable, or some such dangerous bullshit. All is not unkowable. The foundation of your house depends on that assumption. So does you favorite form of digital entertainment. To argue against science, which has brought us nearly everything that we value most, like health and prolonged life, in favor of some made up "mystery" is the worst iind of lie.

To argue against science, which has brought us nearly everything that we value most, like health and prolonged life, in favor of some made up "mystery" is the worst iind of lie.

Sure you can argue against science, or at least against against the dominant science of today. One of the basic principles of science is that if someone has a critical argument with enough proof to back it up, it should be taken into consideration. The problem with all these new age types is that, while they have plenty of arguments, they're seriously lacking in evidence.

But if by "science" you meant "the scientific method of trying to find probalities and regularities in the world", then I'm totally with you.

I bet I could stab you repeatedly, though.

But they were physics majors in college, so what do they know?

Yeah, I don't know, but the bit about addiction and peptides made sense. What that has to do with Quantum whatever is beyond me. The movie faded very fast from my memory. However, when I wrote "the movie makes a good case for the idea..." I did mean it makes a good case for the *IDEA*, not that it's a solid theory... and I did mean for the general layman. I didn't mean it to sound so very accepting. I bet I could stab you repeatedly, too.

this Ramtha video is such a treat...I am kind of really addicted to it, it just keeps getting better

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NbleQv1e0-8

The way I see it, even if Ramtha truly is some spirit who is being channeled from beyond, why the fuck would anyone trust it any more than any other random stranger who gives you weird advice and makes demands on you? Just because it's a spirit is no guarantee it isn't a malicious pathological liar who just loves to fuck with your head and watch you ruin your life, all because it says it is all-knowing and all-wise and you fell for it. Hell, Trump pulls the same shit on his supporters and see how well off they are for believing him.

Oh yeah, if you're wondering what Ramtha's up to these days:

https://www.thenewstribune.com/latest-news/article223435620.html

Speaking of Trump!

Ramtha Followers Became Crime Targets
https://www.expandingfrontiersresearch.org/post/ramtha-followers-became-crime-targets

the main thing I know about this movie now is that it was codirected by former NXIVM member Mark Vicente

redfez
Posted: 18 October 2004 at 15:24:36
Can't get anything past you, it appears...
I bet I could stab you repeatedly, though.

^ can’t see posts like this rando in 2004 who swallowed all this shite and then talked about stabbing ppl who said it was obvious rubbish without wondering what they’re like in 2025. Probably fine and normal

xp I mainly know it as the kind of origin story of that dispenza charlatan. The other time capsule thing in this thread is Drew’s comment that it was a positive thing that people were turning from religious fundamentalism to this kind of conspirituality bs. Probably a reasonable enough thing to say in the bush era but phew that did not work out so well

"The way I see it, even if Ramtha truly is some spirit who is being channeled from beyond, why the fuck would anyone trust it any more than any other random stranger who gives you weird advice and makes demands on you?"

Not for the first time this week I'm reminded of Star Trek V. The first time I was reminded of Star Trek V was while I was pondering the latex masks from Mission Impossible. The second time, I was wondering whether cats need to breathe. The third time, I woke up in a state of sexual arousal and wondered if it was possible to make love to a mountain. Can a mountain give consent? This is the fourth time.

Why am I reminded of Star Trek V? Because the spirit at the centre of the galaxy in that film was obviously ancient, and it had a certain amount of wisdom, but as Aimless suggested six years ago it wasn't nice. It was nasty! Perhaps because it knew it was trapped inside Star Trek V.

On a tangent, the effects for that film were famously terrible. The producers wanted to hire ILM, but they were busy, so they hired a smaller company called Bran Ferren and Associates who apparently had a good demo reel. But they were out of their depth and had to subcontract the modelwork, which was generally inferior to TNG, which was in production the same time (presumably this is why the producers didn't just ask the TNG team to have a go).

Ferren himself has a Wikipedia biography, and it's hilarious. It was obviously written by him, and does everything in its power to present him as a legend in the film world. It's twice as long as Wikipedia's biography of Douglas Trumbull, three times as long as its biography of John Dykstra. It doesn't talk about Star Trek V at all, it's illustrated by a photograph of the 72-year-old Ferren that appears to have been Photoshopped to give him unusually glossy skin, it lists all of his speaking engagements and directorships in mind-numbing detail, it does a very poor job of explaining his actual, concrete achievements, which is odd because he actually was successful while working for Disney.

Back on topic, the "before prayer" / "after prayer" photos are presented here:
https://theeclecticmethod.com/2018/05/10/book-review-the-hidden-messages-of-water-by-masaru-emoto/

They also suggest that playing Beethoven, Bach, or Mozart to water makes it form ordered crystals, but playing Elvis, "japanese pop", or "heavy metal" makes water assume amorphous, random shapes. Which I think is supposed to imply that Beethoven makes water pretty, and Elvis makes water ugly. But do I want sharp, pointed water crystals flowing through my bloodstream? No, I would prefer it if water is slippery. In fact I think that water should be free to assume whatever shape it wants. It's one of the prerequisites of human life, it's bigger than me.

I can't help but wonder if the original book is a form of cultural cringe, e.g. the author (a Japanese man who grew up in the post-war years) had been taught as a child that Japanese culture was bad and wrong, and that he should value Beethoven and Bach, and by extension the entire "water memory" movement is just a result of one man's peculiar hangups. A weird side-effect of Douglas MacArthur's period as Japan's head honcho.

Imagine a political movement inspired entirely by one man's peculiar emotional hangups. Thank heavens the rest of us don't allow such movements to have actual, real power.

great post.

the main thing I know about this movie now is that it was codirected by former NXIVM member Mark Vicente

― jaymc, Saturday, May 3, 2025 6:29 AM (two days ago)

shamefully having watched nearly all the NXIVM docs, this was one of the more aggravating background points. basically summarized as "I gained some notoriety for having directed this movie for a group I formerly liked, but they ended up being a cult. I'm now involved in NXIVM, which definitely isn't a cult!"

cut to a number of months later: "Oh shit, I think this is also a cult"

The other time capsule thing in this thread is Drew’s comment that it was a positive thing that people were turning from religious fundamentalism to this kind of conspirituality bs. Probably a reasonable enough thing to say in the bush era but phew that did not work out so well

Also had a "oh man if you only knew" reaction reading that, and then the posts pushing back against it are as helpless as current attempts.

It really does feel like this was a harbinger of things to come: an unscientific deluge of cool-sounding ideas and theories that aren't an alternative to a system of control, but a more powerful system of control where the main tenet is to distrust scientific authority, or even consensus reality, to follow your own system of gurus. Where every tiktok or instagram influencer is a guru and they're all trying to come up with new angles.

literally anything can be a cult fwiw. i agree with drew's post in the sense that if the we take as a baseline of human behavior that with an increased availability of ideas and experiences people will generally move on from the stilted beliefs of organized religion toward something richer, kinder and more open. but it turns out people crave the public, social order of creeds and organizations and laws and black and white etc. as an equal and opposite force, and like, that's the reason that christianity evolved the way it did in the first place.

for sure, so many things are culty

I have no idea if this movie specifically drove people to check out the Ramtha group or was just a collection of faux-scientific thought, but both the Ramtha group and NXIVM explicitly had a charismatic (well, questionably so) leader that controlled a tight-knit group that lived at least partially in a co-living complex space. pretty cookie cutter cult behavior

The cult thing infected so much of the population, this is obvious, of course, but the new leaders of these movements are Jordan Peterson, Russell Brand, Joe Rogan, etc., nothing but leaders of their own kind of cults. Just this relentless barrage of bullshit and brainwashing. In the case of Brand, it’s a literally a pseudo religious “charismatic guru” type who probably would still commit sexual assault against his followers if he could. It’s just now the difference is the cults are not gathered in some remote mall sized yurt but they are taking the yurt with them in their pocket, accessible at any time.