The honesty part that’s missing in the claims about quantum physics and consciousness:

The interpretations of quantum physics presented in movies like “What the Bleep,” which i have watched, and (presumably) “The Quantum Activist,” which i haven’t watched, are not supported by (almost all) quantum physicists or philosophers studying quantum mechanics. This includes at least one of the scientists featured in “What the Bleep,” David Albert (see here). I realize that Amit Goswami was trained as a physicist, yet his approach is
more philosophical than physics. It is critiqued by a fellow physicist, Victor Stenger, in “Quantum Gods” and in this essay. Also, the experiments in quantum mechanics are done at the scale of atoms or atom particles. Extending these experimental results to anything larger than an atom might not be valid (in the sense of external validity – the generalizability of study results).

Research in psychology points toward the importance of unconscious decisioning (see work by John Bargh, Timothy Wilson, and George Lakoff). There’s also considerable evidence for implicit biases that impact our judgments (stereotypes & system justification tendency) (work by John Jost and stuff around the Implicit Association Test). I have been trying to understand what needs are behind the wish that quantum physics somehow proofs certain spiritual beliefs. There seems to be something particularly “sexy” about it – maybe because it’s shrouded in mystery and some experimental results are mind-boggling. If we want a scientific grounding of the idea of connection, why not simply look at the theory of evolution? Evolutionary, we are all related to every living thing on this Earth. I wonder if the needs are hope and credibility, something that the theory of evolution might not hold despite its scientific grounding (see this Nova series). (I remember how inspired and hopeful i felt after “What the Bleep” until i started checking into JZ Knight and the credibility of the movie started to unravel).

I would enjoy hearing reactions, especially if you can share what needs are met for you when you watch movies like “The Quantum Activist.” Also, i would welcome feedback on how i presented this, as i realize that i am using a lot of words…

The other thing that is alive in me: Fatigue. I didn’t sleep well. Often waking up scared what reaction my email would garner. I realize now that i am so longing to be heard and accepted as i am even if i chose not to watch the movie because there is enough evidence for me that contradicts the claims made in the movie (based on the summaries i read on their website).

I am also sad because of my inability to get my point across in a way that it could be heard. I was wondering this morning why i feel so strongly about this. Yes, there is shared reality – as Michael Shermer puts it: If Amit Goswami’s claims are correct, he could jump off a building without getting hurt. And that is where i realized why i feel so strongly: Compassion. If i get hurt jumping off a building in Goswami’s interpretation that is because i must have fallen into “conditioned choice,” which leaves me feeling dismayed because i value compassion, which to me includes looking at the whole picture and acknowledging that there are things – like physical reality – that limit our choices. If we claim that there are unlimited choices, i fear that we end up blaming the victim because they were stuck in “conditioned choice.”

What did you “hear” me “saying”? What did you read me writing?

I know that there is still some mourning i want to do – mourning that i cannot lean into the unconditional love of a God/spirit/consciousness and the pain that has created in me. However, i also know that i can lean into the beauty of the need for unconditional love itself! How beautiful is that .

Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!

Upon my return, i continued listening to Michael Nagler’s lectures on Nonviolence. In the third lecture he makes some startling claims. Well, they startled me at least. The one that prompted me to listen to this lecture again was that the science in “What the Bleep” is portrayed accurately. Uhm. No. It’s not, at least it’s not according to one of the scientists included in the “What the Bleep” infomercial. For some reason, quantum physics is sexy and i haven’t fully understood yet exactly why Nagler brings it out – it has something to do with his claim that sciences other than physics have to deal with diversity. Well, yeah. You don’t have to go to quantum physics to make that point. You could simply look at an evolutionary biologist’s work.

Nagler also does not acknowledge that the demolition hypothesis of the towers on 9/11 has been debunked by most scientists, except for a handful of conspiracy theorists. It wasn’t a governmental coverup that kept this story out of the limelight. It plain did not make much sense – even though it came from a physicist.

Finally, his most startling claim: Darwin was wrong. Nagler hastens to add that he doesn’t deny evolution but he does not specify exactly what he thinks Darwin was wrong about. Listening between the lines, it seems that Nagler claims that Darwin thought competition was at the heart of evolution. It wasn’t actually Darwin who emphasized the “survival of the fittest”. That emphasis is one of the myths that surrounds the theory of evolution – a myth that is all too helpful in maintaining the current status quo.

I’ve tried to figure out why all these claims bother me so much. Yes, there’s a wish for honesty, yet, this doesn’t seem to fully capture it. When i listened to the next lecture, i gained some clarity around my reactions. Nagler talks about the three consequences of the scientific view: Scarcity, determinism, and separateness. He ties determinism to not taking responsibility for our action, for example how the idea of corporate personhood takes away any personal responsibilities of the executive team. While i completely agree with Nagler that this lack of responsibility is a huge problem and that the personhood of corporations has created many of the issues we are facing, i got lost that this is tied to determinism. For one, claiming that consciousness is an expression of matter rather than a separate entity does not strictly lead to determinism. The manifestation of consciousness is likely much more involved than a straight line, so the claim “my neurons made me do it” won’t hold up even if we can ultimately reduce consciousness to something material. I then realized what bothered me the most in Nagler’s arguments: He was reinforcing us-vs-them thinking by splitting science into the “old” science (the Newtonian model, which leads to determinism according to Nagler) and the “new” science (quantum physics, which doesn’t). Old science is bad. New science is good. This creates an artificial separateness! And it’s actually scientifically incorrect: Quantum mechanics does not replace Newtonian physics, just like the theory of relativity didn’t replace it. It’s a matter of scale: Quantum physics explains some things better than Newtonian physics, yet there is a lot that the “old” science explains very well. (Additionally, physicist express worries about using quantum mechanics to say anything about consciousness – see the Albert quote).

And then i remember to look for the underlying needs: Nagler does not have a need for “bashing science.” He is interested in healing this world, giving us hope that nonviolence is possible, and focusing on interdependence. He is trying to find paradigms within science that can provide a framework for this. These underlying needs, including his dream, i share with Nagler. I disagree with the effectiveness of his strategy to use a pop-culture interpretation of quantum mechanics as the foundation. Further, dividing science into good and bad, ironically reinforces the separateness Nagler is so worried about. Inclusion of all the voices, especially those which might on the surface support the current dominant cultural paradigm, could provide a more credible foundation for a science of nonviolence – and ultimately for shifting our current cultural paradigm away from violence to nonviolence.

Alternative Sources for Learning about Nonviolence
Steve’s comment below reminded me that there are other options to learn about nonviolence than through Nagler’s work. Here are some options – please feel free to add more in the comments, i will compile them into this list:

• Miki Kashtan’s Gandhian Principles for Everyday Living (the link takes you to the fifth part, which contains references to the first 4 parts)
• The International Center for Nonviolent Conflict
• Why Civil Resistance Works: The Strategic Logic of Nonviolent Conflict

In psychology, Stockholm syndrome is a term used to describe a paradoxical psychological phenomenon wherein hostages express adulation and have positive feelings towards their captors that appear irrational in light of the danger or risk endured by the victims.

I’ve also been listening to George Lakoff talk about how we learn to frame things. If we grow up with the authoritarian father model, which most religious people do, we are more likely to be conservative and support the status quo even if that is contrary to what would be best for us. Our neurological wiring doesn’t allow us to act any other way (unless we learn to counteract it!). The fear of questioning plays a big role here as well: If these women would start asking questions, everything in their life would be up for grasp. That’s a scary place to be. It’s a lot easier to put on blinders and spout what your oppressors have fed you.

There are also other ways for the system to stay in place. One of those are benevolent stereotypes, like benevolent sexism. Women are nurturant, loving, god-fearing etc. Sounds positive, right? Well, only if you don’t realize that these stereotypes then prevent us from doing things like run a company… As positive as they sound, they still are stereotypes and they just happen to be characteristics that are culturally less valued. Bread crumbs thrown by the oppressors to the oppressed in the hopes of keeping things as they are. And it seems to be working. The big question is: How do we cut through all this nonsense and change the status quo to create a society that truly values everybody? Somehow we need to change the authoritarian father frame…

But what most people are not aware of, and are sometimes shocked to discover, is that most of our thought – an estimated 98 percent – is not conscious.

Somehow that statement peeked my curiosity. “Thought” in philosophy is generally considered conscious – pretty much by definition. So, it seemed a bit odd. Plus how can they determine this percentage anyways? I decided to take a look at the underlying research. The footnote referred to another book. Not exactly what I expected – books aren’t generally peer-reviewed. But, okay, I figured I could see what that book says. Fortunately, the page in the book I needed to take a look at is available online. And guess what! Yes, this book refers to two other books! One of them again had the relevant page available (page 84 as cited in Rock). Phew. And that finally had a reference to an article:

In a review of the scientific evidence pertaining to this question (and related matters), Bargh and Chartrand (1999) concluded that 95% of our actions are unconsciously determined. This way of measuring consciousness therefore suggests that it accounts for only 5% of our behavior.

The article is a fascinating read (a PDF version is here)! But, my source hunting wasn’t done yet as Bargh and Chartrand made yet another reference:

Tice and Baumeister concluded after their series of eight such experiments [on ego depletion] that because even minor acts of self-control, such as making a simple choice, use up this limited self-regulatory resource, such conscious acts of self-regulation can occur only rarely in the course of one’s day. Even as they were defending the importance of the conscious self for guiding behavior, Baumeister et al. (1998, p. 1252; also Baumeister & Sommer, 1997) concluded it plays a causal role only 5% or so of the time.

And what does it say on page 1252 of that article? It’s the first page of the article, which seems a bit odd and then it says this:

Even if it were shown that 95% of behavior consisted of lawful, predictable responses to situational stimuli by automatic processes, psychology could not afford to ignore the remaining 5%.

Even if?!? That’s not how you start a conclusion! That is how you start a hypothetical statement! So, the claim that 5% of our thoughts are conscious/consciousness/controlled by our conscious self is based on a hypothetical statement! I haven’t checked out the sources that aren’t available online (I have requested the books through my library) but this surely does not bode well…

Now, Timothy Wilson writes (on p. 24):

[...] our five senses are taking in more than 11,000,000 pieces of information. Scientists have determined this number by counting the receptor cells each sense organ has and the nerves that go from these cells to the brain [...] The most liberal estimate is that people can process consciously about 40 pieces of information per second.

Oh, boy. That references a book… I am not going to track this one down. I don’t know if this will dissolve just like the Lakoff quote. I guess, the lesson learned is to always track back numbers to the original source – you might be surprised as to what you’ll find there!

Where does this leave us? Probably the best conclusion is to say that we really have no clue how much of our activity is conscious and how much isn’t. Well, we actually don’t even really know what consciousness is. It is clear that a lot more happens without our control than we realize – or ever would like to admit. But we probably can’t put an exact number on that. And make sure to check your sources. All the way to the end. Consciously.

A big hat tip goes to Bella DePaulo who has been following claims back to their source for a long time and found all sorts of ones that were not supported by the original research.

“In general, trying to separate nature and nurture makes about as much sense as trying to separate personality and situation. [...] The two influences are completely interrelated.”

Is this experiment valid? Can we really conclude from it that kids who have mastered self-control at age 4 will be more successful?

Considering the validity of research within psychology, I usually look at three things:

• Sample size
• Length of study
• Presence of a control group

Exploratory research often has small sample sizes. We can make some inferences based on that research but they are on shaky ground. What holds for 20 people might not hold for 1000s. I suspect that the sample sizes in these experiments were small.

Study length varies from point-in-time to longitudinal, sometimes over decades. As Bella DePaulo has pointed out eloquently, using point-in-time studies for psychological research doesn’t give us results to stand on. Mischel’s study is clearly longitudinal, which gives it more credibility.

I think Mischel’s study falls apart with the lack of control groups. Control groups are important if we want to ensure that there aren’t other variables that might be impacting the outcome – suggesting that what we think is the cause (self-control) is really just another symptom of something else. It is plausible that the same environmental factors that increased the self-control in 4-year olds also contributed to their increased success. Maybe they had more involved parents; maybe they had access to better education. Or maybe – something suggested by the researchers themselves – these kids had developed skills that helped them distract themselves from the marshmallow. That might not have anything to do with self-control. It could simply be cunning calculation: Two marshmallows are better than one, after all.

There certainly is something to be said for self-control but I caution to jump to conclusions based on these experiments. Clearly, they are not investigating systemic impacts but are solely looking at personal responsibility.

Addendum:A new British report on health inequalities also seems to underscore factors beyond genes in things like health inequalities. As the latest Too Much newsletter summarizes:

But British health inequalities go far beyond this contrast between rich and poor. The rich live longer and healthier lives than the near rich, the near rich longer and healthier than the middle-income. Health in the UK follows, in other words, a “social gradient.” The lower a person’s social status, the worse a person’s health.
[...]
We typically blame poor health on unhealthy behaviors. Or bad genes. Or a lack of access to health care. None of these factors, as important as they may be, turn out to statistically explain why some among us live lives so much longer and healthier than others. What does?

Says the Marmot Review: “Social and economic differences in health status reflect, and are caused by, social and economic inequalities in society.”

If we truly want to tackle health inequalities, advises the Marmot commission, we need to address “inequalities in the conditions of daily life and the fundamental drivers that give rise to them: inequities in power, money, and resources.”

I wonder if such inequalities also impact our ability to delay eating a marshmallow…

Bottom line: If you live in an area where earthquakes are likely, you live in an area where earthquakes are likely. Unfortunately, that’s not very useful, so the best thing is to be always prepared, at least a little. Know what to do, know where to go. Have food, water, and medication supplies for at least 72 hours. And then stop worrying about it! If it gets humid, put on a t-shirt. I’ve heard rumors that they sell those even in San Francisco…