posted
I just watched this great TED talk by Al Gore and saw that he wrote a book last year.
The description seems interesting, curious as to whether any Hatrackers read it and what they thought of it.
btw, watching that talk all I could think the whole time was, "why couldn't we have had him for the last 8 years?"
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posted
I read it, but it's been awhile so I only remember a bit about how I felt about it. I know I've written about it, but I can't seem to find anything that I wrote.
Anywho, I think he makes a lot of great points. It's a very good topic, full of great information that is sourced and cited in the back of the book in case you want to read further.
My problem with it was Gore as a writer. Dear God in heaven, he can't write. He repeats himself numerous times, takes forever to get to a point, and overcomplicates things. I wish he could have gotten someone halfway decent to ghostwrite it for him. I'd recommend it to people, because it really does have content that's extremely relevent to our time, you just have to barrel on through it a bit.
I might reread it over the weekend to provide a better summation for you, that's all I remember off the top of my head. I read it last May.
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posted
"Because when he tried to steal the election, he failed?"
There wasn't anything beautiful going on on either side in that election. There's a difference, though...Al wouldn't have spent 8 years and hundreds of billions on a pointless war. He'd have spent it on alternative energy, and we'd be farther down the road to energy independence, and farther away from funding terrorism with our gas-guzzling SUVs.
"I wish he could have gotten someone halfway decent to ghostwrite it for him."
I figured that would be automatic, in the case of a celebrity author writing in a subject area he doesn't have a degree or a job in. Why wouldn't he?
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quote:There's a difference, though...Al wouldn't have spent 8 years and hundreds of billions on a pointless war. He'd have spent it on alternative energy, and we'd be farther down the road to energy independence, and farther away from funding terrorism with our gas-guzzling SUVs.
I think you must have a crystal ball in your back pocket. Who knows how Gore would have reacted to 9/11 and what his reaction may have caused. He may never have taken up the torch of the global warming cause as he did if he were involved in governing the country. And we haven't spent 8 years on either war and only 5 in Iraq which is what I assume you mean by the useless war. If you believe that Afghanistan was a mistake I would be interested to know what you think the US should have done post 9/11.
You can just tell, he didn't. He wrote it himself. I believe some people have in fact written their own books, like the Clintons and Obama, and Gore too.
Strider -
I reread the Intro and first chapter last night and remembered why I liked the content of the book so much, even if the writing needs to be waded through.
Gore makes a lot of interested points about the state of democracy and the way we as a people process information and come to a consensus. It'd be easy to just blame it all on Bush, and he does get a piece of the blame, but he goes further and asks, where was the media? where were the people asking questions? where was the Senate asking questions? The House? Where did everybody go?
He goes into that further in the book, but he really takes it back to basics and asks how we get information and how we take part in democracy, and from his point of view (with some very valid points), we've taken a dark turn. Why? Part of it is laziness, but a much bigger part is the way information is diseminated. It used to be that America primarily got all their information from print media. The two biggest things about print media are A. That it allows for two-way communication between people, which I think is really made that much more obvious by the rise in a return to participation via the internet, and B. the way the information is processed in the brain. Television and radio are the primary mode of information getting, but they are mediums increasingly controlled by a very few conglomerates, who are far less interested in news than they are in making money. And even when we do get news from them, the brain processes the sights and sounds of television and radio in the part of the brain that deals with emotion, not with reason. When we READ the news, it goes right to the reasoning center of the brain. It is far less likely that we'll make a smart, informed decision not based on emotion if we do it from info we got from the television.
And that's just the first 30 pages or so of the book that I browsed through last night. It's not just his feelings on American democracy and citizenship, though those are there, there's also a lot of very real scientific studies on how and why we do the things we do. He talks about mirror neurons, which, when you see a fellow human being in pain will act in your brain as if YOU were the one being injured. So when the news continually played 9/11 images after it happened, we all felt as if we were all quite literally victims in the crime, and that went right to the emotion centers of the brain which totally negated a sense of reasoning we might have had before the Iraq war.
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I thought it was a pretty good, if somewhat depressing, read. And the underlying thesis certainly struck home, in an era where many people seem to think reality is the domain of whoever yells the loudest.
It's been about six months since I read it, though- it was my "airplane reading" for the trip to NZ.
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quote: He talks about mirror neurons, which, when you see a fellow human being in pain will act in your brain as if YOU were the one being injured. So when the news continually played 9/11 images after it happened, we all felt as if we were all quite literally victims in the crime, and that went right to the emotion centers of the brain which totally negated a sense of reasoning we might have had before the Iraq war.
Sounds like an overt simplification (albiet not a completely incorrect one) about people's emotional and neurological reactions.
Interesting theory, I guess.
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There's a lot more to it, and he goes into a lot more detail Samp, that was just a very, very brief (trust me, brevity isn't his forte) summary of some of his larger points from the first chapter.
I can post a further explanation and summary if you'd like (and for that matter, if you don't actually wish to read his book), when I've done a bit more reading.
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I'm pretty well acquainted with mirror neurons, and I'm also pretty sure that Gore mostly knows what he's talking about when dealing with issues of science, so I trust that when he brings them into the conversation he doesn't do it in the way "What the bleep do we know" destroyed the integrity of quantum mechanics.
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strider, I've heard that called a "propaganda film about quantum mechanics," but it's kind of hard to see what the propaganda was all about. Not to say I am defending it, but that I actually don't know what the source of division was about the movie- in what way was it destructive of integrity?
I may have to just remind myself of the movie's contents, because in my memory I am conflating it with some other movie where they described string theory by continually cutting back to a string quartet playing Mozart. Posts: 9912 | Registered: Nov 2005
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quote:strider, I've heard that called a "propaganda film about quantum mechanics," but it's kind of hard to see what the propaganda was all about. Not to say I am defending it, but that I actually don't know what the source of division was about the movie- in what way was it destructive of integrity?
destructive of it's integrity may have been a bad word choice. what it basically does is give a real cursory intro to quantum mechanics, and then uses that as a basis to make all sorts of crazy statements about the nature of reality, mainly that we can change it with thought alone. from wikipedia:
quote:Academic reaction
Scientists who have reviewed What the Bleep Do We Know!? have described distinct assertions made in the film as pseudoscience.[18] Amongst the concepts in the film that have been challenged are assertions that water molecules can be influenced by thought,[3] that meditation can reduce violent crime rates,[8] and that quantum physics implies that "consciousness is the ground of all being." The film was also discussed in a letter published in Physics Today that challenges how physics is taught, saying teaching fails to "expose the mysteries physics has encountered [and] reveal the limits of our understanding." In the letter, the authors write "the movie illustrates the uncertainty principle with a bouncing basketball being in several places at once. There's nothing wrong with that. It's recognized as pedagogical exaggeration. But the movie gradually moves to quantum 'insights' that lead a woman to toss away her antidepressant medication, to the quantum channeling of Ramtha, the 35,000-year-old Atlantis god, and on to even greater nonsense." It went on to say that "most laypeople cannot tell where the quantum physics ends and the quantum nonsense begins, and many are susceptible to being misguided," a situation which the authors attribute to how in the current teaching of quantum mechanics "we tacitly deny the mysteries physics has encountered."[5]
Richard Dawkins, author of "The God Delusion" stated that "the authors seem undecided whether their theme is quantum theory or consciousness. Both are indeed mysterious, and their genuine mystery needs none of the hype with which this film relentlessly and noisily belabours us", concluding that the film is "tosh". Professor Clive Greated wrote that "thinking on neurology and addiction are covered in some detail but, unfortunately, early references in the film to quantum physics are not followed through, leading to a confused message". Despite his caveats, he recommends that people see the movie, stating, "I hope it develops into a cult movie in the UK as it has in the US. Science and engineering are important for our future, and anything that engages the public can only be a good thing." Simon Singh called it pseudoscience and said the suggestion "that if observing water changes its molecular structure, and if we are 90% water, then by observing ourselves we can change at a fundamental level via the laws of quantum physics" was "ridiculous balderdash." According to Joćo Magueijo, reader in theoretical physics at Imperial College, the film deliberately misquotes science.[6] The American Chemical Society's review criticizes the film as a "pseudoscientific docudrama", saying "Among the more outlandish assertions are that people can travel backward in time, and that matter is actually thought."[8]
The film's central theme -- that quantum mechanics suggests that a conscious observer can affect physical reality -- has also been refuted by Bernie Hobbs, a science writer with ABC Science Online. Hobbs explains, "The observer effect of quantum physics isn't about people or reality. It comes from the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, and it's about the limitations of trying to measure the position and momentum of subatomic particles... this only applies to sub-atomic particles - a rock doesn't need you to bump into it to exist. It's there. The sub-atomic particles that make up the atoms that make up the rock are there too." Hobbs also discusses Hagelin's experiment with Transcendental Meditation and the Washington DC rate of violent crime, saying that "the number of murders actually went up." Hobbs also disputed the film's use of the ten percent myth.[7]
David Albert, a physicist who appears in the film, has accused the filmmakers of selectively editing his interview to make it appear that he endorses the film's thesis that quantum mechanics are linked with consciousness. He says he is "profoundly unsympathetic to attempts at linking quantum mechanics with consciousness."[19]
In the film, during a discussion of the influence of experience on perception, Candice Pert notes a story, which she says she believes is true, of Native Americans being unable to see Columbus's ships because they were outside their experience. According to an article in Fortean Times by David Hambling, the origins of this story likely involved the voyages of Captain James Cook, not Columbus, and an account related by historian Robert Hughes which said Cook's ships were "...complex and unfamiliar as to defy the natives' understanding". Hambling says it is likely that both the Hughes account and the story told by Pert were exaggerations of the records left by Captain Cook and the botanist Joseph Banks. Historians believe the Native Americans likely saw the ships but ignored them as posing no immediate danger.[20]
Other Critics
Skeptics such as James Randi described the film as "a fantasy docudrama" and "[a] rampant example of abuse by charlatans and cults."[21] The Committee for Skeptical Inquiry dismisses it as "a hodgepodge of all kinds of crackpot nonsense," where "science [is] distorted and sensationalized."[22] A BBC reviewer described it as "a documentary aimed at the totally gullible."[23]
Journalist John Gorenfeld, writing in Salon, notes that the film's three directors are students of Ramtha's School of Enlightenment, which he describes as having been called a "cult."[19]
Now, I won't say the movie was utter crap. I think you can gain something beneficial from changing your day to day thought patterns, and I remember there were a few interesting points worth thinking about. But mostly I was frustrated that many people would watch the movie and take the scientific psuedo-babble that's spewed as real science.
quote:I may have to just remind myself of the movie's contents, because in my memory I am conflating it with some other movie where they described string theory by continually cutting back to a string quartet playing Mozart.
You're thinking of The Elegant Universe. I didn't really have a problem with that. It was an introduction to the concept, and most people don't really understand properties of strings like frequency and tension. I thought it was nice way of getting the point across of how one basic string structure could produce all the different known particles. Whatever your problems with string theory may be, the analogy itself seemed fine to me.
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