2004-06-21
What the #$*! do we know!?
We sawWhat the #$*! do we know!? this weekend and I thought I'd highlight what I thought was important. Please note it's not completely science-y film and there's a lot of opinion in there.
- "Neurons that fire together, wire together" - this means that if you use two parts of your brain over and over again, at the same time, eventually those two parts will become physically connected when individual neurons change their connections. This thing works both ways, meaning that if you stop using two parts of your brain at the same time, eventually, they'll break their connection with each and you will be sad.
Also, they have some pretty cool visualizations to show this phenomenon.
- Chemical Addictions - The film points out that addictive drugs use the same mechanisms as our natural hormones to make us experience an artificially induced high. It goes on to say that if you can get addicted to these highs, and it's the same mechanism as your natural hormones, we're probably addicted to our natural hormones. This means that some of us maybe addicted to the hormones that make us happy, and some are addicted to those that make us sad.
It makes sense, but of course that means that things happen to people because they wanted it...good or bad. Being responsible for your own destiny is pretty scary stuff, the film maintains most of us would rather blame it on the world and genetic predispositions :-P
- Fact vs. Conception - asRDub put it, .html"one era's scientific 'fact' is another's 'old misconception'". They use this idea to ask you to try to conceive the impossible.
News flash: world is round, spontaneous generation does not happen, and our great, great, great ancestors lovebananas.
- Aging - They state that aging simply improper protein production. Describing aging as a simple, solvable problem isok by me :-)
- Not Touching and Quantum Physics - The use some cool visualizations to attempt to explain that atomic structure is mostly empty space. Which implies that when you see something, you may not be seeing anything at all. In other words, everything is made up of atoms. Atoms have acosmically, huge volume when compared to the infinitesimally, miniscule nucleus. We now know that even this nuclus is nothing more than empty spaces surrounding sub-atomic particles. So, if we're all atoms, and they're made up of empty space, then what are we?
Furthermore, they point out that we dont actually touch anything,ever. Meaning that when we touch a desk, we think our atoms have touched the desk's atoms. The truth is that the atoms have not quite touched anything because the electrons surrounding the nucleus of the atoms of your hand push away from the electrons of the desk, and there's always some space inbetween.
So we know that what we see, is mostly empty space and what we think we touch, we're not touching at all...that's pretty crazy if you think aobut it...
- Perception vs. Reality - The claim, based on fMRI studies, that there's no difference, to a person, between the reality this senses perceive and the memories in their brain. Meaning, if you really believe black is white, then you'd actually function as through night was day...or at least that's an implication that I thought of.
- the Power of Observation - According to Hisenberg, you can't know a particle's position and velocity at the same time. Furthermore Schrodinger used some nasty cat experiments to show that you don't actually know where something until you observe it. So this movie takes the next step and says nothing is anywhere until somebody obeserves it. Meaning that you literally creae your own reality when, and only when, you observe it. They then suggest going out into the world and observing exactly what you want and it will happen. Ever see/read/hearSphere?
This is getting too long, just go see the dang movie! :-P And then think about the implications