Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence

OR

Don’t let your brains fall out

by Tim Kiehl

First, I want to forewarn the reader that I am going to be brutally frank in

discussing one of the "new age" fads running the "talk show circuit” today. And
let me state that I am very open to new ideas and I am not a rigid thinker or
narrow minded. I do not discount the importance of belief and motivation in the
human experience nor in the "power of positive thinking" to help a person
achieve their goals. But often the promoters of these new ideas claim they have
scientific evidence to support those beliefs and I feel it is necessary to understand
the real facts before one "swallows them; hook, line, and sinker".
The latest rage is the new video "The Secret" based on a book, "The Law of
Attraction", which are both very successful attempts at commercializing the
marginal science promulgated by the previous popular video, "What the Bleep Do
We Know?" There are now many associations, groups, seminars, and
organizations founded on the "principals" promoted in these works and there
exist many practitioners of these "arts". In a brief summary, the main concept
behind these works is based on the perception of the "factoid" that matter and
energy are interchangeable, and, that when the brain focuses "thought energy"
on an idea or desire long and hard enough that the energy is radiated in a
meaningful form into space. And, that the universe "responds" to this signal,
articulating these thoughts into reality by converting energy into matter in the
form of an answer to your sincerest and deepest material desires! This is not an
articulation of the concept that the power of positive thinking will help you attain
goals by focusing your efforts. It is rather the naive a priory deduction or a mere
belief that the energy of your thoughts has the power of creation and that your
will is enough to motivate the unseen forces of the universe to manifest your
wishes out of that energy into matter. And, that this will happen outside of any
actual physical effort by the individual but rather on a “universal principal" that
energy and matter are equivalent and that thought can manipulate reality into
any desired form by this conversion.
 Unfortunately, the concepts they have used to come up with this
rationalization of the interchangeability of thought, matter, and energy is, in
reality, a gross misuse of the marginally serious mystical musings by some
scientists, many times taken out of context. They have also misinterpreted the
oversimplifications pertaining to the duality of energy and matter and the nature
of reality that have been common in the popularizations of modern physics and
quantum mechanics (especially the now largely discredited string theory), as seen
on PBS, in videos, and in other media. In an attempt to make the complicated
world of modern physics and cosmology available to the general public many
scientists have published works that only marginally cover the real issues and
science of these topics, but they inadvertently do so in a manner that opens up
naive misinterpretations that have no basis in fact or in serious science. While a
laudable attempt at making new knowledge available to an uneducated public
that normally would not have access to the newest scientific information, these
simplified versions of the true facts and underlining science have also allowed
some people to make spurious leaps of logic FAR BEYOND the bounds of real
science or the intentions of these authors. People are now viewing these matters
in ways that does little to no justice to the actual subject. These works were
meant to be merely introductions to the general public of these complicated
concepts in grossly simplified terminology. The use of these oversimplified and
generalized statements of the physics of reality in the manner that they have
done has no basis in real scientific discovery or theory. Also shown are video
snippets of scientists that are either marginalized by their peers because of the
ridiculous nature of their claims or are merely making "off the cuff” philosophical
wanderings of a not so serious nature, even then used out of context. Pictures of
people having brain scans are used to promote the idea that scientists have
accepted the concept of, and are seriously studying, the "energy" of thoughts.
That they understand that these thoughts can be transmitted in a meaningful
form encoded with intelligent content, and that this content can then be decoded
in some way. These scientists are actually just detecting the locations and
measuring the intensities of chaotic electrical energy generated by regional brain
areas under controlled circumstances to pinpoint brain activity. In no way are any
of these studies being done in an attempt to detect meaningful signals pertaining
to the real contents of the thoughts themselves, but rather inferring information
on brain utilization generated by known stimulation. Also ignored is the fact that
such "mental energy transmissions", no matter what the content, would have
little or no chance to propagate meaningful information into space for any real
distance due to their extremely low energy and the fact that electromagnetic
energy dissipates with the square of the distance of propagation. Any such
"transmissions" would not be in the form of a meaningful signals transmitted with
thoughts and information intact but merely a distribution of energies from the
electrical activity of entire brains or of a stimulated area of the brain being
observed. In spite of the scientifically accepted reality that electromagnetic
signals from the brain are of extremely low energy and that the information in
any signal radiated by the "energy" of individual "thoughts" would be
multiplexed chaotically with little chance of decoding and would most likely have
no meaningful correlation to the actual thoughts, the persistent delusion that
these are scientifically accepted facts and that entire thoughts can be
transmitted over large distance in a meaningful way still holds firm.
However, even ignoring this highly disputable hypothesis that thoughts are
broadcast in the electromagnetic spectrum with meaningful information intact is
the preposterous idea that those thought signals could then actually interact with
the rest of the universe. And that this interaction would result in those same
thoughts being converted into tangible objects from a conversion of energy into
matter under the control of these thoughts and this self said interaction with
space. These ideas are again the result of misinterpretation of mystical musings
of some cosmologists about the possible duality of energy and matter the result
of conscious thought interacting with space time in a quantum fashion. This is also
a gross over extension of the meaning of the strong anthropological concept of
cosmology as discussed by these scientists. These ideas are in the realm of
spirituality and science fiction and are not used in any real attempt to uncover the
properties of space time, are not serious science, and hence cannot be used
seriously.
It also ignores the fact that the principle reason we can say that energy and
matter are equivalent is through Einstein’s famous equation that states energy is
equal to mass times the speed of light raised to the second power. The conversion
of mass to energy has been demonstrated vividly to us all in the form of the
atomic bomb. What is naively misunderstood is that, while theoretically the
reverse is possible, there are two MAJOR stumbling blocks. The first is that the
conversion of matter to energy requires the destruction of organized mass into
chaotic energy. The reverse requires chaotic energy to be converted into an
orderly and in no way chaotic mass of matter. There is no known way to input
this level of order into a chaotic system of energy. The other problem with the
conversion of energy into matter is the imbalance of the original equation. The
conversion of mass into energy liberates a stupendous amount of energy (due to
the factor of the speed of light raised to the second power). In other words, you
would need to organize the power released by an atomic bomb to create a mere
few pounds of matter. To create enough matter to build “the car of your dreams"
out of energy AND organize that matter would take the output of every atomic
bomb in every arsenal in the world, not the few milliwatts generated by a human
brain!
Unfortunately, in this new age of changing values and lost innocence, many
people are struggling as they search for meaning in their life. You don't have to
be gullible or foolish to be caught up in these some of these ideas, and many are
swarming to these new wave gurus in an alarming number. "Quantum healing"
quacks abound, and seminars and lectures about "The Secret" and "The Power of
Attraction" using these pseudo-scientific trappings are being held at this minute
throughout a nation of people seeking easy answers to success and happiness.
But it is not merely a disease of the ignorant practitioners who might actually be
deluded into thinking they are performing a service, but it is also a scam by con
men trying to "get in" on the easy money of these people that are fooled by these
“scientific claims" of veracity. It's OK to believe in any silly thing you may want,
even if it is fantastic, just don't try and fool people into thinking it's based in
science or fact. As Carl Sagan said, "It’s important to keep an open mind, but NOT
so open that your brains fall out." So, don't let your brains fall out --- think about
what these people are actually claiming! A lot of good books on the importance of
motivation and the "Power of Positive Thinking" have been written by Dale
Carnegie and many others, read them and apply their knowledge. But don't allow
yourself to be trapped into the latest "fad" beliefs of wishful thinking or the old
pseudo-sciences, like Astrology, Phrenology, etc. and remember the old maxim, if
it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.
T. A. Kiehl ©2016