Tying up loose ends from 2009: Deepak Chopra versus Michael Shermer

“Word salad” is most apt. In case you haven’t seen this, Nirmukta did a good video describing Chopra’s formula of using false metaphors to arrive at any conclusion he wants. See http://nirmukta.com/2009/06/30/deepak-chopra-a-new-age-shaman/.

Albert Einstein would either laugh his ass off at Chopra’s blatant ignorance or he would go punch Chopra in the nose for using his name and works to scam people out of money.

Could someone tell him it’s just plain woo and not woo woo as he likes to call it.

Oooo, “materialist science” is being a big meanie again!

Chopra: “(Shermer) has made skepticism his personal brand, more or less, sitting by the side of the road to denigrate “those people who believe in spirituality, ghosts, and so on…”

Yes, it’s terrible that skeptics sit around snickering while others do the real work of bullshit.

I don’t think it’s Dinesh D’Sousa who wrote the brain book. It’s the CNN doctor guy who was almost surgeon general.

There’s a difference between being open minded and being credulous. Deepak apparently doesn’t understand that.

@Anthro

I appreciate your comment also.

My biological children are very young, but we are trying to encourage them to think for themselves.

We also try to prepare them for the kind of harassment they will unfortunately experience in school. We affectionately call them our little nerds.

That is one of the things I love about my ASD son’s personality, he doesn’t care what anybody says or thinks about him. My husband (with asperger’s) never did care either. I fear it will be more difficult for my daughters (age four and toddler), but we are trying to get them ready now to be proud of their scientific (hopefully) minds.

Quoted from Chopra:

Western science is still frozen in an obsolete, Newtonian worldview that is based literally on superstition — and we can call it the superstition of materialism — which says you and I are physical entities of the physical universe.

As I said over on PZ’s blog, this is somewhat reminiscent of something Alan Sokal wrote a few years back:

There are many natural scientists, and especially physicists, who continue to reject the notion that the disciplines concerned with social and cultural criticism can have anything to contribute, except perhaps peripherally, to their research. Still less are they receptive to the idea that the very foundations of their worldview must be revised or rebuilt in the light of such criticism. Rather, they cling to the dogma imposed by the long post-Enlightenment hegemony over the Western intellectual outlook, which can be summarized briefly as follows: that there exists an external world, whose properties are independent of any individual human being and indeed of humanity as a whole; that these properties are encoded in “eternal” physical laws; and that human beings can obtain reliable, albeit imperfect and tentative, knowledge of these laws by hewing to the “objective” procedures and epistemological strictures prescribed by the (so-called) scientific method.

No matter that this broad brush would tar not just the Pope, Mahatma Gandhi, St. Teresa of Avila, Buddha,

Um…. yeah! Is anybody seriously defending Pope Benedict as a nice guy? The fucker’s backwards stance on condoms is killing Africans by the thousands. Yes, the Pope is a superstitious dogma-pushing asshole. Thanks Deepak, we already knew that.

Ghandi and Mother Theresa are more difficult figures. More and more, it’s sounding like the latter was no saint (pun intended!), and while Ghandi’s principle of non-violence is indubitably admirable, there is some controversy over whether his piousness and devotion to Hinduism may have exacerbated the Hindu-Muslim tensions that led Pakistan to split off from India, an event that led to three wars and probably the most realistic threat of nuclear conflagration that exists today.

In any case, even if we assume Ghandi and Mother Theresa are worthy of their glowing reputations, the fact that they also had some crazy beliefs is totally irrelevant. I’m a computer engineer, so you wouldn’t want to ask me for oncology advice; by the same token, I wouldn’t ask a professional political activist about the scientific method.

And uh, dude, the Buddha is fictional… and even if he was based on a historical figure, anybody who lived prior to the Enlightment can be excused for believing just about any crazy nonsense, because humanity just didn’t have even passable explanations for a bunch of really basic questions. Post-Darwin, a belief in spooks is less defensible.

Chopraaaaaaaaaaaahhhh!!!!

i believe that the many worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics is true. all the cells in my body feel that there must be an alternate universe where deepak isn’t full of crap. every time i read deepak’s drivel, all the cells of my body want to instantly tunnel to such an alternate universe.

It is rusty because Shermer doesn’t even bother to keep up with the latest findings in neuroscience, medicine, genetics, physics, and evolutionary biology. All of these fields have opened fascinating new ground for speculation and imagination.

Chopra is referring here to “speculation and imagination” without checks and balances. He’s also using a special “holistic” understanding of “science.” Whenever I read crap like this, I’m reminded of this passage from Meera Nanda:

ALL these numerous celebrations of “Vedas as science” follow a similar intellectual strategy of finding analogies and equivalences. All invoke extremely speculative theories from modern cosmology, quantum mechanics, vitalistic theories of biology and parapsychology, and other fringe sciences. They read back these sciences into Sanskrit texts chosen at will, and their meaning decided by the whim of the interpreter, and claim that the entities and processes mentioned in Sanskrit texts are “like”, “the same thing as”, or “another word for” the ideas expressed in modern cosmology, quantum physics or biology. Thus there is a bit of a Brahman here and a bit of quantum mechanics there, the two treated as interchangeable; there are references to “energy”, a scientific term with a definite mathematical formulation in physics, which gets to mean “consciousness”; references to Newton’s laws of action and reaction are made to stand for the laws of karma and reincarnation; completely discredited “evidence” from parapsychology and “secret life of plants” are upheld as proofs of the presence of different degrees of soul in all matter; “evolution” is taught as the self-manifestation of Brahman and so on. The terms are scientific, but the content is religious. There is no regard for consistency either of scientific concepts, or of religious ideas. Both wholes are broken apart, random connections and correspondences are established and with great smugness, the two modes of knowing are declared to be equivalent, and even inter-changeable. The only driving force, the only idea that gives this whole mish-mash any coherence, is the great anxiety to preserve and protect Hinduism from a rational critique and demystification. Vedic science is motivated by cultural chauvinism, pure and simple.

“Vedic science” is also motivated by the same thing as “creationist science” — a desire to reenchant the world, and to do so using the prestige and success of the scientific method, while denying its need for rigor, clarity, and consensus.

Meera Nanda rocks, by the way. If you want to read great critiques of lazy Hinduized choprawoo, look up Nanda.

I didn’t know the Pope, Mother Theresa, Gandhi & Buddha were scientists… gee you learn something new every day.

I wish every cell in my body knew exactly what all the other cells were doing. Then I wouldn’t have to worry about CANCER, because as soon as one cell went awry, the others would be on to it before it even began its initial leech off a blood vessel. There would be no time delay in “fighting” disease, either. No bizarre post (shingles) herpetic neuralgia from a damaged nerve cluster… because all my cells would know the truth!

… Or maybe my cells are just dumb.

I don’t know enough about quantum physics to have hit the part that doesn’t make any goddamn sense yet, I guess. Then again, the fact that I went into it basically completely ignorant of formal classical physics probably helped — I had nothing to unlearn. 🙂

Except that Chopra wouldn’t recognize the scientific method if it bit him in the…well, you know where.

In the deepak?

I don’t know enough about quantum physics to have hit the part that doesn’t make any goddamn sense yet, I guess. Then again, the fact that I went into it basically completely ignorant of formal classical physics probably helped — I had nothing to unlearn. 🙂

I was mostly referring to the Feynman quote that’s something along the lines of, “If you think you understand quantum mechanics, you don’t understand quantum mechanics.”

I am an abject layman, so ignore me. But I defy you to tell me that the results of the double slit experiment are intuitive…!

It seems to me that the woo-woos fundamentally fail to understand the “peer review” aspect of science. They think that “peer” is analogous to drinking buddy and that they should support whatever is claimed. In reality, the “peers” are more analogous to high school girls looking for ways to tear each other down.
As a researcher, I always try to ensure there is someone in the room telling me all my ideas are shit. They tend to be much more valuable in making scientific progress than someone who says every idea is great.
Chopra does not seem to understand what a valuable role such critics play. If you cannot respond to their criticism with empirical evidence, it generally means either your ideas really are shit, or you are not a very good scientist, or you are not a scientist at all.

I remember Deepak Chopra, especially toward the end, emphasizing that he wasn’t arguing with Shermer, but with his neural network. “But who is saying that, who believes, that ? You ? Or your neural network? ” He kept saying things to this effect with such pride and surety. Meanwhile I’m like, “Chopra, who is saying that, you or your neural network ?” My neural network thinks Chopra didn’t make a very good case.

James Sweet wrote:

By the way, I recently coined the term The Quantum Gambit for the following argument:
1) My insane theory doesn’t make any goddamn sense.
2) Quantum theory is supported by mountains of evidence, but even it’s strongest proponents (e.g. Feynman, Schroedinger, etc.) have gone on record saying that it doesn’t make any goddamn sense.
3) Therefore, my insane theory is probably supported by mountains of evidence.

There used to be a page about QM on on “Wiki4CAM”, which after a load of flapdoodle about What the Bleep Do We Know?!, The Secret, “mankind’s psychic powers”, positive thinking “forcing quantum states into the desired positive options”, etc., and namechecking Lionel Milgrom, finished with: “Quantum mechanics is investigated by physicists worldwide, hence all the above can be considered accepted science.”

And you’ve earned my first Quote of the Time Being for 2010, James.

What is it with this guys trying to use quantum mechanics and conciousness to make sweeping generalizations about their false pretenses? They may think that their listeners can’t evaluate the truthfulness of their claims but this is scientific turf they are stepping on and don’t have the right to act surprised when getting their asses handed on a platter. Further, unlike some woomeisters who purposefully twist facts Chopra seems to have convinced himself into a Renaissance stature by commenting on any topic that strikes his fancy without the littlest concern of mangling discussion. I would like to see one of his posts directly refuted on huff po , perhaps by beginnig to expose his ignorance of quantum mechanics and move to his idiotic claims of ascribing conciousness to single cells.

Despite trying to hijack the terms “open mindedness”, “imagination” and “curiosity”, Chopra doesn’t exhibit any of these traits in the slightest.

He doesn’t seem to know the difference between open mindedness, and blind, unyielding belief. A truly open minded person will consider both an idea and the possibility that the idea is false. Chopra invariably chooses the former, whilst utterly closing his mind to the latter. Despite whining about how the mean mean sceptics would have stood in the way of great scientific advances, it hasn’t crossed his mind that scepticism plays just as much of a role in the scientific process as acceptance. When Crick and Watson were told that their triple-helix model of DNA was wrong, they didn’t moan about “closed mindedness”. Instead, they continued in their search for truth, and eventually succeeded. Scepticism filtered out the worthless nonsense, thus allowing the truth to be reached. Similarly, scepticism filtered out caloric, The luminiferous aether, and miasmas, thus leading to thermodynamics, relativity, and the discovery of pathogens. Unfortunately, Chopra has nothing to offer but worthless nonsense, and so his only response to scepticism is to throw tantrums.

Despite his blatherings about “imagination”, Chopra’s nonsense displays little of it. For example, the “medicines” he peddles are based on crude associations and simplistic models, which are only imaginative in the sense that they are made up. Ayurveda’s uselessness is exceeded only by its sheer dullness. On the other hand, an MRI scanner, with its glorious combination of (real) quantum physics, exquisite engineering, and mathematical wizardry is the product of more imagination, more curiosity and more intellectual daring than the sum total of every “alternative” medicine ever devised.

Chopra’s “curiosity” is the most ridiculous pretence of them all. His condescending name-dropping of scientific fields betrays a lack of real curiosity in those subjects. If he was genuinely curious, he would have done some background reading; his utter pig-ignorance demonstrates that he hasn’t. At most, he has wormed-out a handful of partially-correct factoids, muddled up with his usual bare assertions and word salad. He couldn’t care less about neurology, information theory or quantum mechanics; he wants important sounding phrases with which to peddle his tedious, unimaginative drivel.

He is not just an idiot, but a closed-minded, unimaginative, and incurious idiot.

I don’t think it’s Dinesh D’Sousa who wrote the brain book. It’s the CNN doctor guy who was almost surgeon general.

I think you’re correct; Sanjay Gupta could have been the guy wearing the kick-ass Admiral-of-Health suit that C. Everett Coop used to wear. It’s still pertinent to point out that Dinesh D’Souza has an incredibly irritating voice voice, though.

Chopra isn’t talking about Mother Theresa (of Kolkata, India) but about Teresa of Avila, a Spanish Renaissance mystic who experienced extases that modern psychologists identified to orgasm.

As for Gandhi, I’m not sure about what he believed in. He may have been a worshipper of Ganesh, for what I know. But what counts is not what you believe in: it’s how it affects your action. In that regard, Gandhi was very much a materialist. He taught people, not to pray, but to act. No “law of attraction” for him: not only would he have found it ridiculous, I’m sure he would have said that it’s a tool of the oppressors to encourage people to do nothing. So, sorry Mr Chopra, but you have no right to recruit Gandhi in your Army of Woo.

The futurama quote comes form the third movie.