Oh fuck, since when was Deepak Chopra an "expert on human consciousness"?

[Odin2005]

"Top New Age charlatan" is more like it. :puke:

[TZ]

1. Yeah I know.

Personally I think we are all experts on human consciousness. Of course he's one of those people who likes to think he's MORE concious than the rest of us.

[onager]

2. 'Umble Quotes from the Master...

There's data now that actually confirms that the Soviet Union came down and the Iron Curtain came down as a result of Dallas, the soap opera. There were more people watching Dallas in the Soviet Union and East Germany who were attracted to the car, to the woman's dress and the house and J.R. and all of that.

:rofl:

And all this time I thought it might have a LITTLE something to do with massive military spending and a political system that finally collapsed under the weight of its own bullshit.

In this next question, Chopra is talking about Victor J. Stenger, who he dismisses as "some professor...from Hawaii or something."

My Irony Meter broke on that one.

Stenger is a quantum physicist. Deepak (in the ancient Vydurean tongue of the Ass-Ended Masters, pronounced "Dipshit" ) is not.

In fact, Stenger worked on the teams that discovered the quark and other sub-atomic particles.

Stenger also has a PhD in Philosophy and teaches it at the University of Colorado, IIRC.

Q: How much do you believe that physics are a part of spirituality?

A lot. I mean, I saw the article in The Sun. And they've got some comments from some professor of physics and astronomy from Hawaii or something. He says that consciousness has nothing to do with quantum physics. I'd love to debate a guy like that.

Oh, I don't think you would. Not if the debate strayed out of wooly-minded navel-gazing into hard science.

Note the desperate appeal(s) to authority in the next bit.

I don't know where these journalists -- sorry: you're a journalist, but -- where they find these guys, because the best quantum physicists -- and they are friends. I mean, I have the head of the Max Planck Institute at my center every month. There's no bigger place for quantum physics in the world than the Max Planck Institute in Germany. And I have Amit Goswami who is a professor of physics at Oregon State University and Nick Herbert: I can name 20 quantum physicists who have written hundreds of papers on the relationship between quantum physics and consciousness.

So when I read a quote like that, it's almost laughable.

Not nearly as laughable as your "books."

Here's a famous short Stenger piece that mentions The Master Himself, "Quantum Quackery:"

http://www.csicop.org/si/9701/quantum-quackery.html

[Twillig]

7. Futurama has spoken:

From Bender's Game

Professor Farnsworth: As Deepak Chopra taught us, quantum physics means anything can happen at any time for no reason. Also, eat plenty of oatmeal and animals never had a war. Who’s the real animals?

Also, I'd like to point out that Amit Goswami is not, and was not, a Professor of Physics at Oregon State University.

He belongs to the University of Oregon. (some professor...from Oregon or something.)

Go Beavs.

[varkam]

3. Yeah, that was a fun one. You mean old skeptic, you. eom

[Orrex]

4. He's an expert on everything

Remember our earlier discussion about his "exotic"-sounding name. That gives him oodles of cred on matters spiritual and/or supernatural.

[Nevernose]

5. I was the subject of an experiment on human consciousness.

I never quite got the professor's hypothesis, but it had something to do with what people are thinking at any given moment. As part of the fifteen hours I had to donate to the psych department as an undergrad, I got two hours fulfilled by completing a 500 question multiple choice exam.

What they neglected to mention is that people who answered in a certain pattern were called back. I was one of the lucky ones. I had to carry around a thing (a technical term, I know) that beeped randomly, sometimes every five minutes, sometimes once in an eight hour period. I only had to wear it eight hours a day, preferably when alone, at home, or not otherwise busy. I was to record my thoughts on a provided notepad. Once a week I'd go in and speak to a professor, for which I''d get paid ten bucks. At the end of the semester, I'd get a hundred bucks, and it would fulfill all remaining psych dept. hours.

The questions he asked were all bizarre:
"It says that when the bell rang, you were 'frying chicken.' Did you realize that the chicken had once been a living animal? Did you feel any empathy for it? Did you picture it as it had once been?"

"Uh, no. Mostly I just took it out of the plastic Safeway wrapper and rolled it in flour. Used low heat, too -- that's the secret to keeping it moist."

"It says here that your daughter was in your lap when the bell rang. Did you disturb her when you got up? Did you realize that you disturbed her? Did you realize that she was capable of being disturbed?"

So I'm thinking, naturally, what the hell kind of questions are these? Are they looking for serial killers or something? Some kind of a ham-fisted empathy test? It was on the third or fourth visit that in the office I spotted a copy of the original test. I looked at it, realizing that I'd TOTALLY misread the directions. Where it had said, "Not including anytime you were under the influence of drugs or alcohol, did you ever feel or experience this?"

I just missed the part about "NOT." I read the directions as "Including anytime you were under the influence of drugs..."

So the questions were something akin to, "Has there ever been anytime you felt as if you didn't have a moral compass?" And I'm thinking, "Yeah, that time when I had that bad trip and locked myself in the closet and tried to keep the Shadow Demons away because they'd already stolen my soul because I was worthless and now they were trying to take my life." Awesome night, by the way. So I marked DEFINITELY YES.

"Have you ever felt like your body was unreal, just a machine being powered by a greater being, you being the greater being?" "HELL, yes," I was thinking. There was the time the park rangers were driving up to tell us to put out our bonfire so we ate the rest of the stash and I tried to dispose of my body and become one with the roots of the earth so I tried to bury myself from the neck down... Again, DEFINITELY YES was marked.

They were pretty pissed off when I told them the truth, that I wasn't the psychotic they were looking for, just some schmuck who'd taken way too many psychedelic drugs when he was 18 or 19 and had misread the directions. They still gave me a pass on the volunteer hours, but they kept their money, the greedy bastards.

[moggie]

6. It's a Voight-Kampff test!

They're onto you, skin-job!

[Nevernose]

11. Do Androids Dream of Psychedelic Sheep? n/t

n/t

[Deep13]

8. expert on human cash extraction nt

[Odin2005]

9. Well, I just got flamed again for attacking Chopra on one on the Gupta threads

:banghead:

[SpookyCat]

10. I didn't know who this guy was

some time ago, CS and I were watching tv, and Chopra came on. CS was looking for an example on line for what an idiot this one is, when Chopra obliged...

"Enlightened means...to lighten up!" I don't know what was said after that, cuza the screaming chimpanzee laughter...LOL!!!

How anyone takes this obvious snake oil salesman seriously is beyond me.