Quantum Mysticism is Stupid (Deepak Chopra, Spirit Science, Actualized.org) 

If you really want a crystal that emits real energy, feel free to pick a piece of graphite from Chernobyl.

"your child isnt real, he becomes infinite when you are not looking" *Breaking news* : Grown man fails object permanence.

Ironic that Deepak wears glasses. Why doesn't he just believe he can see better?

Crystal healers: "Crystals will bring you health and joy!" Solid state physicists: "Crystals will only bring you pain..."

"This room has such good energy!" *Geiger counter intensifies*

Chopra : “There are no electromagnetic fields, molecules or atoms. They are all a human construct” Me, a Chemistry Undergrad : “guess I’ll just imagine a better yield for my lab then.”

I'm convinced the people who came up with quantum mystism didn't even know the definition of quantum and just used it because they thought it sounded cool.

That lunatic cult leader grinning while describing the "positives" of "physical death" was absolutely chilling.

Our philosophy teacher in high school showed us "What the Bleep do we Know" and asked us to do a PowerPoint presentation on it. She didn't specify the length of the presentation, only the talking points: who were the people that worked on it, who were the people that talked on it and what can we learn. Thanks to a member of our team, we found out the people working on the "documentary" were linked to a cult and we prepared an hour long presentation on why everything was bollocks and why everyone said what they said and did what they did, including when was the cult formed, why it was a cult, why and how the documentary only showed what the cult wanted and how they used the common person's misunderstanding of science against them. To this day the best essay and presentation I've done.

I remember a girl telling me how she manifested the knowledge she needed for her exam at the Uni through getting into the consciousness of another person who was an expert. I said, "Wow, such awesome powers! You can easily learn whatever language, or get into a physicist's head and actually learn some quantum physics!" She went like, "Yeah, but I cannot possibly learn such things like that! That's outside my domain" I said, "So, you're telling me that you can only learn the things you already know?" and she was sooo deeply offended.

My mother is a "spiritual healer" and doesn't want to be told the only thing she can beam out of her hands is the placebo effect. But i love this video and it gave me plenty of aguments to use. In addition i bought your book after listening to it on audible. Keep doing what you're doing.

Man, this is something that bothers me so much as a physics student. They throw around words like frequency and quantum while bastardizing its meaning completely. They never engaged with physics, they can't calculate the speed of a falling apple, they don't know shit. They take the language and forget the scientific method from which the language emerged in the first place. I think a lot of people have some interest to engage with physics but then end up with this bullshit and it makes me sad.

Let's be fair: magic healing crystals do cure one very specific problem known as "I need more shiny rocks in my room"

Ultimately, if quantum mysticism actually worked, these scam artists could just make their conciousness manifest my credit card details instead of asking me for them.

it's actually a hard pill to swallow that just by having a way with words paired with confidence and enough persuasiveness can cause people to lure into this kind of bs. it's disheartening to know that people are actually willing to take notes with 0 knowledge and 100 confidence. maybe that's the main reason why salesmen doesn't need to have 100% knowledge on how their product works, they just have to have the guts and charisma to tell that it works and provides people solutions even they're offering empty promises. i worked before as a sales support, and can't stand the way my coworkers persuade their customers by giving them extreme stretch of benefits/exploiting their wants to turn it into a necessity ot grandisizing the products' purpose just to sell something

This is such a weird experience for me to watch, because I used to watch Leo for his meditation videos, and a few other videos on Buddhism and self improvement. I dropped off when all his new videos were about drugs and pick up culture, but I never thought it'd go THIS far. His videos genuinely helped me out in a tough time of my life, and I've recommended his channel to others getting into meditation. Not anymore. Really sad to see what he has become.

I strongly believe that studying how the public perceives science is a brilliant way to understand the shortcomings of our education system.

I want to send this to my lovely mother who insisted that I have “bad energy” and she’s “cutting her cosmic cord” with me when I was 12. When she described how I have “bad energy” she was just describing my autism.

As someone who has grown up with a mother that was very much into meditation and by extension this whole field, I just want to add a perspective here. I would describe myself as someone who pursues gaining knowledge and exploring the numerous fields of science. I am currently studying as a mechanical engineer, and am totally on the side of everything science related. I think the majority of the gurus and others in this whole field are genuine people that just want to help, a lot of their principles are based off early religions like Hinduism and Buddhism. Kindness and happiness are a couple of the many positive things that they preach, rather than blind faith and whatever the typical evangelist spouts. I've been studying the earliest forms of Buddhism for a little while now, as I am interested in the philosophical and scientific things that the Buddha had presented, like meditation. One of the biggest gurus, Deepak Chopra, is a meditator and claims his physical health has improved because of that. A fairly strong tie between meditation and neuroplasticity have been documented in recent years, so I'd say at least some of the things people like him believe in are accurate given our current understanding of meditation and the like. With all that said, though, I still don't believe in the quantum mysticism and misinformation aspects of their teachings.

I love that this video is still evergreen, 2 years later. I come back every 2-3 months just to reinforce the concepts. Thanks for this brilliant piece.

"Anything that is made of 100% silicon is silicon" -Professor Dave

"The periodic table is not a piano" - Something that shouldn't ever have needed to be said

I was raised in a cult that was deep in this stuff, oh my did I love watching this video. it’s so cathartic.

A friend of mine is 100% into all things new age,reiki,chakras,remote healing,homeopathy and all kinds of spiritual stuff. She just wants to help people which is great. However she often posts stuff like this, quantum healing, quantum energies to heal you etc etc. I studied quantum mechanics in my astrophysics degree so will tell her whats wrong with the latest meme she has shared and often she understands and agrees, Then a new meme comes along and she will blindly repost and share it totally against what she had just agreed with. These people LOVE to insert the word quantum into any mystical things they are talking about to make it sound legit.

Why would a quantum mysticist need money from me for a lesson? If you need money materialize it with your consciousness.

Good energy is the kinetic energy of a car driving you to where you want to go. Bad energy is the kinetic energy of a cannon ball going 200m/s straight to your face.

As a physics college student just starting to learn about Hilbert space, Group Theory, Operators etc. It's really straight out hilarious how people can sell jargon and call it "Quantum Physics" 😂 Nice work professor.

I'm a first year neuroscientist motivated to understand the objective nature of human subjective experience, and it's a bit annoying to have people say absolutely random shit. I'm not mad at them, and I'm not trying to disprove pseudoscience BS, I am just trying to discover truths that hold up against scientific criticism that help to explain the human brain, I want criticism while people who believe certain pseudoscientific things get annoyed from criticism.....anyways I'm thankful you made this video :)

"If you think you understand quantum mechanics, then you don't" - Richard Feynman

Wait, so Chopra's book "Quantum Healing" would literally imply that it heals you the least amount possible.

Recently I found a way that works for me to debunk that whole "if your body is screaming to run away that means I am right" is to reverse that statement. "If you are attracted to my proposition, that means I am lying." I'm not sure how well it helps with certain mysticism, but with Christianity where this is employed, it helps a lot because it puts doubt on the people who are attracted to Christianity.

The vibes I get from crystals are really specific, and always the same- the echoes of the screams of dying children as the mine they were working down to get the damned things collapsed

i really dislike the crystal people, i was studying geology last year at uni and whenever i searched for a particular mineral's properties on google it was a dice roll whether i'd get new age woo or just the actual properties, it was really bloody annoying

"The periodic table is not a piano" The fact that this needs to be said is making me weep for humanity.

Wow the beginning made me realize realise that I am one of those that only focuses on the frontier and have left by the side the basics, I truly want to understand things like quantum physics so this made me want to focus on picking back up physics in a more mathematical way and not just the explanations

The most frustrating part is how angry people get when you try to point out the nonsense they're spouting and what the physics actually says.

If Oprah Winfrey married Deepak she would be Oprah Choprah. Now that would be a quantum joint banking account.

I have a funny first-hand story about Chopra. He came to our University (he doesn't do that now) and spouted some BS. When I asked him about quantum physics and woo he went on his usual word salad, and ended that I was confused and should try to learn some quantum theory...which caused a great deal of mirth to my post-grad students (I teach mathematical physics, specialising in quantum experiments). Answers like this made the crowd more and more hostile to the point where he was essentially run off stage.

The dude at the end is legit terrifying.

Thank you SO MUCH for this video, there isn't much videos debunking this subject. My mom got absolutely sucked into quantum mysticism a few years ago and every time I try to reason with her she takes it as an aggressive personal attack. She spends so much money on these scam artist "gurus'" online programs, etc. I kinda feel hopeless for her at this point...

"consciousness creates reality" sounds like someone put "I think therefore I am" through Google translate 100 times

I'm glad I found this video because apparently you can't be a former physics student who listens to guided meditations without the algorithm recommending you this stuff, it does sometimes make for a good chuckle though

Also, this video is fantastic. While I am wary of pseudoscientific nonsense, I am pretty dumb and never really understood what exactly energy is supposed to be in physics... So thanks for explaining it so simply. Your thorough debunking of the rest of this horrible nonsense is also pretty good/entertaining.

As a musician, I cringed so hard when the Quantum Mystic guy said an octave down on the periodic table. And the 100% silicone sponge is hilarious.

"the periodic table is not a piano" absolutely murders me it's so funny

When I was at the late years of my adolescence, I was very depressed. When I looked for help, with a psychologist, mind you, I was faces with someone who behaved more like a cult leader, despite working for a public clinic (I am not from the US). Lots of people, myself included, suffered a lot from that, including sexual harassment. This video took a very dark turn for me at the end, but it is extremely necessary to warn people about these kinds of manipulation tactics. I thank you for giving people that warning, no one deserves to live through this kind of thing.

Leo Gura literally thinks real life if like Minecraft: if you aren't actively looking at something, then the chunks aren't loaded 😂😂

An old coworker of mine was telling me about a "cleansing" he went to once, and as he was describing the bodily pain and sweating and dizziness and shitting himself, I came to the realization that he had actually paid someone to poison him for an evening.

Professor Dave, continuing to smack down pseudoscientific nonsense one charlatan at a time. Well done!

It's always impressive and comforting to see rational people working hard to educate apes without losing their mind over the mass wilful ignorance thats overly abundant within our species. I'm out here losing my mind all by myself.

The oversimplification of scientific concepts is really dangerous, I remember talking to someone who believes that evolution is a lie, and tells me that the second law of thermodynamics disproves evolution when I asked him why do you say that he told me that the theory states that everything goes towards randomness and of course he found this piece of information in a youtube video that oversimplifies the second law of thermodynamics when I tried to tell him that earth is not a closed system, he didn't even know what a closed system means.

"i am omniscient, i know everything that is happening in the universe" "hang on, what's that at my door?"

"What is energy?" Energy is that thing I bloody well never seem to have! ____________ "Energy is the capacity to do work." Yup. Still applies 😂

Energy is the scalar quantity that is conserved, for a specific continuous transformation, that is also a symetry of the action. Under the T=t+εt transformation, energy is pẋ-L were L is the Lagrangian that describes the system, p is the generalized momentum defined as ∂L/∂ẋ. The quantity pẋ-L as a function of p and x is called the Hamiltonian which is also a function (like the Lagrangian) that describes the state of the system. If we assume that the Lagrangian for a classic mechanical system is T-V (kinetic -potential energy) then the Hamiltonian becomes T+V (kinetic +potential energy) which is the total mechanical energy of the system. The Hamiltonian is conserved if and only if it is time independent (closed system)

Deepak Chopra had been one of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi's most prized disciples before he struck out on his own. He had learned all of Maharishi's successful marketing tricks and usage of pseudoscientific language wrapped in Eastern mysticism phraseology. He learned from Maharishi the art of sounding deep while saying nothing. Not surprisingly, the queen of New Age woo Oprah Winfrey has endorsed both Chopra and Transcendental Meditation. I will say that I still perform TM regularly because it can be pleasurable and peaceful, but you would have to be a fool to believe most of the gobbledygook claims Maharishi made about it and its advanced techniques like "yogic flying".

"when you're not looking at your child, it's infinity, it's nothingness." I bet that child (existant or no) developed object permanence before Leo did.

I feel so much negative energy coming from this video that I need to detoxify my chakras and realign my bioenergy fields with the quantum frequency of the Universe so that my aura vibrates harmonically again.

Hithere Professor! I have now seen most of your videos and I want to say : thank you for your hard work, not only for entertaining and educating me but also being a voice of reason on this platform of "alternative facts". I understand that this video is old and I doubt that you track all your videos , but who knows - I'll just try here first and see . I came across a very interesting thing called Synchronicity. Apparently the old psychiatrist Carl Jung coined this concept in the late 1920 "to describe circumstances that appear meaningfully related yet lack a causal connection." Carl himself meant that it was pointing to something paranormal but did not conduct any experiments or observations to reach his conclusions. But as it seems there is very few skeptic voices here on youtube on the matter. I believe its needed and I would love to hear your thoughts on it.

On top of this video being entertaining, it finally answered my question(i have math point of view), that is "is time continues or discrete", and what i got from quantization is that its discrete. Thank you :D

I was raised in a evangelical church believing in healing, speaking in tongues etc. So when I broke away I quickly got caught up in all these quantum physics and mystical teachings. It took years but I finally rid myself of all false beliefs.

Years ago my wife dragged me to a new age conference in Sydney. Deepak was visibly sick from flu or similar while preaching how we can all control our health. Several thousand people seemed not to notice. It was gibberish.

Thank you professor. I needed this video in my life. I am tired of New Era BS. My life is much more simpler since I am into science.

Ha! I'm one of the new age nuts that managed to escape but there was a time when What the Bleep Do We Know was the gospel I lived by. Sounds silly now but it made so much sense at the time. I recently did some therapy with psilocybin to treat PTSD and sometimes it's such a powerful experience that it feels like you've entered the realm of the gods or have connected with universe in a profound way that's hard to look away from once you've been there. But Man, some people get ridiculously woo-woo with it. I found Carl Sagan way before mushrooms so I'm all good and I use your line from this vid all the time. It does seem like there's a region of the brain that's there to seek out and connect with the divine and psychedelics can be an incredible way of scratching that little itch we all have in us. To me the fact that its all chemistry in my brain is mind blowing enough as is so I don't need to dress it up with any mysticism and nonsense.

So basically what I've learned is that you can't just magically produce a femboy fox in your room no matter how hard you try. 0/10 worst universe please give me a different one.

I found this meme once about healing crystals. A woman hotglued crystals into her car, because she said they gave the car a postive energy, and that they helped her feel good on mondays. She also put them on the steering wheel, and the caption said: "CONGRATULATIONS, YOU JUST TURNED YOUR AIRBAG INTO A CLAYMORE" and laughed my ass off

Picking on Jared from spirit science without pointing out he thinks Jews came from space.

I completely agree about needing to understand terms and determine if they are being used correctly. One of the most common comments I post on RU-vid science videos is asking if some term from the video is defined in that science the same way I am understanding it as a mathematician, and if not, how is it defined?

"such as Scientology and other successful criminal enterprises" ok, that got me. That's good. Don't get sued.

My sister got a 98% in quantum physics at McGill. Nothing else to say here, just very proud of her

I love the fact that while watching this video I was shown an ad for astral projection 😂

My mom has fallen victim to the pseudo science cults to the point that I am now worried for her. She no longer trusts any doctor and relies only on "natural" medicine, energy treatments and other magic to get her health in check. As she ages further and the fear of death becomes more substantial I fear that she will spend everything she has on those gurus, just so she can confirm her biases and this will lead her to having a miserable old age. It's just saddening how we have achieved so much and yet, there are still ways to exploit our naive magical thinking to such extremes as to forego medication just in order to prove a point.

"If a tree falls unobserved in a forest, does it make a sound?" Quantum mystics: "There is no tree"

I don't think there's an issue conflating two concepts with one an other, as it's a normal part of vocabulary evolution to save time and energy. The only issue is when we don't properly explain those concepts, such as how the room does not have "good energy", but does have characteristics that trigger associations in the brain which then trigger hormones that make us feel nice. So, the combination of the room's composition and the associations in the brain cause a chemical reaction with an energy cost. So since language is still very new and clumsy, we're at a loss when explaining what has energy and what imparts it, because we have the chemical energy and we impart in onto ourselves to perform chemical chain reactions. So rather than placing the energy in the associations inside our brain, we place it in the physical objects tied to those associations. Of course you could say, "this room reminds me of other rooms where I had nice experiences", but more than likely, you won't be conscious of the associations involved in a "vibe" you get off of something, and of course all that takes more time to say than, "good energy." It reminds me of how my niece at 1 year old could hold a toy phone and walk across the floor without help, because the phone was her association tool that helped activate her balance and alleviate anxiety, reminding her of other, more effective supports she used to walk and giving her the somewhat false sense that this one would do the same job. In a way it did though, by helping her associate the walking routine in her brain to the new movement of walking without supports, without making the two routines seem like different routines. In that way, physical objects can play a very similar role for adults such as reminding us of promises, dates, people, places, emotions, morals, etc. The energy we impart on objects by giving them definitions, and the almost magical(sufficiently advanced) effect that has on human civilization is why we have the quote, "In the beginning, there was the Word, and the Word was with God." This refers to the magical power of human speech. How it has the ability to change the world and our very concept of the universe. Language makes war, peace, craftsmen, scientists, art, government... language is how we are able to rapidly exterminate species across the planet in the pursuit of resources, language is how we cure diseases and erradicate them. It's easy to see how this highly advanced concept with uncountable implications could be seen as magical or even godly. I've always been a skeptic about metaphysical things, and generally everything. True skepticism should including not fully disbelieving the point in question as well. If some scientists believe there are upwards of 10 dimensions folded microscopically into each other, then there's nothing wrong with people believing in reincarnation, afterlife, auras, etc, etc, etc. As long as they're working to explain those beliefs through data or following those beliefs in a way that doesn't go against data too much. The data seems to show that humans owe a lot of their successes to people who ignored data and did the illogical, so maybe it doesn't hurt if a few people(key phrase "A FEW") don't listen to scientists and have their own crackpot theories. Newton believed the universe and its systems were too beautiful to not be the work of God, he simply didn't believe God was like a warden watching over his creations and rather set the universe in motion to step back and watch it unfold.

It’s crazy how many comments on this video mention someone’s mom being duped by these charlatans, that sucks and to bad they can just scam ppl the way they do!

Animated spirituality guru:- "One octave down from carbon is silicon!" Dave:- That's called a 'period', the periodic table is not a piano... The best line I've heard in a while and I watch comedy every day

The thing that bothers me the most about all of these people is they love to bring up scientific discoveries when they think it proves their ideas, but will deny the scientific method when it doesn't.

Hey man, love your videos, been watching a lot because I am getting pretty involved with science right now, I am in year 11 Atar (Australian uni version of a course 2nd last year of school) Phyiscs and Chemistry, I would go with bio or human bio, but I am pretty bad at them, so I went with phys and chem, anyways, Love your stuff, has had me learning a lot on top of what I learn at school, which is an investigation on relative heat capacities of different materials, where we are given a random material from a list of different heat capacities and have to find out what material we have, and in chem where we are doing net ionic equations, just started the year, so not too complex, anyways, keep it up, love your stuff.

OMG, THANK YOU! THANK YOU THANK YOU, THANK YOU! Thanks for explaining the "Slit Experiment". That has been something that I couldn't wrap my head around because I didn't kmow why or how the Experiment worked. And really, a lot of people don't explain it that well. Hell, sometimes they leave it a mystery, and left me thinking that the eyeball watching the dot was the explination, but it just never sat well with me. I didn't know that the observation itself was the reason for the change in behavior. Course I guess I should have. In order to measure something, you gotta interact with it. I also agree that the language used is very misleading... "like it KNOWS its being watched". I've even heard that statement used in educational videos. Thanks for finally explaining something that had been a thorn in my side. I already have a hard enough time wrapping my head around concepts in Physics.

"The periodic table is NOT a Piano!" I died.

"Everything is Centimeters man, it's all made of Centimeters!"

This video feels so good to watch when you are surrounded by quackery. Thanks for saying this out loud. Some days it feels like the whole pseudoscience scene (including flat erath) is just a training-ground for future carreers. The rules are the same in politics, management, advertisment, .... There is ways to manipulate people and they work in any shape or form. Where is the line between quackery and fraud and why does noone seem to care? In this regards: Thank you so much for your work good Sir. It realy helps me to understand our society which I am strangely beeing a part of.

yo! thank you so much for being an influential voice advocating on behalf of of the sciences and importance of critical thought! please continue pointing out flawed science and flawed epistemology when you have the capacity to do so! i see you still in the comment section and had to extend my thanks! btw i saw you embarrass james your and that was great 😂

Leo: I learned about everything by thinking about it. The pointy bit on the Dunning Kruger graph: You are here.

"Believe those who are seeking the truth; doubt those who find it." - André Gide

23:02 Very true. I DO love cool shapes! However, I also am aware that shapes don't necessarily have meaning. And the ones that do, have basis in science, can be tested and proven, and are usually not that cool to look at. Also, 47:52 I have had quite a bit of trauma in my life, but I count myself fortunate that the end result of all that is that I am less vulnerable to conmen and charlatans. I need proof before I can believe, respect before I can trust. Making me exactly the kind of person these people DON'T want, because I can and will question every facet of everything they're peddling until I receive a satisfactory, plausible, scientific answer.

As someone who loves crystals and witchcraft, I see it as like writing my shopping list vs trying to remember everything and forget things. Holding a tigers eye reminds me to be wise, looking at amethyst helps me calm down and "protects me" from negativity by redirecting my mind on something else, spell charms reminds me of goals and motivates me more to do it etc. It should be used as another form of mindfulness meditation, I could use any other objects to meditate with but rocks and plants are cool. There's nothing wrong with meditation, i think everyone should do it because it promotes introspectiveness, self awareness I see too many people lack 🙄 Like the awareness of that good happy feeling you get when you see a beautiful crystal shine isn't from the crystal, but it's from within. Just because it brought happiness to you, doesnt mean waving it around changes how the world works.

'I may have stolen your wallet when you weren't looking, but from your perspective it was was nothingness, so did I really steal anything?'

"He is a third-degree black belt in the art of pseudoscientific word salad" this had me dying 😆

Great talk. Really enjoyed it. One minor nitpick - You didn't use the word 'crap' enough, or at all, when describing quantum woo. :-)

Great content, love your chem and ochem courses!!

"If you think I'm wrong, it's because I'm right." -Big brain cult leader

"When you realize that you're God, it will instantaneously solve every problem in your life." Tried it- still had to call a plumber for our back bathroom.

the chernobyl disaster created some pretty high gamma frequencies that align with my chakras

"funny how someone who is omniscient doesn't know who is at their door" 🤣

"Frequency of WHAT?!" -Prof. Dave, Martymer 81, and possibly every person who has a functional brain

"Things can happen only when things are perfectly balanced" is my favorite, because by sheer coincidence it happens to even be related to scientific truth, by virtue of being its exact opposite. *Nothing* happens and nothing will *ever* happen again once "things are perfectly balanced". It's the heat death of the universe.

Please do a video series on all the alternative healing modalities, especially psychedelic plant medicines, sound healing, structured water, herbal medicines, essential oil, movement therapy like tibetan rites and osho and breathwork like wim hof and TRE, acupuncture etc There are just so many out there

I have watched a bunch of videos on the double slit experiment in the past, all which said the same stuff as demonstrated in your video, thank you for explaining it properly with the context of why the results were different, it makes more sense to me now.

Leo thinks he’s Doctor Manhattan, but he’s just a normal inhabitant of Arkham Asylum

Bad energy: being held above a pit of spikes. Good energy: a compressed spring set to push you away from the spikepit and onto a mattress.