If you’ve run across Microsoft’s new ads, which aim to counter the witty “I’m a PC, I’m a Mac” series by Apple, you might have noticed this tweedy academic-looking guy near the end:
Years back, I had the idea that Apple should include more famous-for-academia types in its Think Different ads. Ed Witten, Jacques Derrida, Amartya Sen, people like that. But I didn’t actually call up any ad agencies to make the pitch. So I figured that Microsoft had the same idea, and was including some professor-type among its self-declared PC’s in order to lend some gravitas to the proceedings.
Yeah, not so much. The somber mug above belongs to none other than Deepak Chopra, celebrated purveyor of quantum nonsense. He did, of course, win the 1998 IgNobel Prize in Physics for “for his unique interpretation of quantum physics as it applies to life, liberty, and the pursuit of economic happiness.” So there is that. (In certain religious circles, there is an increasingly popular teaching known as the Prosperity Gospel. I wonder if I could make money writing a book about “The Prosperity Hamiltonian”?)
The construction of jokes comparing Deepak Chopra’s understanding of quantum mechanics to Microsoft’s understanding of software is left as an exercise for the reader.
You beat me to this! His appearance in those ads has been driving me crazy.
Have you been following Washington bothering Muslims, securing petroleum, administering healthcare, safeguarding retirements, warring on drugs, promoting airline travel, restoring New Orleans and Galvestan, regulating financial markets… Deepak Chopra and Moose Jewel in 2008! Let’s get it over with.
Enter some CP/M file handling commands into Microcrap Vista (on expendable files). ‘Nough said.
There is guy who works with genes, and chick who designs jeans and the guy who wants to saves polar bears. Why didn’t you mention those people? And the Africans, don’t forget the Africans …
It’s especially great that in the ad he says he’s, “… not a human thinking, not a human doing …”
Agreed.
Despite two decades of PC evangelism (and even the fact that IBM put me through college), I must declare that as of this day, I am no longer PC.
I was sent a couple of weeks ago a clip from Deepak Chopra’s website his statements about the Republican National Convention. As much as I find his rot about quantum consciousness or quantum healing to be irritating, he was razor sharp and spot on with that one.
Besides Deep-pockets Chopra can’t be dumb. It takes a certain smarts to lift cash from people’s wallets by selling balderdash.
Lawrence B. Crowell
Been there, complained about that — but yes, the “not a human thinking” bit was, unintentionally, hilarious.
Since when does Derrida count as a serious academician?
You folks need to relax. One way to look at the advertising is that it’s saying that Windows can help you do whatever it is that you do, even if it’s nonsense.
Also, regarding your statement about “the witty “I’m a PC, I’m a Mac” series by Apple”, does anybody here really think those ads are witty? As a professional nerd, I find them annoying. An Apple computer is a cool twentysomething dude who dresses in hip, stylish clothes and a Windows PC is a overweight guy in a suit and tie who also wears glasses? Yeah, that’s really witty.
“Jacques Derrida”? You mean one of the most decorated intellectual impostures of our times? Come onnn..
Deepsix Chopra!
Actually, Luke, yes, the Mac/PC ads are funny, and I’ve never used anything but Windows (XP, that is).
John Hodgeman was an inspired choice for the ads and the “cool Mac” vs “stuffy PC” is an image Apple has cultivated for years and plays perfectly what is pretty much the conventional wisdom these days whether or not it’s true. Even though I am quite happy with my “PC” (an IBM/Lenovo Thinkpad) and find no reason to pay through the nose for a Mac, I still find the ads clever and amusing.
Frankly, I think the biggest problem with Microsoft response is that they have waited far too long to do it. If they had responded this way within the first few months, they might have been effective. These days, it’s just a big yawn.
hi Sean,
I would like to mention that I have a display problem connected to the header image:
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/cosmicvariance/files/uploads/header3b.jpg
The problem is that if I make my browser window wider than the inner page width the header image shifts awkwardly.
firefox 3.0.1 linux
The ad campaign wasn’t that bad an idea (although improving Windows would be even better). However, including Deepak Chopra ruins it. As the kids would say back when I was in college (whenever “upchucking” was insufficiently graphic): Deepak makes me want to blow chunks.
Damn you Sean, the phrase “is left as an exercise for the reader.” is the pinnacle of textbook evil! (Yes, it actually beats confusing notation.)
Just by thinking (and thereby altering quantum fluctuations), Deepak Chopra has created a spiritual wavefunction and a bhagavan wormhole connecting to a specific parallel universe, where things are different. Very different. The name of the parallel universe is Kabbalah-blabla.
In Kabbalah-blabla the other guys won WW2 and they have no problems using software. Intelligent design prohibits software bugs (=eliminate the developer immediately) and all other crap. They also have no problems choosing – there is only one company in the universe. Business, mysticism and dictatorship are the same thing in Kabbalah-blabla universe (pretty much as in our).
COB Tupac Chopper (Deepak’s quantum brother) runs business together with CEO Adolf Ballmer. Please, enjoy this enlightening video that Deepak Chopra managed to get through the bhagavan wormhole:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c3XdOl5YtLg
(Confession: Yes, I love my PC and Vista is honestly making my life easier, and Ballmer is not bullying me to say this! 😉
I’m solidly Mac, but I’m getting concerned that the continued weakness of the competition does not help Mac in motivating it to continue to improve its products. Macs could still use a lot of improvement in battery lifetime, and in being more solidly built (more able to withstand cold and a little bit more bumps and bangs without covers coming off etc.) What’s going to motivate them to improve when the “competition” is just putting out garbage like this?
As a Linux user all I can think of to describe the problem is to ask the question – Many Worlds or Many Nerds?
I wish you guys could see yourselves and your reaction to Deepak as I see you.
You remind me of my days in school surrounded by too hip by half kids, kids who all too quickly learned everything required to get an “A” in a class, but never learned the reasons behind equations. Most scientists, and especially physicists, think of the universe mechanistically and find the idea of multiverses more satisfying than that our universe has some intrinsic meaning behind it.
Maybe you find Deepak’s philosophy shallow, but I marvel at your derision. If there’s one thing I’ve found its that aggressive derision against someone who has done no harm to them is usually a sign of insecurity. As an aside, any physicist who has speculated about alternative universes, and treated it as a “scientific” endeavor is in my opinion far more “new agey” that Deepak. Its a sad excuse for the fear that the universe might have some meaning to it that is separate from pure probability. What a sad thing to require other universes to escape meaning within out own.
Eric Habegger, sorry if I offended you in any way. My experience though, is that people that can’t take a joke may not be the most confident among us.
(Sean will probably grumble that we are going off-topic here, but what the heck.)
Doctor Deepak Chopra is for sure smarter than I am, and knows a whole lot more, but he is using his knowledge in a dangerous and wrong way. I my eyes he is nothing more than a charlatan.
Why? Well, if you write books titled “Quantum Healing”, examining the mysterious phenomenon of spontaneous healing of cancer, any hillbilly-amateur-physicist like me can be absolutely sure that this is NOT science. My mother had colorectal cancer and if she had turned to Doctor Deepak Chopra for some “Quantum Healing” she wouldn’t be alive today. Now, she is perfectly cured by real doctors with the help off latest technology and real science.
It’s NOT up to real science to decide if there is meaning to our lives and the universe, or not. It’s NOT up to real science to decide if there is a God, or not. No real scientist will ever write an equation proving this. It’s helpless and utterly out of topics of real science.
So, charlatans turning glitters into gold, just have to accept that hip kids make fun of them in the name of real science.
Speedy,
I’m not even a fan of Deepak and have read no books by him. But my antenna goes up when I spot hypocracy. There has been so much quackery in physics for the last 50 years that its ridiculous. People will willfully use illogic, such as many worlds , or in a more literal way – multiverses, to explain things that can’t be easily explained in our universe. It even goes to the idea of something as simple as a virtual particle. What the hell is a “virtual” particle except an excuse to invent a new definition for something you don’t understand. There has been this huge overuse of labeling in physics to give one the feeling that one now understands it. “Oh, its a virtual particle. That explains it!”
Life is about struggling with the unexplainable and incomprehensible. Everyone must find their own way of doing it. But inventing an entire alternate reality in the form of multiverses that can’t be proven and has no contact with experiment, as the direction modern physics has moved in, is surely no better than what Deepak is doing.
This is not about invoking a supreme deity, or an organized religion, or a new age philosophy. Its about having egg all over one’s face and laughing at the other guy with a milk mustache. It’s ignorant and its dishonest, and its smug. But most of all, its too easy.
Eric, if you think physicists don’t know precisely what they mean by “virtual particle”, you’re completely wrong – the idea is in no way even speculative. That you’re ranting about it is a form of crackpottery and will fall under our no-crackpots clause in future.
Mark,
It’s typical of modern physicists to pick out one thing to argue about so as to ignore the entire thesis of my argument. I’m not conceding about virtual particles and your accusation of crackpottery ignores everything else I was saying. What about the rest of what I was saying. Is that too threatening to you to argue about? Everyone here can see what you are ignoring and the philosophical hypocracy.
Eric, I also think your comparison of people who discuss the multiverse in the context of a well-developed, well-motivated theory to the nonsense that comes out of Deepak Chopra’s mouth is complete crackpottery.
That you’re not conceding about virtual particles doesn’t help your case. Bye.
“I also think your comparison of people who discuss the multiverse in the context of a well-developed, well-motivated theory to the nonsense that comes out of Deepak Chopra’s mouth is complete crackpottery.”
I think that rather than labeling the “connection” between the multiverse and Deepak Chopra’s ideas as crackpottery it would be wiser to label the ideas themselves as crackpottery. If you did that then I would no longer feel inclined to defend Deepak based on unfairness. It’s the illusion of difference that I’m attacking. You and the rest of the science community better face up to it one of these days.