All at sea over mine waste
While we appreciate Fred Pearce’s contribution to the technical debate over
the disposal of mine tailings
(11 November, p 46), we regret that he has failed
to take up wider social and moral issues. The disposal of tailings at
sea鈥攌nown as “submarine tailings deposition” or STD鈥攊s currently
illegal in the US. (The US government agency, the Overseas Private Investment
Corporation, refused to grant political risk insurance to the huge Lihir gold
mine in Papua New Guinea partly for this reason.) Nor is it likely that Canada
or Australia would license a mine employing STD on their own territories. Yet
companies registered in these three countries can export the technology. This
anomaly is not lost on communities affected by STD in Indonesia and the
Philippines.
Pearce points out that advocates defend STD as an alternative to the
unacceptable risks of tailings deposition onshore. In fact, the mining industry
has other reasons for pushing submarine disposal. It is substantially cheaper
than building tailings ponds on land or transporting dried-out tailings to other
sites, and in recent years opposition to almost all new mines in the
Asia-Pacific has increased massively. Companies are desperate to minimise their
visible presence there, and avoid outrage at tailings pond failures.
Self and non-self
I was interested to read Peter Halligan and David Oakley’s
(18 November, p 34)
assertion of the subordinate position of the conscious mind. However, this
is hardly an original insight鈥攎ystics of the Zen and Sufi traditions
pointed this out long ago. Their teachings draw attention to the shallowness of
the ego (or false self, or Level 1 mind) and how it is an illusion created by a
need to make sense of feelings and actions caused by the unacknowledged (Level
2) parts of the mind. I believe the advertising industry, too, is well aware of
our unconscious “buttons” that they can press even though we consciously deny
that we could ever be manipulated against our will.
Letter
The idea that mental events have no effect in the physical world but only
possibly on each other, is known as epiphenomenalism. I am wondering whether
Halligan and Oakley’s theory can be defined as such.
If epiphenomenalism is true, there is no test for a conscious system as, in
principle, a conscious system cannot affect the outcome of any test. It would
follow that it is quite futile for me to wonder whether I am the only conscious
creature on the planet, as there is no way of ever answering the question. And
those members of the AI community who are trying to create conscious machines
are chasing the wild goose as there is no way of confirming consciousness in any
machine they might contrive.
Always on the run
Your celebratory new technology special (21 October, p 29) contained very few
references to issues such as energy consumption or the health implications of
new technologies, which you usually cover so well. And your competition
asks what kind of future worlds these technologies will create, and how will
they change our lives. The biggest impact of tele-immersion, Bluetooth and so on
will undoubtedly be environmental.
Aside from the energy costs associated with their production, many of these
technologies will need huge increases in energy consumption. Not only will sheer
volume of use override any energy saved by efficient design, but the “always on”
prerequisite of many wireless technologies invites an even more unthinking
attitude to energy use.
Designers of new technologies need to stop this rush towards an automatically
unsustainable world. What is the point of fantastically sophisticated
technologies if using them makes us increasingly stupid, to the point where we
don’t even know how to switch a light on or turn a key in a lock?
We might, however, need products that help us to confront the material
consequences of our unsustainable habits and lifestyles. Our ongoing use of
paper is one example. Working on such design problems would provide
techno-innovators with a far more creative challenge than 1001 redefinitions of
speed and efficiency.
Freewheeling
In your recent article about cycle helmets lessening the chance of a head injury, it was
no real surprise that the helmet provided protection whatever the age of the wearer
(4 November, p 27).
However, I found it scary that one of the
authors of the report in the British Medical Journal concluded that
there is a strong case “for legislation to make [cycle] helmets compulsory”.
How can someone be so naive or ignorant as to impose legislation against the
victims (for the majority of cases) of road accidents?
It’s like telling victims of gunshot wounds that they should have worn Kevlar
vests. Wearing a helmet is common sense. And to suggest that it encourages
cyclists to ride dangerously is preposterous. It is not the victims that need
pulling up, it is the perpetrators of road accidents. If Lance Armstrong, a
world-class professional cyclist, with many hours and miles of road experience,
can be taken out of the game by a world-class idiot driver, what chance do the
rest of us stand?
Letter
It’s wrong to claim that cyclists “no longer have an excuse not to wear a
helmet”. Instead cyclists, myself included, need freedom of choice. Experience
gained in other countries shows that enforcing helmet-wearing stops people from
using their cycles, for whom the health benefits of cycling outweigh the risks
that other road users impose on them. Therefore, enforcing the use of a helmet
would probably be bad for public health overall.
Perilous pesticides
As an organic farmer, I am disturbed to read
(11 November, p 16) that derris
has become one of a growing list of pesticides associated with Parkinson’s
disease. It’s particularly worrying, because the interval between derris
treatment and harvest is only a day for an edible crop!
It is strange, though, that there was no publicity on the pesticide
connection 15 years ago, when the story broke about heroin users developing
symptoms similar to Parkinson’s after injecting drugs contaminated with the
chemical MPTP. In this case, a metabolite of MPTP called MPP+ was identified as
the toxic culprit. But we were told that a globally used synthetic herbicide of
the paraquat family, cyperquat, contained the same molecule.
Many previous articles have associated exposure to synthetic pesticides with
Parkinson’s. They have invariably cited fat-soluble chemicals acting on the
systemic system as the cause鈥攆ormulations that are a thousand times more
likely to cross the blood-brain barrier and initiate Parkinson’s in vivo than
any degree of exposure to the non-systemic derris compound.
Gene-age insurance
In response to your correspondent John Hind
(11 November, p 60), I recommend
he reads the section on insurance from the Science and Technology Select
Committee’s 1995 report, Human Genetics鈥擳he Science and its
Consequences. I would be happy to send copies to him and any other
interested readers who e-mail me at jonesl@parliament.uk with their address.
(The rest of the report is good too.)
Perfect partners
In “What’s love got to do with it?” (28 October, p 38), Michael Brooks risks
misrepresenting our conversation about the sociology of sexual attraction. His
article implies that I said there is a trend towards evolutionary explanations
among sociologists. In fact, I was saying quite the opposite: most sociologists
of sexuality鈥攊ncluding myself鈥攔emain resolute social
constructionists, despite the trend towards evolutionary explanations in both
scientific and popular accounts. This may mean that social scientists and
natural scientists need to make more effort to engage in dialogue, but when we
do so we should make sure that we listen carefully to each other’s replies.
Lone cows
Mike Follows asserts that it is “safer . . . to be part of the herd”
(18 November, p 64).
Surely this is the one thing the BSE crisis has disproved.