Clash of world views
Whatever else the Answers in Genesis group might be accused of, Lawrence Krauss’s charge of intellectual dishonesty in their use of the fruits of science and technology is misplaced (26 May, p 24).
The science of technological devices such as planes, cars and TVs is based on what we can observe and test directly in the same time frame in which they operate. The science of reconstructing the origins and history of biological systems, the Earth and the cosmos is not based on what we can see (still less test) at the time of their origin. It is based on how we interpret 鈥� in the light of our preferred world views 鈥� what we see today of the fragmentary and time-altered leftovers of years gone by.
The fact that one scientific methodology works well when applied to the regularities of nature, by explaining how things operate, is no guarantee that it will work well when applied to irregularities in nature or to explaining biological origins. A methodology adopting a world view which presupposes that everything can be explained wholly in terms of the regularities of nature will very probably be successful where things do indeed operate in accord with such regularities. However, where in fact they may not so operate or originate, such a restricted approach will be science-stifling and potentially misleading.
Therefore, even if we don’t agree with creationist methodologies (which I don’t), they are not being intellectually dishonest by embracing indisputably science-based technology whilst rejecting disputable science-based “origins” history.
Accident prone
A better question to ask than “do some people have bad luck?” is whether a past history of accidents provides any forecast of accidents (12 May, p 19).
Consider this thought experiment, using similar figures to the study you report. Ask 147,000 people to toss a coin, say, 20 times.
There will be a “hapless” group near one end of the spectrum with 50 per cent more tails on average than the people outside this group. However, if we consider future coin tosses, there are no people who are more prone to tails than others.
As regards accidents, it is possible that some people are more prone to accidents than others, but the article says that “the study doesn’t reveal which people in particular are most at risk”.
It is possible that the study draws spurious conclusions from completely random data. The conclusions then would be laughable except for the insidious possibility that an insurance company could cite such “research” to increase premiums for random accident victims.
Chaos not free
Bluntly put, it is absurd to imply, as you report Bj枚rn Brembs doing, that chaos is a “rudimentary sort of free will” (19 May, p 16). This chaos is in fact a sort of determinism, which is antithetical to the strong sort of free will and irrelevant to the weak one.
The strong sort is known as origination: the assertion that decisions can be originated by the free will of an agent such that those decisions have no causes.
Thus, as an “uncaused” source of causation, origination is the province of faith, and its existence is widely doubted by scientists and philosophers alike.
The weak sort, called voluntariness, merely asserts that an agent has free will if it can behave in a way that suits its own preferences.
Arguably the most familiar conception of free will, voluntariness reduces to subjectively experienced freedom of choice.
Consequently, it can only be ascribed to entities believed to possess sufficient subjectivity. While voluntariness is easily constrained, by imprisonment for example, few doubt its existence.
The mathematically defined chaos to which Brembs refers cannot provide evidence for free will as voluntariness, because it tells us nothing about internally experienced freedom, or any other aspect of subjectivity.
The verified presence of mathematical chaos actually excludes free will as origination, because by definition this chaos conforms to a predetermined pattern, while origination admits no predetermination.
Conflating origination with voluntariness is a common error in unsophisticated discussions of free will. Suggesting that deterministic chaos is evidence for any conception of free will, however, propagates far worse confusions.
Obnoxious children
Your article on bipolar disorder omitted discussion of the dreaded JOD (Juvenile Obnoxiousness Disorder), whose incidence is growing at alarming rates (19 May, p 6). The symptoms closely resemble those included in the official DSM-IV definitions of bipolar disorder and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.
Although JOD has been successfully treated for millennia by familial love, patience and discipline, the sudden rapid spread of this serious disease must now be aggressively treated with psychotropic drugs. And preferably off-label drugs, at that: those intended for something else that generally haven’t been tested on children and that are known to carry serious and potentially lethal side effects when given to adults. The alternatives are too horrible to contemplate.
How fortunate we are that big pharma does not need to conduct new research into JOD, because they already have ample supplies of drugs developed and approved for the treatment of adults with other diseases, such as epilepsy and schizophrenia.
As reported in your article, Harvard psychiatrist Michael Miller says that “we simply don’t have all the information we need to connect the dots between behaviour, causes and symptoms”. The lack of scientific knowledge has never stopped us from administering powerful drugs, off-label, to adults, so why not do the same to children?
Hide in plain sight
Apparently Microsoft is developing techniques to guess personal information from your web-browsing history (19 May, p 32). My reaction was to write a tiny program I’ve called “Chaff”.
It navigates to www.newscientist.com and selects three words at random, then uses a famous web search engine to look them up. It then visits one of the first three results, stays there a random number of seconds and returns to the search results page, where it selects another page at random and repeats, periodically selecting three more words from a new page.
The aim is to produce a superficially real-looking browsing history 鈥� the chaff 鈥� that would be horribly difficult to separate from the wheat of my real browsing, without creating any serious nuisance. Chaff could be further tuned to match aspects of my own browsing behaviour.
This all follows from the observation that the secret to concealment is not to hide a needle in a haystack, but to build a stack of needles and hide it there.
For the record
鈥� We described Robert Weinberg of the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research as being a “winner of a Nobel prize for his work on viruses and cancer” (2 June, p 38). He has not won the Nobel prize.
鈥� Gordon Gekko may be a fictional character from the 20-year-old movie Wall Street, but we should not have used a fictional spelling of his name on our cover (2 June).
Darwin awards
It is refreshing to see New 杏吧原创 not only defending Darwinian evolution from fundamentalist attacks, but also providing evidence of its operation, in reporting the dangers of using a cellphone whilst walking (2 June, p 19).
There is nothing more annoying than listening to the intimate details of some idiot’s life shouted into a cellphone for all to hear when out strolling, except perhaps suffering the same on public transport. The fact that people who expose everyone else to this annoyance are almost twice as likely to step in front of moving cars is clearly nature’s way of ensuring that their inconsiderate genes are not passed on to future generations. I wonder if readers can cite other examples of such self-limiting social misbehaviour?
Firestorm theorists
In the article about a “firestorm from space”, it seems a bit churlish to say “did the blast leave any traces…? Proponents have yet to find any…”, and to present it as a new discovery (26 May, p 8). D. S. Allan and J. B. Delair have compiled, and published in 1995, a raft of meticulously presented evidence concerning the event which they, by averaging various evidential indications, dated to around 12,500 years ago. Are these academic “proponents”, such as Richard Firestone and Allen West, unaware of their book When the Earth nearly Died (Gateway, 1994)?
Allen West writes:
鈥� Yes, during our research we became aware of Allan and Delair’s book, which is a compilation from many sources, extending back hundreds of years. The general theory of the catastrophe has been written about in theoretical terms for a long time. Some of the proponents of the theory are cited in our scientific papers. We do not claim to have developed the general cosmic event theory. We have, instead, uncovered and disclosed never-before-reported hard scientific evidence for a cosmic impact. We are grateful to all of the original pioneers 鈥� including Allan and Delair 鈥� who pointed the way to the evidence we found.
Vaccine options
Commenting on the stand-off between Indonesia and the World Health Organization over the provision of H5N1 bird flu virus samples (26 May, p 5), you touch on the even bigger issue that 90 per cent of the world’s population, rich or poor, have no chance of receiving a conventional influenza vaccine. Global production is too limited.
However, by switching flu-vaccine facilities to produce a live attenuated vaccine, already approved and used for seasonal flu, the required number of doses could be produced. Furthermore, switching just a quarter of the world’s biopharmaceutical protein production plants to produce a new protein-based vaccine 鈥� now close to clinical approval 鈥� will allow a greater speed of coverage, which is critical. Such switching is not commercially attractive, however, so action by governments would be needed.
Find more ore
I was rather unimpressed with the article on the threat to the world’s mineral resources (26 May, p 34). Haven’t we been hearing similar cries of “wolf” for 40 years?
Surely if a mineral becomes scarcer the price will rise: currently uneconomic deposits will become economic to extract; more will be recycled; and in some cases alternative materials will become cheaper than the scarce resource.
I would have been more interested in a discussion of current extraction technology and the geology involved. Do we have a random distribution of minerals, with ore becoming vastly more available if we are prepared to exploit lower grades? Or are the currently viable deposits the bulk of the likely resource? Have we surveyed all of the Earth’s mineral resources, or are there still countries where potential resources are unknown? What is the potential for recycling, especially as prices rise?
From Gordon Stanger
We may be a little short on rhodium, indium, gallium and germanium, but the rest of the feature was just ill-considered scaremongering. It’s not a question of “running out”, but of “how much are we willing to pay?” We have enough real problems to face without conjuring up illusions of scarcity.
Hallett Cove, South Australia
From John Zimmerman
Any prediction of materials shortages needs to go beyond the geologic to the economic and also to consider history. In 1980 Paul Ehrlich and Julian Simon made a bet on the future scarcity of a group of metals. After 10 years each of the metals was lower in price, indicating increased availability relative to demand. The long-term trend in the inflation-adjusted prices for most metals is downwards.
In the short term prices do go up, causing alternatives to come into play and spurring the hunt for technological fixes. Additionally, science advances so quickly that any prediction of a shortage 10 or 20 years away, based on today’s technology, is not germane. Malthusian fears about unsustainable resource use have been unfounded for centuries. Why should they be justified now?
Hopkinton, New Hampshire, US
From Martin Gould
On your map of minerals around the world there didn’t seem to be any in the Congo. I am sure that the Congo is the richest country in the world for mineral wealth, hence the huge ongoing war and plunder by neighbouring countries, which are funded, armed and organised by the west.
Newmarket Suffolk, UK
The editor writes:
鈥� The Democratic Republic of the Congo did feature in the copy, but did not appear on the map because there were no reliable estimates of its reserves available.
Warming proof
Guy Cox makes an extremely important point in implying that the burden of proof regarding the truth of global warming lies with the sceptics, not those wishing to reduce carbon dioxide levels (2 June, p 26). Sceptics and believers alike accept the fact that humankind has increased CO2 levels substantially since the industrial revolution. Likewise, both must accept that very simple chemistry teaches us that CO2 is a greenhouse gas and, other things being equal, increasing CO2 levels will warm the world.
Unless it can be demonstrated unequivocally that other things are not equal, and some mechanism exists which is acting to stabilise planetary temperatures, the human race is duty-bound to assume that it must keep CO2 levels as near as possible to those which prevailed in the recent past.
Grasp the meaning
Jonah Lehrer reports the finding that the experience of synaesthesia may be triggered not by sensory inputs but by concepts (19 May, p 48). I am not a neuroscientist but a practitioner of cognitive linguistics and was excited, not so much by the crosstalk between linguistic concepts and sensory experiences, as by the support this gives to an established paradigm in cognitive linguistics: that concepts are embodied. George Lakoff, a pioneer in cognitive linguistics, has long claimed that concepts are generally based on our bodily experience, such as action and perception.
For example, in “I have a full grasp of the whole passage”, the word “grasp” is used metaphorically. But this sense is not an out-of-thin-air thing, but rather based on its physical sense as in “I grasped an apple”. The concept of “understanding” seems to be connected with the concept of “grasp”. This relationship is also evidenced in Chinese.
More recently, research on mirror neurons has lent more compelling evidence to this Lakovian approach: for example, neurons involved in executing a monkey’s action also fire when the monkey merely sees an experimenter perform that action. Similar experiments have been done on human subjects with action and auditory stimulus. There are also tentative findings on correlations between action-execution, hearing the action word with its literal meaning, and hearing the action word with a figurative meaning.
The research of Julia Simner covered in your feature is part of a bigger picture of embodiment incorporating relationships between sensory experience, physical concepts and abstract concepts in people with synaesthesia.