Free debate
Dan Jones’s article (16 April, p 32) explores whether a mechanistic, and therefore deterministic, view of what we are degrades our view of ourselves by undermining the concept of free will.
If I believe, as I do, that we are animals, and no more than animals, this does not belittle my view of humanity. What it does do is greatly enhance my view of what an animal can be.
If I then come to believe that animals, including ourselves, are no more than mechanisms and therefore, in theory, deterministic, this does not make untrue all that I know of human love, altruism, ingenuity, self-sacrifice and greatness. All it does is enormously expand my view of what a mechanism can be.
If I go further, as I do, and come to believe that all mechanisms, including us, are no more than the interactions of neutrons, protons and electrons, guided perhaps by the fuzzy laws of quantum chromodynamics, this does not undo my wonder at humanity. It takes to a new level my appreciation of the fundamental laws of physics and the wonders of stuff.
If, as in fact I most certainly do not, I were to believe in a creator God, this new knowledge of the capabilities of the simplest components of the universe might make me want to worship Him.
From Don Manley
New 杏吧原创 undoubtedly gave us an eye-catching title for Jones’s article “The free will delusion”. It asks why we cling to the belief in free will, as if determinism were already proved.
I don’t believe it is and, unless this deterministic hypothesis is actually proved one day, we should surely continue to act on the basis that we have some freedom to choose our actions, even if our biology makes our choices more constrained than we would like to think.
As the article suggests, this seems to be the only basis for civilised living. Maybe that tells us something worth knowing.
Oxford, UK
From Robert Youngson
Determinism is undeniable because everything has at least one cause, and all causes are caused. Most of us think we have free will because we can consciously make choices and assume, if we ever think about it, they are free choices. They are not, because there are causes for the data from which choices are made and thus those choices are predetermined, as is the outcome of each choice.
As to criminal responsibility, society is entitled to protect itself against criminals by restraining them, but punishment is irrational and inhumane.
At this stage in the evolution of society, however, the free will illusion is probably essential.
Blandford Forum, Dorset, UK
From Tom Capes
I am quite pleased that, once I had achieved a schoolboy understanding of physics at age 16, I came to a Laplacian deterministic conclusion about the universe 鈥� in other words, that if all the forces and positions of everything in nature were known, a sufficiently vast intellect could determine the future 鈥� all on my own and without ever having heard of Pierre-Simon Laplace.
I’m also glad that subsequently, when I got my head around the consequences of quantum physics and chaos theory, I realised this determinism was poppycock. Changes that occur by chance, such as radioactive decay, mean the exact state of a system can never be fully determined.
Free will is not an illusion.
Grimsby, Lincolnshire, UK
From Bryan Storey
As I read the article on free will, I was reminded that in my Catholic seminary days many decades ago, I learned we are determined to follow what we see as most conducive to personal happiness and in that sense we have no free will. That has always seemed to me to be of the utmost common sense. Nothing I have seen or heard since has induced me to change my belief.
Tintagel, Cornwall, UK
From Tom Chamberlain
There is a deeper paradox about determinism that has not been mentioned. If everything is fixed beforehand, then so is every detail of Jones’s article.
Newark, Nottinghamshire, UK
Happiness paradox
The special report on happiness (16 April, p 46) did not mention the Easterlin paradox, that the average happiness of developed nations has not generally increased with growth of GDP per capita over the past few decades, and has even declined in China despite its spectacular .
One reason is the strong dependence of individual well-being on relative rather than absolute income. Others are declining community and social capital, as well as environmental degradation resulting from economic growth.
These results show that policy focused on GDP growth is not the way to increase happiness in developed countries. Denmark and other Nordic countries usually top international comparisons of average well-being, with their much greater equality and trust in neighbours and institutions.
School of Economics and Finance, University of St Andrews, Fife, UK
From Alan Entwistle听听听听听听听听听
I can, as a parent, state unequivocally that Daniel Gilbert’s assertion in your interview with him (16 April, p 48) that children have a reliably negative impact upon happiness is incorrect.
Tests he employs, or endorses, may score parents to be less happy on average than non-parents; my offspring probably rate me as a “miserable old git”. I can, however, assure both parties that I would be significantly more miserable without said offspring.
Buckhurst Hill, Essex, UK
From Hugh Colvin听听听听听听听听听
Gilbert thinks that states should measure happiness. When governments are consistently able to achieve cuts in death rates, prison populations and greenhouse gas emissions, along with the eradication of child poverty, a balanced economy, peace, class sizes of 20 and so on 鈥� the list is very long 鈥� then perhaps in some Shangri-La they will be entitled to get to work on national quotients of “happiness”, whatever that may mean.
But until that happy day, my state of mind is not their business.
Knighton, Powys, UK听听听听听听听听
The name game
The misleadingly easy quiz questions that John Chen came across (Feedback, 9 April) have been around for years. I recently used them as an icebreaker before a fund-raising quiz.
There are other possible questions. How much does a 10-gallon hat hold? (Answer: a headful, about 0.75 gallons.) In which month does the Munich Oktoberfest begin? (September.) My favourite is: which seabird has the Latin name Puffinus puffinus? Answer: the Manx shearwater; the puffin is Fratercula arctica.
From Julie Fitzpatrick
We need a word for the inverse of “something being known for an erroneous name” to apply in situations in which people believe a name to be incorrect or misleading when it is in fact perfectly correct and accurate.
Take the Chinese gooseberry, for example. We have been sold the idea that it should be called kiwi fruit, and Feedback accordingly reports an internet quiz which claims that the fruit originates in New Zealand.
Yet my family tradition and Wikipedia agree that Actinidia deliciosa, as the fruit is called, is native to southern China, with variants across Asia.
The New Zealand connection arose when some Chinese samples were cross-bred there to produce the variants we usually see in the shops. But claiming the whole lot for New Zealand is no more justified than if Australians were to claim the apple just because we developed the Granny Smith and Pink Lady.
Scarborough, Western Australia
Wealth disorder?
I found Jessica Hamzelou’s article on psychopaths very interesting (9 April, p 8). She stated that the study showed “brain areas involved in reward processing… were larger than normal” in adolescents with conduct disorder who also showed callous unemotional traits, considered symptoms of psychopathy in children. What, I wondered, about bankers’ brains? Do they show up larger than normal in the relevant areas?
Blast the waste
The advantages of thorium nuclear power (26 March, p 8) seem mostly unproven in practice, and the technology will probably take more than a decade to develop if a decision is taken to extract power from this element.
Meanwhile, our demand for energy means the demise of uranium and plutonium reactors is unlikely any time soon, although their lethal residues still need to be dealt with.
We have no real assurance that buried nuclear waste will remain buried. It is impossible to guarantee that nuclear waste, whether encased in salt caves or Yucca mountain, will not escape as a result of geological shifts.
A powerful international agency should be established and charged with collecting such waste from all reactors and, with rockets, shoot it on a one-way trip to the sun. Surely this would be cheaper than the billions being spent to “safely” bury the waste.
Growth must slow
Achim Steiner’s article (16 April, p 28) about the conflict between agricultural expansion and conservation appears to assume a growing world population is inevitable. It mentions population rising from the present 6.9 billion to between 8 and 9.7 billion by 2050, and discusses ways to increase land use for food without wrecking the planet.
If population growth is the problem, what about exploring reasonable and acceptable ways of limiting it?
Of course there will be difficult cultural problems, but surely they can’t be insurmountable.
For the record
鈥� A conversion error made as our feature about cockroaches (16 April, p 40) was being prepared for publication led to the radiation doses we quoted being out by four orders of magnitude. The correct figures are 64 grays for cockroaches, 640 grays for fruit flies and 1800 grays for Habrobracon wasps.
鈥� The story headlined “Invisible princess keeps kids honest” (23 April, p 18) should have said 67 children were involved in the study reported on.