Cosmology's problem
Your excellent existential issue (23 July) is most revealing in what it ignores. It exposes modern cosmology as a sophisticated shell game using advanced mathematics to generate infinite regresses of explanations that explain nothing.
Problems are solved by positing ever more perplexing problems that multiply like angels on the head of a pin. Accounting for our universe by postulating infinite parallel universes or explaining the big bang as the collision of “branes” in a higher dimensional “bulk” are not accounts at all, but merely ignorance swept under a cosmic rug 鈥� a rug which itself demands explanation but is in turn buried under still more rugs.
Modern physics would do well to get back to basics and take a lesson from Occam, whose razor is sadly missing in a science that fills holes in its theories and addresses anomalous data by invoking ever more complicated unseen forces, undiscovered particles or invisible dimensions. Simplify, simplify.
On the smaller and more personal scale, neuroscience fares no better when it dismisses the self, awareness and consciousness as illusory while ignoring the elephant in the room. Something must be experiencing the illusion, something is being fooled into thinking that it is and that it is aware. What do they propose to call that deluded something? The self, perhaps? More Russian dolls.
I think, therefore鈥�
In Michael Brooks’s excellent article on existence, he suggests that “our reality is in fact a simulation run by entities from a more advanced civilisation” (23 July, p 36). Robin Hanson then says that if we uncovered a clue to the existence of this simulation, the operators could just rewind everything to a point where the clue was erased.
If this process did not completely clear out the memory buffers, it might explain d茅j脿 vu.
From Peter Hoare
Your existential issue contained an interesting discussion on what it might take for us to die out (23 July, p 39). But the doomsday events listed don’t reflect the suggestion that we are a simulation run by a more advanced civilisation. Maybe mass extinction would occur quite simply when they upgrade to the latest version of Windows.
Quorn, Leicestershire, UK
From Andy Bebington
In contemplating the question “How do I know I exist?”, Michael Brooks references Descartes’ statement “I think, therefore I am”, but he didn’t go far enough.
If I meet you, the “you” I meet is unique, because no one else can see you through my eyes. My experience of you is unique 鈥� our mutual history, however short, is not shared with anyone else. Anyone else will experience you through their own eyes and their/your mutual history.
Descartes ought to have continued “and I think, therefore you are”.
London, UK
Final frontier
Mary Midgley’s letter on the space race (30 July, p 28) could be interpreted as humankind’s suicide note.
She consigns human space exploration to the realm of fantasy “which has proved imaginatively nutritious but which needs to be kept separate from real life”. Real life also includes meteorite impacts, super volcanoes, basalt floods and other menaces. Humanity will only survive such catastrophes if it has colonised the solar system. Keeping all our eggs in a single basket will, sooner or later, prove disastrous.
It is a mistake to treat human space exploration as simply a flag-planting exercise. On the contrary, it may well be the human race’s best insurance policy.
From Brian White
Thank you, Mary Midgley. At last someone has voiced scepticism about the future of crewed space exploration and colonisation.
Former Astronomer Royal Richard van der Riet Woolley declared that going to the moon was impractical. Some claim that those sceptical about modern space exploration may likewise be mistaken. But the unpalatable fact that humans are not suited to interplanetary travel speaks for itself. We will never set foot on another planet.
Ashford, Middlesex, UK
Cyber space
Michael Le Page discusses scenarios for what artificial intelligences will do when they exceed human intelligence (23 July, p 40). One possibility described is that computers, being better suited than humans to interstellar travel, will leave Earth to explore the galaxy.
In the spirit of the late author Douglas Adams, I suggest that their parting message to humanity could be: “So long, and thanks for all the chips.”
Self interest
Anil Ananthaswamy seems to suggest that improved understanding of the neurological basis of our sense of self shows that “self” is just an illusion (23 July, p 41).
I think it shows that the sense of self we experience is an emergent phenomenon which we can now understand as arising from fleeting and changeable brain processes. A phenomenon does not become an illusion just because we begin to understand its underlying basis. That is as misleading as saying that the solidity of hard macroscopic objects is an illusion because it arises ultimately from the interactions of sub-atomic particles and forces which cannot themselves be described as solid.
Describing emergent phenomena such as the sense of self as “illusions” just because they arise from other more fundamental phenomena does not help understanding, it creates confusion.
Hands off the net
Given my role in a large internet company, it’s probably natural to worry about what might happen if the internet becomes , as Anil Ananthaswamy suggests (16 July, p 42).
While I might not wish to downplay the threat from fragmentation, I believe there are other risks to the internet that are potentially more serious, such as increased crime leading to a collective loss of faith in its safety, ill-conceived legislation that doesn’t make anything better but makes it much worse, and direct government interference.
If you study the history of new technologies within the past few centuries, and also look at the introduction of government regulation, several things become clear. There hasn’t yet been much regulation of the internet, and it’s about time by historical standards that significant regulation started to emerge. Politicians internationally have shown an interest in the internet and are now determined to do something. The problem is that there’s a policy vacuum 鈥� no one knows what a policy framework for the internet should look like.
Those outside the UK will no doubt believe I’m exaggerating when I say that between 1865 and 1896, British law , which included automobiles, to have a crew of three, one of whom had to walk with a red flag 60 yards (55 metres) ahead of each vehicle at the permitted top speed in the countryside of 4mph (6km/h).
Given the absence of a suitable policy framework, we can pretty much guarantee that some politician somewhere in the world will be convinced to pass legislation that does something as electronically asinine.
Bulb footprint
It is not true to say that incandescent light bulbs waste 90 per cent of the power they consume as heat (23 July, p 5). In climates and seasons that require buildings to be heated, any heat from incandescent bulbs warms those buildings and offsets part of their heating requirements.
I would not like to estimate which has the lower carbon footprint 鈥� incandescent or low-energy bulbs. Certainly, the wattage on a bulb box is no indication of overall energy costs.
Aristotle on chance
In his look at the meaning of risk (25 June, p 30), Nicolas Bouleau writes: “The concept of chance as we understand it today emerged long after the birth of philosophy. The ancient Greeks distinguished between events which were inevitable and those which were seen as the will of a god.”
Aristotle’s Physics has an extensive discussion of chance, including a summary of the views held: some believed everything was due to chance, some that nothing was, and many held views in-between. Aristotle’s own view is in line with that held by many modern philosophers.
Chandra's life
As interesting as your “Lab rats” feature was (9 July, p 40), I was startled by the statement that Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar “settled for life as a second-tier scientist”. Chandra, as he was known, was widely regarded as one of the greatest mathematical physicists and astrophysicists of the 20th century.
His many deeply penetrating books and papers, together with what has been written about him, leave no room for doubt. His obituaries all confirmed it.
The editor writes:
鈥� Chandra was extraordinary. However, this was recognised very late. Arthur I. Miller, in his book Empire of the Stars, refers to him as a “reluctant astrophysicist”: really, Chandra wanted to be a theoretical physicist, but this work was sidelined throughout the 1930s courtesy of Arthur Eddington’s torpedoes. A succession of the “greats” chose to ignore his contributions until the mid-1940s, a situation that Chandra resigned himself to. In an interview with Spencer Weart in 1977 , he admitted that he saw himself as the kind of scientist who helps others make breakthroughs, rather than make them himself.
Hair on a G string
David Robson’s fascinating exploration of sound symbolism in language (16 July, p 30) reminded me of a performance in Australia in the early 1990s.
Christine Johnston, dressed as a demented opera singer, walked through the audience approaching various individuals, and proceeded to “sing” their hair.There were screeching, short, percussive sounds for a crew cut, flowing notes for wavy locks, and coloratura for perms. The audience seemed to understand almost immediately, and there were whoops of laughter when she captured the sound of a hairdo perfectly.
Without knowing it we were a test case for researcher Sotaro Kita’s theories, in a Brisbane nightclub.