You win some鈥�
In Kate Douglas’s article on the evolution of decision-making (12 November, p 38) the economic “irrationality” of human loss aversion is described 鈥� we are more upset at losing a certain amount than we are pleased by gaining it.
I have never understood why economists regard these as equivalent. Suppose I can live on the 拢1000 that I have. If I then gain 拢999, I am, of course, delighted. But if I lose 拢999, then that is a disaster.
This inequivalence is retained whatever amounts are involved. Regarding them as different is completely rational.
Wrongful lawsuits
The practice of Israeli children with birth defects suing for “wrongful life” is disturbing on two counts (29 October, p 6). First, allowing such lawsuits in a country where euthanasia is unconditionally illegal shows a profound inconsistency. Either a person’s existence is universally beneficial and desirable, as an anti-euthanasia law indicates, or there are circumstances in which it is harmful and undesirable, as the mere use of the phrase “wrongful life” indicates.
Secondly, given that much of this centres on antenatal genetic testing, the notion of holding a doctor responsible for single instances of false negatives violates basic statistical principles. False positives and negatives will inevitably occur with any test.
Therefore, taken individually, they cannot be evidence of negligence. Rather, such evidence would be found in the physician’s overall error rate if it were significantly worse than allowed by reasonable standards of practice.
Out of sight
“If violence occurs, there is an ever greater revulsion to it,” writes Ernest Ager in his letter (12 November, p 35) referencing Steven Pinker’s article (15 October, p 30). While it is arguable whether westerners are less violent: we are definitely more sensitive. That is, we have found ways to kill and wound the enemy without exposing ourselves to unpleasant sights, or indeed, personal risk.
We tend to prefer pushing a button from afar, or sending a drone. This is expensive, but usually safe for the pusher or sender; less violent, perhaps, but certainly more hypocritical.
I am what I am
In his letter (5 November, p 33), Hans Proebsting writes: “Autism is what we have, not who we are.” Personally, as hypersensitivity is a major aspect of my autism, autism affects everything, from what I like to eat to what I wear, where I live to who I want to spend my time with.
There is no non-autistic person inside me waiting to get out, as autistic author Donna Williams discovered and wrote about in her book Nobody Nowhere.
Ad hominem
Emanuel Derman makes some interesting points in his look at misguided mathematical modelling (22 October, p 32).
But his essay is scarred by the inclusion of a bizarre ad hominem attack on Richard Dawkins, accusing him of “stunning unimaginativeness” for thinking that something could have been learned by studying, rather than killing, Saddam Hussein.
Where on earth did this attack come from? Derman hand-waves about how this is an example of his idea of “pragmamorphism”, attributing the properties of inanimate things to human minds, but the connection is not made clear and seems tenuous at best, and he never explains what it is about Dawkins’s position that is “unimaginative”.
It appears obvious that more can be learned about anything by studying it than by not studying it, Saddam Hussein included, and it seems to me that Derman is the one who is guilty of showing a lack of imagination.
We have, after all, learned enormous amounts about all sorts of mental disorders by studying people at levels ranging from genes to brain morphology to psychology; why should the disorders characteristic of someone like Saddam Hussein be deemed to be outside the realm of inquiry?
Emanuel Derman writes:
鈥� I apologise for the seeming ad hominem, but I was objecting to Dawkins’s published statements. Let me reply with quotes from three people:
Dawkins: “I think it [bringing children up to believe in spells and wizards] is anti-scientific. Whether that has a pernicious effect, I don’t know.”
Goethe: ” .”
Saul Bellow: “I fall back instinctively on my first consciousness, which has always seemed to me to be most real and easily accessible. For people who have no access to any such core consciousness, no mysteries exist.”
Over powered
Please compare and contrast recent quotes from New 杏吧原创. First, from the piece on global capitalism (22 October, p 8), the researchers involved stated: “Concentration of power is not good or bad in itself.”
Then, in Laura Spinney’s analysis of corruption (5 November, p 42), Samuel Bendahan of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology stated: “Power should come with more built-in checks and balances”, and you quoted British historian Lord Acton: “all power tends to corrupt”.
Discuss.
Yawn together
Tortoises may not yawn contagiously, as per Feedback’s report of the Ig Nobel prize (8 October) but our old ginger cat, who has turned soft and now likes sitting on the sofa between my husband and me when we watch TV, will almost always yawn if he spots either of us doing so.
I would like to think this is empathy, but have my doubts.
No nonsense
If people with intentions unrelated to science would like to attend a scientific conference then they should be allowed to, as should young-Earth creationists at American Geological Society conferences (8 October, p 30). If, however, those same people intend to speak about science and are not properly scrutinised, then it will affect the reputation of the event organisers.
I would hate to go to a conference and have my time wasted by anyone who was pretending to discuss a scientific topic in order to market some unrelated nonsense.
Get a life, AI
“What is the meaning of life?”
“I don’t know. But I think there’s an app for that.”
According to New 杏吧原创 (22 October, p 25) this is an actual conversation with the Apple iPhone 4S’s voice-based virtual assistant Siri.
I guess that’s progress. In the late 1980s, I was helping pack up kit at a technology trade show, specifically an AI-based natural language processor. Before I shut the system down, I typed in: “What is the meaning of life?” The system responded: “Life not found.”
Unreasonable point
Writer George Bernard Shaw would have loved Kate Ravilious’s recent look at the evolutionary status of mental illness (5 November, p 34), as it supports his famous contention: “The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.”
Taken from Shaw’s (1903).
Timely reminder
At several points in your special issue on time, you state that time runs more slowly where gravity is stronger (8 October, p 37). This is not correct. What counts is how deep one is in Earth’s gravitational potential well. Time runs more slowly down a mine than on the surface, even though the force of gravity is less. The slowest time near here is at the centre of the Earth, where you would be weightless if you could get there.
Junk the ads
Concerning the Danish tax on saturated fat (22 October, p 30), surely it is only fair that people who eat unhealthy foods should pay more tax, as they will likely run up bigger health bills than other taxpayers.
In the UK, cigarettes are taxed heavily, which helps offset the National Health Service’s extra costs in treating heart and lung disease in smokers.
More could be done. Why can’t the UK follow Sweden’s example and ban adverts 鈥� including those for junk food 鈥� directed at children?
Look me in the eye
You report that the chance of a greater than 70 per cent match between two irises is less than 1 in 10 billion, as if that were very good (15 October, p 21). Given the propensity of police around the world to pool data and treat the global population as suspects, and your report that world population will likely top 7 billion in the next decade (15 October, p 10), that doesn’t seem very good.
Heading off
A train travel advert urging us to “experience life as a Tudor” was mentioned in Feedback (12 November) 鈥� but I thought it was well known that Henry VIII went everywhere by rail. Recall the London Underground poster showing Henry buying a ticket: “Tower Hill, return, please”, with the graffiti punchline: “and a single for the wife”.
On the rails
Your impossible inventions article stated that “planes, trains and automobiles navigate using satellites” (15 October, p 39). Trains run on fixed lines, of course.
For the record
鈥� Enigma 1672, Heptagony (12 November, p 35), requires a sequence of six consecutive heptagonal numbers, not five.