Editor's pick: Luddites' work is not finished
Jon White reinforces the concept that the loom-breaking Luddites of early 19th-century England were focused on their own concerns (25 June, p 33). The Luddites were way ahead of their time and the concerns they were raising and protesting about are as relevant today as they were then: to whom does the material benefit of mechanisation accrue?
They believed that benefits shouldn't accrue to just the owners of machinery; rather they should be spread throughout society – to workers and communities as well as, of course, the “owners” of said machinery. Isn't this the same discussion we need to have today – only this time around artificial intelligence and robotics? Will we again be defeated by the power elites?
There is a desperate need for this discussion to be had much more widely than in your pages. But I fear that it will be subverted and be subject to the same orchestrated put-downs and suppression that the Luddites faced. How successful this suppression was is clearly shown by how people view the notion of “Luddite” today.
We need another way of looking at how the material benefits of new technology are disbursed.
Chilling thoughts on waking in 2116
I am rather puzzled over this business of cryonics (2 July, p 26). I have no problem with freezing cells, tissues and organs. But when an entire person is reanimated after perhaps 100 years, are they then at the age at which they died? Would they start living again with a 100-year gap in memory and a chasm in cultural, social and psychological experiences?
With no friends or family to guide them, how would they navigate this strange life? Would they end up as interesting specimens of a past age in a laboratory enclosure somewhere?
Chilling thoughts on waking in 2116
Imagine getting a call from Life Extensions R Us in 2116. They have just revived your great-great-great uncle Kevin, who died in 2020. His pancreatic cancer is cured, though he still has some arthritis. Before being frozen, Kevin set up a trust fund on which he proposed to live after his revival, but 90 years of poor investment has left its value after inflation the same as your children's pocket money. They would like to know when you will be along to collect him.
Chilling thoughts on waking in 2116
If a person close to death is frozen in the hope of being reanimated one day, why should somebody in the far future revive them? If a person frozen in 1816 were revived today, what contribution would they make to society, other than providing source material for social historians? The UK government is reluctant to admit a few thousand Syrian refugees, citing a burden they will place on the state while they find their feet. But they are well-equipped to contribute to modern society, having been brought up in it. That wouldn't be the case for those who were revived. As for setting up a trust fund to pay for your revived future: my hypothetical frozen Victorian might have put their money into the East India Company, or maybe that thriving steam engine business run by Messrs Boulton and Watt…
First class post
I say sleeping is the normal state. We just wake up to get some food in order to sleep on
Lisa Blaustein stays awake long enough to a different angle on why we sleep (16 July, p 8)
Mumbo-jumbo, hope and delusion
You juxtapose two comment articles on the UK's vote on EU membership and on the futility of homeopathy for animals (2 July, p 18). Both decry a lack of critical thinking and logical discussion. This is no surprise. New 杏吧原创 advertises itself with a reminder that “9 out of 10 people hold a delusional belief”.
Many people have no truck with rational thought and their decisions are often (mis)informed by emotion. Desperate and disenfranchised people grasp the tripod of mumbo-jumbo, hope and self-delusion to support their views. As you report, science has shown that cogent argument does not sway the irrational but makes their attitudes more entrenched.
Scientifically literate politicians need more than facts and solid arguments to carry the majority. They also, sadly, need sound bites and showmanship. Without these they will be trumped by snake-oil sellers and opportunists.
Mumbo-jumbo, hope and delusion
When then UK prime minister Margaret Thatcher was launching her assault on the trades unions in the 1980s, she first proposed that decisions to go on strike be legal only when supported by two-thirds of those entitled to vote in a ballot. This year, the UK that strikes in public services must be backed by 40 per cent of those entitled to vote. Many companies' rules require that two-thirds of those voting back any amendment to those rules.
Now, 37 per cent of the UK's electorate – little more than a quarter of the total population – have imposed a far-reaching constitutional change upon everyone. Surely such changes should need the backing of least half of the possible voters?
Brain models could replace primates
You claim that the Weatherall Report helped to end debate about the validity of primate research (18 June, p 5). Yet the report states that “debate on the use of non-human primates in research would benefit from more systematic information on its overall impact on scientific and medical advances”.
Models using human tissues, reproducing key features of biochemistry and physiology, have enormous potential in brain research. A 2016 in Alternatives to Laboratory Animals concludes: “neuroscience would be more relevant and successful for humans if it were conducted with a direct human focus”. As scientists dedicated to ensuring the best outcomes for patients, we concur.
Language escapes from instinct
杏吧原创 Kristin Andrews has put forward six attributes that she believes would qualify an animal to be considered a person (2 July, p 17). But the crucial and fundamental difference is that humans are the only animals that can deny the evidence of our senses. We do this with language. Language isn't an instinct: it is a tool of cognition. Our ancestors developed language in order to escape the constraints of instinct. For example, in an animal, the fight or flight reaction is automatic. Humans, by contrast, can identify phenomena – and a response – with a word and modify our behaviour.
Human language, therefore, is the antithesis of instinct.
Do liveable planets need moons?
I read with interest the article on planets more habitable than ours (21 May, p 26). But would they be habitable without moons? Many hold that the presence of our large moon is critical to life on Earth, and our planet would be quite a different place without it. The moon's most obvious effect is on the oceans, producing the daily and monthly cycles of tides and influencing deep ocean tidal streams. This tidal effect also pulls on Earth's crust, causing heating and distortion, which may have triggered plate tectonics.
We thus have a dynamic crust with convection currents beneath it dragging material down into the mantle and spewing it out again. This recycling affects many processes, from the saltiness of the sea to the composition of the atmosphere. So do other worlds have moons and are they of a similar size and distance from their planet compared with ours?
Few superflares from the sun
David Copsey calculates that the sun may emit superflares more or less every 184 years (Letters, 18 June). Some sun-like stars produce superflares; others apparently do not. Those that do are much more magnetically active than the sun. Records of nitric acid and carbon-14 in ice cores show that we have not had a solar flare bigger than the 1859 “Carrington event” since 1561. There are signs of bigger events in the 8th and 10th centuries.
A Carrington-like event may be dangerous to our technological civilisation, but obviously there has not been a superflare capable of wiping out life on Earth for billions of years.
Clean coal betrayed by governments
Alec Cawley suggests that shale gas can replace coal (Letters, 18 June). I have been a lay union representative for a coal branch for two decades, and during that time have been involved in initiatives around clean coal.
With carbon capture and sequestration (CCS), coal could be an easier and cheaper option than gas and could achieve near zero emissions. However, despite lip service to CCS, successive UK governments have done nothing to implement it. The technology does exist, but it's obviously not as good a “get rich quick” option as fracking.
Certainly, fracking in the US led to coal being dumped cheaply elsewhere and has been a big factor in the demise of the UK coal industry. Our last deep mine closed in December 2015 with the loss of hundreds of jobs and hundreds of years of tradition. However, we are still burning coal.
Sadly, UK governments over many years have failed to put together an integrated energy policy that delivers what the country needs, considers the environment and provides jobs.
A butterfly exists to make caterpillars
You report cooperation between metalmark butterfly caterpillars and ants in Peru and the apparent exploitation of the ants by the butterflies once hatched (25 June, p 15). If the caterpillar supplies ants with its sugar secretions, it is in the interests of the ants that the butterfly produces as many viable caterpillars as possible in order to maintain the supply of sugars for future generations of ants.
Hastings, East Sussex, UK
The editor writes:
• It turns out that the butterflies lay their eggs elsewhere, so the ants are unlikely to benefit directly from a relationship with the next generation of caterpillars.