Beyond stupid
Your article on stupidity refers to psychologist Daniel Kahneman’s analysis of cognitive biases that can dominate when intuition trumps slow, deliberate thought, leading us to make irrational decisions (30 March, p 30).
The conclusion is that “knowledge of our foolish nature could help us escape its grasp” and that the financial sector is in need of a good test of rationality, perhaps to help avoid future bubbles and crashes.
However, we also need to consider emotional biases in all this, something the new discipline of emotional finance does. It uses a psychoanalytical framework. In this approach, investors become emotionally attached to their investments, burying risks in their unconscious psyche. Herding behaviour by other investors may result, vastly inflating prices, creating bubbles.
At a critical tipping point, reality intervenes and the pain of loss floods our consciousness. We then switch from love to hatred of our investments. Panic selling and crashes can ensue. An analysis of the emotional approach to finance suggests bubbles and crashes might be here to stay.
Speaking as a Mensa member, I’ve got to take issue with one of the quotes in your stupidity feature. Richard Nisbett of the University of Michigan, says: “If you have an IQ of 120, calculus is easy…” If only that were true. I’ve met lots of Mensans who seem to be incapable of it, including me.
Frank Zappa had it right when he said: “There is more stupidity than hydrogen in the universe, and it has a longer shelf life.”
What's in it for us?
You praise big science’s recent triumphs 鈥� the discovery of the Higgs boson and the Planck telescope’s new map of the cosmic microwave background (30 March, p 5), but I wonder what their value is to humanity? Would we be any poorer for not knowing how the universe will end? Will the Higgs lead to benefits for us? In these days of austerity can we afford these expensive toys?
In more than 30 years as a reader of 快猫短视频, I cannot recall ever having been enlightened as to the practical value of cosmology or particle physics. In contrast, your report on synthetic biology had a panel headed: “What can synthetic biology do for us?” (30 March, p 11). If articles on cosmology and particle physics did the same, we could then determine whether or not they are just hobbies.
Hesket Newmarket, Cumbria, UK
Cloud storm
That your digital material exists only as temporary magnetic states on the memory of a computer in the cloud does not necessarily mean that property rights should be open to question (30 March, p 34).
Take the example of money in a bank. At one time you would have handed over cash. These days it’s pretty much all done electronically. When you transfer money from bank A to bank B, A does not count out the transfer in cash, and then have it taken by armoured car to B. What is transferred is a stream of “magnetic states”.
If the FBI can confiscate material stored on the cloud on the grounds that it is not tangible without running foul of US constitutional protections on property, then it could, in principle, arguably do the same with your money.
Sterile search
The Planck telescope’s new map of the cosmic microwave background (30 March, p 8) adds weight to the view that purported evidence for sterile neutrinos is wide of the mark.
In earlier coverage of the hunt for sterile neutrinos (2 March, p 48), you mentioned that we are “seeing evidence” that ordinary neutrinos can morph into the sterile sort. This is simply not correct. Much stronger experimental signals would be needed before we could say that there was evidence for them.
The Planck result favours three ordinary neutrino types, and thus, no sterile neutrinos are needed. However, inconsistencies indicated by some neutrino oscillation experiments are still unexplained.
Shades of darkness
Andrew Pontzen’s article on the continuing hunt for dark matter (23 March, p 32) seemed to assume that just one type of dark matter exists. But if you can’t come up with one extra ingredient that makes the cosmological model work, does it not raise the suspicion that more than one might be missing?
I do, however, applaud Pontzen’s focus on improving modelling of “non-dark” matter and energy. Since an accurate model of the cosmos has to account for every form of matter and energy, dark or otherwise, I would go further and drop the divisive term “dark” altogether. Cosmologists, embrace an equal opportunities universe!
鈥� Good prediction! See our story last week on exactly that idea (13 April, p8).
An Alice universe
Anil Ananthaswamy quotes US theorist Don Marolf suggesting that “maybe the interior [of a black hole] just doesn’t exist” (6 April, p 39). One way in which that could be true is if space were folded upon itself with a topology like that of a Klein bottle, forming a so-called Alice universe ().
In your discussion of what happens at the event horizon of a black hole, Bob only assumes that Alice is in the black hole because he last saw her disappearing across an event horizon. In an Alice universe she would still be in the same space as Bob 鈥� while from any single point of view a Klein surface appears to have two sides, it in fact has just one continuous surface.
Because Bob is viewing things from his single point of view there would appear to be an exterior and an interior to the event horizon and things could vanish across it. Given the ability to return to your starting point in a Klein bottle topology by following a continuous line, there would be a case for shouting at Bob: “She’s behind you!”
Correction: When this article was first published online, some text was omitted from the first paragraph.
Technical term
Gary Bucknell surely isn’t suggesting in his letter that a computer can simply be switched off and on again when its operating system crashes (30 March, p 29).
No computer expert would do such a thing; they would “power cycle” the device. Similarly, they would never wiggle a circuit board but “re-seat” it. If those techniques failed then “percussive reconfiguration” would be applied.
My dream self
After your special issues on sleep and dreaming (2 February, p 30) and the self (23 February, p 34), I am intrigued by the realisation that I, as myself, am active in my dreams. So I suggest that the activity in my brain which constitutes my “self” might be detectable during the dreaming phase of sleep, when activity related to bodily control is muted.
Space spheres
You mentioned that Dyson spheres, vast platforms engineered to enclose a star and harvest its energy, could be alternative targets for alien hunters (6 April, p 42).
Could Dyson spheres, in fact, be the explanation for dark matter 鈥� the mystery nature of which often features on your pages 鈥� and might the universe be teeming with intelligent life?
I was filled with the warm glow of nostalgia at your mention of Dyson spheres. I wondered, though, at the logic of thinking they could exist. Since 1960, when Freeman Dyson came up with the idea, it has become increasingly obvious that a race’s inability to control its own population and respect its environment will kill it long before it leaves its own solar system and achieves such monumental feats of engineering.
The one thing we can be sure of when we explore the universe is that there will be a total and complete lack of Dyson spheres.
Power over profit
You report continuing commercial uncertainty over the extent of new nuclear power, in both the US and the UK (6 April, p 24). It seems to me the trick to making it an attractive proposition is to view it as a means of generating electricity, rather than as a means of generating money.
Economical truths
According to your look at body language (6 April, p 34), “liars tended to talk with a higher pitched voice, gave fewer details… were more negative and tended to repeat words”. Sounds like a good description of a politician.
Waste away
I fail to understand why an international collection and disposal agency for nuclear waste hasn’t been set up, given our inability to find long-term storage sites (16 February, p 28). Has no one looked into the feasibility of loading waste onto rockets and blasting them off to the sun?
Flight of fancy
You report that huge strides have been made in our understanding of the dinosaurs that ought to be shown in the latest Jurassic Park film, particularly the lineage to modern birds (6 April, p 6). Ironically, this may be due to research being boosted by the original film’s popularity.
If the latest film sticks with scaly monsters and ignores the evidence pointing to many feathered dinosaurs, it will deserve all the derision it gets.
For the record
鈥� Whodunnit? The Leap Motion gesture interface for PCs was actually hacked into a photo management system called Project Agatha by Mario Viviani of Italian firm Mariux Apps. (6 April, p 21).