Last? Not so fast
The proposal to build a universal programming tool entirely out of questions is not a new one. (8 June, p 36). In fact it has a long and sorry history. For example, in the early 1980s there was a system called TLO, which promised to construct business software by asking questions of the user. TLO stood for The Last One 鈥� in other words, the last program anyone would ever need to buy. Needless to say, the software industry survived this challenge.
There have been others, and there will be more, yet none will succeed. Why? Because their proponents misunderstand the nature of the task. Programmers are, by nature and necessity, pioneers. We rarely have to solve the same problem twice.
The reason why software is a shambles 鈥� and, to be fair, it’s hard to disagree with that description 鈥� is because we’re constantly exploring the unknown and recently illuminated parts of the problem space.
The missteps are just part of the territory. Most software defects today are design errors born of such uncertainty, rather than grammatical problems in the code.
Mars risk
You report that radiation levels would be too high for a trip to Mars and back (8 June, p 17). When I researched my book Mars: The inside story in 2000, I was told the radiation level for a one-year round trip would be similar to that experienced by firefighters at the Chernobyl nuclear plant after its meltdown 鈥� far too risky.
But the results from the Radiation Assessment Detector on the Mars rover Curiosity 鈥� the basis of your story 鈥� show levels are much lower. NASA’s current lifetime radiation limits for astronauts equate to raising the chance of dying from cancer by 3 per cent; the new results suggest a return trip to Mars would expose astronauts to a risk of less than 4 per cent, while a one-way trip would correspond to only a 2 per cent increase 鈥� actually below NASA’s danger level.
Considering all the other risks involved in a flight to Mars, radiation is likely to be the least of their worries!
Unless humans have changed dramatically in recent centuries, when risky exploration of regions such as the Arctic attracted plenty of volunteers, I expect there will be no shortage of people willing to spend 12 months or more on a high-risk trip to the Red Planet.
West Launceston, Tasmania, Australia
Nuclear costs
Further to your Instant Expert on nuclear energy (1 June). The costs of civil nuclear power have shifted from the early hope of “too cheap to meter” to too costly to mention.
And the graph summarising new nuclear plants in the pipeline also looks fanciful. For example, Hinkley Point C in the UK does not meet the criteria for “approvals, funding in place. Expected generation in 8 to 10 years.”
Congratulations on your well-balanced articles on nuclear energy. You played up the possibility that nuclear energy “could fulfil our needs without generating any greenhouse gases”. But in 2011 鈥� equivalent to maybe 5 per cent of total energy consumption.
Not only would nuclear have to expand vastly, but we would need to find ways to turn its electricity into fuel for transport. Neither batteries nor hydrogen can hope to meet this requirement.
Ely, Cambridgeshire, UK
Just a side effect
On the possible evolutionary advantage of consciousness (18 May, p 38), three ideas were offered: it allows us to “chunk” information to assist with problem-solving; to understand other people’s minds; and as a requirement to reflect on experiences before we can talk about them.
But all these processes are presumably associated with activity in the brain that would be detectable by modern means. If this were not the case, we would relapse into Cartesian dualism, implying a suspension of brain activity while the conscious agent is working its magic.
The inevitable conclusion has to be that, yes, for good or ill, consciousness does accompany higher mental functions of the sort described, but as an inert secondary phenomenon, not as their driver. Let’s admit it: there is no actual biological necessity for the existence of consciousness.
No let up
There are two dangerous consequences that follow from the study suggesting the world will warm more slowly than we thought (25 May, p 8). The first is that politicians will use this to justify continued procrastination in reducing carbon emissions.
The second is that the slower warming of recent years may be associated with a natural factor, most likely the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, which appears to have an approximately 60-year cycle. If this is masking temperature rises, the opposite may occur from about 2040 in much the same way that temperatures increased rapidly in the later decades of the 20th century.
The need to reduce emissions is just as urgent as ever.
Kitchen party
Feedback asks what songs our domestic appliances might be downloading from iTunes (1 June). I would imagine that the fridge is listening to Arctic Monkeys.
Laundry appliances might be keen on Australian jazz band George Washingmachine, but the washing machine might also like Procol Harum’s A Whiter Shade of Pale, and the tumble dryer Tossing and Turning, a much-recorded 1960s hit.
Theory of mind
In her look at our ability to perceive another’s thoughts, Kirsten Weir fails her own theory of mind test (8 June, p 32). She wrongly assumes that on her return, Sally would expect to see her phone on the table in the bar where she left it.
Her friend Anne’s action 鈥� placing the phone in Sally’s bag while she went to order some more drinks 鈥� illustrates the common view that it is foolish to leave a phone unattended in a public place. Surely Sally could appreciate Anne would think this.
Surely the litmus test to judge a person’s theory of mind capability is how deeply they appreciate the nuances of the hit song Little Does She Know by the Kursaal Flyers in 1976: “Little does she know that I know that she knows that I know she’s two-timin’ me.”
Billingham, Teesside, UK
Scared to death?
Could it be that the fear factor 鈥� as Ed Yong reports happening in his article on present-day prey-predator interactions (1 June, p 36) 鈥� could partially explain the loss of megafauna in North America in the Pleistocene? It would have occurred with the arrival of humans. I can imagine these large beasts learning to avoid hunters by moving to less amenable areas, affecting their ability to thrive and reproduce.
The debate about the extinction of these megafauna has now swung towards the climate-change hypothesis 鈥� but this new concept is worth considering.
Born to rest
Other animals provide a clue as to why some of us choose to be sedentary despite the benefits of exercise (1 June, p 28). A lion will kill, then spend the next few days sleeping or resting. It won’t expend energy except to make another kill. I suspect a similar thing occurred in our evolutionary past.
Selection favoured those capable of persistence hunting, chasing prey over long distances to the point of collapse, but also the desire to conserve energy at other times. If your body is sated, and has enough energy or calorie content, then just lie around. When you feel you need more energy, go hunt.
These days our persistence hunt extends from the couch to the refrigerator. Afterwards, your body is urging you to lie still and save energy. So we sit and blob and get fat and develop sedentary diseases. To get off the couch and exercise every day is just not evolutionarily normal.
Inner beauty
Your article on inner voices was fascinating (1 June, p 32). I often solve problems or rehearse a text, such as a lecture, in my head. Saying it out loud destroys the moment, with just fragments remaining from some beautiful yet fragile structure.
It seems, in that moment, so simple to see the difference between my thoughts and my actual speech. Indeed the bits that remain tend to be the basic elements, without the analogies and sideways thinking, the nodes without the connections, the world without the glory.
Discussion of our inner voice reminds me of when US physicist Richard Feynman was testing whether different activities performed as he counted to 60 in his head would influence how long he thought a minute was.
It turned out he could do anything simultaneously except talk. Conversely his friend could talk but not read. Richard was counting with his “inner voice”, whilst his friend would use his “inner eyes” and picture a tape inscribed with numbers.
Portsmouth, Hampshire, UK
Fat index
I enjoyed your article on the development of facial analysis software that can predict body shape (8 June, p 20), but was perplexed as to why the engineers want to refine their software to more accurately match a subject’s body mass index.
BMI is considered a crude and often misleading indicator of body condition. The engineers would be better off refining the software by matching it to a person’s body fat percentage.
For the record
鈥� Our look at the heritability of intelligence (8 June, p 15) could have been cleverer. The 2 to 3 per cent of variation in educational attainment is accounted for by 2.5 million mutations called SNPs, rather than just by the 10 with strongest effects.