Editor's pick: Put a selfishness tax on indulgence
I have noticed an increasing disparity in 快猫短视频 between two themes: “save the planet” and “make humans happy at all costs”. We moan and fret about global warming and overpopulation and in the next breath demand to live much longer lives and consume everything we want in nice convenient packaging.
Now I read about Jeff Bezos’s rocket launch “with an eye on the space-tourism market” (9 May, p 6) and about the effort to create artificial rhino horn, on the grounds of satisfying people’s needs instead of telling them they are wrong (p 7).
But their needs are destroying a species. And space tourism will certainly contribute to damaging our already struggling climate. We can’t have it all. Thats what we tell our toddlers when they want all the sweets or all the toys. We should tell ourselves the same.
Since expecting people to consider the greater good over their own is naive, what about a “selfish tax”? In the UK we could do with an influx of tax money 鈥� to save the National Health Service, to fund development of green technology, to deal with the cost of unemployment among the young.
You want to go on a rocket? Fine: there will be a huge tax on the indulgence. If you can afford space tourism in the first place, you can certainly afford the tax.
Kingstone Winslow, Wiltshire, UK
A universe not made for humans
Michael Slezak says that the universe is fine-tuned for life (2 May, p 32). Balderdash. Inspection of the night sky reveals that the universe is almost entirely cryogenic pitch-black irradiated empty space, void of life, or indeed of anything much. To a high order of approximation, the universe resembles a vacuum.
The universe isn’t 100 per cent lifeless, but 99.9999999999 per cent lifeless is pretty good fine-tuning. I deduce that the universe is fine-tuned not for life, but against it. I call this the Misanthropic Principle.
San Francisco, California, US
A universe not made for humans
When considering whether our universe is fine-tuned for life, we need to consider all the possible physical parameters that go into defining a universe. Think of them arrayed in a multi-dimensional space of all possible universes, with our universe occupying one point in that space.
Our universe lies within a subset of the larger space, in which life can exist. We can make a simplifying assumption that this life-friendly subspace is compact and is contiguous within the larger space of possible universes; let’s say its shape is a hypersphere.
In mathematics, if you choose a point at random within a hypersphere of N dimensions, then as the number of dimensions increases so do the odds that your chosen point lies close to the surface of the hypersphere 鈥� beyond which, in this case, no life can exist.
How many dimensions are we talking about? 100? 1000? The number is more likely to be larger than smaller. The more dimensions, the stronger the effect.
In other words, if our universe was created at random, but within the subset of universes in which we can exist, then the odds are very high that it is close to the edge where no life can exist.
Given the seeming uniqueness, and precarious hold, of life on Earth, this is exactly consistent with what we observe.
Hamilton, New Zealand
<b>First class post</b>
I think I’ve spotted a flaw in the ‘secret’ part of ‘secret plane’
about our report of the Boeing X-37B launch (23 May, p 7)
Is humanity to be defended against?
Anders Sandberg of the University of Oxford’s Future of Humanity Institute feels that “If we think we are the only life in the universe, we have a huge responsibility to spread life to the stars” (2 May, p 37). He supposes our presence here has been for the planet’s long-term good 鈥� but has it?
Maybe any higher intelligence out there will, having watched the police series Z Cars and then the film Apocalypse Now beamed from Earth (2 May, p 36), deduce that they have a nasty little virus on their hands. Are our instincts for preserving ourselves and adopting new habitats any different from those of HIV?
Maybe our intelligence will be viewed from afar in the same way that we admire the mutational prowess of flu viruses. And maybe by the time they get to the film Blade Runner they will be devising some form of antiviral to launch at us.
West Moors, Dorset, UK
Careful with that lab, Eugene
Michael Brooks asks whether we could destroy the fabric of the cosmos (2 May, p 35). Do we have here a solution to Fermi’s paradox concerning the lack of signs of extraterrestrial life?
If measuring and collapsing a fundamental quantum state destroys the measurer, then each civilisation would be the only life form in a universe that should be teeming with life 鈥� until they make that fateful measurement.
Southend, Essex, UK
A universo-centric view is needed
The contributors to your group Leader “The universe is ours” mostly took an anthropocentric approach (2 May, p 5). I suggest that as intelligent creatures we should adopt a loftier viewpoint 鈥� the universo-centric one.
If the universe is to be colonised by an intelligent organism, what type of creature would be best suited to look after its interests? It would be a triumph of hope over history to think that humans are the ideal choice.
We continue to fight wars for spurious reasons with ever more ingenious weapons. Profit reigns supreme over sustainability. And we have done an appalling job of looking after that infinitesimally small corner of the universe that we claim as ours 鈥� Earth.
When it comes to engaging with other alien species, we don’t have to look too far back into our past to see how badly that might turn out. We haven’t yet learned to treat other Homo sapiens with equality, dignity and respect; and the species we see as “lesser” have all too frequently been exploited or made extinct.
Dublin, Ireland
Seed banks are not nearly enough
If we ever have to use seed banks to revive agriculture (see for example 3 January, p 23), will we also need to revive pollinators from insect banks?
Cholesbury, Buckinghamshire, UK
Getting to the heart of ownership
Mabs Taylor reminds us in her letter that the question “who owns the assets” is an interesting problem with head/body transplants (18 April). What I find equally interesting is that no one considers it a relevant question for any other transplant.
Southampton, Hampshire, UK
Pricing happiness out of the market
You featured two interesting opinion pieces side by side: Ha-Joon Chang’s discussion of inequality (25 April, p 28) and Richard Layard’s call for a measure of general well-being (GWB) to supplement that of gross domestic product, or GDP.
Economic theory may seem to make the GWB redundant, since GDP is composed of market prices, and these are taken to be a good proxy for the subjective utility (or happiness) expressed in the willingness to pay them.
But inequality fundamentally undermines the validity of this proxy. The law of diminishing marginal utility means that additional money provides less happiness than the initial sum. Less subjective utility is needed to motivate the spending of the rich than that of the poor. Rising GDP is a misleading proxy for well-being if inequality is ignored.
Eden Hills, South Australia
People in the past were not stupid
I was interested to read about an Anglo-Saxon remedy that could kill MRSA (4 April, p 14) but, as ever when I read such articles, I asked myself “why are people surprised that our ancestors found a solution to a problem?” Why do people think old ideas must be crazy? And why is it unexpected that the ingredients had little effect until they were brought together, or that it was necessary to follow the recipe exactly to get the desired results?
Do people really think that the ability to think and observe regularities only arose in the last, say, 150 years? One person’s ignorance of a subject doesn’t mean that other people’s knowledge is worthless.
Penshurst, New South Wales, Australia
More creatures of the crossing code
I read with interest your article about smart chimps looking both ways before crossing a road (25 April, p 19). We have a local family of four Australian magpies. They come for a feed of minced meat every morning.
One morning, when the chicks were younger, one ran out onto the road. Mother magpie immediately rushed out and grabbed the youngster by the neck-feathers, dragged her back to the side of the road and severely vocally chastised her. A perfect example of the teaching of road sense.
Melbourne, Australia
Paracetamol as panacea or placebo
You mention that paracetamol “blunts emotions” (18 April, p 7). For several years, on occasions when for no reason I felt negative, anxious or stressed, I would take two paracetamol. In 20 to 30 minutes I felt back to normal. I just assumed it was all in my head.
Edinburgh, UK
Robots are all tax avoiders
David Gullen’s letter has a point about the economy-destroying power of robots 鈥� even more than he states (25 April). When you replace a tax-paying taxi driver with a driverless car, who is going to pay the unemployment benefit of the former driver? Robots don’t pay taxes.
Culemborg, The Netherlands
<b>For the record</b>
鈥� We should have said that Marshall Nirenberg and Heinrich Matthaei began to break the nucleic code using artificial RNA, made only of the base uracil, to make the peptide polyphenylalanine from the amino acid phenylalanine (2 May, p 46).