Editor's pick: Robot challenge to free-market faith
Alan Chattaway writes that in a free-enterprise economy, the money passengers save by using driverless taxis will be spent on “other services” that will create employment for former drivers (Letters, 4 July). That is free-market faith 鈥� not logic.
At present, passengers do without those other services, whatever they are. They may choose in future to save that money, or to invest it in robotics companies, or to buy cheap products made by other robots, rather than purchasing a service they have so far been able to do without.
What happens when the taxi passengers’ jobs are also replaced by robots, and when 80 per cent of our jobs are done by robots? At the moment, the lowest-paid jobs are done by those unable to find higher paid work. Any alternative work they might do or other services that may come into being will also likely be better and more cheaply done by robots.
There is one function that is unlikely to be performed by robots, of course: to revolt, peacefully or otherwise, to take a fair share of the robotic productivity. People aren’t going to starve just because the free market has found them to be economically worthless.
San Antonio, Texas, US
Dairy in diet in the balance
Your article “Gone off” should be praised for highlighting research areas concerning health and dairy consumption (25 July, p 33). But I have concerns that this was less of an exploration and more of a “joining the dots” of research presenting adverse effects.
Querying whether milk is an “elixir” or a “poison” lacks the nuance and scientific balance usual to writing in 快猫短视频. For example, the Micha毛lsson research from Sweden was discussed and subjected to heavy critical appraisal in the popular and scientific press last year. Yet is it presented here without reference to those debates.
Another concern relates to hormones and growth factors. Recombinant growth hormones are not permitted to be used in animals in the European Union. The Dairy Council supports Jeff Holly’s statement that the concentration of insulin-like growth factor 1 in cow’s milk is not an issue in itself. Concentrations in cow’s milk are comparable to human milk. And, finally, the World Cancer Research Fund says evidence supporting associations between high dairy consumption and prostate cancer is limited, not “probable”.
There is compelling scientific evidence to demonstrate the nutritional and health benefits of dairy products, and The Dairy Council supports debate based on a wide and robust base of evidence.
London, UK
<b>First class post</b>
Clean energy is coming with or without Hillary Clinton
Arlene Prince brings back to energy policy (1 August, p 5)
Reason and taking responsibility
If our unconscious really makes our decisions and we can track that process neuroscientifically, then are we responsible for our actions (18 July, p 5 and p 26)? If a person isn’t responsible for a crime because it’s not under their conscious control, then for the same reason the police, judge and jury are not responsible for the subsequent actions that they take against the criminal. Either individuals are responsible for what they do and the people who make up the legal system are responsible as well, or nobody is. The end result is the same, so although the question seems superficially important, it isn’t.
The only logically untenable positions are to maintain that individuals are not responsible and that magically groups of people are; or vice versa.
Foxham, Wiltshire, UK
Clarity on creature consciousness
Daniel Everett cites a definition of consciousness by Christopher Koch: “the thing that feels like something”. He claims that such a definition “clearly imputes consciousness to non-human animals” (11 July, p 42). Given that he appears to be claiming to have a way to measure consciousness in other entities 鈥� a problem with which science and philosophy have been struggling for centuries 鈥� it might be appropriate to ask Everett, in the words of professors on exam papers, to show his work. How does he know which entities feel things and which entities don’t?
Ithaca, New York, US
Why can't neural networks explain?
Your article on neural networks stated that “no one knows how the neural networks come up with their answers” and even that it is “impossible” to know how they do it (11 July, p 20). Could this be because research has, so far, focused on constructing neural networks that produce correct answers, rather than networks that also tell us how they work?
Surely it is possible to add self-monitoring and recording functions, so that the networks can reveal the paths taken to reach the observed outcome. Or is there some fundamental feature of neural networks that means this wouldn’t reveal their secrets?
London, UK
Depression and over-training
As a keen marathon runner, I found that your article linking inflammation and the resulting immune response to depression (27 June, p 38) made me immediately think of athletic overtraining syndrome. This is not thoroughly understood: but typical symptoms include loss of motivation, poor appetite and sleep disturbance, alongside fatigued physical performance. It has been linked to raised cortisol levels and cytokine release.
Could the continual muscular inflammation of repeated hard training without proper recovery provoke neuro-inflammation and those depression-like symptoms in athletes?
Cambridge, UK
Sizing up the Superman stance
I think Christian De Leon-Horton is right to question the physiological construct of the Superman stance (Letters, 4 July). I am sure King Henry VIII was portrayed in this stance because he was constantly under threat from his opponents. If, instead, we imitate the casual stance of Hercules, the implication is that we are perfectly capable of dealing with anything that the world might throw at us.
Leatherhead, Surrey, UK
The puritans and e-cigarettes
You have discussed “getting away with” smoking or e-cigarettes (30 May, p 30). I am 69, and have smoked since I was 13. I turned to Old Holborn roll-ups at 15 when I joined the army. I have tried giving up on many occasions, once for three years, but missed my fix every minute of every day. I now know it is killing me. I tried e-cigarettes a year ago and have cut ordinary cigarettes to three or four a day 鈥� I now hope to quit them completely.
The fuss kicked up by the anti-smoking lobby about e-cigarettes has more to do with puritanism than public health. Using e-cigarettes, I can now walk without getting breathless, my “smoker’s cough” has disappeared, I can taste my food again and smell the flowers. I can understand the call to regulate e-cigarettes, but let us see them as a boon, not just another innocent pleasure to be squashed.
Borough Green, Kent, UK
It's like donating blood to a stone
Your report of a fall in the number of new volunteers giving blood in England and Wales comes as no surprise to me (4 July, p 4). I first gave blood in my early 20s, when I saw signs for a donor session at a local municipal building and just walked in. Registered donors are now advised to make an appointment for a specific time in a specific session. It is very difficult to give blood without doing this, since the waiting time is otherwise prohibitively long 鈥� if any slots are left at all. There is little chance of first-time donors taking the plunge on impulse.
The new system is also often unusable for me because I cannot guarantee I will be home from my commute before the session ends.
Ringwood, Hampshire, UK
Aeroplanes cannot just be hacked
Stuart McClure asserts that he can “crash planes in the air…” (4 July, p 38). As a licensed aircraft engineer, I assure you he cannot. An aircraft’s flight control systems cannot be hacked. For example, should the numerous flight control computers on an Airbus A320 plane malfunction simultaneously (an event that hasn’t happened), the flight crew can switch them off and fly with mechanical cables and hydraulics.
Dunbar, East Lothian, UK
Linguistic precision is required
Proto-Indo-European is not “the common ancestor of all modern European languages” (4 July, p 28). The ancestor of Basque apparently predates Indo-European languages; and we should also mention the Uralic languages (including Hungarian, Finnish and Estonian) and remember other smaller language groups.
I also wonder who told the author that the word “name” comes from the Latin “nomen“. Others think it came from Old English “nama“, and before that from Proto-Germanic “namon“. Of course the Latin and Germanic come from a common ancestor.
Metung, Victoria, Australia
What do you get if you cross…
In their exchange about the species of dogs and wolves (Letters, 27 June) neither Ann Williams nor Michael Slezak mentions the need for offspring to be fertile, which was my understanding of the definition of a species. Mules are the healthy offspring of horses and asses, but they are infertile. I would be interested to learn whether the “woodles” 鈥� wolf/poodles 鈥� of Indiana can produce pups.
Glasshouses, North Yorkshire, UK
<b>For the record</b>
鈥� The redcoats came! The mini-forest we pictured was British Soldier lichen, Cladonia cristatella, named after the colour of British soldiers’ uniforms during the American revolution (18 July, p 22)