Editor's pick: More backing for a citizen's income
There is yet more evidence that paying all citizens an unconditional basic income benefits the country as a whole (3 October, p 28). A two-year pilot project in Namibia paid 1000 residents of two villages about 拢7 a month. showed that only 3 to 4 per cent of the total cost of the scheme went on administration (for comparison, I understand that the figure for Jobseeker’s Allowance in the UK is 26 per cent). At the same time, the proportion of people experiencing food shortages daily dropped from 30 per cent to 12 per cent over six months; children ‘s weight for age improved so much that it was nearly on par with the world average; and families were able to send their children to school.
Economic activity rose fastest among women, and average income 鈥� excluding the citizen ‘s income 鈥� rose 200 per cent in the bottom fifth of the villagers, because people could now buy things to make themselves more economically productive. Additionally, women could now say no to requests to sell sex.
I suggest we tax robots to pay for a universal citizen’s income.
Oxford, UK
We're just as adaptable as ever
I was impressed with Michael Slezak’s discussion of climate change’s role in human evolution, but baffled by its conclusion, that humans are no longer able to adapt to a changing climate (19 September, p 8). This seems to contradict the rest of the article.
Homo sapiens occupies every environmental niche, from the frozen north to tropical rainforest, from the Australian deserts to the Siberian tundra. If we were plants, we would be regarded as weeds. Global warming may not suit Homo sapiens var Londiniensis, but then it will be bad news for London too. However the climate turns out, there will be plenty of people for whom it will be just perfect.
Sydney, Australia
<b>First class post</b>
I lost a hero when this came out, but I would rather lose a hero than have this kind of stuff carry on.
David Ward to the finding that exoplanet hunter Geoff Marcy violated his institution’s sexual harassment policy (17 October, p 6)
What is your city's life expectancy?
John Hunwick notes scientists’ statements on climate change often understate the situation, and calls for them to speak out clearly (Letters, 12 September). I would add that they must speak in terms most people can relate to. Saying that there will be a 2 掳C or a 4 掳C rise in temperature will not get anyone riled. Saying that inland cities in the UK will be lost to the sea should make more impact. It appears that several have a long history (more than 800 years) but a considerably shorter life expectancy (200 years).
East Wellow, Hampshire, UK
Standing on their own four feet
Sam Wong asks whether dogs’ keenness to seek help with problems demonstrates their dependence, or social intelligence (19 September, p 14). There is a more balanced view: that dogs and people have a symbiotic relationship. Sometimes we are dependent on dogs 鈥� crossing roads, searching for drugs, getting them to bark at intruders, retrieving hunting kills…
Felixstowe, Suffolk, UK
Standing on their own four feet
Did Monique Udell’s research into the problem-solving capabilities of dogs and wolves include hounds? Working dogs (such as bearded collies) have been selectively bred for intelligence and obedience; companion dogs for cuteness and affection.
Hounds in contrast are bred for intelligence and independence as a hunting breed. Any basset hound will figure out how to open the baby gate and get into the kitchen to steal food, or to open the garden gate to get at dustbins. Give it a puzzle box with food and see what happens 鈥� it won’t just crack the code, it’ll nip round the back of the lab, find your sack of dog kibble and scoff that too.
Chesham, Buckinghamshire, UK
Standing on their own four feet
Udell’s dogs did not try to open the box until encouraged to do so. Much of the time, initiative is not considered a desirable behaviour in dogs, particularly when it concerns stealing food, and owners are likely to try to suppress it. With encouragement and simple challenges to start with, most dogs can be taught to solve puzzles.
Fulbourn, Cambridgeshire, UK
A fourth good reason for death
Jessica Hamzelou gave three reasons for ageing and death being inevitable (19 September, p 32). There is a fourth: the regular alternation of good times and bad times. When bad times come, it is better if all the population are not at the same level of fitness, since they will starve at the same rate. Having both older individuals of declining fitness and younger individuals to replace them allows death to shrink the population, leaving more resources for those in the prime of life.
When good times return, a group needs to breed fast to reclaim its ecological niche before another steals it 鈥� or to steal that of another. It is easier to crank up an active reproduction system into overdrive than one producing only a few replacements for accidental deaths. And an immortal species may forget how to reproduce.
Penwood, Hampshire, UK
Weighing up recovery strategies
I was interested to read the proposition that those recovering from injury may adopt a gait that causes them to use less energy (19 September, p 17). Having witnessed my wife recovering from two hip replacements and now coping with a knee problem, I think in her case she modified her gait in order to minimise pain.
However, work I was involved in some years ago showed that adopting lethargic, instead of lively, movement for a given task such as getting up out of a chair could significantly reduce energy use. We identified this as an adaptive action for people under heat stress, in order to minimise thermal imbalance.
In the first case pain has no direct causal relation to energy use, whereas in the second case discomfort, resulting from thermal stress, is directly addressed by limiting energy use.
The key question is: following an operation or injury, does adopting a modified gait help or hinder recovery? When I broke my heel a physiotherapist told me to consciously avoid limping.
Colchester, Essex, UK
Emotions must come before words
Tiffany Watt Smith tackles the interesting subject of whether language helps shape emotions (19 September, p 41). But many writers distinguish between emotions and feelings. Smith seems to use the two words interchangeably.
And presumably English speakers were able to feel Schadenfreude before one of them had the bright idea of borrowing the word from German: otherwise there would have been no incentive to borrow, and no way of knowing which word to borrow.
She asks why Germans have two words for disgust, telling us that one of them is “usually translated as revulsion”. So, presumably, we also have two words.
Stroud, Gloucestershire, UK
What the imitation game really tests
According to Jacob Aron, Alan Turing “argued that if a computer could fool a person into believing it was a human, it could think” (26 September, p 20). But Turing never sought to define a criterion for what might count as successful fooling. Instead, his view was that there is an inexhaustible supply of finite tests whose unreliability as indicators of intelligence is hard to expose. So, he wrote, “there would be no question of triumphing simultaneously over all machines” by performing some action which machines cannot.
Although intelligence can never be demonstrated with certainty, we can design smart tests that allow it to be detected with high confidence. Machines could in principle also pass these tests, though.
Our understanding of what tests are most reliable will keep changing. Turing’s is not an invitation to actually run a definitive test. It is a general observation about how intelligence manifests in practice.
Leixlip, County Kildare, Ireland
Confidentiality is vital in medicine
When I receive medical treatment I expect all my sensitive clinical data to be kept confidential. Yet Thomas Heldt proposes that data from bedside monitoring devices be stored and made available to researchers (26 September, p 27). If he wants such data, he must obtain informed written consent from every patient.
London, UK
Confidentiality is vital in medicine
鈥� Thomas Heldt reminds us that in the US this kind of research falls under the of 1996, which regulates use and disclosure of “protected health information”. His work on hospital-archived data proceeds only after all protected information has been removed, so that researchers cannot identify patients from the records.
What really did for Australian beasts?
You report Tim Flannery claiming that in Australia, unlike elsewhere, humans rather than climate were responsible for megafauna extinctions (1 August, p 12). There is, however, evidence to the contrary. The fossil record indicates that at most 8 species (13 per cent of the Pleistocene megafauna) were still surviving when humans arrived and that at least 4 species persisted for up to 20,000 years after that. Stephen Wroe and Judith Field in 2006 that climate was the principal cause of megafauna extinction, with human influence “a minor superimposition”.
Brunswick Heads, New South Wales, Australia
<b>For the record</b>
鈥� As of 2012, the UK Medical Practitioners Tribunal Service hears cases filed by the UK General Medical Council concerning doctors’ fitness to practise (10 October, p 4).
鈥� We missed the measure of the NPL, which stands for the National Physical Laboratory. And caesium-133 is the only isotope of this element that is not radioactive; the second is in fact by “hyperfine splitting in the ground state” 鈥� the frequency of light emitted for a transition between two of its electron states (3 October, p 38).