Editor's pick: Autism, empathy and compassion
As an autistic woman, I read your article on empathy with great interest (14 May, p 33). I wonder if the researchers have considered extending their study to autistic people's experiences?
In recent years there has been recognition that many autistic people do not fail to experience empathy for other people's mental and emotional states, as was previously thought – but that we may instead be hyper-aware, and instantly overwhelmed by them, leading to immediate shutdown to protect ourselves from the excessive stimulus.
The effect is so great that we do not have a chance to classify the emotion, so we may be seen to react as though unaware, or to be avoidant in terms of verbal or physical response and contact.
Interestingly, you report that Buddhist practice of training in compassion can help to overcome overwhelming empathy. I lived in Buddhist centres for three years and I met a lot of autistic people there. I had assumed the ethics and clear logical structure were the main attractions. It would stand to reason that the practice of developing compassionate mind states would also be helping to protect autistic Buddhists from constant emotional overload.
The statistics and logics of universes
The big bang, Michael Brooks says, should have produced matter and antimatter in equal amounts (30 April, p 28). But, lo, there seems to have been at least a small extra proportion of matter produced. I ask: could the equality we predict be near the median of a statistical distribution? If so, might that cure-all hypothesis, the multiverse, come to our aid? We might just happen to live in a universe in which the ratio of matter to antimatter lay at a particular point on a distribution of possibilities.
The statistics and logics of universes
Brooks's excellent analysis of the anomalies in particle physics and universal laws seems to overlook an obvious problem: that we are trapped within our own concept of logic. Evolution has filled many ecological niches, one of which is occupied by us, creatures displaying a conscious logic.
Is there any reason to suppose that this local temporarily applicable logic applies to the universe as a whole, apart from our concept of logic itself?
The statistics and logics of universes
In an earlier life I was responsible for the design and operation of computer simulations used to assist decision making in the oil and gas industry. These were as comprehensive and realistic as we could make them, within time and budget constraints. They were well regarded by all concerned and their results were used to help make multimillion-dollar real-world decisions.
But if you looked closely at some of the underlying modelling assumptions, you might discover some inconsistencies – anomalies even. The anomalies Brooks describes might indicate that we are living inside a computer simulation: one built in some haste, to a budget!
First class post
A wish come true? As a visual thinker I can often sketch a CD cover but don't remember the name
Marieke van Grootel (21 May, p 22)
Quirky QWERTY on the other hand
Chris Baraniuk describes the layout of QWERTY keyboards influencing the way we feel about words (30 April, p 23). Could there be a link with the handedness of the brain when it comes to typing positive emotional words with a higher ratio of letters that fall on the right side of the QWERTY keyboard? Speech production and language comprehension are processed in Broca's and Wernicke's areas of the brain respectively. In right-handed people these are often located in the left side of the brain, which has more control over the right side and is said to primarily process positive emotions.
Hemispheres hear handedness
Margaret Scott wonders why she prefers to listen with her right ear, even though this is more awkward for a right-handed person (Letters, 23 April). I have always used my left ear. I recently had a hearing test that showed my right ear is poorer at picking up the high frequencies needed to distinguish between consonants. Maybe it's just that her right ear is, too, a better receiver?
Hemispheres hear handedness
I too am right-handed, but I have to hold the telephone to my left ear. The hearing is just as good in my right ear but I have trouble interpreting what I hear.
Some sleeper to watch over me
You report research finding that when sleeping away from home half your brain is still awake (30 April, p 14). Many years ago I experienced another similar phenomenon and wrote it off to the same hypothesis.
I am not a good sleeper at the best of times and I concluded that, with a wife and children asleep in the house around me, I have been suffering from what I called “nightwatchman duty”. A few years ago, when my mother and father were house guests with us, for those few nights I slept soundly. I reckon I was reverting to childhood and delegating the nightwatchman duty to my dad.
Worryingly, he reported that he had slept soundly.
Body rhythms and 'ordinary time'
Catherine de Lange reports research into body rhythms, particularly in relation to food intake (16 April, p 30). This reminded me of work on fox activity rhythms done 16 years ago by my daughter Mani Berghout for her PhD thesis.
She reasoned that foxes could not care less about abstract clock time or the position of the stars. She also observed that human societies have often used dual time systems, such as astronomical time and what some called “ordinary time”. In the latter, an hour was simply one-twelfth of the time from sunrise to sunset.
When she looked at the foxes' activity rhythms based on this ordinary time she found far more regularity than when based on astronomical time. How about a study comparing the effects of time of eating in countries at low latitudes and at high latitudes, where astronomical and common time are quite distinct?
Ignorance is bliss with privacy rules
You say that people give up their information without choosing to, and without realising it (7 May, p 5). It is more likely that most give it up without understanding.
You can explain something to someone, but you cannot understand it for them. Even if Google and other companies were to spend millions of dollars trying to better educate the masses about what they were doing with their information, sadly the majority would not understand it and we would still be left with their anger.
I say ignorance is bliss for most. That there are some people who understand and watch over us is enough. Keep up the good work.
A fitting challenge for artificial minds
Mary Midgley describes a Go grandmaster being defeated by “a conspiracy of all known previous grandmasters, ably helped by a similar conspiracy of experts in computer programming” (Letters, 16 April). Having only ever been able to complete two computer games, I have long suspected a conspiracy among game designers. If we humans want to get our own back, perhaps we should try to build an artificial intelligence to play ” ” as featured in I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue on BBC Radio. As devotees understand, revenge is a dish best served at Colliers Wood.
Misleading needles in haystacks
Ray Hinks wonders whether searching through all knowledge to find hidden links, such as that apparently between the rate of dementia and season of birth, is beyond the ability of a human polymath (Letters, 9 April). The sifting of all knowledge almost certainly is: but that shouldn't deter more specific searches for possibly unexpected correlations.
I am reminded of a statistically significant positive correlation between the season of birth of car thieves and that of their victims, which I found in records held by Avon and Somerset Constabulary. Perhaps legitimate owners and thieves share preferences for particular models according to their zodiac sign? Whether that says anything about astrology at large is another matter.
Graphene sensor for diabetes control
Your piece about graphene smart patches for monitoring diabetes (26 March, p 24) focuses on automatically releasing metformin for type 2 diabetes. It seems to me that the device would be most useful as a continuously monitoring blood-glucose sensor, that could be paired with an insulin pump for people with type 1 diabetes.
In that case, the technology could be deployed within a year or so, without any need for a drug delivery system. Existing continuous blood-glucose systems are quite expensive and require costly sensors, which are not supplied free on the NHS and must be replaced every few days.
A military mine by any other name
David Hambling says “persistent drones could sit on buildings or trees and keep watch indefinitely” (16 April, p 18). When is a drone that sits in wait for its victim not a military mine?
For the record
• Petrol-headed: we meant to say that before mass car ownership, gasoline was a worthless by-product of kerosene lamp oil (14 May, p 5).
• The number of people killed in road accidents in Great Britain is about 1800 (14 May, p 22).
• We have decided. It would have been better to say that Kurt Gödel showed that even if we add an axiom to make previously undecidable mathematical statements decidable, this will still leave other problems that are undecidable (14 May, p 9).