Editor's pick: Bread, circuses and lots of sport
Your articles on the future of work (25 June, p 29) brought to mind a 快猫短视频 article by Charles Darwin, theoretical physicist and patrician grandson of his famous namesake (). He was an advocate of eugenics, calling for authoritarian measures to mould society. He asked whether more leisure time as a result of technology would lead to “endless mischief of one kind or another unless it is controlled by some sort of compulsion”.
He worried that a large fraction of the population would not be able to handle extended free time. Would they demand more sensational entertainment – “even gladiators”? Would those “not satisfied with whatever exciting things are provided for them almost inevitably give rein to their tastes by stirring up trouble”? Would they be drawn to rioting, the excitement of crime?
Darwin's remedy, suggested by his schooldays, was compulsory games to occupy non-work time.
Editor's pick: Bread, circuses and lots of sport
Hal Hodson does not sufficiently highlight the benefits to society of employers paying people a smaller wage as a top-up to a basic state income. Employers have less motive to make people redundant because the wage bill change will be smaller. This was discussed in the 1970s as a way to encourage more employment.
The first funerals needed planning
I was interested by Max Green's article on the first burials of Homo naledi, some 2 to 3 million years ago in the Rising Star cave system in South Africa (14 May, p 36). I cannot help being struck by the sheer inaccessibility of where the bones were found, 30 metres down and 80 metres into a pitch black roller-coaster-shaped cave with a tiny entrance.
It would surely be impossible to explore such a system as a potential burial site in the first place, let alone carry bones or bodies into it later, without some light source. I have difficulty believing that pieces of burning wood alone could suffice. Does this mean that H. naledi had relatively refined torches, such as a combustible material soaked in fat, which burned long enough to traverse the system, deposit the bodies and return? That would in turn imply they knew how to make fire when required.
Or did the sick go in before dying? Why would they do that, and how would they find their way? Either possibility suggests the species had the capability to consider future activities and requirements, and a communication system to organise it all. I see a picture of a society far more socially, verbally and technologically advanced than was thought possible so early – with a brain only half the size of ours.
First class post
They have just as much right to walk the earth as we do … with the exception of wasps!
Jane Almond on the efforts to with legal “personhood” for some other animals (2 July, p 16)
Expertise and cargo cult science
If UK politician Michael Gove is right in saying the British people are “fed up with experts” then they are in good company (2 July, p 5). The physicist Richard Feynman famously said “.” Of course he was not saying experts should never be listened to. But Gove was talking about economics, which closely fits Feynman's definition of a ““.
Economists cannot reliably predict whether growth will be positive or negative in the next quarter, so any claim to be able to project the effect of today's decisions over decades should be treated with extreme caution.
Taxing fossil fuels is the only way
Michael Le Page observes that governments have had to subsidise renewable energy (21 May, p 19) That is only because this is an emerging industry competing with one that is not paying for the costs of the climate change it is creating. The way to make renewables competitive on price is simply to tax fossil fuels.
The same is true for anything with socially damaging consequences – microsecond stock trades and nuclear waste production are examples.
A carbon tax is the only sane way forward, however tricky it may be politically. It may be less so after Washington has flooded, as New York already has.
Pollution rules are being bent already
Recent events have directed my attention to Fiona Reynolds's article on how “Brexit” could lead the UK to a dirtier future (27 February, p 30). She does not mention that the UK, by being part of the EU's standards-making system, already has exemption from certain environmental rules.
In the UK, the 1993 controls smoke pollution, but successive ministers have used Orders in Council to alter the Act without parliament even knowing. They have given complete exemption and even – a fuel made from petroleum coke that is illegal or severely restricted in other jurisdictions.
Strangely enough, the UK is likely to have to stick much more strictly to EU rules in return for access to the single market. With the UK no longer having much of a hand in framing the rules, it won't find easy get-outs. At least, I hope so.
Animals are no models for us
Andy Coghlan reports a monkey being genetically engineered to have Parkinson's disease (18 June, p 12). The superficial similarity between humans and monkeys is of little benefit when it comes to research into neurological diseases like Parkinson's.
Applying data from monkeys to humans is highly unreliable and of questionable value, especially when alternative methods are available. 快猫短视频s should be focusing effort on more human-relevant methods, such as ethical studies on patients or “brain on a chip” and 3D tissue cultures.
Assumptions about consciousness
I must object to the diagram with Sumit Paul-Choudhury's article on the future of supersmart machines (25 June, p 18). It plots “capacity for consciousness” versus “human-like qualities”. The category of “animals” is shown as a diagonal oval: the greater the human-like qualities, the greater the capacity for consciousness, apparently.
But this is species-centrism. We have no way to measure capacity for consciousness, since we have no way to measure consciousness. The diagram only expresses that animals that seem more similar to humans evoke greater sympathy in us. We assume that they are more likely to be conscious.
Indeed, even placing “brick” at the lower extreme of capacity for consciousness is an assumption. We don't even have any idea how conscious or unconscious one is.
Self-simulation and dreaming a world
Elon Musk suggests the universe is a computer simulation (11 June, p 18). What if we ourselves are the programmers and have built the program deliberately so that we forget this fact? The author and poet Jorge Luis Borges summed it up in his 1939 essay “Avatars of the Tortoise” when he wrote: “The greatest magician… would be the one who would cast over himself a spell so complete that he would take his own phantasmagorias as autonomous appearances… We have dreamt the world. We… have dreamt it as firm, mysterious, visible, ubiquitous in space and durable in time; but in its architecture we have allowed tenuous and eternal crevices of unreason which tell us it is false.”
If the universe is a projection of our unconscious imagination, then instead of discovering its wonders, it's more like we invent them as we go along.
We do need traffic reduction schemes
Olaf Olsen mentions his co-worker's calculated response to a high-occupancy vehicle incentive on New York river crossings as a warning against expecting a positive outcome from measures to promote change in commuter behaviour (Letters, 4 June). We should not dismiss such schemes on the basis of a sample size of one.
The fact that the proportions of commuters using different modes of transport vary widely between cities suggests it is possible to nudge people from one mode to another, with the right combination of incentives and disincentives. The damage done to public health by air pollution from vehicles provides a strong justification for doing so.
Set the controls for the heart of Earth
You report carbon dioxide dissolved in water interacting with hot basalt rock to produce very stable carbonates and sequester the carbon (18 June, p 16). It is expensive, but could extending the notion make it more cost-effective? I suggest injecting very small particles of vitrified nuclear waste with the carbon dioxide solution. This may also be expensive, but could get rid of some dangerous substances for which we are currently at a loss to find means of disposal.
Security of patient data and the spies
You report fears over the transfer of medical data to Google's DeepMind project (28 May, p 6). What is DeepMind doing with the data? I am not reassured by the ruling of the Court of Justice of the European Union on 6 October 2015 that Facebook, Google and other internet companies were to the US National Security Agency, called PRISM.
For the record
• Life extension: the planned date for the Juno probe to plunge into Jupiter's atmosphere is currently February 2018 (2 July, p 6).
• The result of flight AF447 being angled upwards was that it stalled – meaning its wings lost lift (2 July, p 37).
• Well, well, well: fresh groundwater reserves identified under California's Central Valley are estimated at 2700 cubic kilometres (2 July, p 7).
• Sorry about misspelling Theresa Chapman's name (Letters, 9 July).