Editor's pick: There is no policy without history
It is well established that the forms taken by technological development and scientific research are determined by the social, economic, political and cultural context in which they are pursued. An example of this is the imbalance in research funding for medical disorders that primarily affect wealthy populations and those that affect poorer populations. For this reason I am sympathetic to Zoltan Istvan's desire to decouple science and technology policy from the short-term interests and planning horizons of political establishments (27 August, p 18).
But for the same reason I am struck by the monumental hubris of his aim to establish policy from a point of view “not… shaped by… culture or history”. Progress is not an uncomplicated given, in which everything gets better as we invent more neat stuff. It is an ideological term, with a complex history, that leaves unspoken the network of interests and power relations that steer knowledge production.
If Istvan sincerely wishes to foster rapid, transformative technological development in the interests of all humanity, then one of his enterprise's first tasks should be to examine its own assumptions and intellectual antecedence.
This lead spike marks our place
Geologists are looking for a “golden spike” in the geological record to denote the start of the Anthropocene (3 September, p 7). Putting tetraethyl lead in gasoline during the early part of the 20th century polluted Earth's entire surface – surely that would do?
Geologist Clair Cameron Patterson discovered this when he used the radioactive decay of lead to determine Earth's age in the 1940s. Everything he could see was polluted with lead, including the tools used to measure lead contamination. (The campaign to remove lead from gasoline and food packaging in the 1960s may have as .) In fact this could date the Anthropocene from about 6500 BC, when people first started smelting metals, rather than the 1940s, but what is a few millennia in geological terms?
First class post
It won't happen if penal institutions are privatised. They want you to come back
Jenny J. Miller when efforts to reduce reoffending are doomed (17 September, p 20)
When the evidence is under wraps
Evidence-based policy is brilliant (27 August, p 5). But how do you get the evidence? I have an interest in road safety and I'd like to read the accident reports, produced by our local police, to find out the precise causes of deaths and injuries on our roads. They refuse to let me see them on the grounds that they contain “personal data” – much of which I can read in the local paper anyway. The coroner withholds inquest reports because I'm not an “interested party” in law.
The UK is going to spend £30 billion on new Trident submarines. They rely on being undetectable, but I doubt that they are or will remain so in the future. What do you think are my chances of getting the Ministry of Defence to let me see the evidence?
A panpsychic particle panacea
Jon Cartwright's article describing “objective collapse” had me indulging in the game of “let's play quantum physicist”, as I suspect other readers do on occasion (16 July, p 30). With so many unresolved quandaries, and with 40 per cent of physicists in an informal poll accepting the Copenhagen interpretation that nothing becomes real until observation makes it so, how can we not?
So, what happens if we accept the premise of objective collapse theory, but instead of assuming that the wave functions collapse randomly, we assume that they possess primordial agency and are responsible for their own collapse? The hypothesis has the advantage of explaining why the collapse happens. It's not random: it's chosen, by the agency of the wave functions themselves.
It might be distasteful to those who dislike the premise that waves and particles might have primordial consciousness. But I find it intriguing, especially seeing as a range of researchers from astrophysicist Arthur Eddington to neuroscientist Koch give serious attention to this “panpsychism”.
We need to argue with a CareBot
My wife and I believe that when we get older a CareBot would be useful, even if its only function was to follow us when we go for walks and guide us home when we get lost, or call for help when we fall over. Computers that argue (10 September, p 36) add a new opportunity. We could exercise our brains by having complex intellectual discussions, with the advantage that if the argument gets too heated, the CareBot won't go off in a huff and refuse to speak for three days.
Free will? Let's get metaphysical
The choice over who is truly in control isn't between “we” and “some external agent”, whether an omnipotent god or the laws of physics, as Michael Brooks states (3 September, p 28). It is between “we” and “some internal agent”.
Countless factors go into decision-making that are beyond our awareness, much less control. We may think we're doing thus-and-so for this or that reason, but in reality we're carrying out the wishes of a very smart and wilful subconscious.
All that said, since clearly the subconscious is part of us, then to the extent that it has free will, we also do. But it's not the kind of free will that we would prefer.
Free will? Let's get metaphysical
Starting with the broad assumption that the brain evolved as an “organ of computation”, at some stage it became able to model the world around it. In a sense, this started with quite primitive organisms' senses of hot and cold, light and dark. In more complex animals, this ability extended to simulating their world, enabling cognitive and intelligent behaviours.
It would be rather strange, if not pointless, for a brain to simulate the world unless it simulated itself. Would this not lead to an intelligent, cognitive simulation of itself – consciousness? The evolutionary benefits are clear.
This line of reasoning clearly supports the notion that self and consciousness are created by a physical mechanism.
Free will? Let's get metaphysical
I enjoyed your metaphysics edition very much, but in assuming that life has no meaning because everything will end in bleak nothingness, Graham Lawton fell into the trap of prophesying the future based on what we think we know. It is, of course, completely unknowable.
Of the many things that are yet to be discovered that will be as far from our present thinking as electricity would have been in the Stone Age, not least is the effect on the world of our consciousness, with its driving curiosity and ingenuity. I would suggest that a more intriguing and perhaps positive future lies in the idea that life is the universe's way of figuring itself out – still unknowable, but to some degree our responsibility.
Peering through the voids of space
Anil Ananthaswamy asks whether lumpiness of mass distribution could make the average curvature of space sufficiently negative to explain the dimness of distant galaxies without recourse to “dark energy” (18 June, p 28). There may be a bias in our observations here. A distant galaxy is more likely to be visible if the line of sight to it passes through relatively empty space with negative curvature.
The ignorosphere under threat
Stephen Battersby gave a very considered account of what we don't know about the ignorosphere (20 August, p 34). Among the unknowns are how it interacts with the lower atmosphere in detail, and how it plays a part in Earth's weather systems. But David Hambling outlines plans by the US Air Force to plasma bomb this same region of the sky (p 21). Is there any analysis of the possible risks? I'm sure the US Air Force will have carried one out – after all, they have never undertaken any other bombing campaign without thorough investigation of the possible ramifications.
Darwin's burial was a loss for worms
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You note that evolutionist Charles Darwin “was given a state funeral in London's Westminster Abbey” (16 July, p 35). I have always considered it a tragedy that Darwin, who had such a comprehensive awareness of nature and the web of life, was buried in those sterile vaults. His wish to be interred in his local churchyard, which he called “the sweetest place on Earth”, was judged inappropriate by those in power at the time, who obviously lacked understanding of his work and its fundamental truths.
How sad to think that very little of Darwin's mortal remains were able to pass back into nature for reuse by his beloved earthworms.
Entangled qubits aren't in touch
Entangled trapped-ion qubits cannot communicate faster than the speed of light (13 August, p 14). Entanglement allows correlations between results at distance: this is not the same as communication.
Sport, sport, glorious sport…
Discussing gene doping in sports, Michael Le Page says: “But many sports are risky. American football can cause brain damage: should we ban that too?” (13 August, p 19).
The answer is “yes”.
The very, very last thing we want
Steve Martin writes that “the last thing we need is an impact from a large asteroid on Earth” (Letters, 20 August). It's also probably the last thing we'll get…