Editor's pick: AI challenges our basic idea of science
Malcolm Shute suggests that if all the old attempts at performing natural language translation using grammar-based sentence analysis have failed, and the statistical analysis of translated documents found on the internet has been a resounding success, that “may speak volumes about how natural language works” (Letters, 4 February). This is an important point, and is becoming the object of philosophical discussion.
Shute's question implies deeper questions about the very purpose of scientific investigation. It is a shame that there was no space to address this in my article on artificial intelligence (26 November 2016, p 39).
Do we build models of reality in order to predict it, or in order to explain it? And what are we to make of models that make good predictions, but make no sense to us?
Our need for causal explanations seems to be similar to our need to tell stories about what we perceive.
More work is needed to understand what role machines can play in the future of the scientific method.
The stranger results of infinite multiverses
Shannon Hall explores the implications of everything allowed by physics happening (21 January, p 28). But I conjecture events with non-zero probabilities that will surely not happen anywhere. Is there a civilisation like ours but where every fair dice throw is a six for every person every time? Probabilities that tend to zero, with opportunities that tend to infinity, should maybe be treated like multiplying zero by infinity: the result is undefined.
A world where the least likely has always occurred is interesting to think about, though.
The stranger results of infinite multiverses
If there is an infinite multiverse, I would argue that somewhere there will be at least one god. On account of being consubstantial, coeternal and so on, once She, He or It appears they immediately pervade space-time, always and already having been everywhere, unconfined by the speed of light.
This theory seems as valid as the idea that we live in someone else's virtual environment, or are figments in the imagination of a Boltzmann brain (25 May 2013, p 12). I accept that this notion also predicts the existence of the Flying Spaghetti Monster.
The stranger results of infinite multiverses
OK, so I'm prepared to swallow this multiverse business, but an infinite multiverse? Surely that way lies utter madness.
If there are infinitely many universes, then among them there is one identical to our own in every single respect but one: in that universe you chose not to publish this letter – but otherwise it made absolutely no difference.
First class post
Dolphins are a hoax created by China to defeat the freedom to drill and overfish
Kevin Russell the news that there are only 30 vaquita porpoises left (11 February, p 5)
My purpose here is to say that we don't know
Teal Burrell purports to deal with a sense of purpose and the meaning of life (28 January, p 30). But how does she know the “harsh reality” that “as far as the universe is concerned, we are nothing but fleeting and randomly assembled collections of energy and matter”? How does she know that “life is ultimately meaningless”?
If that were the case, why do we still read Plato, Shakespeare and Dostoyevsky; or listen to Mozart, Mahler and Wagner; or look at Michelangelo, Caravaggio and Picasso; or take notice of Euclid, Galileo and Darwin? Yes, they all turned to dust, like the rest of us will. But their memory lives on.
My purpose here is to say that we don't know
Burrell tells us that Victor Strecher is developing “an app called Jool that he hopes can eventually serve as a kind of ‘purpose pill’… tested by companies to help employees hone their sense of purpose – and boost productivity”. Personally, I'd rather die miserably and before my time than be trained by a cutely named app to line my employer's pockets.
The question is not about humanity, but suffering
Clare Wilson asks whether pigs that are manipulated to possess human brain cells merit “greater moral consideration” (28 January, p 8). The presence of human brain cells is a faulty criterion. Moral consideration must be afforded to all beings that are able to suffer.
As the utilitarian philosopher Jeremy Bentham : “the number of legs, the villosity of the skin, or the termination of the os sacrum [tail bone], are reasons equally insufficient for abandoning a sensitive being to the same fate… the question is not, Can they reason? nor, Can they talk? but, Can they suffer?”
Can free-range planets solve a cosmic mystery?
You suggest that the Milky Way – and by analogy the universe – may abound with free-floating planet-sized bodies (14 January, p 20). The elusive dark matter?
The editor writes:
• Perhaps sadly, there wouldn't be enough of them to account for all the missing mass that dark matter is invoked to explain. Other evidence, such as that from gravitational lensing, suggests dark matter has a particle nature.
You think antimatter is weird? Look here…
Joshua Howgego says “the antimatter realm is so bizarre… particles that destroy themselves and normal matter whenever the two come into contact” (7 January, p 28). Antimatter isn't of itself any more bizarre than matter, apart from its rarity in our neck of the multiverse.
We have a habit of classifying anything that is rare in our experience, such as metallic hydrogen, as “special”. This just shows that the environment we live in is itself rare compared with the bulk of the universe.
The imbalance between matter and antimatter in the observable universe is a puzzle, but the stuff itself is no weirder than any other type of mass-energy – which is all weird enough already.
The danger zone half way to automation
Sandy Ong worries about the “ethics” that will be programmed (or not) into fully autonomous vehicles (7 January, p 36). But there is a far more urgent issue that needs to be dealt with first.
Before vehicles become fully autonomous there will be a time when they handle routine driving but occasionally require the human behind the wheel to take control. These drivers will have little training in the capabilities of their vehicles' automation. How many will study and understand the owner's manual?
Drivers who are not paying full attention will be surprised when their vehicle suddenly demands they take control.
Partially autonomous vehicles are likely to reduce the toll of accidents now caused by drivers who aren't paying attention. But I expect some very sad results from passing control to a “driver” who must suddenly wake up and react.
Preserve fragile treasures of space flight
Kate Becker's article on the women behind space exploration in the 1950s and 60s was uplifting and inspirational (21 January, p 40). Another aspect of the space-race is in danger of being lost.
Because digital computers of the time were so slow, much of the trajectory calculation was done by analogue or hybrid digital/ analogue electronic computers. A few remain in museums. But their really valuable intellectual heritage is the “programs” they used, and the mathematical techniques behind them. These are being lost as engineers and scientists of my generation die.
In the US, most of NASA's analogue computers were made by Electronic Associates (EAI). I urge anyone with copies of any of these programs, for space applications or others, or knowledge of their whereabouts, to pass them on to one of the analogue computer museums, or to contact me care of this page.
Give credit for pioneer computing work
Much as I enjoyed your recent crossword (14 January), I must comment on one clue. It asked for the name of an “MIT/IBM educational computing project” and required the answer “Athena”.
This overlooked the fact that the Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) was the main donor to this collaboration of skills, personnel, equipment, technology and money (estimated at $50 million in the year 2000). The memory of DEC's achievements lives on with its past users and employees. Its contributions to the evolution of computing and to information technology cannot be overstated.
How does dust hide gravitational waves?
You report the BICEP2 telescope at the South Pole detecting noise created by dust inside our galaxy (14 January, p 6). How does this or any cosmic dust create a noise?
The editor writes:
• It would have been clearer to say that BICEP2 detected a signal, confusingly similar to the signature of gravitational waves, that turned out to be emissions from warm dust ejected by supernovae (26 April 2014, p 14).
Primatology in surprise anthropology meeting
I was captivated by how chimps dealt with the return of a “tyrant” (4 February, p 9). In 1890, James Frazer in proposed that prehistoric “kings” would reign in good times and later serve as scapegoats and sacrifices to ensure fertility.
The parallels made me sit up straight and rub my eyes. Might Frazer's work now bear respectful re-examination by students of the rational sciences, alongside students of the irrational ones?
For the record
• “PM2.5” particles of air pollution are defined as being 2.5 micrometres in diameter or less (4 February, p 22).