Editor's pick: The final frontier is on our own finite planet
I was bemused by the comparison between the world of Charles Darwin and that of Elon Musk implied in Leah Crane's article on privately funded exploration (11 March, p 25). In Darwin's day, the prevailing ethos of so-called free-market capitalism treated the planet as a limitless resource, and its atmosphere and oceans as an equally limitless repository for waste. Western nations were exploiting their empires where the only inhibitions to development were the insignificant interests of a few unimportant indigenous peoples.
Today we realise that all relevant aspects of our planetary existence are decidedly finite. The needs of the planet must be at the forefront in any decisions about consumption.
It is especially poignant that this notion of entrepreneurial exploitation of space has appeared in the same week that the United Nations warned of the impending deaths of millions from starvation – which could be avoided with a mere fraction of the investment proposed for vanity space projects.
Ownership and control of robotic production
Sumit Paul-Choudhury is right to say that a robot tax is only the beginning (4 March, p 25). He notes it could be spent on a basic minimum income. It should.
Pragmatically, this would compensate people for work lost to robots – provided that we take other measures to spread reduced employment. Morally, it would express the truth that robots and AI systems are not the work of one person or company but arise from our shared scientific heritage.
Ownership and control of robotic production
I would go further than Paul-Choudhury on the economics of robots. Those who own and control them would have great economic power by virtue of the wealth they create. They would be able to hire PR firms and lobbyists, clever accountants and lawyers.
They could buy large tracts of the media, plus many politicians and the odd political party. I very much doubt they would ever pay tax on their robots. Any universal basic wage would most probably be eroded to a meaningless level, as those who own the robots vilify it for supporting a class of “skivers and shirkers”.
The only way to ensure that mass AI-driven automation has a beneficial rather than disastrous effect on society is to find a way for us all to share in ownership of the robots.
Ownership and control of robotic production
It's good to see fresh thinking about the impact of technology on economic organisation. Another possibility is for private individuals to own robots and rent them to the firm.
First class post
You don't want to do that, little buddy. Not now. Stay in the sea where it's safe
Wendy Stevens to the fish that seem to be evolving into land-dwellers (25 March, p 18)
Regulating capitalism is really not Stalinism
Fred Pearce contrasts a “market-based view of nature” with the observation that “collectivisation hardly treated the steppes of the Soviet Union well, creating conditions for famine worse even than the American dust bowl” (11 March, p 44). This implies the same error that has been holding back US environmental policy for decades: the claim that any alternative to a Western ideal would necessarily turn into a communist nightmare.
Many European countries have restricted the freedoms both of individuals and companies for the common good and are better for it. Polarising the debate into cold war dichotomies helps no one.
Choice and altruism in the balance
Niall Firth gives as an example of “effective altruism” the case of Greg Lewis choosing to work on public health policies rather than becoming a doctor (25 February, p 22). Some would probably argue that the health service already has too many policy-makers and not enough doctors, so adding one more makes the balance worse.
Choice and altruism in the balance
Greg Lewis projects a doctor's effectiveness over an entire career, concluding that a doctor of “average ability” could expect to “save” only four lives, or the equivalent thereof. It is a truism of medicine that doctors mostly cannot “save” lives anyway, since we are all going to die at some point. What modern medicine can and does do is buy people time, and improve the quality of their life during that time.
Choice and altruism in the balance
I think Greg Lewis seriously underestimates the impact his working as a doctor has on people's lives. Consider what would happen if every medically trained person went to work for hedge funds and just paid their tax plus £600 to a relevant charity.
The editor writes:
• It is implicit that an effective altruist goes where there are shortages. If there were a shortage of doctors like Greg Lewis, the next effective altruist would maximise their effectiveness by filling that gap.
Emissions accounting must include exports
Is the news about UK carbon emissions dropping (11 March, p 6) as good as it first seems? The figures serve only to emphasise how much manufacturing has moved overseas.
The UK still consumes huge amounts of carbon-intensive stuff, but no longer makes it. Fossil fuel is consumed on our behalf by overseas manufacturers, air freighters and shipping lines.
And what about the “carbon intensity” of the fuels we import? Losses connected with obtaining methane from under the North Sea, for example, were quite low. Now we mostly import methane as liquefied natural gas, consuming additional energy in liquefaction and shipping. Surely international agreement should oblige consuming nations to declare their true “carbon footprint” to the rest of the world?
Quantum entanglement we can understand
Stuart Clark suggests that quantum weirdness is like you and I starting together before parting, then as soon as one of us finds we have odd socks we know that the other, now a long way away, also has odd socks (4 March, p 28). This all makes perfect sense to me.
Imagine we start off with two red and two green socks between us. We become entangled in a dark room, then put on our socks and go our separate ways. As soon as an observer notices I have one red and one green sock, she knows instantly what colour socks you are wearing.
Since this example is so clear, does it mean that I now fully understand quantum theory, or does it mean the analogy is not quite adequate?
Reframing quantum mechanics in relativity
You regularly run articles about the search for a unified theory of physics. Such efforts always seem to involve trying to quantify general relativity (for example 4 February, p 28) or attempting to find a carrier – namely the graviton – for a gravity field that obeys quantum mechanical rules.
It seems to me, as far as I understand this, that general relativity does not describe gravity as a field. There is “just” a 4-dimensional geometry that depends on the masses in the space under consideration. Forces then follow this geometry.
Why not try to describe quantum mechanics following the geometry of general relativity, instead of the other way round? There are certainly very difficult problems to tackle here. Quantum uncertainty adds complications. But are there efforts to seek a unified theory along this path, despite such difficulties? Are there fundamental barriers?
The editor writes:
• A few researchers do advocate trying to describe quantum fields geometrically. But quantum theory's success in describing three of the four fundamental forces, plus the uncomfortable mathematical singularities general relativity generates on small scales, mean this remains a minority pursuit.
Water on Mars could have existed as a cocktail
Mars needn't have been warmer for water to have carved its features (18 February, p 25). An alternative explanation is that something was once present that allowed water to remain liquid at very low temperatures, but is now gone. Ammonia seems plausible: mixtures with water can be liquid at around -100°C at a pressure of 1 atmosphere. Ammonia has a far higher vapour pressure than water. I think it would be lost much more rapidly by ultraviolet degradation or through erosion by the solar wind.
The bestiary of the spectacle could pay
Olive Heffernan looks at the risk that funding de-extinction would take away from existing work to conserve species (11 March, p 24). Does the cost of resurrecting mammoths or other extinct creatures need to come out of the conservation budget?
The potential income from zoos wishing to exhibit creatures as spectator attractions is likely to be substantial, even if it does nothing for real world conservation. Renting a panda from the Chinese government, for example, costs .
Is Donald Trump cooking up his own cleverness?
Bob Cory suggests that Donald Trump's behaviour is not stupid, and that his books show cleverly calculated promotion of brand Trump (Letters, 18 March). But does Trump write his own books?
For the record
• The Institute for Advanced Study is an independent research centre based in Princeton, New Jersey (18 March, p 43).