Editor's pick: Consent is meaningless without choice
I am happy that new legislation will compel internet giants to be more transparent (11 November, p 5). But currently if you need to log into a Google or Microsoft account you are obliged to enable “cookie” logging by third parties. There is no technical reason for this, apart from allowing their clients to spy on you.
So long as such companies are close to monopoly suppliers everyone will simply grind their teeth and tick all the boxes. Legislation needs to limit what companies can do with the data they collect and not just allow users to tick a lot of boxes with implications that they are unlikely to understand.
Editor's pick: Consent is meaningless without choice
Many years ago, a student colleague mentioned a possible solution to the problem of linked personal data. Everyone could enforce their copyright in the collection of their words and other “works”, or in their own life as art. Any defence of “fair dealing” may falter where they repeatedly sell the information to many customers.
First class post
With streaming services, if a record label ends a contract, you no longer listen to your songs
Natalia for “retro” music formats – now surprisingly including a cassette tape revival (25 November, p 24)
Secular explanations for ghost sightings
Emma Young quotes climber Reinhold Messner as sensing the presence of a third man accompanying him and his brother on their descent from Nanga Parbat, Pakistan (4 November, p 36). This echoes the account of the epic crossing of South Georgia in May 1916 by Ernest Shackleton, Tom Crean and Frank Worsley. All said they felt they were accompanied by a fourth man.
This “wraith” was unhelpful: the party twice climbed to a ridge and had to retrace their steps. Any decent ghost or deity would surely have been less obfuscatory.
Years later Worsley admitted that the “fourth man” story was made up to enhance the book by Ernest Shackleton, for purely pecuniary gain. Messner's third man is no doubt a figment of the imagination, too, but I do not in the least impute deception to him.
Secular explanations for ghost sightings
You report that 30 to 40 per cent of people in the UK and US believe in ghosts. A similar survey in Australia some time ago reported near zero. When we are asked what goes bump in the night, the standard response is “possums”!
Secular explanations for ghost sightings
Young informs us of the rather surprising fact that belief in ghosts has risen in recent decades. Considering the growing billions of humans who now walk around all day long with smartphones capable of taking very high-quality photographs under all manner of lighting conditions, I would have thought that the singular and complete absence of any credible picture of either ghosts or UFOs would have been sufficient to kill belief in them.
Secular explanations for ghost sightings
I was delighted to read Young's reference to seeing a ghostly arm when you wave your hand in front of your face in total darkness with both eyes closed. I discovered this phenomenon accidentally a few weeks ago and was amazed to find so little discussion of it.
If I close my eyes until all after-images have disappeared and put on a sleep mask to ensure that I'm not peeking under an eyelid, I can “see” a faint but clear dark shadow of my arm when I move it slowly back and forth in front of my face. When I move my arm quickly, the shadow sometimes has a light grey and pink trailing edge. When I stop the motion it disappears immediately. When I shrug my shoulders I “see” a dark area appear and disappear at 4 and 8 o'clock in my visual field.
It seems to me that this is indeed synaesthesia, with stimulation of the visual cortex by neurological pathways from kinaesthetic and proprioceptive neural centres. It would be interesting to have a large number of people try this experiment. Is this phenomenon more likely with age? I'm 87 and perhaps I was too young or distracted to notice it earlier.
Secular explanations for ghost sightings
Young reports psychologist Ciarán O'Keeffe dedicating his life to studying why we get spooked by “ghosts”. So what exactly is it we feel that he studies? Ten seconds of thought made it clear to me what we feel: fear.
We feel the very real fear of death and physical bodily harm, of pain. We fear there might be something lurking around the next corner capable of ripping us to shreds. It's the sort of fear that one would feel in a forest full of carnivorous animals. It's a real and justified fear that we are wired to feel. This feeling doesn't just stop at animals, anything that can violently kill us scares us, especially humans, cold-blooded killers who could capture us and torture us before killing us.
Don't say I'm deluded just because I'm special
Dan Jones mentions that 90 per cent of the population hold a delusion-like belief, at least weakly (18 November, p 40). This finding is biased by the type of questions. Most of them start with “Do you ever feel…”. It would be surprising if most people had never, ever had some of those feelings; particularly those of us who know we are very special and destined to be important and therefore everyone is out to get us.
Superintelligences have better things to do
Jamais Cascio brings up the concept of Roko's basilisk, the idea that “anyone who knows that a superintelligent, godlike artificial intelligence is possible but doesn't work to bring it about will be considered by said AI to be an enemy” (14 October, p 24). But why would a superintelligent being, whether a god or an AI, be so narcissistic and vain as to care which humans did or did not worship it? Wouldn't it have more interesting things to think about?
Printing before the Gutenberg revolution
You say the printing press was invented by Johannes Gutenberg in Germany in the 14th century (28 October, p 32). There is dispute over the first use of movable type; but we do know that each page of the Dharani Sutra scroll was printed from a single block between 704 and 751. It is now kept in the , South Korea. The complete Diamond Sutra of 868 is now in the British Museum. Both were printed in China during the Tang Dynasty.
Protecting rivers under a common law system
Giving a river rights so its quality can be defended through the courts is very much not a UK approach (11 November, p 24). Here riverbank landowners have duties, such as not carrying out activities that could lead to pollution, and rights, such as water flowing onto or under their land in its natural quantity and quality, as a result of common law cases dating back many years.
Anglers' clubs started organised civil action in the late 1940s, to get authorities and nationalised industry to clean rivers. They used injunctions to prevent future and continued pollution whose breach would result in contempt of court.
It's not impossible until a young expert says so
Discussing Sergio Canavero's body-transplant project, Nic Fleming quotes Peter Ellaway, who is emeritus professor of physiology at University College London, saying “in my opinion this will never happen” (28 October, p 39). Without meaning to imply any judgement of my own as to the viability of the plan, I am reminded of the First Law of writer Arthur C. Clarke: “When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.”
So, watch this space…
Roundup resistance in weeds is also a problem
Michael Le Page laments the possibility that the European parliament may “fall for the line of anti-glyphosate activists” and ban use of glyphosate herbicides (4 November, p 25). Recent reviews of the available evidence – some funded by Monsanto – conclude that “the evidence that glyphosate is harming our health is weak or non-existent” and Le Page points to the benefits of “no-till” farming reducing erosion and carbon emissions from soils.
But many plants traditionally regarded as weeds have to glyphosate and are reinfesting crops, to the extent that some farmers have already been forced to revert to more toxic herbicides or resume ploughing. Whether glyphosate is deemed directly harmful to people or not, it cannot be regarded as a “green” fix for the ongoing problem of feeding the human race.
The earliest artistic depiction of a hairstyle
Discussing the history of hair, you say the Venus of Brassempouy is the oldest known three-dimensional representation of the human form (7 October, p 40). Does the Venus of Willendorf not predate her? She also sported a fine coiffure, the hair seemingly elaborately braided, although she is devoid of facial features that the Venus of Brassempouy does have. Of course they are both relative youngsters compared with the “Venus of Hohle Fels”, – though, sadly, she lost her head somewhere along the way.
The editor writes:
• Many dates have been suggested for each of these but, yes, the French national archaeological museum the dame de Brassempouy is 23,000 years old and most sources date Venus of Willdendorf to 25,000 years ago.
For the record
• In Greek “philos” is “friend” and “phylla” is “leaf” (11 November, p 19).
• Josiah Zayner injected himself with a CRISPR system to remove his gene for myostatin (18 November, p 22).