What exactly is this self-determination, then? (1)
My lack of free will gives me no choice but to disagree with Tom Stafford 6 April, p 34. Cellular automata may look unpredictable to him, but surely they produce exactly the same pattern when started from the same initial conditions, unless a random number generator based on quantum physics is incorporated.
What does he mean by self-determination, anyway? I can “freely choose” between two issues if no outside agents prevent it, and then my choice is based on a conscious or unconscious preference. If I choose totally at random, can it be called a choice?
My illusion of free will comes from the absence of external intervention, but my choices are still determined by my past, which shaped what I want.
Fortunately, nature is truly random at some level: it would all be totally deterministic and horribly boring without that.
Also, Stafford leaves me no choice about his Choice Engine: this interactive essay is on Twitter, a commercial entity based outside of our legal space. I have no desire to make an account there. Can we expect to see the engine on a no-strings-attached platform?
What exactly is this self-determination, then? (2)
Stafford is optimistic that we do have free will to make choices. I wonder whether he freely chose to believe that. His genes, prior life experience and career researching the brain all shaped his own brain structure to hold that belief: so the true act of free will would be to somehow reject his own optimism for free will. This is rather a paradox.
The editor writes:
Our genes and experience lead us to agree that this paradox is important. But…
In the summertime, when the vitamin's easy
Linda Geddes reports on the health perils of shunning the sun 16 March, p 28. This was interesting, but I have a question. How much skin should I expose when I go out to get my daily dose of sunshine? Hands and face are easy, lower arms and legs possible – but is that enough?
The editor writes:
How much sunshine you need to get your daily dose of vitamin D depends on your skin colour, where you are and the time of year. The UK's National Health Service says that in the UK, you can bare your forearms, hands or lower legs in the middle of the day from late March to early September for short periods – but to be careful not to burn (see ).
Machine learning is not artificial intelligence
Three systems misclassified medical images after the pictures were slightly altered 30 March, p 17. This is symptomatic of a deep misunderstanding: algorithms like these are not “artificial intelligence”. No intelligence is involved. They are merely statistical machine-learning algorithms that happen to be based on neural networks.
These algorithms don't understand that they are supposed to diagnose cancer. They merely find effective ways to distinguish the two categories of images on which they are trained. To avoid creating unrealistically high expectations regarding the intelligence of such algorithms, it is important to refer to them as machine-learning algorithms rather than AIs. You should lead the way.
Traces of the Yamnaya in modern languages (1)
Colin Barras discusses the fascinating genetic and archaeological evidence for the spread of the Yamnaya people from the Steppes through Europe, the Near East and India 30 March, p 29. He curiously omits the linguistic evidence from the reconstruction of proto-Indo-European from modern languages. This suggests the same spread of people over the same time period. It also makes a strong case in support of more cooperation between the sciences and the humanities.
Traces of the Yamnaya in modern languages (2)
Although the Yamnaya left no written records, circumstantial evidence overwhelmingly points to them being the speakers of the ancestral Indo-European language, which diversified into a language family that includes the overwhelming majority of European languages, as well as the , Urdu and Hindi.
The vocabulary of proto-Indo-European can be reconstructed by comparing words in descendant languages, and includes some highly suggestive vocabulary, oft-given examples being “horse” (ekwos), “yoke” (yugom) and “wheel” (kwekwlo). They hint at a mobile people with horse-drawn wagons. So the roots of the descendant languages contain the last faint echoes of how the Yamnaya saw themselves.
To thrive, firms must recruit new graduates
Your article in association with SRG reports a shortage of science and engineering skills 13 April, p 46. As the parent of a daughter who graduated with an upper second honours degree in medical engineering last year, I lament the shortage of employers willing to consider recruiting new graduates. Virtually all firms in the UK ask for applicants with very specific experience.
Perhaps it is time that industry realised that graduates don't come tailor-made for their particular requirements. Rather, they have aptitudes and abilities that enable them to work in a variety of situations – if given appropriate training.
You only have to look online to see that my daughter is not alone in this. My message to industry is: if you want a conscientious, hard working engineer who is willing to move to any part of the country, then there is one here.
How those indicative votes actually worked
Petros Sekeris writes that a majority of MPs prefer some deal between the UK and the EU to no deal, and are thus likely to opt for one of the new options, rather than May's proposal – implying that they each had to choose one preferred option from the eight that were on offer 6 April, p 24. Each MP could vote for any and all options that they regarded as tolerable. For example, Gareth Thomas, MP for Harrow West, voted in favour of five of them in the first round of “indicative votes” on 27 March.
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