On the trail of the perfect contact-tracing app
Given the difficulties with finding an effective phone app to help with coronavirus contact tracing in the UK, I have an idea that may help (6 June, p 7). A difficulty is obtaining a reliable range measurement between two people using the Bluetooth signals of their phones. But, in 2016, you reported on ultrasonic data transfer using cellphones.
My simple suggestion is that once rough proximity is established via Bluetooth, one phone should send an ultrasonic “ping” from its speaker, picked up by the mic of the other, which then replies with an accurately defined delay. The round-trip time then gives a very good distance measurement simply based on the speed of sound. Also, it wouldn’t misleadingly flag a nearby person who is actually on the other side of a wall or screen, which Bluetooth alone might.
I just need to get this idea within 2 metres of the app developers.
What happens when we move to 1-metre spacing?
As a scientist, I tend to see inverse laws all over the place, and am wondering how they feature when it comes to the transmission risk of the coronavirus (30 May, p 10).
As a first approximation, does the risk of virus transmission with social distance follow an inverse, an inverse square or an inverse cube relationship? If we double the distance, does the risk halve, quarter or become one-eighth?
It would be good to know, as my observation in supermarkets is that most people’s idea of 2-metre social distancing falls short of that, so if we reduce it to 1 metre (as we are about to in England) will it become even less than that?
The long, long wait for nuclear fusion
Your coverage of developments that could bring us closer to controllable, sustainable fusion power reminded me that our attempt to develop this energy source is undoubtedly the best example of Hofstadter’s law (13 June, p 30). This states: “It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take into account Hofstadter’s law.”
The long, long wait for nuclear fusion (2)
The problem with fusion power is that both major designs now in operation 鈥� laser confinement and toroidal plasma containment 鈥� are far from ideal for a practical power plant. In order to generate fusion power continually and remove the heat generated, a third, and completely different, design, yet to be envisaged, will be required.
I would say that if this were akin to trying to build a Boeing 747, fusion power is at the stage of a hot-air balloon still tethered to the ground. Fusion power is a very long way indeed from being a useful source of power.
Reasons why our reality probably isn't simulated
Nick Bostrom’s reprinted article, which discussed the idea that our reality may be a simulation, doesn’t begin promisingly when he says “we are made of the same stuff as mud” (). Well, not so much 鈥� the essential components of mud are alumino-silicate clay minerals and these play no part in the mammalian body.
I take it that the article was written, if not as a joke, then at least as a jeu d’esprit to provoke discussion, so I won’t go through all the logical inconsistencies. But I will point to the pachyderm on the premises. No civilisation living on a planet in a solar system (and we don’t know of anywhere else a civilisation could live) could obtain enough energy to run such a simulation, at least not without destroying their solar system.
So we can be pretty confident we aren’t living in a simulation.
Reasons why our reality probably isn't simulated (2)
It would be impossible to simulate a reality as detailed as the one we are in (at least in real time) because to do so would require all the resources that the universe contains.
It is still possible to have a simulation of sorts requiring less resources by concentrating more of its power on the simulated beings themselves and less on the rest of the detail of the simulated universe. But it is likely that this would give these beings a rather impoverished existence without much of a detailed outside world, and there is no reason to suggest that we are in such a simulation.
Maybe AI will help us control the weather
I was intrigued by the idea from Dwight Hines that artificial intelligence could be used to develop a better lie detector based on analysis of speech (Letters, 6 June). A more far-fetched idea came to me: would it be possible to train an AI on satellite images and other meteorological data to predict hurricanes before they happen or before they get out of control?
I am no expert on hurricanes, but would it be conceivable to stop a potential hurricane at a very early stage, perhaps with an injection of cool air from an aircraft? The possibilities with AI are endless and exciting, but maybe this application is too unrealistic to reach fruition.
Are we born good or are we made that way?
Simon Ings is right to tell readers that Rutger Bregman’s examples in his book Humankind: A hopeful history are cherry-picked to back the hypothesis that our species is innately good rather than bad (13 June, p 26).
In particular, the enviable record of low reoffending among those released from high-security Halden prison in Norway might have something to do with prisoners being returned to Norwegian society, rather than a society with high levels of inequality, deprivation and racism, for example the US.
Consciousness could be another aether
I do enjoy the frequent letters and occasional articles on the subject of consciousness (Letters, 6 June). I am, however, bewildered by how the concept is defined. It seems to me that no two people can agree on what it is they are trying to describe.
Maybe because I have learned a spattering of languages in my life, I’m used to trying to guess a word’s meaning from its context, and the context seems to me to vary significantly in writing on the matter of consciousness. I wonder if the search for it is like that for the luminiferous aether, the proposed medium that would allow light waves to move through space. What reason do we have to assume consciousness exists, however much we “feel” it must?