Beware automation's ability to divide us
Sandy Ong’s excellent piece on automation and its effects on employment misses one cardinal point (10 October, p 44). New technology tends to increase inequality, and the bigger the effects of the new tech, the greater the inequality that follows. Unemployment can easily come with more deprivation for many and extreme wealth for the few 鈥� which is exactly what we are seeing.
It isn’t just the kinds of job that matter, it is the share of resources, power and opportunity created that are key to the kind of future we will have. That is largely a matter of political, not technological, choice. The wise option is rarely easy, but if we let free-market thinking make our decisions for us without greater control of inequality, it is all too easy to see where AI could lead.
Intensive farming has failed to solve hunger
There are a number of issues raised by your discussion of using gene editing to address agriculture’s climate impact (Leader, 10 October).
The first is the assertion that better breeds are the best way to address climate effects. This is highly debatable. What is clearer is that well-proven agroecological techniques, such as agroforestry, have substantial climate heating adaptation and mitigation abilities, as well as a plethora of other benefits and very few downsides. The problem is they are low-tech and widely known, so aren’t amenable to high-tech science and therefore prestigious publications and patents.
Next, the many sophisticated solutions offered to solve farming’s problems are doomed to fail as they are based on the false assumption that underpins intensive agriculture and the green revolution: that to feed people, we need to increase yield.
After 70 years of intensive agriculture, we still have nearly a billion people that don’t have enough food, even though we have grown enough to feed every person on the planet for decades. If that is success, I would hate to see what failure looks like.
Ecological science is clear: we must manage population to levels where consumption of food and other resources is compatible with the capacity of the planet. This ventures into the ugly politics of Malthus, but it is also clear that it isn’t those in low-income countries that we have too many of, but those consuming far more than their share of the planet’s outputs.
Earth just can't sustain ever more consumption (1)
The accelerating climate change mentioned in your special report is a surprise to some, but why? Melting ice sheets reflect less solar energy, darker surfaces absorb more heat, previously frozen gases escape while fires and dying vegetation worsen matters (17 October, p 34). Temperature changes also lag behind changes in total greenhouse gas levels, so we are in deep trouble even if our emissions fall rapidly.
Many ideas to address this can also fail. More food from less space seems obvious, but some years ago, environmentalists reckoned three or four planets would be needed to give us all Western lifestyles and jobs to afford them. A more recent estimate is 11 planets for all to have well-off US lifestyles.
Maddeningly, many changes that are essential if mainstream climate views are correct, such as producing less waste, would make perfect sense even if climate change were a damp squib or temperatures fell. Predictably, such win-win options were rejected in favour of arguing about who was right. Urgent action is needed to avoid complete disaster. One target is economic reform 鈥� conventional ideas on economic growth will end in disaster.
Earth just can't sustain ever more consumption (2)
Your article continues the head-in-the-sand approach of virtually all publications. The pandemic and global warming are just two manifestations of the real problem: overpopulation. As our numbers continue their out-of-control growth and the attendant problems get ever worse, I ponder: are people really this stupid?
The editor writes:
See page 36 for economists’ take on the post covid-19 future. We plan to look at population in the coming weeks.
Time mathematicians put their analogue heads on
Eddy Keming Chen has me fascinated with his thoughts about vagueness in fundamental physical laws, and the possibility that we may never be able to completely capture the objective order of the universe through mathematics (5 September, p 36).
Clearly, the laws of the universe existed long before we started measuring them. The universe we measure using mathematics may seem to be digital, and hence could be pinned down by maths, but surely the universe is analogue, without discrete values. When Gottfried Leibniz and Isaac Newton invented calculus to square the circle, they did so because every curve 鈥� and, indeed, everything in the universe 鈥� is analogue. By putting a curve through an infinitesimal digital grinder, we can make it appear digital, sufficient for most supposed laws of physics, but who are we fooling?
From a digital point of view, it may be frustrating not to be able to know the location and momentum of a particle at the same time. Yet from an analogue perspective, not knowing is natural and obvious. Is quantum indeterminacy therefore a genuine feature of the universe or a mental category error that has resulted from the imposition of a supposed digital reality onto the universe’s actual analogue reality?
If this is so, will mathematicians continue to pull their digital hairs out, or will they refocus their attention on their analogue heads and consciousness from which their digits emerged?
Another source of genetic diversity for women?
Thank you for the interview with Sharon Moalem, in which he expounds why women live, on average, longer than men (1 August, p 42). He says this is thanks to having two X chromosomes, giving genetic diversity in the immune system.
Interestingly, it has been shown that cells from the developing fetus cross into a pregnant woman and can persist in her body for life. Since the fetal cells comprise half a genome from the father, they are genetically different from the mother’s cells, again increasing her genetic diversity.
Compared with the other cells in the mother’s body, there are very few fetus-derived cells, but immune cells can replicate significantly and make a major difference. It would be interesting to see if this also boosts longevity.