Some quantum thinking can lead you into trouble
Your special issue on quantum frontiers alludes to the question of whether an observer is necessary for a wave function to collapse (28 August, p 34). Some people think this implies a conscious, human observer. However, this leads inevitably to the paradoxical conclusion that if it were true, we couldn’t exist.
Almost all life on Earth, including human life, depends on photosynthesis. In photosynthesis, a photon interacts with a molecule of chlorophyll and its wave function collapses. The energy of the photon is transferred to an electron, raising it to an excited state. The photon, since it is a quantum of pure energy with no rest mass, ceases to exist.
The energy is transferred through a chain of molecules, exciting an electron in each by the de-excitation of the preceding one, to the is used to split water into hydrogen and oxygen.
This wave-function collapse, and the chemical reaction it powers, had been taking place for more than 2 billion years before the first humans walked Earth. Without it, there would be no complex plant and animal life.
Fast forward to <i>快猫短视频</i> in the year 4521
Annalee Newitz’s thought-provoking article suggests that the way we considered coins 2500 years ago is similar to how we regard computers today, and that our thinking about them will inevitably change as we add more levels of abstraction (4 September, p 18).
Interestingly, many modern theories of mind compare consciousness to computers 鈥� we have “memory”, we “process” thoughts via neural “networks” that translate inputs to outputs via internal “software”.
As our understanding of the mind increases, it may be that we lose such language, along with unverifiable ideas such as the existence of the self, free will and even thought itself. The resulting change in language will apply not only to the mind, but to everything 鈥� coins and computers included. These changes are explained in 快猫短视频 in the year 4521. It won’t be thought-provoking, because there will be no such thing as a thought.
No matter what, spite really isn't ever right
Based on direct (personal and observational) experience, I have to question the idea that spite has any upside (4 September, p 40). If acting with spite pays off in competition, then you end up with more spiteful people in power. Since acting out of spite helped them get ahead, many may continue to act spitefully to retain authority and seek more power.
Often behaving spitefully becomes so instinctive that such individuals act this way because it has become part of who they are. Kicking or undermining others becomes just a way of controlling people that, in their experience, works. How is such suppression, which soon becomes oppression, ever likely to improve society? Spite is a component of bullying. There is no upside for society.
Joanna McManus, Southampton, UK
In your fascinating article on spite, I was surprised by the example “slow down to annoy tailgaters, even though it puts everyone in danger”. When I was taught to drive in the 1980s, I was told to carefully slow down when someone is tailgating. The reason given was that if someone is less than a safe braking distance behind you, you should slow down to the speed at which that distance becomes a safe one.
To any habitual tailgaters reading this, it might be caution rather than spite motivating the brake lights ahead.
Listen up, here's another blow for the robot cars
Jeff Hecht notes the visual problems that self-driving cars have with identifying missing lane indicators, obscured road signs and so on (31 July, p 45). But there is another important set of warnings that isn’t mentioned: audible signals like train whistles and sirens. These give clues about potential conflicts that a visually oriented autonomous vehicle could miss.
Carbon equivalent of ration books needed
The article “A day in a net-zero life” provides a vision of the future, but didn’t get into the transformation of economies and our own behaviour that will be required to reach this utopia (4 September, p 34).
In my opinion, the only hope of achieving this is through legal restrictions on our personal carbon production. As was done during the second world war, to make sure that everyone, rich and poor, does their bit, we should introduce carbon rationing.
Every person will have the same annual allowance and each time they make a carbon transaction 鈥� buying a flight, a steak or a bunch of grapes from Chile, filling a petrol tank and so on 鈥� the carbon cost is deducted from their ration. Those with leaner lifestyles 鈥� not running a car for instance 鈥� can sell their excess ration to others. Each year, the ration is reduced by the amount required to take us all smoothly to net zero by 2050.
Nature's even better if you leave the tech on the shelf
With great pleasure, I can report to being at one with Richard Webb’s piece, “At one with nature”.
Unlike Webb, however, and to the ongoing dismay of my family, I still don’t possess a smartphone (or any portable communications device) (28 August, p 44). This is despite strenuous efforts on their part to demonstrate that a walk in the country needn’t involve racking my brain as I try to recall names of flowers and fungi learned for school exams more than 60 years ago.
What they don’t realise is that this struggle is part of the pleasure, and that to finally wrench out a Linnaean binomial is intensely gratifying. I picked up in Webb’s penultimate entry that he, too, was approaching this state of mind.
The great potato chitting experiment results are in
Clare Wilson asked at the start of the vegetable gardening season if chitting seed potatoes made any difference to the crop (2 January, p 51). My results 鈥� two bags of each 鈥� are in. Chitted bags: 20 and 12 potatoes. Not chitted: 10 and 21. While not reaching statistical significance, if other readers/gardeners have any results to add, we may achieve that and get a proper answer.