Why disagreeable and introverted can be good
Miriam Frankel ended her article on how to alter your personality with a call for self-acceptance (15 January, p 46). I would echo that. Ratings for the big five personality traits all start at 0 and go to 100 per cent, and the assumption seems to be that it is desirable to score well for extroversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness and openness to experience, rather than being neurotic, say.
However, I for one wouldn’t like those scientists who worked long hours late into the night on covid-19 vaccines to be any less introverted. Meanwhile, it can be useful when disagreeable people challenge our assumptions.
People who see enough good in us to be our friends can make up for what we lack, organising us if we lack conscientiousness, coaxing us to outings or accompanying us on that world trip or visit to a museum or art gallery. We, too, can be that kind of person for others. We don’t have to have it all ourselves. While we may need to do something if our personality is causing us problems, “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”.
When we put low-alcohol beer to the ultimate test
Graham Lawton’s article on alcohol-free and low-alcohol beers was fascinating (8 January, p 34). In the late 1980s, when I was a pharmacology lecturer at the University of Manchester, UK, a large brewery company asked me and my late colleague, John Rees, to look at the relationship between consumption of low-alcohol beer (1 per cent ABV) and blood alcohol concentration.
One of the questions was: how much 1 per cent beer can a person drink before exceeding the drink-drive limit in the UK? We had plenty of willing volunteers for the tests, but we never managed to get anyone’s blood alcohol concentration above the legal limit, no matter how much of this beer we gave them. In fact, the limiting factor was the volume of liquid volunteers were able to drink.
In the metaverse, no one will be able to hug
The idea of conducting life virtually in a metaverse is unappealing on various grounds (8 January, p 39). Above all, if there is one thing we have learned from the pandemic, it is the importance of interpersonal contact. The technology of the virtual hug is a long way away. It would be very easy for an avatar to fake empathy, but I don’t think we would feel any emotional benefit.
Put the kettle on and solve another paradox
Your mention of the Jevons paradox, the shift to greater energy use despite improvements in energy efficiency, illustrates the fallacy of relying on logic alone (8 January, p 44).
While the example of continually increasing internet usage cancelling out any efficiency gains does have logic behind it, this isn’t the case for all uses of energy. For example, there are only so many cups of tea you can drink in a day, so increasing the efficiency of kettles is a good idea.
The real problem is that money saved via energy efficiency still gets spent on something that has a carbon footprint. That means much of our footprint gets exported to other countries from which manufactured goods are bought. The only way out of this paradox is to make every supply chain in the world as efficient as possible in a circular economy.
Super nature could undo the supergrid
As a Californian who, over the years, has seen earthquake, fire and flooding damage, I see a super-sized problem with the idea of supergrids for electrical supply (1 January, p 8). A single fit of nature, be it extreme winds or a sizeable earthquake, could take down an entire solar farm in one fell swoop.
While long-distance cables and large energy production farms may be part of our energy future, it must also include rooftop solar and dispersed local solutions. Dispersed, but connected, energy production is more resilient than large single points of failure.
Why 'rational' scientists sometimes get irrational
Regarding Steven Pinker’s stated key mechanisms for irrational beliefs, I think the potential loss of self-esteem is also a key factor in many people clinging to such beliefs in the face of reason (11 December 2021, p 46).
There are many examples of scientists, who one would expect to always base their opinions on logical reasoning, failing to abandon some long-cherished belief when new evidence builds up to the contrary.
It must be hard for anyone who has established a reputation among peers, and maybe based a whole career on a particular scientific belief, to admit to being wrong, with the subsequent loss of face and possible ridicule.
Biochar seems a safer bet for forest carbon capture
Dave Smith, Alnwick, Northumberland, UK
Reader Geoff Harding points to the opportunity of storing carbon by regrowing trees in the Amazon (Letters, 8 January). Sadly, the November winds that knocked down many trees here in Northumberland illustrate the problem with such offsetting: it may be merely temporary.
One option could be to use renewable energy to generate a sustainable biochar industry by pyrolysis of trees that are nearing the end of their active growth. The resulting terra preta (black soil) has long been used in the Amazon to improve soil fertility. The carbon in biochar is stable and the bio oil that is also produced could be a useful source of energy.
Sharpen the razor and turn it on the quantum world
David Strachan,Llanbister, Powys, UK
If Occam’s razor is the best tool in seeking simpler answers to the question of how life and the universe work (18/25 December, p 70), as Johnjoe McFadden says, is it time to apply it to 11-dimensional string theory and some other opaque and complex ideas in quantum physics?
For the record
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention advises people with covid-19 to self-isolate for five days after testing positive or from the day their symptoms start (15 January, p 9).