How to get to grips with conspiracy theories (1)
It seems that conspiracy theories are very hard to counter, the problem being that it is difficult to change people’s minds. A possible solution to this seemingly insoluble problem is to encourage them to change their own minds(15 April, p 12).
Asking “Is there any evidence that would cause you to change your mind?” would force people to think for themselves. If their answer is no, then you should stop wasting your time. If it is yes, with an outline of the evidence they would require, you can assess whether it is worth investing time in the discussion.
How to get to grips with conspiracy theories (2)
I am often, and depressingly, amazed by a general lack of basic scientific or even factual knowledge among some people.
Sometimes, I will ask others about the stars, for instance. All those tiny points of light in the night sky: what do you think they are? It is staggering how many people have no clue at all how far away they might be or what their relationship with our own sun could be. Nor can they give a ballpark idea of how far away our sun, the moon or the other planets could be from Earth.
We need to devise a school syllabus for learning such things. If people know how far the stars are, they are less likely to believe in flying saucers. If they have a basic grasp of gravity, they will know that a double-decker bus 25 metres away exerts more pull on them than all the planets 鈥� aside from Earth 鈥� combined, and will be less likely to believe in astrology.
How to get to grips with conspiracy theories (3)
You note that the most effective method so far reported to counter conspiracy theories is a three-month course where people are taught how to think, not what to think. You have just described critical thinking, and the solution would seem to be teaching this to everyone from a very young age.
Too much indulgence may not be a good thing
It was interesting to read David Robson’s take on procrastination. Virtually everyone will have experienced trouble getting going with a project, task, report or piece of homework(15 April, p 51).
To explain this as a conditional and subliminal response to fear of failure is illustrative. While methods to mitigate this may include deconstructing the task or asking for help, I am not certain if “strategic indulgence” is a good method. There is probably a fine line between recharging oneself by being indulgent and feeling even more despondent should the indulgence be perceived as having wasted more time.
No need to worry about the quantum observer
The idea that a conscious being is needed to collapse the quantum wave function, which describes the probability that a particle will behave a certain way, has been abandoned by most physicists(8 April, p 36).
The main difficulty in building quantum computers is how to maintain the quantum state (another name for wave function) through multiple quantum gates 鈥� which do the processing 鈥� for long enough to do something useful.
Stray interactions of any type cause an immediate collapse, which is why IBM and others are building giant fridges for their quantum computers to avoid thermal disturbances. To get the results of a computation, one or more qubits must be measured, putting them into a definite state. None of this is mediated by a conscious being.
Is big food changing the natural microbial milieu?
With reference to your feature on the extinction of microbes, one thing has increasingly concerned me. The fruit and vegetables I grow on my allotment decay very differently from the same varieties purchased at a supermarket(15 April, p 46).
Perhaps the time has come for serious research into whether the globalisation of food products, along with whatever is being done to prevent them decaying naturally, is having a potentially catastrophic affect on microbes worldwide. I seriously worry about what happens when foods that don’t rot quickly and naturally, especially imported products, are turned into compost and added to the soil.
Why heat pumps are a good option now
David Le Maistre suggests that his gas boiler has a lower carbon footprint than a heat pump. This isn’t the case. : “A heat pump delivers about three units of heat for one unit of energy… A gas boiler delivers only about 0.9 units of heat for one unit of energy.” As a result, “the numbers support the early retirement of gas boilers”(Letters, 22 April).
Given the seriousness of the climate crisis, it is important to get this point over.
Brightest of all time? Maybe not, after all
You report on an extremely powerful space explosion that may have broken our understanding of how similar explosions work. This event, called GRB221009A, was a gamma ray burst (GRB) and has been dubbed “the BOAT” 鈥� the brightest of all time(8 April, p 19).
Eric Burns at Louisiana State University and his colleagues found that GRBs this bright probably only occur about once every 10,000 years, so the title of BOAT is said to fit. Well, it doesn’t.
We can’t say for sure when time began. It may have started when our universe did, at the big bang, 14 billion years ago. But it may go back further than that if the big bang was, in fact, a big bounce.
Even taking the shorter time span of 14 billion years, there will have been 1.4 million of these explosions in all time, making this a common event. Since the 10,000 years is an estimate, and an average, this may not even be the brightest of human time, itself not even a blip in all time. Calling GRB221009A the brightest of all time is a tad hubristic.
Birds of prey are well aware of glowing mice
Researchers aren’t the first living beings to notice that an ultraviolet glow can betray the presence of small animals such as dormice 鈥� eagles can see in UV and are said to use this ability to hunt small mammals(1 April, p 11).