A citizen-led approach to climate change
Susannah Fisher’s take on the COP30 negotiations in Brazil is hopeful, but I can’t share her faith in relying on government or corporations to do anything meaningful. The common feature of most administrations is the setting of short-term goals, because democratic governments don’t want to plan for a future for which they won’t get credit, and autocratic governments work to stay in power for their own benefit, not that of the populace (1 November, p 21).
This leaves citizen-driven projects. Because we all focus on our immediate needs, if enough of us are motivated to overcome threats that affect us directly, we can achieve meaningful progress, particularly through shaping market demand. This creates a role for the more motivated among us to share ideas with which we can all engage. For this, we will have to bypass the gatekeepers of social media. An open-source, distributed-host, Wikipedia-like model for the exchange of ideas might work.
From enshittification to enlightenment
Cory Doctorow is correct about how algorithms end up ruining good services. However, I experience little to no enshittification, probably because I don’t do so-called social media, and I pay to use encrypted services, enjoy a vast selection of open-source applications, use a phone with a replaceable battery and avoid the Google search engine. Just breaking free from “social” media will make you feel like an enlightened person in Nirvana (1 November, p 27).
Continuing adventures into human consciousness (1)
Robert Kuhn deserves praise for compiling a comprehensive catalogue of theories of consciousness. There is a problem, however. Science progresses by proposals of hypotheses that generate testable predictions. If the predictions generated by a hypothesis are disconfirmed, then that hypothesis is discarded and we can move on to better ones(25 October, p 36).
Theories of consciousness, however, don’t seem to generate testable predictions. If there are 350 theories, at least 349 of them must be wrong. But it isn’t clear what sort of evidence would show any of them to be wrong, so no progress is possible.
Continuing adventures into human consciousness (2)
It seems to me that consciousness isn’t a state or quality, but something the brain does. Two observations that I think support this conclusion: one, we manipulate conscious experience by ingesting certain substances.
Two, anaesthetics reduce conscious experience to about as close to zero as is likely possible. The above implies that the proper question isn’t “What is consciousness?” It’s “How does the brain do conscious experience?” I suspect the awkward grammar of that question has a lot to do with why it’s rarely asked.
Continuing adventures into human consciousness (3)
An excellent article, though it seems possible there may be difficulty providing detached judgement when it comes to asking ourselves about our own consciousness and what that means. To avoid bias, maybe a solution is to ask AI. Then there’s the question of whether AI can attain consciousness and, by implication, think like a human. Based on its own observations of humanity, perhaps AI has already decided wisely that it doesn’t want to.
Remembering our microbial friends
Graham Lawton’s excellent article on fermented foods shows how human evolution has built a strong symbiotic relationship with Earth’s vast biome. Thank you for reminding us how utterly scrumptious our microbial friends can be, and how to find them for our daily intake. Even that lightly rinsed tomato fresh from the garden offers much more than its simple chemical constituents (4 October, p 32). Perhaps that silly 5-second food-on-the-floor rule should be reversed?
Could we be more selective about what we hear?
In a letter responding to the article about how our brains “swivel” towards certain sounds, Bryn Glover mentions the problem of using hearing aids in the dining area of a pub. Although I don’t use hearing aids, I have this problem of my brain focusing on the louder sounds behind me, or to one side, and wonder if hearing aids could be designed as binaural, forward-facing microphones (Letters, 1 November). Could software not then pick up and selectively amplify sounds coming from the direction one is facing?
The case against biomass carbon capture
I am glad to have Eric Kvaalen’s support for carbon capture, but his desire to rely on biomass for this is misplaced. The main, though not the only, problem is the vast area of land that would be needed for a capture programme that would significantly reduce atmospheric carbon dioxide. Research at Imperial College has shown that carbon capture from biomass can make only a limited contribution to meeting the need (Letters, 8 November).
Sooner or later we will need to use heavy chemical engineering to capture CO2 from the air. Happily we can exploit the falling cost of renewable energy but it will still be expensive.
A new way of looking at our family tree
When I did A-level biology, a species was a group of individuals whose members could interbreed to form fertile offspring. Since then it seems there has been meaning creep, especially in the hominins (8 November, p 40).
There is good evidence for hybridisation between all the “species” derived from Homo erectus. We are all H. erectus, with subspecies H. e. erectus, H. e. neanderthalis, H. e. denisovensis, and others, including H. e. sapiens (so called). This would emphasise that we could all have remote ancestors and genes from more than one, or all, of these groups. Unchain the subspecies taxon!