Making sense of quantum cause and effect (1)
As an ordinary reader trying to make sense of the universe before breakfast, I was delighted by your feature on quantum causality. The idea of “causal bubbles” gave me a way to picture the quantum world without feeling out of my depth (29 November, p 36).
By chance, I had just finished your article on the ancient origins of sperm (29 November, p 11). It struck me that these two stories 鈥� one probing the deepest structure of reality, the other tracing the machinery that eventually produced all of us 鈥� sit together beautifully: the same quantum rules shaping electrons also shape the proteins powering our earliest ancestors. For once, physics and biology felt like they belonged to one big cosmic whakapapa (lineage).
Making sense of quantum cause and effect (2)
The article on causality in quantum theory reminds us that, until an observer takes a measurement, we are confronted by a fog of possible alternatives and that the measurement will cause these distributions to “collapse” to finally reveal definite properties.
These quantum scenarios appear less weird if we liken them to every point in space constituting, first, a set of actual properties – being a consequence of all past events – and, second, a cloud of future possibilities. As the future transitions across the present boundary to become the past, space and time act as filters to determine which future possibilities emerge from the fog.
Our observer's measurement is a mere snapshot, captured from the continuous stream in which future possibilities transition to past certainties. All the while, the effects of ensuing events feed back into and update future distributions. Under this scenario, measurements will potentially contribute to the continuously updating distributions, but won't cause them to collapse.
Making sense of quantum cause and effect (3)
Your feature explores the issue that nothing seems to be fixed until it is measured. Measurement can be an observation. What quantum theory doesn’t explain is that it all depends on who is observing an object. That is why, after I have failed to find a particular object in the fridge, when my wife then opens the door, there it is, right at the front.
Why oversized cars are a massive problem (2)
I cannot agree more with Anthony Laverty’s article on the need to curb the trend towards big cars. Not only are they more lethal in a crash, they are also more likely to be involved in accidents because of larger blind spots and longer braking distances. I call for regulations to inconvenience big car owners in subtle ways (22 November, p 19).
In the environmentally friendly Albury-Wodonga region in Australia, along the border between Victoria and New South Wales, both councils have done something in this vein: many free public car-parking spaces are too small for large cars and their owners are supposed to park further from facilities.
Why oversized cars are a massive problem (3)
Laverty perfectly sums up what can only be described as the biggest environmental crisis ever to hit UK roads, and beyond. Let’s hope this subject gathers much-needed momentum.
Sometimes the old ways might be the best (1)
In reference to Claudia Canavan’s article, “Time for a new you”, I have been applying the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator 鈥� which categorises people into 16 personality types 鈥� for over 30 years (27 September, p 23).
Despite often being dismissed, it has always “said” everyone is both an extrovert and introvert (just not equally so), and that we not only change our personality, but also do so in predictable ways depending on which personality style we start with. Sometimes, science is best applied by looking at the older models with a better eye than looking for new ones.
A hunch about human consciousness
As an agnostic on such matters, but a fellow subscriber to Robert Lawrence Kuhn’s hunch that the ultimate nature of consciousness is the key data point to understand humanity’s existence 鈥� be it physical and accidental or something more profound 鈥� I found it disheartening that the previous letters published about his feature uniformly exhibited an insistence that the materialist game is the only one in town, or even that the whole field of study should just be abandoned!
Perhaps we should consider the end of his published paper on the landscape of consciousness, where he states: “Me, I just don’t know … My own hunch, right here, right now鈥攊f I’m coerced to disclose it and for what little it’s worth鈥攎ight be something of a Dualism-Idealism mashup (25 October, p 36). (I can describe; I dare not defend.)”
It seems that plants don't love rock and roll
James Wong examined the evidence that playing music benefits plants and notes that, while plants cannot hear, they can respond to vibrations, although which types of music and sound affect them positively or negatively remain unknown (22 November, p 43).
A 2018 study in Ecology and Evolution addressed this by testing the music group AC/DC’s claim that “rock and roll ain’t noise pollution” using soybean plants, aphids and ladybirds. Exposure to rock music and urban noise reduced ladybird predation, leading to higher aphid densities and, through weakened trophic cascades, lower plant biomass, demonstrating that certain loud sounds can disrupt predator-prey-plant interactions and, ultimately, contradicting AC/DC’s claim that rock and roll is harmless to plants.
Science is finally catching up with philosophy
Your article on giving up on your ambitions put me in mind of a passage from P. G. Wodehouse that has stayed with me since I read it over 30 years ago (15 November, p 28). In it, he succinctly summarises the gist of the article: ” ‘Well, well,’ he said, ‘if I cannot compel circumstances to my will, I can at least adapt my will to circumstances. I decide to remain here.’ Which he did, and had a not unpleasant time.” It looks like science is finally catching up with the great philosopher!