- Email: [email protected]
Humanity's cradle
OPINION LETTERS Humanity’s cradle
From Calvin Malham While reading the many elaborate schemes discussed by Jim Giles for mitigating our effect on the climate (3 April, p 6), I was struck by two salient points about the human condition. First, how innately ingenious and creative we are, and secondly, how unable we are to notice the obvious. Space-based light reflectors,
cloud seeding and artificial trees are all very exciting, but why do we miss, or choose to ignore, the low risk, low cost and middling effectiveness of reforestation? It appeared on the accompanying chart, but was notably absent in the text. Humans are profoundly childlike in outlook. Perhaps it is time we grew up and did the mundane chores, like planting trees globally. Summercourt, Cornwall, UK
No-brainer From Alan Atkinson As part of your “Nine big brain questions” special (3 April, p 26), Celeste Biever made a reference to the familiar problem that we “have no way of proving we are not the only self-aware individuals in a world of unaware ‘zombies’ ”. I have often wondered
Enigma Number 1592
Seeing spots susan denham If you take a domino set and discard all those dominoes which involve a 5 or a 6, leaving 15 dominoes with a 0, 1, 2, 3 or 4 at each end, then the rest can be laid out, spotty sides up, to form a 5-by-6 rectangle. Then, taking the number of spots in each square as that square’s value, the product of each row can be calculated by multiplying together the values of the six squares in that row. Your task is to lay out the dominoes so that the five products are all different, less than 1000, and
in increasing order as you come down the rectangle. Just one row must have a product which is odd, just one must have a product which is a power of 2, and just one other must have a product which is a nonzero perfect square. List the products of the five rows.
WIN £15 will be awarded to the sender of the first correct answer opened on Tuesday 25 May. The Editor’s decision is final. Please send entries to Enigma 1592, New Scientist, Lacon House, 84 Theobald’s Road, London WC1X 8NS, or to [email protected] (please include your postal address). Answer to 1586 So touching: Columns 2, 3 and 4 The winner Ian Snell of Oxford, UK
24 | NewScientist | 24 April 2010
why this doubt persists when there is a cogent argument for accepting the consciousness of others. The only knowledge we have of the nature of consciousness is our own direct personal experience of it. A zombie, lacking consciousness, could not have any comprehension of conscious experience, in the same way that a person blind from birth supposedly has no understanding of colour. This would mean that a zombie would be unable to discuss the subject with a conscious entity. Since we discuss consciousness with other people, we have good reason to believe that they are as conscious as we are. Newton Aycliffe, County Durham, UK From Anna Wood The link between the mind and body is interesting and complex, but Linda Geddes should take care when asserting that the wise doctor should “probe the mental state of a patient whose symptoms are hard to explain physically”. In fact, it is an arrogant doctor who will do this without being mindful of the deficiencies in medical knowledge. It is naive to believe that we understand everything about the human body, and unacceptable that an absence of certain physical symptoms automatically makes the patient mentally ill. In the past, people with multiple sclerosis and diabetes have been wrongly given a psychological diagnosis, simply because doctors could not find anything physically wrong with them. Today it is patients with ME (myalgic encephalitis) who suffer this mistreatment. Rather than assuming a diagnosis of mental illness, the wise doctor will diagnose both physical and psychological illness according to available evidence – and be prepared to admit that he or she does not know the
answer when the necessary evidence is lacking. Glasgow, UK
Multiversal mirror From Jim Kemp If I read Amanda Gefter’s fascinating article right, for observers outside a black hole all information about stuff that has been sucked through the event horizon is smeared across the surface of the horizon (6 March, p 28). It’s a hologram. Thus the holographic principle: that the surface of every volume, including the infinite multiverse, contains all information within the volume. Now, although we may not be able to access the multiverse, the boundary between it and us will contain all multiverse information, so if we can access the boundary we can make predictions about the multiverse and test them, observing and interacting with information about it. Or does this overlook a huge difference between information in black holes and in the multiverse? Everything passing into a black hole started out in our domain, but nothing in the multiverse did. Or did it? Sonoma, California, US
Atheist selection From John Ewing Your editorial “Time to accept that atheism, not god, is odd” makes
From Calvin Malham While reading the many elaborate schemes discussed by Jim Giles for mitigating our effect on the climate (3 April, p 6), I was struck by two salient points about the human condition. First, how innately ingenious and creative we are, and secondly, how unable we are to notice the obvious. Space-based light reflectors,
cloud seeding and artificial trees are all very exciting, but why do we miss, or choose to ignore, the low risk, low cost and middling effectiveness of reforestation? It appeared on the accompanying chart, but was notably absent in the text. Humans are profoundly childlike in outlook. Perhaps it is time we grew up and did the mundane chores, like planting trees globally. Summercourt, Cornwall, UK
No-brainer From Alan Atkinson As part of your “Nine big brain questions” special (3 April, p 26), Celeste Biever made a reference to the familiar problem that we “have no way of proving we are not the only self-aware individuals in a world of unaware ‘zombies’ ”. I have often wondered
Enigma Number 1592
Seeing spots susan denham If you take a domino set and discard all those dominoes which involve a 5 or a 6, leaving 15 dominoes with a 0, 1, 2, 3 or 4 at each end, then the rest can be laid out, spotty sides up, to form a 5-by-6 rectangle. Then, taking the number of spots in each square as that square’s value, the product of each row can be calculated by multiplying together the values of the six squares in that row. Your task is to lay out the dominoes so that the five products are all different, less than 1000, and
in increasing order as you come down the rectangle. Just one row must have a product which is odd, just one must have a product which is a power of 2, and just one other must have a product which is a nonzero perfect square. List the products of the five rows.
WIN £15 will be awarded to the sender of the first correct answer opened on Tuesday 25 May. The Editor’s decision is final. Please send entries to Enigma 1592, New Scientist, Lacon House, 84 Theobald’s Road, London WC1X 8NS, or to [email protected] (please include your postal address). Answer to 1586 So touching: Columns 2, 3 and 4 The winner Ian Snell of Oxford, UK
24 | NewScientist | 24 April 2010
why this doubt persists when there is a cogent argument for accepting the consciousness of others. The only knowledge we have of the nature of consciousness is our own direct personal experience of it. A zombie, lacking consciousness, could not have any comprehension of conscious experience, in the same way that a person blind from birth supposedly has no understanding of colour. This would mean that a zombie would be unable to discuss the subject with a conscious entity. Since we discuss consciousness with other people, we have good reason to believe that they are as conscious as we are. Newton Aycliffe, County Durham, UK From Anna Wood The link between the mind and body is interesting and complex, but Linda Geddes should take care when asserting that the wise doctor should “probe the mental state of a patient whose symptoms are hard to explain physically”. In fact, it is an arrogant doctor who will do this without being mindful of the deficiencies in medical knowledge. It is naive to believe that we understand everything about the human body, and unacceptable that an absence of certain physical symptoms automatically makes the patient mentally ill. In the past, people with multiple sclerosis and diabetes have been wrongly given a psychological diagnosis, simply because doctors could not find anything physically wrong with them. Today it is patients with ME (myalgic encephalitis) who suffer this mistreatment. Rather than assuming a diagnosis of mental illness, the wise doctor will diagnose both physical and psychological illness according to available evidence – and be prepared to admit that he or she does not know the
answer when the necessary evidence is lacking. Glasgow, UK
Multiversal mirror From Jim Kemp If I read Amanda Gefter’s fascinating article right, for observers outside a black hole all information about stuff that has been sucked through the event horizon is smeared across the surface of the horizon (6 March, p 28). It’s a hologram. Thus the holographic principle: that the surface of every volume, including the infinite multiverse, contains all information within the volume. Now, although we may not be able to access the multiverse, the boundary between it and us will contain all multiverse information, so if we can access the boundary we can make predictions about the multiverse and test them, observing and interacting with information about it. Or does this overlook a huge difference between information in black holes and in the multiverse? Everything passing into a black hole started out in our domain, but nothing in the multiverse did. Or did it? Sonoma, California, US
Atheist selection From John Ewing Your editorial “Time to accept that atheism, not god, is odd” makes