Letters archive

In Daniel Cossins's piece "Do we make reality?", philosopher Kelvin McQueen says consciousness may not be exclusive to humans or other complex organisms, but may exist, in a rudimentary form, in inanimate objects ( 1 February, p 34 ). How does that differ from proposing that the wave function collapse, which produces a "real" event, …

In "Can we create reality?", Donna Lu reports the claim by philosopher Nick Bostrom that if there are any simulated universes at all they will vastly outnumber any real ones. So, he says, we probably live in a simulated universe. This argument is fatally self-contradicting. The universe that we live in is enormously more complicated …

Lu suggests that if we live in a simulation it would be switched off if the overlords realised that we knew about it. But it is most likely that the overlords are kids playing in their bedrooms. Our discovery would merely add excitement. The risk arises when they discover girls, boys or whatever, at which …

Sandy Henderson, arguing for meat production, says that this is the only practical way to farm much of the north and west of the UK and Ireland (Letters, 1 February ). He omits the original and best land use for much of that region: forest. We shouldn't plant short-lived industrial conifer plantations – though there …

In the past, forests were considered part of the farming economy . Their resources could still be used to cut down carbon pollution in other ways. If we fed pigs on the dropped nuts and undergrowth, maybe we could have occasional pork chops, as pigs are very good at turning food waste into crackling.

Geneticist Robert Plomin believes genetic testing can help to identify pupils who would benefit from educational interventions, and says a study that found a correlation of 0.4 between polygenic scores and GCSE results supports his stance ( 18 January, p 9 ). Others claim that socio-economic status is a better predictor, though such a strong …

You report on trypophobia, a fear of holes ( 18 January, p 38 ). I am puzzled that you didn't link this to the image a few pages earlier of rather unpleasant spotty bacterial patterns on agar gels ( p 28 ). Isn't it likely that some people's disgust at spots is related to a …

You report that Neanderthals may have climbed an active volcano soon after it erupted ( 1 February, p 14 ). I suspect that there were Neanderthals who were protoscientists. They would, by observation, experiment and deduction, make startling discoveries. One might have been that a person who walked up a live volcano with a dry …

Donna Lu says face recognition needs to be regulated ( 1 February, p 23 ). It may already be. The EU General Data Protection Regulation , which wears a Union Jack hat as the UK Data Protection Act 2018 , covers cases in which it is possible to identify an individual directly from processed data.

• Research into adding human genes to pigs to try to prevent donor organs being rejected could solve the problem of the shortage of human donor organs, as organs from normal pigs trigger a very strong attack from the immune system ( 1 February, p 10 ). • It was December 2019 that was the …