Getting real
The word “real” does so many different jobs, being the opposite of pretended, fictitious, apparent, imaginary or superficial, for example, that there cannot be a single thing called “reality”. Your reality special (29 September, p 34) seems mainly to oppose it to “apparent”, suggesting that what is real is actually whatever the latest fashion in physics deems to be fundamental matter. Thus the everyday world, including ourselves, is in some sense a mere appearance.
Jan Westerhoff also offers an alternative definition of reality as “a world without us, a world untouched by human desires and intentions”. But this is surely mere fantasy. In anyone’s view, the human race, along with its special ways of perceiving, is a solid, objective fact in the world, one that has quite a marked effect.
We can’t jump off that shared world, and our scientific thinking on the nature of matter is as much a human artefact as our painting.
It appears to me that our interpretation of the quantum world favours the idea that reality might just be a computer simulation, as Richard Webb discussed (p 47). If I were to try to write such software, there are two strategies to reduce processing requirements, both with parallels to quantum theory.
The first is the use of probability and the second is the special position given to observers (the conscious occupants of the simulation). Consider a tree in a forest. While unobserved, I would not want to model it in full detail and would assign a probability as to its likelihood of falling based on a number of parameters, such as age, condition and angle of growth. Only when observed would these probabilities need to be resolved and the observer would see the tree either fallen or standing in full detail.
If we do live in a simulation, by probing the quantum world, it is as if we have peered deeper than the “programmer” intended.
Didsbury, Manchester, UK
I spent some time observing your reality special, but it failed to collapse into a coherent form. I could see that it included individual (p)articles, but even staring at it through very small holes failed to resolve the issue.
It was a tricky enough subject to grapple with, without having to decide which way round to hold the paper. Or was my issue meant for another universe?
Bourne End, Buckinghamshire, UK
Transport for London has resolved the circularity problem – which afflicts attempts to define the nature of reality by seeking what is fundamental, as described by Jan Westerhoff. He compared this loop of reasoning with the London Underground Circle Line, a continuous subway train line without beginning or end. However, a redesign means that since 2009 it is no longer a continuous loop of track, but has a terminal station.
Mike Holderness says solipsism, the feeling that one’s own consciousness is all there is, “is an idea that is hard to refute” (p 44).
He has a point. However, I apply to this the same test as I do to the existence of the gods of the major religions, one of plausibility rather than logic.
Do I really believe that I have so perversely creative an imagination as to conceive a world that I find so confusing, understand so partially, and about which I so often change my views as I learn something new?
Great Missenden, Buckinghamshire, UK
It may well be true that if people stopped believing in stock markets then they would cease to exist. Is this not also true of God? Yet one is real and the other not.
Kimberley, Nottinghamshire, UK
Good pharma
Ben Goldacre, the author of Bad Pharma, seems fixated on issues within the pharmaceutical industry which have long been addressed (6 October, p 28).
He claims that “drugs are tested in poorly designed studies… selectively reported, with unflattering data hidden”. In the UK there is a robust system of regulation for the undertaking and reporting of clinical trials. They must be approved by both the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Authority and an ethics committee. We work closely with regulators to ensure that patients are not exposed to ineffective medicines.
Additionally, Goldacre talks about the pharmaceutical industry being “allowed to distort the evidence on how good a drug is”, and that it seeks to hide trial data. All clinical trial data relating to the quality, efficacy and safety of a medicine must be submitted to regulatory authorities for review. If the benefits are not deemed to outweigh the risks, it will not be licensed for use.
Trial results are published on websites such as , and many companies, such as GSK, publish both positive and negative data on their websites. We do acknowledge that it is far more difficult to get negative trial results published in journals, but we are working with healthcare professionals to change this.
One solution to Ben Goldacre’s worries over transparency would be to set up a public drug-testing agency. Companies could then pay it to conduct, or commission, trials of safety and efficacy before any licence is issued. The brief would include a requirement to publish the results of all trials, even if the company decided to withdraw its licence application.
Genetic spaghetti
Our genome “software” is still at version 1.x, never having had the benefit of a rewrite. Evolved from the last universal common ancestor, it contains programming remnants from countless predecessors (15 September, p 30).
If we ever succeed in decoding the genome software as some hope, for example, via the ENCODE project (8 September, p 40), it will turn out to be the most appalling example of spaghetti programming – software with a twisted and tangled flow almost impossible to unravel and even harder to debug. I confidently predict the weeping of strong men.
It's a start
It is about time that the US outlawed the ineffective and unethical psychological practices of “conversion” or “reparative” therapies (6 October, p 7). They have never worked and are disrespectful to people who are lesbian, gay, bisexual or who are questioning their sexuality.
California has done the right thing in banning those therapies. Now, we need to pass similar legislation in the other 49 states and the federal government. I hope other countries take up the issue.
Truth pays
You discussed whether browser extensions that rate the accuracy of online news are likely to change our opinions (15 September, p 44). But a knock-on effect may be that downrated sites could lose status, hence traffic and advertiser support, giving them a monetary incentive to spread less rubbish in the first place.
Time warp
You reported a quantum entanglement experiment that seems to show that a “dead” photon can influence a “newborn” one (6 October, p 11). The gap between the existence of the entangled particles has been shown to be a small fraction of a second, but could further experiments expand this to years, decades, centuries and beyond?
What could this tell us about the fundamental nature of time? In fact, do all times and events actually exist concurrently as physicist Brian Greene and others have postulated, and is this entanglement over time a manifestation of such a phenomenon?
Meaning less
Samuel Arbesman makes some interesting points about the apparent pattern of decay of accepted knowledge (22 September, p 36), but perhaps this is only part of the story.
Not only does factual information evolve, but so does the language in which these facts are expressed, which might help to explain some instances of decay.
Alzheimer's study
I enjoyed your article on the relationship between Alzheimer’s disease and diabetes (1 September, p 32). However, I would like to clarify where we performed the rabbit studies which showed for the first time a direct link between these two conditions. The studies, reported in , were done at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey, not at Northwestern University, as your article implies.
Conscious decisions
I imagine most people will agree with Marc Bekoff that it is high time we recognised that animals are conscious (22 September, p 24), but I wonder if he is not naive in supposing that such recognition will help to stop the abuse of animals.
Around the world now and throughout history, our species has been perfectly willing to kill, torture, cage and otherwise maltreat fellow humans they believe to be conscious, so why would they stop abusing other animals now?