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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 …

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 …

Andrew Barron mentions a study that showed that same-sex attraction could be a polygenic trait rather than a monogenic one ( 8 February, p 23) . Either way, as identical twins share the same genes they should have the same sexual orientation if the trait is entirely genetic. But it is known that if one …

Barron considers why same-sex attraction isn't a paradox . His explanation of the evolution of sexuality shares one thing with all other explanations I have seen: it is far too complicated. Sexual reproduction works for species that don't distinguish between mating with their own or the other sex. As long as they sometimes mate with …

Donna Lu's account of the suggestion that we may be living in a simulation made me think ( 1 February, p 42 ). If we were, it is possible that time would appear to run slower close to large and complex objects, as the computer we are running on struggles to process all the myriad …

Lu reports the concern of philosopher Preston Greene that our present reality might be switched off if we were in danger of discovering that we live in a simulation. This shouldn't be our greatest worry. We should be more anxious lest our simulator overlords find that their research budget has been cancelled, as the experiment …

It seems as though a quote from the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche is relevant here : If you stare long enough into the void, the void stares back at you.