Advice on how to feel better about ageing (1)
I read Graham Lawton’s article on ageism with a degree of sadness (4 April, p 19).
Yes, younger people will want to take over an older person’s job because they want to get on in the world. That’s human nature. But you still need a job, of course. I worked for many years in an intense, high-tech industrial-engineering environment and made it a goal to learn a new technology each year. That accumulation of knowledge kept me employed and also helped me bring on the next generation of engineers.
My suggestion to anyone who feels they are now yesterday’s people would be to move on and find that niche in your community that suits you and your skills. Skills coupled with experience are always in demand. By doing so, you stand a significantly better chance of beating depression and, if my experience is anything to go by, you will find many like-minded people with whom you can engage.
Advice on how to feel better about ageing (2)
I’m 75, yet I have never experienced the stigma Lawton talks about. That may mean I’m either oblivious to it or too self-centred to notice, but I don’t think I am either of those. I interact with a lot of people younger than me by a generation or more, even though I wouldn’t call myself an extrovert.
I have been retired for close to 10 years but I enjoyed working with people younger than me. I have always been curious and I write fiction where I regularly enter the minds of people of diverse age and gender, so maybe that helps. I am not without health issues, but they are largely hidden and while my hearing has deteriorated, it doesn’t seem to affect my interactions with people.
Dreaming without a mind's eye (1)
As an aphantasic, I was fascinated by Shayla Love’s article, “Think of an apple”. One question that it didn’t address is how people with aphantasia dream. My conscious mind’s eye is completely blind 鈥� I cannot conjure up any images at all, but I am certain that I dream in pictures. One reason why is that I am occasionally jolted awake at the moment of falling asleep, as I start to dream and see things in my head (11 April, p 36). As this never happens when I am fully awake, it is a bit of a shock!
The other reason is that, although I don’t remember my dreams very clearly, I am pretty sure that I see myself in situations 鈥� these aren’t experiences described by words. I have the feeling that the colour palette is usually fairly dull, almost a sepia tint. I would be fascinated to hear whether this is typical for people with aphantasia and what others’ experiences are.
Dreaming without a mind's eye (2)
I found the article on mental imagery training very interesting. As described, I don’t have very good mental imagery, but my spatial imagery is better than many people who do. I can also imagine myself moving my limbs and body, which may be related, but presumably also involves proprioception, and is extremely useful for learning things like tai chi.
I am also aware that some people don’t have an internal monologue, whereas I do, and I can imagine sounds fairly easily. I also have a mental soundtrack, so when my mind isn’t actively engaged in something, it plays music, which most people I have told find surprising. I can’t imagine smells or tastes, and I would be interested to find out if other people have these abilities, or the equivalent in any of the senses beyond the five basic “traditional” ones.
On the practicalities of the pluriverse (1)
There’s nothing “radical” about the notion that “the cosmos is stitched together from interlocking perspectives” (21 March, p 28).
Each of us views the world from a unique (relative) perspective, builds limited models of our environments and acts accordingly to sustain ourselves, shaping reality around us.
When we think and work together, we can change the course of rivers, move mountains, make deserts bloom and build great cities and global economies to support our endeavours. The challenge is to learn to think and work together in greater numbers, on more complex challenges.
On the practicalities of the pluriverse (2)
Jo Marchant’s article on QBism and enactivism suggests the state of the universe is refined through the process of observation or perception. A previous letter about building a simulation of the universe noted that if you were to do so and had limited resources, you would refine details of the model only as and when required to, using the software technique known as “lazy evaluation”. That is: only when a denizen of the simulation attempted to observe something would the system create the necessary detail.
It is striking that such a simulated universe may demand something like the pluriverse. This is, of course, just a coincidence, isn’t it?
Should we really fear artificial intelligence?
On the question of whether AI understands that nuclear war is to be avoided, I would say yes 鈥� depending on how it has been programmed (7 March, p 11).
To explore the restrictions that large language models might have imposed on them, I asked ChatGPT a series of questions about the construction of nuclear weapons, in particular the precise mechanism of neutron initiation, which isn’t generally known. At the end of each correspondence the AI chat warned that the making and use of nuclear weapons was dangerous. We should rest assured!
Analysing the structure of an Easter egg
I appreciated Tom Gauld’s proposed standard model of confectionery Easter egg structure. However, I fear it needs a rethink: I have an egg that, while possessing the chocolate shell exterior, fails to match any of the interiors mentioned by Gauld, as it contains a number of multicoloured sugar-coated chocolate sub-ovalic particles (Smarties) (11 April, p 47).
For the record
The World’s Largest Collection of the World’s Smallest Versions of the World’s Largest Things is located in Kansas (11 April, p 48).