Feedback is New Scientist’s popular sideways look at the latest science and technology news. You can submit items you believe may amuse readers to Feedback by emailing feedback@newscientist.com
Death of the author?
Now and then, Feedback sees ads for courses promising to teach us how to become an excellent creative writer. It sounds like fun, but why learn to be a good writer when we can just do this stuff instead?
One brand that recently caught Feedback’s eye is BBC Maestro. Its course taught by comics legend Alan Moore half-tempted us, but we suspect the professionalised approach might have taken the edges off his thinking. Give us the Moore who believes Northampton is the literal centre of the universe, and who once wrote a 1174-page novel centred on this notion, or give us nothing at all.
Maestro’s latest endeavour features a particularly unexpected presenter: crime fiction legend Agatha Christie, who astute readers may realise departed this mortal coil in 1976. The blurb is truly enticing: “In a world-first, the bestselling novelist of all time offers you an unparalleled opportunity to learn the secrets behind her writing, in her own words. Made possible today by Agatha’s family, an expert team of academics and cutting-edge audio and visual specialists, as if she were teaching you herself.”
Time travel? Cloning? No, this is an AI duplicate of Christie. Actress Vivien Keene was hired to perform the role of the writer, and AI was then used to alter her face and voice.
Something similar – an “avatar powered by gen-AI inspired by Aldous Huxley’s science fiction writings” – was on display at UNESCO’s World Press Freedom Day event on 7 May. Malka Older, a humanitarian aid worker and science-fiction writer (possibly the greatest portfolio career ever), was there, and was underwhelmed. On Bluesky, she described the avatar as giving “buzzwordy meaningless literal ‘maybe both’ answers“.
It sounds like an enormous amount of hassle to create an AI clone, but we suppose there is a certain security in using bots based on writers who are safely dead and therefore can’t be divas in the studio. On the other hand, Feedback is like all writers: always wondering where the next paycheck is coming from. It’s bad enough losing out on work to people more talented or charismatic than us – now we’re being outcompeted by the dead.
Or as Older put it, with not-even-remotely restrained frustration: “There are! Actual living science fiction writers!… You can invite them to speak!! I promise, many of them are at least as insightful as a white man who has more name recognition but has been dead for 60 years!!!!” Feedback agrees: we want to present our own course in whatever it is we do.
The light of intelligence
It is a truism in science that correlation does not equal causation. Just because one thing seems to vary in line with another doesn’t necessarily mean they are actually linked – unless you want to believe that the divorce rate in Maine is driven by per-capita consumption of margarine. It’s such a basic point that Feedback wouldn’t usually mention it, but every so often we come across a spurious correlation so daft we can’t resist.
Reporter James Dinneen draws our gaze to an unreviewed paper with a truly promising title: “Human intelligence forming in the rhythm of solar activity“. It reveals a strong correlation between “high-energy solar proton events” and the number of Nobel laureates born in a given year.
The researcher looked specifically at Nobel laureates “in the fields of sciences (including economics) and literature” – and we just want to say that we enjoyed the subtle side-eye inherent in the brackets around “economics”.
The number of laureates, the author assures us, has been “adjusted for a six-month prenatal offset”. Why not nine months, or five? Could it be the correlation appears only with that specific hack? Regardless, this leads to the hypothesis that “atmospheric radiation patterns… may act as environmental stressors affecting neural circuit formation during prenatal development”. Yes, that is certainly one interpretation.
If anyone knows of a more bizarre correlation-based claim, they should send it to the usual address. Meanwhile, Feedback advises anyone who is pregnant to wear tinfoil, just in case.
Cracking stuff
Feedback would like to quit nominative determinism, but we just can’t. We were delighted by Andy Green’s email alerting us to consultant urologist Nick Burns-Cox, but a hasty archive search revealed we did him in 2019. However, in a genuine novelty, Stephen Alexander highlights the 19 May edition of BBC Radio 4’s The Briefing Room, the sound engineer for which is one David Crackles.
Sam Edge (who we really hope is a mountaineer) flagged two instances in issue 3540 of this very magazine. Our review of the book Intertidal, by a naturalist who began his career bird-watching, somehow failed to flag his “satisfyingly apropos” name: Yuvan Aves. A few pages later, “in your own esteemed column” (see, readers, this is how you get your submissions published; just saying), he noted that “scientific journals were being scanned by one Alexander Magazinov”.
Finally, this isn’t quite nominative determinism but is clearly adjacent, and anyway, this is our own esteemed column, we can do what we want. Amy Marschall writes on Bluesky: “Omg I just saw a billboard that said ‘Erectile dysfunction is a growing problem‘ “. The question being: was this on purpose, or did someone genuinely not realise?
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