42 | New Scientist | 21/28 December 2019
Editor’s pick
We need to teach and
promote the joy of failure
9 November, p 31
From Robert Willis,
Nanaimo, British Columbia, Canada
Your review of the exhibition Flop:
13 stories of failure reminded me
of finding Stephen Pile’s wonderful
1979 tome The Book of Heroic
Failures. Its guiding principle was
that anyone can succeed, but it
takes genius to fail in spectacular
ways. The notion that great success
can come from great failure sparks
much discussion among educators.
Our educational systems fail, at all
levels, to teach students how to fail
and about the resilience to learn
and recover from failure.
It is great that our pedagogy
emphasises students’ success. But
it seemingly does so at a cost: the
creation of learners who are less
tolerant of risk and, therefore, of
innovation. We need more work
on the joys of failure.Belief in an afterlife does
not follow our usual logic
23 November, p 40
From Krista Nelson,
Hobart, Tasmania, Australia
Graham Lawton explains in a
clear and logical fashion why
people believe in the afterlife.
But he overlooks the fact that
many people don’t think logically
or clearly, at least from a scientific
point of view.
One reason why people believe
in life after death is because they
really, really want it to exist. It
means that although their loved
ones may have died, they haven’t
disappeared forever and there is
a chance of being reunited with
them eventually. This is an
incredibly powerful incentive
to believe in an afterlife.
Lawton suggests that people
don’t believe in non-existence
because they have trouble
imagining it. I think the problem is
that many can imagine it very well
indeed. This fear of disappearing
further encourages them toembrace the idea of life after
death. We see many instances in
the modern world, from climate
change denialism to homeopathic
remedies, of people not valuing
scientific logic and preferring the
more “human” logic of narrative
and intuition – particularly when
it gives them a happy ending.From Jeremy Cook,
London, UK
As a neuroscientist who identifies
the concept of “me” with a subset
of the complex activities in my
all-too-mortal brain, I have no
problem accepting the notion of
“not-being” after my death. As a
former embryology teacher, I also
had to consider the conundrum,
which Lawton mentions in
passing, of my “not-being” for
aeons before my conception,
“being” at some point and, later
still, “becoming aware of being”.
Most of us spend large parts
of every night in a state of “not-
being” and only discover it when
morning comes. When I had open-
heart surgery a few years ago, the
entity that I refer to as “me” failed
to exist for rather longer, but
reappeared right on cue in the
recovery ward. You have to wakeup to know you were asleep, and
there would have to be an afterlife
for you to find out that there isn’t.
Lawton’s remark that “you’ll find
out sooner or later” is exactly
what won’t happen.We need to do the right
thing for any reason at all
9 November, p 22
From Roger Taylor,
Meols, Wirral, UK
We still have to do everything,
immediately, to fix climate
change, says Graham Lawton, but
at least we aren’t doing nothing.
The other day, I drifted into a
casual discussion about climate
change with a friend who turned
out to be a denier. It demonstrated
that neither of us had any idea
what to say. The rather gormless
polarisation we lurched into was
a microcosm of the wider debate.
Reason demands another way.
I think everyone would agree that
we are the only species that fouls
its own nest so appallingly. We
cannot continue to relentlessly
expel our many wastes into the
air and the sea and across the land
without expecting some kind of
dire consequence for our children.Recycle and conserve to prevent
this, even if you don’t believe in
climate change. Better to do the
right thing for a different reason
than do nothing – or, worse, stand
in the way.Survival on our Titanic
demands steering
Letters, 23 November
From Simon Evans,
Malvern, Worcestershire, UK
Fred White likens the climate
crisis to an iceberg towards which
we, like the Titanic, are heading.
To extend this metaphor: we are
metres away from that iceberg
and the ship’s wheel is broken.
For every positive step we take
to limit emissions, we slither
backwards by electing a
Donald Trump or Jair Bolsonaro.
Our only hope is for developed
countries to get together and
throw resources at finding ways
to remove greenhouse gases. ❚For the record
❚ When an atom of the hydrogen
isotope tritium decays, it emits
an electron and an anti-neutrino
(30 November, p 10).Views You r le t te r s Want to get in touch?
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