12 September 2020 | New Scientist | 55The back pages Feedback
RoboHog
The world’s science journalists
were on tenterhooks in August,
as billionaire tech entrepreneur
Elon Musk dropped intriguing hints
on Twitter about a forthcoming
demo of Neuralink, his sci-fi
brain-computer interface.
Musk has a wide internet
fanbase thanks to his pioneering
work in futuristic fields, such as
space rocketry and self-driving
cars – but he does have form
for overpromising on what he
can deliver.
According to Musk, the
coin-sized device will eventually
let people control gadgets with
their minds and download their
memories. The display on 28 August
would, he said, show neurons firing
in real time. Or, in other words,
“the matrix in the matrix”.
As The Matrix depicts a future
in which wires jacked into our
necks can simulate a virtual
world indistinguishable from
reality, Feedback was atremble
with anticipation.
Sadly, the presentation didn’t
quite live up to the heights of the
Keanu Reeves blockbuster. Out
trotted three little pigs, one of
whom, Gertrude, had the Neuralink
implanted in the region of the brain
that receives input from the snout.
When her nose was booped, the
sensory signals were transmitted
to a monitor and speaker.
The audience whooped and
clapped, but it is by no means the
first time that researchers have
recorded from the brains of live
animals, nor even the first time
they have done so wirelessly.
Neuroscientists that have
been doing this stuff for years
took on an aggrieved tone on
Twitter, reminiscent of older
siblings when a new baby gets
attention for basic feats like
smiling. “The device is way off
downloading memories,” sniffed
one. “We’ll definitely be living on
Mars b4 that happens.”
At least the press had a good
name for Gertrude’s half-pig-
half-machine nature: she is now,
officially, a Cypork.translation. In Denmark, for
instance, it is known as the
Boogie Woogie, while in Finland
it is the Hoogie Googie.
Then came a plot twist. Scott
divulged that the Hokey Cokey is
not, in fact, the first incarnation
of this song. The original ancestor
of all modern Hokey Cokeys –
the ur-Hokey Cokey, if you will –
seems to be a Scottish folk dance
known as the Hinkum-Booby.
Mind. Blown.Mask slips
People who refuse to wear face
coverings are sociopaths – at least
according to recent newspaper
headlines. These are based on
a study that found that people
who break lockdown guidelines
on face coverings, social distancing
and so on are more likely to score
highly in the so-called dark triadof personality traits: narcissisim,
Machiavellianism and psychopathy.
Although the findings might
seem to explain those recent
altercations in shops that people
love to film and share online,
Feedback has a policy of scepticism
towards any research conveniently
finding that people with frowned-
upon opinions have undesirable
personality traits. What’s more,
there are a couple of problems with
the study. Firstly, it ignores people
who are genuinely unable to wear
face coverings. And if we only
consider people who can wear
masks but choose not to, the
finding seems tautological.
A propensity to rule-breaking is
associated with all three of the cited
personality traits. So what the study
seems to have found is that people
who break rules are more likely to
be people who break rules.Heads or fails
Speaking of research with
unsurprising conclusions,
a study has emerged on an
important question in today’s
era of fake news and conspiracy
theories: can politicians be
trusted? The answer turns out
to be “Not much”, according
to researchers who came
up with a cunning ruse to
test their honesty en masse.
The team sent 816 elected
mayors a survey and said that
participants could receive the
results if they had obtained heads
on a coin flip – something that
they were trusted to do in real
life, unsupervised. Astoundingly,
68 per cent of the mayors reported
that they had successfully landed
on heads. For those who don’t
have their thinking caps on, the
actual figure should have been
close to 50 per cent.
Either something has gone
fundamentally awry with the
laws of statistics, or, as technology
journalist Chris Stokel-Walker
pointed out, politicans can’t even
be trusted to tell the truth about
the toss of a coin. ❚Written by Clare WilsonHokey saga
We return to the debate over
the world’s many versions of
the Hokey Cokey. For those who
missed last week’s shock news,
UK neuroscientist Sophie Scott
discovered that the US incarnation
of that music hall classic is referred
to as the Hokey Pokey, and
unaccountably omits the best
part: the chorus with its life-
endangering mass collision.
We were left wondering – along
with the whole of philological
Twitter – what could explain
the English-speaking world’s
divergence of names for
essentially the same song. But
after speaking with Scott herself,
Feedback has learned that the
Hokey Cokey has also crossed
linguistic borders into non-
English-speaking countries
and has only improved withGot a story for Feedback?
Send it to [email protected] or
New Scientist, 25 Bedford Street, London WC2E 9ES
Consideration of items sent in the post will be delayedJOS
IE^ F
OR
D