Why you don’t really know what you know

Water on the moon should be more accessible than we thought

Sponsored by VMware The Download Your daily dose of what's up in emerging technology 10.27.20 Good morning! Today: what does it really mean to "know" something? Also, what to expect on Election Day, and it should be easier to access water on the moon than previously thought. Get your friends to sign up here to get The Download every day. Why you don’t really know what you know   What does it mean to “know” things, asks freelance science writer Matthew Hutson in the latest issue of our magazine. The bicycles above, drawn by MIT Technology Review staffers from memory, illustrate how slippery our knowledge of even common objects can be. In July, Joseph Giaime, a physics professor at Louisiana State University and Caltech, gave me a tour of one of the most complex science experiments in the world. He did it via Zoom on his iPad. He showed me a control room of LIGO, a large physics collaboration based in Louisiana and Washington state. In 2015, LIGO was the first project to directly detect gravitational waves, created by the collision of two black holes 1.3 billion light-years away.  I was visiting this complicated operation, on which hundreds of specialists in discrete scientific subfields work together, to try to answer a seemingly simple question: What does it really mean to know anything? How well can we understand the world when so much of our knowledge relies on evidence and argument provided by others?  The question matters not only to scientists. Many other fields are becoming more complex, and we have access to far more information and informed opinions than ever before. Yet at the same time, increasing political polarization and misinformation are making it hard to know whom or what to trust. Medical advances, political discourse, management practice, and a good deal of daily life all ride on how we evaluate and distribute knowledge. We overstate enormously the individual’s ability to amass knowledge, and understate society’s role in possessing it. You may know that diesel fuel is bad for gas engines and that plants use photosynthesis, but can you define diesel or explain photosynthesis, let alone prove photosynthesis happens? Knowledge, as I came to recognize while researching this article, depends as much on trust and relationships as it does on textbooks and observations. Read the full story. This story is from the latest edition of MIT Technology Review. Read the full magazine and subscribe to get the next issue. Water on the moon should be more accessible than we thought The news: If you don’t already know: Yes, there is water on the moon. NASA suggests there’s as much as 600 million metric tons of water ice there, which could someday help lunar colonists survive. It could even be turned into an affordable form of rocket fuel (you just have to split water into oxygen and hydrogen, and presto—you have propulsion for spaceflight).  Some caveats: We still don’t know the exact quantity, where those reserves are stored, or how to access and harvest them. Nor have scientists ever really understood how the water got there. But two new studies published in Nature Astronomy this week do suggest that water on the moon is not as hidden away as scientists once thought. The first suggests that, rather than being confined to craters and shadows, there’s water sitting in broad daylight. The second suggests that the moon’s water ice reserves are sustained in millions of “micro cold traps” that are just a centimeter or less in diameter. This could be hugely useful for lunar colonies. Read the full story. —Neel V. Patel We can still have nice things A place for comfort, fun and distraction in these weird times. (Got any ideas? Drop me a line or tweet 'em at me.)   + The “hourly fox” Twitter account does exactly what the name suggests.    + An artist in Phoenix has created an installation of runners-up for president of the US.   + A building in Shanghai “walked” to a new location.   + Labyrinths made out of salt.    + Take a virtual trip along the Pamir Highway in central Asia.   + Check out these amazing postcards from the future. Sponsor Message Majority lean into digital transformation 75% of CXOs and IT Executives have accelerated their digital transformation as a result of the COVID-19 crisis. Follow the lead of these digital pioneers by reading the latest guidance based on discussions with VMware's closest customers and partners. Learn key insights from our latest custom research studies on the state of global business and recommended critical actions for CXOs. Read the report. The top ten must-reads I’ve combed the internet to find you today’s most fun/important/scary/fascinating stories about technology. 1 The evidence that immunity to covid-19 wanes is growing Antibodies declined rapidly in the British population during the summer, a study found. (Reuters)   + Cases just keep going up and up across Europe. (NYT $)   + Eli Lilly is ending a clinical trial after finding its antibody treatment doesn’t help hospitalized coronavirus patients. (NPR)   + Some hospitals in the US are becoming overwhelmed. (Axios)  2 What to expect on Election Day 🗳️ Waiting, uncertainty, and a whole lot of disinformation. (TR)   + How Wikipedia plans to cope with all the madness. (Wired $)   + Twitter will pre-emptively debunk false information about voting by mail and results. (NBC)   + Twitter flagged yet another Trump tweet trying to falsely whip up fear over mail-in ballots. (Reuters)   + Former Facebook moderators are not optimistic about the company’s ability to handle the election chaos. (The Verge)  3 What happened to Google’s plan to distribute coronavirus tests Somewhat predictably, it made the whole thing contingent on it collecting a load of data. (LA Times)   4 How political campaigns target you  The Republican Party claims to have 3,000 data points on every voter. (WP $)   + Campaigns rushed to submit Facebook ads before they’re limited. (WSJ $)  5 What does it mean to be “safe” right now? Left to their own devices, people chart their paths based on their personality, how they see the world, and how they relate to risk. (The Atlantic)   6 Esports stars are burning out 🎮 The pressure to squeeze in endless hours of gaming can take a huge physical and mental toll. (Wired UK)   7 Japan plans to go carbon neutral by 2050 Great, but now it needs to square that with the 17 coal-burning power plants it’s currently constructing. (NYT $)   + The US electrical grid is very vulnerable to both hackers and storms. (Future Human)  8 Uber drivers say the star rating system is racially biased A lawsuit claims it disproportionately leads to the firing of people who are not white or who speak with accents.(NPR)   + Asian Americans will be disproportionately affected if ride-hailing companies are allowed to keep classifying drivers as contractors. (NBC)   + Uber is being sued in Europe for its practice of “firing by algorithm.” (TechCrunch)  9 There seems to be no good way to do exams remotely 📝 Online proctoring software is awful, yet teachers fear students will cheat without it. (Slate)   10 The pandemic quiet is letting us listen in to dolphins’ conversations 🐬 Researchers are recording and interpreting the language of endangered Burrunan dolphins for the first time. (Wired $)   + Lockdown was the longest period of quiet in recorded human history. (TR) Registration is open for Future Compute! Join us this February for our virtual event on leveraging the power of the cloud. We'll explore the 3 building blocks of cloud computing–computing power, networking capabilities, and storage–and how advancements in these areas will revolutionize how we do business. Purchase your ticket today.   Quote of the day “It’s descending into a cesspool of bad conversation.” —Ray Wang, a moderator for Nextdoor in California, tells Recode the site is increasingly riddled with conspiracy theories and tense fights over politics. Top image credit: Bicycles drawn by MIT Technology Review staffers Please send postcards from the future to hi@technologyreview.com. Follow me on Twitter at @charlottejee. Thanks for reading! —Charlotte Was this newsletter forwarded to you, and you'd like to see more? Sign up for free From prevention to response Join us online | December 2-3, 2020 Follow us: MIT Technology Review One Main Street Cambridge, MA 02142

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