How sex statistics lie to us

The best of the week’s long reads in science and technology, including how statistics about sex warp the truth, and what caused the capitalist system.

Physics | The end of cosmology

Science bumps up against the frontiers of philosophy: “Cosmologists have looked deep into time, almost all the way back to the Big Bang itself, but they don’t know what came before it. Cosmologists don’t know if the world we see around us is spatially infinite, or if there are other kinds of worlds beyond our horizon, or in other dimensions. And then the big mystery: no cosmologist has a clue why there is something rather than nothing.” (Ross Andersen, Aeon, 9,400 words)

Economics | What caused capitalism?

Discussion of Sven Beckert’s Empire of Cotton and other recent books about the origins of capitalism, highlighting the distinction between ‘internalist’ explanations, which see capitalism as the outcome of particular conditions within Western societies; and ‘externalist’ explanations, which see capitalism as the product of Western exploitation of the rest of the world through conquest and enslavement. (Jeremy Adelman , Foreign Affairs, 4,130 words)

Start-ups | Tomorrow’s advance man

Profile of “Andreessen the Magnificent” – Marc Andreessen, founder of Netscape, “charismatic introvert” and partner in venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, which is known as “a16z” to its friends. “Each year, three thousand start-ups approach a16z with a ‘warm intro’ from someone the firm knows. A16z invests in 15. Of those, at least 10 will fold, three or four will prosper, and one might soar to be worth more than a billion dollars.” (Tad Friend, New Yorker, 13,000 words)

Sex | Sexed-up statistics

Men think about sex every seven seconds; 84% of women are emotionally unsatisfied; single Americans have more sex than married Americans; 69% per cent of people over the age of 35 have had extramarital affairs. Or so various statistical authorities claim. But keep a grain of salt handy. People who answer probing questions about their sex lives are probably not a representative nor a reliable sample of the population. (Tim Harford, Undercover Economist, 916 words)

Biology | The science of craving

We desire things, but we don’t always enjoy them when we get them. How so? Neuroscientist Kent Berridge may have the explanation. Desire and pleasure are separate chemical systems in the brain. Dopamine correlates with desire; opioids and endo-cannabinoids with pleasure. The dopamine system is “vast and powerful”; the pleasure system is “anatomically tiny, has a far more fragile structure and is harder to trigger”. (Amy Fleming, Intelligent Life, 5,200 words)

Environmentalism | Nature in the age of humans

What does it mean to be an environmentalist if human influence on the planet is the defining characteristic of our age? Some scientists call for the modern era to be recognised as the “Anthropocene” age. The proposal implies a fundamental shift in perspective. It says that humankind has “outgrown” nature. The geological record, once a fixture against which people acted, becomes “just another expression of the human presence”. (Ben Minteer and Stephen Pyne, The Conversation, 1,150 words)

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