New Scientist readers ask about stair speed and perceived reality — SkimNews
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- New Scientist's Last Word column published two new reader-submitted questions this week on its long-running peer-to-peer Q&A format, with answers from readers still being solicited
- Mick Liubinskas of Sydney, Australia asked whether jogging up stairs is faster than taking them two at a time
- Robert Morley of London, UK submitted a philosophy-of-mind question asking what the world is actually like if perception is just the brain's interpretation of electro-chemical signals from the eyes
- The column explicitly forbids the use of AI tools including ChatGPT and Claude for writing submissions, stating that AI-generated entries will be withdrawn
Why it matters: Two readers are publicly seeking crowd-sourced answers through a long-running New Scientist column, with submissions routed to lastword@newscientist.com. The explicit ban on ChatGPT and Claude for submissions signals the publication's active guardrails against machine-generated content in its reader-driven science section.
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