SpankyMcFarland

Religion is good if it’s a private thing but when it takes over the public sphere, watch out.

I do. It was an outburst of semantics on my part to dispute it. I struggle with how to express the problem succinctly myself. In my job, Canada was a very small country You don’t think MBS has the same influence in Washington that Netanyahu has?

Really? That’s not my impression but correct me if I’m wrong. Here’s some info from a law firm to unfortunates facing a federal prosecution:

Canada is a huge country with a small population.

For now at least, Israel wants to remain a privileged member of the Western club and not one of the barely tolerated Middle Eastern ruffians that have to use the tradesman’s entrance.

Popery? What century are you talking to us from?

Although America’s plea bargaining system is used way too much to extort pleas from powerless defendants, it is a wonderful instrument against white-collar conspiracies that Canada would do well to examine. Look at these bad guys (and gals!) falling over each other to explain their crimes and those of others. Each new collaborator increases the pressure on the ringleaders. I don’t think we want to know the truth about much of our corruption in Canada. It’s easier for us to pretend we are cleaner than the Yanks.

The Azeris and Armenians are pitted together in a fight over land. I think they’d still fight if both were of the same religion. For all his faults Aliyev is secular and has strong links with Israeli and the UK.

The PM has serious questions to answer here.

In human history there are events that change everything. AI may be one of those moments. Its potential is different from any of the previous innovations we have seen. If it does eliminate work for many people, we will have to think about the emphasis we gave to this activity. Humans may need other goals to fill their time and the morality around the worth of work will itself become obsolete.

Work has its value but at the moment it’s relatively easy to find. What happens if AI makes many of us surplus to requirements in the workforce?

Romanist?

Thanks. I kind of thought that but wasn’t sure.

I believe all humans have these tendencies - we struggle to control them in each generation - but many Arab countries have a particularly reprehensible history of involvement in the slave trade and still treat their Asian migrant workers quite abominably. The level of misogyny and homophobia is truly spectacular as well. The Arab conquest of much of the world may have been a rather fortuitous event. As I am sure you are aware, the Persian and Byzantine empires were at a particular low ebb at that time after endless wars against each other.

The precise amount matters a great deal and would be a major source of debate. I don’t believe everybody at the lower end of the income scale would give up paid work forever if they got UBI. There would be an effect but it would have to balanced against positive quality of life effects such as individual health, opportunity to care for relatives, pursuing educational courses etc. As I understand it, most UBI proposals offer little benefit to better off people? I would prefer a BI system that cut off any benefit somewhere in the low to middle range. Attitudes to UBI may change if ChatGPT announces: “Workers of the world, goodbye”.

If you look at the power of the Thomson and Rogers families in Canada, running preposterously expensive cell phone and Internet services for years despite the promises of reform from multiple governments, extracting more money from them and their ilk looks unlikely in this country.

Have you got links to these studies? There was a small experiment in Manitoba? I like the idea of UBI. Why tell people they can’t work if they receive money from a Gov program? Andrew Yang is a supporter and he’s not a lefty by Canadian standards. Apparently, some on the US right have seen benefits in UBI although they are not named here: https://college.unc.edu/2021/03/universal-basic-income/ In his presidential campaign, Yang saw UBI as a way of cushioning the effect of automation on employment and this was before ChatGPT was on everybody’s lips. Some obvious questions: 1. How much would it be per person? 2. Would it replace existing programs entirely or would people have a choice?

One lesson to be learned is how often generals are still fighting the last war and fail to incorporate advances in tactics, technology etc. until forced to do so.

Conflict between people isn’t new but clearly the Israelis didn’t have everything figured out here. Asymmetrical warfare is full of surprises as we found out on 9/11.

Actually, there are many good reasons for not wanting to get too involved in this particularly emotional scrap. Given the adversarial nature of online debates, nuance tends to be lost and one is often forced into a more extreme position than one really holds.

I’d be more in favour of prosecuting explicit actions that show support of Hamas, e.g. waving the Hamas flag as opposed to the Palestinian one, or clear statements of hatred against Jews. That would narrow down the job for the police a lot.

Honestly, I am not taking this personally at all but if what I think you’re saying is true it would be a serious problem for vaccines and the health system. Are you saying that being vaccinated against COVID was more dangerous than not being vaccinated in people who were otherwise the same in terms of age, health etc.?

Gabbing here is an option; US high tech in general is compulsory for the vast majority of us. What they provide is like a utility, a water company, say, but one we have absolutely no control over. A small example would be electronic health records. If they’re American, are they built with backdoors to allow US government surveillance? From what Snowden and others have revealed, if they were nobody would be allowed to tell us. And what Google (also the owner of Fitbit), Apple and Facebook have on many of us is far more detailed than any health record.

What are you trying to say here and do you have peer-reviewed articles to back it up? People who are vaccinated are still mortal. Many of them are old and they will die anyway.

But that’s a national decision. The social media giants are foreign companies operating around the world that nobody outside America and China has any control over, with the US govt often being powerless too. We don’t seem to be alarmed by this.