SpankyMcFarland

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.

The Old Testament is a desert survival guide; kill or be killed. The New Testament is what the Life of Brian shows it to be, a holy book compatible with foreign rule where law and order is no longer a problem and natural homicidal tendencies have to be curbed.

So let’s assume for a moment that biblical borefest is true. Do those who live a very long time in a place have exclusive rights to it in perpetuity? Do you see where I am going with this?

The FPTP voting system punishes small national parties like the NDP and favours regional ones like the BQ. People understand that and tend to vote for the large party nearest their interests when a general election comes around. The question for left-wingers becomes an unpalatable one: do you want Trudeau or Poilievre?

Some of the working poor don’t have it which sends a terrible message. I saw a newly arrived doctor from the UK prescribing fertility medication here and finding out to his amazement that the patient couldn’t afford it.

Good news in our sea of gloom. Mr. Faucette is still alive one month after his transplant. He and his wife seem to have a great attitude to his perilous situation. So far there has been no sign of infection or rejection. https://www.cnn.com/2023/10/20/health/pig-heart-transplant-maryland-update/index.html#:~:text=medicines from shelves.-,One month after experimental pig heart transplant%2C doctors say they,signs of rejection or infection&text=Lawrence Faucette does physical therapy,receive experimental pig heart transplant.

We’ll have to see the fine details on this. Somebody who has been on Skid Row for decades probably has other illnesses and will have suffered a great deal already. However, I don’t think young addicts should be offered this drastic alternative.

Many countries are in the same boat.

Mate, you copied and pasted an entire article from the NP. Did you obtain permission from them to do that? Selected quotes are OK as long as you give a link for people to see the rest at the original site. That’s how it works in Internetland. This forum provides tools for quotation to make it unambiguous. Let me show you how they work: Actually, they want people to visit their site as well. In no way am I trying to silence you. If you want people to read what you write, make it easier.

You could make the point about Jews being in that part of the world for thousands of years in a paragraph or two. I’m not disputing it, by the way. Israel and Palestine is one conflict of many where both parties can claim deep roots in the region. Tribes give all sorts of reasons for fighting over land - religious, political, past atrocities etc. - but I would argue these are secondary. Our gods are worshipped and the enemy’s gods are smashed. The land itself is what the fight is really about. A housekeeping point. Put quoted material from other authors in a quoted box so we can clearly see it’s theirs and not yours. For copyright reasons, keep the quote as brief as possible and add a link for us to read the rest so we don’t get accused of infringing their legal rights here. Just to be completely clear on this: I condemn the recent actions of Hamas without reservation.