Bonam

And yet, in comparison to other Western countries, Canada's governments aren't even that bad. Democracy doesn't encourage long term thinking. Also, societies where most people live in comfort and apathy always begin to rot. Or, in modern forms of communication, here's a meme to explain it:

Don't think there's such a thing as "grass roots" any more. Just mobs organized via social media campaigns, which are all artificial and driven by some entity (whatever Russia has done in the last few elections, American groups have been doing against each other a thousandfold over anyway).

If you give the government the benefit of the doubt, the explanation is that the point of the carbon tax is not to put companies out of business but to help them evolve into cleaner and better versions of themselves. To this end, subsidies, especially focusing on improving their processes to be cleaner and more efficient, make sense. Indeed, the linked article mentions that some of the money is specifically for "clean" tech/initiatives. If you assume the government is incompetent, then the explanation is also simple. The carbon tax is something that was popular with Trudeau's liberal base and allows him to be popular with world leaders at international events. Meanwhile, the government directionlessly reacts to the economic decline of affected industries by throwing money at them, hoping to minimize the backlash. Or, if you assume that the government is nefarious, then the whole scheme is an effort to put more of the economy under government control and amass greater power. The carbon tax penalizes large swathes of industry, potentially driving political opponents and contributors out of business. Meanwhile, those few companies and projects the government chooses to favor will be propped up. At what back-door price? In this way, the government gains greater control over the economy and greater power. So whatever your view of government is, it makes perfect sense.

Actually I would anticipate that increases in carbon taxes (and thus fuel costs) would spur growth in the auto industry, not decline. High gas prices incentivize people and companies to replace old, inefficient vehicles with modern more efficient vehicles, including hybrids, plug-in hybrids, and electrics. Almost all auto manufacturers now offer a variety of such models. Hybrids often cost only a small premium over gas powered equivalents and can provide up to 50% improved fuel efficiency.

My favorite was Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri. Best game in the series, in my opinion.

Ideologues of all stripes always want to silence any scientific inquiry that might contradict their ideology.

Yes, solar and wind are cheaper. But the variability still means they can't be used for more than a fraction of power needs (a growing fraction using smart grids and load management, but still a fraction). The long time it takes to build nukes and the cost overruns are mostly a result of regulatory burden and uncertainty, as well as the reality that so few new nukes have been built in Western countries in a long time, that each one is effectively a unique one off megaproject, as opposed to a routine construction job. On the other hand, China has no problem building dozens of new nukes quickly and on budget. Of course, despite China's rapid construction of nuclear plants, they still only provide a small % of its total energy needs.

Even in the worst cases, the Earth will remain more hospitable than any off-Earth colony for the foreseeable future. Terraforming Mars, theoretically possible, would take a thousand years or so, and it's far from clear we'll ever embark on that effort. And living in pressurized habitats on the Moon or in space, breathing recycled air, always one mechanical failure away from disaster, doesn't sound like your typical "one percenter's" ideal scenario. Even if we get tens of meters of sea level rise and lose all coastal cities, 5-10 C of temperature rise, making much of the tropics uninhabitable, and extinction of 99% of species, the Earth will still have breathable air, and survivable surface temperature and pressure. I would guess that if disaster on this scale were to occur, most societies would quickly forget their dislike of things like nuclear energy, desalination, hydroponics, GMOs, etc, and find ways to support their populations with a smaller geographic footprint. Totally apocalyptic scenarios, such as the oceans boiling away to create a Venus-like runaway greenhouse effect, are far outside of any realistic projections that I'm aware of. I guess I would argue that if emissions cuts in places like Canada add up to be nothing more than symbolic ("sending a message") given increases elsewhere, perhaps the better approach might be to encourage economic growth that's as quick as possible so that we can devote more funding to research and development of the needed technologies. Given the reality that cuts aren't going to get us where we need to, we should pursue the solution that gives a chance of success, rather than pouring resources into symbolic gestures.

Likely? More like inevitable. China and India's combined emissions increase by more each 2 years than Canada's entire emissions. That is, Canada could instantly cut emissions to zero, and within 2 years global annual emissions would surpass what they were at before anyway, due to growth in China and India. Realistically, Western countries cannot ethically (or practically) deny China, India, and other developing countries from pursuing economic development, which means producing and using more energy. The growth is so rapid that even with the fastest possible deployment of renewables and nuclear, a big chunk of new energy will come from fossil fuels (mainly coal). The international hopes of keeping warming to under 2C by cutting emissions are pipe dreams. China and India will not forcefully hold over a billion people in abject poverty to achieve these targets. I think what we should be looking at now is developing technology for the large scale capture of CO2 from the atmosphere. If the world can deploy technology to capture 20 billion tons of CO2 from the air per year by 2030 the targets might be achieved. Current technologies cost about $100 per ton of CO2 captured, so we're talking about $2 trillion/year expenditure to get there, although the cost may fall with improved technology. World GDP is ~$90 trillion. So the question is, is it worth it to devote about 2.2% of the efforts of the human race to capturing CO2? Worst case climate models certainly suggest that it would be worth it, but not everyone is convinced that the worst case models are correct, plus those most able to contribute to such an effort are also those most able to shelter themselves from the worst effects, at a much lower cost.

Hah.

That said, men also receive harsher sentences for the same crimes, which arguably IS because of sexism against men.

Hmm, I see. I guess I still have the impression from vaguely paying attention to things over the last few weeks that the extradition request itself is politically motivated given the US-China trade situation. I'm not sure it's just a routine legal case. Would the US have made the request if it wasn't for the current "trade war"? I'm really don't like the idea of justice systems being used for political purposes.

So was what Meng did in violation of the sanctions that remain in force and/or in violation of Canadian law? Is there an article that clearly outlines the legal situation? I'm not fully up to speed on it.

I dunno, is it really that simple? Huawei acted in violation of US sanctions against Iran, but weren't those the same sanctions that were lifted in the Iran nuclear deal, which was originally agreed upon by the US, China, Russia, the UK, France, Germany, the EU and Iran? Trump withdrew from the deal unilaterally in May and now the US requested that a Huawei executive be extradited for violation of the sanctions. But the rest of the world is still on board with the deal. So should Canada be bowing to US pressure based on its unilateral withdrawal from the deal? What authority does the US have to mandate that a Chinese company not have dealings with Iran, if China is not on board with the sanctions, and the UN security council is not on board with the sanctions? Maybe I missed something but it doesn't seem to me that there is a clearcut legal situation here, rather, it seems like its an issue of the US and China each wanting Canada to do something. Personally I think it would have been better had Canada not gotten involved at all.

They should. Or not even necessarily more conservative but at least a bit more pragmatic rather than blindly ideological. But they won't. Seattle is a liberal echo-chamber like you wouldn't believe, far more so than any Canadian city. I just get to watch the slow motion train wreck since I'm not a US citizen and can't vote anyway.

If I'm the third, chances are your posts weren't clear. One person misinterpreting means a bad reader. Everyone misinterpreting means a bad writer. Regardless, my statement stands on its own, regardless of what it was made in response to. So if you're in agreement with it then great.

Here in Seattle, this has led to de-policing. Police are (rightly) afraid of the possibility that should they interact with a minority person or homeless person (another group beyond criticism here in Seattle) they'll become the target of a witch hunt. So police simply won't get involved. Crime has skyrocketed, homeless encampments are everywhere (worse than the Vancouver downtown eastside now), and if you call the police about property crime they just laugh at you. And the (actual, self-avowed) socialists on the city council just want to double down and push further down the same path.

The most powerless and smallest minority group of all is the individual. Any individual who has been assaulted deserves the same response from the justice system against the perpetrators of the crime, whatever the race or gender of either victim or perpetrator. Any ideas that do not fulfill this basic reality are fundamentally unjust, because crimes are fundamentally committed by and against individuals. The individual criminals did the crime, and the individual victims were the ones targeted. Period.

There's a huge profit motive, which is why companies like Google and others are spending millions on the effort. AI/machine learning. Once a working system is set up, keeping it updated by continuing to train it on contemporary data-sets will be easy.

Yes, I'm fluent in two languages (English and Russian). I spent about 6 months working in translation of technical documents between English and Russian, as it happens. I also used to have passable French but its been years since I used it so its mostly rusted away (another flaw of humans as compared to computers). I don't think they are that difficult to learn. Rather, the motivation for people to learn multiple languages is not that high since in most situations people remain in areas where their native language is sufficient for their daily lives. Additionally, traditional language teaching methods at the school level (i.e. your typical French class in an English speaking school in Canada) are ineffective to the point of absurdity, explaining the almost null results after 7+ years of French "education" that a typical Canadian receives. A focused effort to learn a language can lead to fluency in about 1 year, which is shorter than the time it takes to learn many other types of practical skills.

Individual bathrooms are great when possible. They are clearly much nicer from a user perspective regardless of any debate about transgender issues. But they take up a lot more square footage per person (especially since they also have to meet accessibility requirements), which is a problem for establishments that have to serve large numbers of people. Space is at a premium for a lot of businesses, as well as schools, event venues, airports, etc. These kinds of places will likely have to keep some kind of categorization for their bathrooms rather than offering all individual bathrooms.

Not really. Technology gets better over time, and the cost of technology goes down over time. Meanwhile, the language capabilities of humans stay the same from generation to generation, but the pay of government civil servants just goes up and up over time. Sooner or later, the machine version will be more cost effective. My bet is on sooner rather than later.

People deep in a specific field often tend to overestimate the complexities of their own field and underestimate the ability of people outside their own field to come up with creative solutions. None of the problems you mention are any more qualitatively difficult than dozens of other problems that are actively being researched and addressed by people working in AI and machine learning. As for Lojban and Esperanto, the US couldn't even switch to metric, let alone adopting new languages. Not gonna happen.

You mean like the cell phones that everyone already carries around almost everywhere?

That's true but that's the power of technology and computation. You only need one set of experts with the right linguistic and technical skills to solve the problem once. After that, the power of what they have created is available to everyone else, expert or not.