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Bonam

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Everything posted by Bonam

  1. Real people also have to guess which of the possible meanings of a phrase is actually meant when speaking to each other in the same language. This guessing is based on the context. There is no reason that machine translation cannot, with further development, be able to use context as deeply as humans do to inform its understanding (and therefore translation) of phrase meanings. That's why I gave a time of 10 years in the future, not this year or next year, because there's still a ways to go until the algorithms exist to do deeply context-aware translation.
  2. The solution to this problem, as to most social problems, is technology. In 10 years, automatic realtime translation will be seamless and extremely accurate. Once technology allows an anglophone who has never learned a word of French to interact as effectively with a francophone as another francophone, there will be no need for bilingualism requirements. Then it will just be a matter of governments changing policies to accept the new reality. They will be slow and resistant to do this, but sooner or later reality triumphs over politics.
  3. Yes, Ontario is one of the few jurisdictions in the world that embraces a large % of nuclear energy in its energy mix, making eliminating dirty fossil fuels quite easy. France is another great example. Unfortunately, very few other places on Earth use nuclear to that degree. Nuclear had finally been gaining ground in the 2000s, but worldwide overreaction to the Fukushima incident has caused many areas to cease construction of new nuclear plants or shut down existing plants, reverting to more fossil fuel use. A single incident, which killed not a single person, has caused idiotic world leaders to condemn tens of millions to early deaths through additional fossil fuel burning (3 million people die prematurely each year as a result of air pollution caused by fossil fuel - mainly coal - power plants).
  4. If the left cared about AGW, they wouldn't be so dead set against hydro and nuclear, the two technologies we've had for decades that could have realistically replaced vast amounts of coal burning power stations. Yes, hydro alters rivers/lakes, may drown some historical lands, and affect fish populations, and yes nuclear has the issue of dealing with radioactive waste, but these issues are tiny and manageable in comparison to the predicted effects of AGW, so anyone who believes in the dire consequences of AGW and is rational would have no intellectually honest option but to support these technologies. But they don't. The left has spent decades railing against any possible solutions to reduce CO2 emissions other than forcing people to change their behaviors. For the left, just as for the right, it's all a matter of ideology, and the debate over AGW and what to do about it is just one aspect of that clash of ideologies.
  5. Good thing I don't have a political career, so I can just say things that make sense rather than worrying about it.
  6. All money ultimately ends up in the hands of individuals. Corporations may build up temporary cash piles during slow economic times, but not permanently. Eventually, money goes to employees (as salaries/bonuses), owners/investors (as dividends/capital gains), as well as suppliers and vendors and other companies. Taxing companies is inefficient because their finances are complex and ascertaining how much tax a company owes is difficult and can easily be skewed by different accounting methods and legal practices, which large companies employ to great effect. It is also inefficient because it causes companies to plan their business practices around tax efficiency, rather than optimizing growth and competitiveness. In contrast, individual taxes are much simpler compared to corporate taxes. Additionally, companies can easily move their headquarters, operations, or profits around the world to try to evade tax rates, while individuals would have to physically move, a prospect that is often less attractive. I would suggest that corporate taxes ought to be eliminated completely, but the revenue should instead be gathered by taxing the beneficiaries of corporate profits... investors. Right now, most types of investment income are taxed at rates much lower than wage income. I would recommend that direct corporate taxes be completely eliminated, but that all dividend and capital gain income be taxed at the same rates as wages. That, together with my above post about eliminating payroll taxes, would constitute actual tax reform, not just tinkering with the brackets a bit while eliminating some deductions and expanding others.
  7. I think payroll taxes need to be reworked. They are counter-productive to the fundamental idea of a "progressive" tax system and increase complexity by having multiple parallel and separate tax rates and brackets. You have the normal income tax brackets, then you have social security which is an extra 6.2% on both employee and employer but actually goes down to 0% after $132,900 in income, and then you have the medicare tax which is 1.45% for both employee and employer, but an additional 0.9% medicare tax is employed on incomes above $200,000. Then you have the standard deduction, which applies to the tax brackets for income tax but not for social security and medicare tax. The net result is a complex mess, before you even consider itemized deductions, tax credits, investment and business taxes and their varying tax rates, etc. I think payroll taxes should be eliminated completely and income taxes raised correspondingly (in a net revenue neutral way) so that it's all part of one set of more easily understandable tax brackets. The level of progressiveness of tax rates could then be more easily understood by laymen, rather than the current situation where tax rates actually shift multiple times from progressive to regressive to progressive again as you scan through the income spectrum.
  8. Yes, some decent ideas in there on multiple fronts. We'll see how it does in the next election. Canada's politics has been fairly dynamic with parties coming and going fairly frequently. Can't say I'm a fan of the name, though.
  9. Looks pretty good to me as well. Better than the current mainstream parties, anyway.
  10. Shh! You'll catch their attention.
  11. Jupiter and Saturn. The Moon. Andromeda. Globular Cluster, like M5
  12. I was quite into it years ago and had a 6" Celestron reflector but I've let the hobby lapse. Definitely pretty fun to go out there and look at things, but don't expect to see or take images like you see NASA posting. Some of the coolest objects to look at in my opinion were globular clusters.
  13. Personally I think political parties should be banned, completely. Every representative should have a singular job, to represent their constituents, not to be a part of a party. Issues should be debated on their merits, and representatives should vote on them based on their own opinions and the interests of their constituents. That's how it's supposed to work. Not these monolithic organizations we call parties, which prioritize party power over the country and over constituents, and where the ability of politicians to gain and keep power depends on the party bosses rather than on the people they represent. Parties are evil, they are the antithesis of democracy, they are leeches sucking the lifeblood out of democratic nations.
  14. Miscommunication. By "such as?" I didn't mean "such as which issues?" but rather "such as which parties will address this?" Argus understood. The answer, of course, is none.
  15. I think it would be good for US politics. It would enliven debate, enable the possibility of meaningful legislation passing on certain issues when 2/3 parties agree on it even if the 3rd doesn't, and dis-entrench partisanship a little bit I would think. The politics of countries that have more than 2 parties seems more dynamic and more changeable as compared to the US with its 2 heavily entrenched parties. I think it would be great if moderate democrats were in a separate party from the SJW types. I think it would be great if moderate republicans were a separate party from libertarians, and the social conservatives could be their own party too.
  16. Force is the tool of religion. The only tool of science is truth.
  17. Why does it assume that? If one starts with false premises, one ends up at incorrect conclusions.
  18. That's all well and good but regardless of what the founders intended, today, the federal government has a large and well armed military force (the US Army, Navy, and Air Force). The National Guard is not the primary source of manpower for the military. Regarding the potential for the federal government to get tyrannical, it seems unlikely that it would do so by blatantly employing the military against its own citizens (an order that the military may not follow, in any case). Rather, it would use various paramilitary organizations (specific local police forces, mercenaries, security companies, hired protesters, etc) to beat up and intimidate opponents, intelligence/surveillance (through agreements with private companies like Google/Facebook/etc as well as through the intelligence agencies), taxes/regulation/bureaucracy to destroy the businesses of whoever it deemed as undesirable, the justice system / show trials / false evidence to imprison opponents, etc. This has been the standard method for most dictatorships out there... rarely is the military used directly, its only a last resort, usually leading to a failed state (i.e. Syria) rather than a continuation of the power of the dictator. And it is against tactics like this that a well-armed population could indeed present a credible deterrent. Whether the founders intended it or not, today the US government could be capable of tyranny, and private firearm ownership could indeed provide a deterrent to such tyranny in some cases.
  19. No need to choose, they're "allies" together against the "white male patriarchy".
  20. That article doesn't provide any numbers, just opinions, no more authoritative than yours or mine. It doesn't compare how many women now leave their homes without burkas to how many decide to wear one in protest or stay home. It just notes that maybe some women stay home. And it says that a few interviewed individuals wear it in protest.
  21. There's a lot of Muslims that are religious but not fanatical. By default of their beliefs, they may force the woman to wear the burka. But realizing it is against national law, most of them being law abiding citizens, and being pragmatic enough to realize that never allowing women to leave the house period is impractical, will change their ways.
  22. Banning burkas is a difficult issue I think. In the most basic sense, yes, people should be free to wear anything they want, and the government shouldn't interfere. On the other hand, the burka is associated with the oppression of women and their deprivation of rights and freedoms by a misogynistic culture. By banning the burka, on the one hand, you interfere with the freedom of those people who genuinely want to wear it of their own choice, but you increase the freedom of those who would otherwise be forced to wear it. It is tempting to take the libertarian stance that the government should infringe on freedoms as little as possible, period, regardless of the context. But if infringing on the freedom of garment choice for some individuals who might genuinely want to wear it vastly increases the freedom from abuse and oppression for many other individuals, there's a strong argument for that to be considered.
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