This article is laughable. They don't even try to compare the cost of the basic income project with current welfare spending. It is not even difficult. For example, let's take the Swiss proposal they quote, of paying 2,500 CHF per month per person. It would cost approx. 200 billion CHF, compared to a welfare budget of 22 billion CHF. So, ten times more, for a extremely generous basic income. In other words, with the current welfare budget they could pay 250 CHF to each inhabitant, which would be enough not to starve.
Let's take another example, UK. Welfare budget is about 220 billion GBP (after being savagely cut by the current government), population about 65 million, so a monthly payment of about 280 GBP. Again, enough not to starve. And this is with the current welfare budget. My bet is that with the coming AI revolution both the country's wealth and unemployment will soar, making the numbers even better for basic income.
Sure you can find several people with a million to spare. The problem is that most people who have worked to have a million dollars (as opposed to those whose just inherited) are not complete idiots, and they will only pay it if
p*R > 1 million
where p is the probability that it works, and R is the expected return. I estimate R to be about 100 billion dollars, of the order of magnitude of the whole space industry. Since p=0, we have
The merchant is still being ripped off, as the cost for Visa is much lower than 1-2%. In fact, the fact that it is a percentage is already a huge problem, as the costs of the transaction do not scale linearly with the size of the transaction. I guess they would be almost constant, or logarithmic.
Hum, according to Wikipedia about 93% of the Palestinians are Muslims and 6% are Christians. And it is true that most of the recent attacks are made by Hamas and other organisations, which are more religious than the PLO. But I still hesitate in classifying their attacks as Islamic terrorism, as their goal is largely secular.
About the other point, of whether "Islam is a religion of peace", I'd like to point out that the vast majority of the victims of Islamic terrorism are also Muslims. But apart from the insults, I think your point is largely correct, that the Muslim world today is much more violent than the Christian world. The interesting question is, why?
I don't think this has much to do with religion. I think the true reasons are cultural and economic. Remember that 500 years ago Christians were just as bad. What were the Crusades, if not Christian jihad? And the sectarian wars in Europe between catholics and protestants? They look very similar to me to the wars being sunnis and shias. And the Inquisition? That was pretty much death penalty for apostasy and blasphemy.
The difference is that Christians have largely grew up out of these barbaric ways, and today overwhelmingly consider these to be embarrassing episodes of their history, while Muslims have gone the opposite way, going from being a (for that time) sophisticated and peaceful society to one where this barbarism has significant support (I'd like to point out that Muslims that actually support this religious violence are far from being the majority, but there are enough that support it for it to happen). Why?
It is the same conclusion that you would get to if you were not so angry.
Let me give you an example that is more removed from your passions, so that you can evaluate it impartially: take two examples of terrorist attacks: the shooting at Planned Parenthod and Birmingham pub bombings. Both were terrorist acts committed by Christians; but first one is Christian terrorism, and the second one is not. Why? The first one was committed by a (self-stated) Christian, for a (self-stated) Christian goal: stop abortions. The second one was committed by a secular organisation (the IRA) for a secular goal: free Northern Ireland.
Now, breath deeply, and see if you can grasp the distinction between 1 - the Islamic State, which is a (self-stated) Islamic organization, that commits terrorist attacks for a (self-stated) Islamic goal: establish a caliphate in the Middle East. 2 - the PLO, which is a secular organisation that commits terrorist attacks for a secular goal: take back the land that Israel occupied.
The terrorism in that troubled land is not religious, it is a fight for land. And must I remind you that Christians form a significant minority of the Palestinians?
Historically, the main organization attacking Israel was the PLO, which is pretty much secular. More recently, though, terrorist attacks are made by Hamas (which is indeed Islamic in character) and by "lone wolves", which don't seem to have religious motivation.
Oh, you were not interested in facts, just in insulting Islam? Carry on, then.
The sad truth is that pre-airport security screening is sometimes necessary and it does work. Please read about how they do the security screening in the Ben Gurion Airport in Tel Aviv. I had to pass through five (our four, I don't remember that precisely) security screenings to board an airplane. One to enter the bus to the airport, another on the road to the airport, and a couple more inside the airport itself. In each screening the queues were progressively larger.
Because the IRA attacks were not significant, right? And the Rote Armee Fraktion never managed to kill anyone, right? How about ETA? They were so harmless, right?
No no no, it's all the fault of the EU and the muslims. Without the Schengen agreement and muslim immigration everything would be just perfect, wouldn't it?
* For the sarcasm-impaired: this post is sarcastic.
Do you want to wait in line for a booth with wired internet at every airport and con and conference and ted talk?
The best internet I have ever experienced in an airport was in Vienna. It is Wi-Fi, but they have individual booths with comfortable seats, electrical outlets, and presumably they optimize the position of the routers, so that the signal is always strong and relatively interference-free. It's almost as good as wired internet. And given that they already have booths, it would be trivial to add a wire to each of them. And no, I didn't need to wait in line for it, they have a huge amount of booths. Furthermore, it's gratis.
Should we be adding an RJ45 in the back of every convention hall chair?
That would be awesome.
Because based on your complaints it sounds like we'd be better off if we could solve some of wifi's issues, instead.
That would be even better. Imagine a world where you can get reliable, fast, low-latency Internet without the hassle of a wire. A beautiful dream, isn't it? I think we'll have Fidel Castro as the president of the US before that happens.
Ethernet is the one reliable standard that will always work, everywhere, no questions asked. And I need it. I can go on for days without eating. I can go on for hours without drinking. Without Ethernet? Good old, reliable, wired, Ethernet? What am I alive for? And don't come with your fancy "Wi-Fi" b/g/n. It never works when you need it. Airport? Conference? eduroam? It does not work! And I need it to work, this is the Internet we're talking about!
I'm never going to allow one of these things to drive me, as I will not let Google make life-and-death choices for me. Let me illustrate with a story that happened to me a couple of years ago in Morocco. I was driving from Marrakesh to Ouarzazate (beautiful trip, btw) in a narrow road when a truck coming at high speed from the opposite direction invades my lane. I thought quickly of two ways to escape it:
1 - Swerve to the right, crashing into the mountain. Likely to destroy my car and cause me minor injuries. 2 - Slam the brakes, hoping that the trucker will get back to his lane fast enough, and the car behind me will not crash into my rear. Likely to avoid any trouble for everyone, but has the potential to cause a major accident if the truck hits me anyway.
What would the AI do? Decide it's worth it to damage me and my car to avoid any risk of a major accident? Or decide that the likelihood of a major accident in option 2 is low enough to be worth taking it?
Well, I don't know and I don't care; this is my life and my car and no AI has the right to decide this for me. If anyone cares, I chose option 2 and indeed nothing happened.
This is not true, according to the Wikipedia article. The only thing the pilot is absolutely required to do is not manouver in the direction opposite to the one indicated by the TCAS. As for actually following what the TCAS says, there is some leeway.
I do agree that the situation was bleak when Elop joined; but the question is whether his actions were an honest attempt to save the company or a ploy to destroy its share value and make it easier for Microsoft to buy it.
Ok, honest question then: do you think things could have turned out worse for Nokia than they in fact did? Was there any course of action being realistic advocated that would have made the company even more worthless than it is now?
I think you need to learn how to count. And how about the fourth option, Meego?
And come on, trying Windows? In which world would it make sense to jump from a failed operating system (Symbian) to another failed operating system (Windows)? If it was an honest attempt, according to your point of you, we must conclude that Elop was not Evil (Tm), just monumentally stupid. And looking at how much money the guy made from the whole debacle, I think he is anything but monumentally stupid.
I think that Hawking and the scientific community are pretty much experts on the subject they wrote about: how scientific research is funded and who does it, and how Brexit would affect it. And in my opinion their prediction is head on: it would be a disaster. Research is pretty much an international affair, and doing it without EU grants and with less cooperation from EU scientists is clearly going to make it harder.
Do you really think if some project wanted Hawking or some other noted scientist or that they wanted to participate in some project that it is going to depend on whether or not the UK is part of the EU? As you state, research is an international affair. Even in times or war, scientists have been able to travel to where the research or symposium was.
I think you are making a straw man argument. What I said is that UK scientists will not get EU grants and will have less collaborations with EU scientists. I never said that Hawking or some famous scientists are going to have any problems participating in whichever project they want. Science, however, is not made only by famous people; in fact, the great majority of scientists are not famous (as you probably know). To give you an example of how is life for non-famous scientists, imagine that the EU is funding a project called RAQUEL on randomness and entanglement. The researchers on this field are writing their proposal to get the funding: the research goals, the time span, and crucially, the participants. They know a really good researcher on this field that works in the University of Bristol, Andreas Winter. Now will they sweat to get some extra funding outside the EU to be able to get Andreas Winter on the project, or they will simply choose instead Andris Ambainis, an equally good researcher from the University of Latvia that the EU will be happy to fund? In this imaginary case Andreas will not get the money nor will he be invited to the scientific meetings. In the real world what happened is that both got funded by the project and collaborated.
And I don't see what is your point about scientists being able to travel even in times of war. Did I ever suggest otherwise? I agree with you, it is laughable the idea that Brexit would make it hard for UK scientists to travel wherever they want.
While it is unlikely that the UK will get EU grants, it is not unlikely that UK scientists will be prohibited from participating in EU funded projects. In addition, it is likely that there will be as much funding for UK projects because the UK funding will not be spread over the entire EU.
I think that Hawking and the scientific community are pretty much experts on the subject they wrote about: how scientific research is funded and who does it, and how Brexit would affect it. And in my opinion their prediction is head on: it would be a disaster. Research is pretty much an international affair, and doing it without EU grants and with less cooperation from EU scientists is clearly going to make it harder.
As a scientist myself, let me try to persuade you that this is a bad idea.
Scientific research takes a long time to be done. It is crucial then to have a stable source of funding if you're not willing to throw your results away in the middle of the process.
Case in point: In Spain funding for research was completely gutted during the financial crisis (it's still bad now). Physics there continued existing mostly because of EU money. On the other hand, Brazil is suffering a terrible crisis in the last two years. Funding for research dried up. There was nobody to pick up the tab, so scientists were just fucked.
Also, the quality of research goes up if you pool resources together and fund the best scientists with the best proposals, instead of just funding whoever happens to be in the UK. But this argument only applies if you care about research being done as opposed to money going to the UK.
To finalise, I find extremely unrealistic your estimate of 50% overhead. I demand a citation on that.
You shouldn't confuse the European Court of Justice with the European Court of Human Rights. The first one is a EU court, and is normally not in the news, as it mostly deals with boring technical aspects of EU trade law. The second one is the one who decided that UK cannot deny prisoners the vote, and it's unrelated to the EU (Russia, for example, is a member). Ironically, it was founded by the UK itself after the second war.
It's sad really that the UK government has regressed so much in human rights that it considers a burden to abide by the rulings of the court it made itself.
This is an interesting point; I wonder if one can find historical analogues to better understand how the process goes.
Of course, the price of coal cannot decrease forever; as it sinks below cost mining will simply becoming unprofitable. This is already happening in Poland, mostly due to their inefficient mining.
Why are you talking about the "true" motive? This is also the _stated_ motive, they want to be able to track all big transactions. And the _stated_ motive for tracking all big transactions is to reduce financial crime, i.e., money laundering, tax dodging, etc. Which I think is also the true motive.
Slashdot Mirror
This article is laughable. They don't even try to compare the cost of the basic income project with current welfare spending. It is not even difficult. For example, let's take the Swiss proposal they quote, of paying 2,500 CHF per month per person. It would cost approx. 200 billion CHF, compared to a welfare budget of 22 billion CHF. So, ten times more, for a extremely generous basic income. In other words, with the current welfare budget they could pay 250 CHF to each inhabitant, which would be enough not to starve.
Let's take another example, UK. Welfare budget is about 220 billion GBP (after being savagely cut by the current government), population about 65 million, so a monthly payment of about 280 GBP. Again, enough not to starve. And this is with the current welfare budget. My bet is that with the coming AI revolution both the country's wealth and unemployment will soar, making the numbers even better for basic income.
Seriously? Are you quoting Zeno's paradox to conclude that space cannot be continuous? I think you need to study some calculus.
Sure you can find several people with a million to spare. The problem is that most people who have worked to have a million dollars (as opposed to those whose just inherited) are not complete idiots, and they will only pay it if
p*R > 1 million
where p is the probability that it works, and R is the expected return. I estimate R to be about 100 billion dollars, of the order of magnitude of the whole space industry. Since p=0, we have
0 < 1 million
So nobody with a drop of sense will pay it.
The merchant is still being ripped off, as the cost for Visa is much lower than 1-2%. In fact, the fact that it is a percentage is already a huge problem, as the costs of the transaction do not scale linearly with the size of the transaction. I guess they would be almost constant, or logarithmic.
Hum, according to Wikipedia about 93% of the Palestinians are Muslims and 6% are Christians. And it is true that most of the recent attacks are made by Hamas and other organisations, which are more religious than the PLO. But I still hesitate in classifying their attacks as Islamic terrorism, as their goal is largely secular.
About the other point, of whether "Islam is a religion of peace", I'd like to point out that the vast majority of the victims of Islamic terrorism are also Muslims. But apart from the insults, I think your point is largely correct, that the Muslim world today is much more violent than the Christian world. The interesting question is, why?
I don't think this has much to do with religion. I think the true reasons are cultural and economic. Remember that 500 years ago Christians were just as bad. What were the Crusades, if not Christian jihad? And the sectarian wars in Europe between catholics and protestants? They look very similar to me to the wars being sunnis and shias. And the Inquisition? That was pretty much death penalty for apostasy and blasphemy.
The difference is that Christians have largely grew up out of these barbaric ways, and today overwhelmingly consider these to be embarrassing episodes of their history, while Muslims have gone the opposite way, going from being a (for that time) sophisticated and peaceful society to one where this barbarism has significant support (I'd like to point out that Muslims that actually support this religious violence are far from being the majority, but there are enough that support it for it to happen). Why?
It is the same conclusion that you would get to if you were not so angry.
Let me give you an example that is more removed from your passions, so that you can evaluate it impartially: take two examples of terrorist attacks: the shooting at Planned Parenthod and Birmingham pub bombings. Both were terrorist acts committed by Christians; but first one is Christian terrorism, and the second one is not. Why? The first one was committed by a (self-stated) Christian, for a (self-stated) Christian goal: stop abortions. The second one was committed by a secular organisation (the IRA) for a secular goal: free Northern Ireland.
Now, breath deeply, and see if you can grasp the distinction between
1 - the Islamic State, which is a (self-stated) Islamic organization, that commits terrorist attacks for a (self-stated) Islamic goal: establish a caliphate in the Middle East.
2 - the PLO, which is a secular organisation that commits terrorist attacks for a secular goal: take back the land that Israel occupied.
The terrorism in that troubled land is not religious, it is a fight for land. And must I remind you that Christians form a significant minority of the Palestinians?
Historically, the main organization attacking Israel was the PLO, which is pretty much secular. More recently, though, terrorist attacks are made by Hamas (which is indeed Islamic in character) and by "lone wolves", which don't seem to have religious motivation.
Oh, you were not interested in facts, just in insulting Islam? Carry on, then.
The sad truth is that pre-airport security screening is sometimes necessary and it does work. Please read about how they do the security screening in the Ben Gurion Airport in Tel Aviv. I had to pass through five (our four, I don't remember that precisely) security screenings to board an airplane. One to enter the bus to the airport, another on the road to the airport, and a couple more inside the airport itself. In each screening the queues were progressively larger.
Because the IRA attacks were not significant, right? And the Rote Armee Fraktion never managed to kill anyone, right? How about ETA? They were so harmless, right?
No no no, it's all the fault of the EU and the muslims. Without the Schengen agreement and muslim immigration everything would be just perfect, wouldn't it?
* For the sarcasm-impaired: this post is sarcastic.
I don't doubt it can be even worse than the eduroams I've suffered through =)
Been to the University of Bristol and Imperial College. eduroam was crap there.
Nope. Neither am I in Queens.
Do you want to wait in line for a booth with wired internet at every airport and con and conference and ted talk?
The best internet I have ever experienced in an airport was in Vienna. It is Wi-Fi, but they have individual booths with comfortable seats, electrical outlets, and presumably they optimize the position of the routers, so that the signal is always strong and relatively interference-free. It's almost as good as wired internet. And given that they already have booths, it would be trivial to add a wire to each of them. And no, I didn't need to wait in line for it, they have a huge amount of booths. Furthermore, it's gratis.
Should we be adding an RJ45 in the back of every convention hall chair?
That would be awesome.
Because based on your complaints it sounds like we'd be better off if we could solve some of wifi's issues, instead.
That would be even better. Imagine a world where you can get reliable, fast, low-latency Internet without the hassle of a wire. A beautiful dream, isn't it? I think we'll have Fidel Castro as the president of the US before that happens.
Ethernet is the one reliable standard that will always work, everywhere, no questions asked. And I need it. I can go on for days without eating. I can go on for hours without drinking. Without Ethernet? Good old, reliable, wired, Ethernet? What am I alive for? And don't come with your fancy "Wi-Fi" b/g/n. It never works when you need it. Airport? Conference? eduroam? It does not work! And I need it to work, this is the Internet we're talking about!
Since Brazil and India already have GMO labelling laws in place, I doubt it will be problem.
I'm never going to allow one of these things to drive me, as I will not let Google make life-and-death choices for me. Let me illustrate with a story that happened to me a couple of years ago in Morocco. I was driving from Marrakesh to Ouarzazate (beautiful trip, btw) in a narrow road when a truck coming at high speed from the opposite direction invades my lane. I thought quickly of two ways to escape it:
1 - Swerve to the right, crashing into the mountain. Likely to destroy my car and cause me minor injuries.
2 - Slam the brakes, hoping that the trucker will get back to his lane fast enough, and the car behind me will not crash into my rear. Likely to avoid any trouble for everyone, but has the potential to cause a major accident if the truck hits me anyway.
What would the AI do? Decide it's worth it to damage me and my car to avoid any risk of a major accident? Or decide that the likelihood of a major accident in option 2 is low enough to be worth taking it?
Well, I don't know and I don't care; this is my life and my car and no AI has the right to decide this for me. If anyone cares, I chose option 2 and indeed nothing happened.
This is not true, according to the Wikipedia article. The only thing the pilot is absolutely required to do is not manouver in the direction opposite to the one indicated by the TCAS. As for actually following what the TCAS says, there is some leeway.
I do agree that the situation was bleak when Elop joined; but the question is whether his actions were an honest attempt to save the company or a ploy to destroy its share value and make it easier for Microsoft to buy it.
Ok, honest question then: do you think things could have turned out worse for Nokia than they in fact did? Was there any course of action being realistic advocated that would have made the company even more worthless than it is now?
Two options:
1 - Try Windows.
2 - Insist on Symbian.
3 - Try Android.
I think you need to learn how to count. And how about the fourth option, Meego?
And come on, trying Windows? In which world would it make sense to jump from a failed operating system (Symbian) to another failed operating system (Windows)? If it was an honest attempt, according to your point of you, we must conclude that Elop was not Evil (Tm), just monumentally stupid. And looking at how much money the guy made from the whole debacle, I think he is anything but monumentally stupid.
I think that Hawking and the scientific community are pretty much experts on the subject they wrote about: how scientific research is funded and who does it, and how Brexit would affect it. And in my opinion their prediction is head on: it would be a disaster. Research is pretty much an international affair, and doing it without EU grants and with less cooperation from EU scientists is clearly going to make it harder.
Do you really think if some project wanted Hawking or some other noted scientist or that they wanted to participate in some project that it is going to depend on whether or not the UK is part of the EU? As you state, research is an international affair. Even in times or war, scientists have been able to travel to where the research or symposium was.
I think you are making a straw man argument. What I said is that UK scientists will not get EU grants and will have less collaborations with EU scientists. I never said that Hawking or some famous scientists are going to have any problems participating in whichever project they want. Science, however, is not made only by famous people; in fact, the great majority of scientists are not famous (as you probably know). To give you an example of how is life for non-famous scientists, imagine that the EU is funding a project called RAQUEL on randomness and entanglement. The researchers on this field are writing their proposal to get the funding: the research goals, the time span, and crucially, the participants. They know a really good researcher on this field that works in the University of Bristol, Andreas Winter. Now will they sweat to get some extra funding outside the EU to be able to get Andreas Winter on the project, or they will simply choose instead Andris Ambainis, an equally good researcher from the University of Latvia that the EU will be happy to fund? In this imaginary case Andreas will not get the money nor will he be invited to the scientific meetings. In the real world what happened is that both got funded by the project and collaborated.
And I don't see what is your point about scientists being able to travel even in times of war. Did I ever suggest otherwise? I agree with you, it is laughable the idea that Brexit would make it hard for UK scientists to travel wherever they want.
While it is unlikely that the UK will get EU grants, it is not unlikely that UK scientists will be prohibited from participating in EU funded projects. In addition, it is likely that there will be as much funding for UK projects because the UK funding will not be spread over the entire EU.
I think one can get a good idea about what will happen to the UK by looking at what happened to Switzerland after they voted to restrict immigration from the EU. So indeed, they got no EU funding (in particular none of the coveted ERC grants), but they are allowed to participate in EU projects. They actually got less money than before, however, as they were extremely successful in getting research grants (only less successful than the UK, I believe). They paid about €1.6 billion and got back about €1.8 billion.
I think that Hawking and the scientific community are pretty much experts on the subject they wrote about: how scientific research is funded and who does it, and how Brexit would affect it. And in my opinion their prediction is head on: it would be a disaster. Research is pretty much an international affair, and doing it without EU grants and with less cooperation from EU scientists is clearly going to make it harder.
As a scientist myself, let me try to persuade you that this is a bad idea.
Scientific research takes a long time to be done. It is crucial then to have a stable source of funding if you're not willing to throw your results away in the middle of the process.
Case in point: In Spain funding for research was completely gutted during the financial crisis (it's still bad now). Physics there continued existing mostly because of EU money. On the other hand, Brazil is suffering a terrible crisis in the last two years. Funding for research dried up. There was nobody to pick up the tab, so scientists were just fucked.
Also, the quality of research goes up if you pool resources together and fund the best scientists with the best proposals, instead of just funding whoever happens to be in the UK. But this argument only applies if you care about research being done as opposed to money going to the UK.
To finalise, I find extremely unrealistic your estimate of 50% overhead. I demand a citation on that.
You shouldn't confuse the European Court of Justice with the European Court of Human Rights. The first one is a EU court, and is normally not in the news, as it mostly deals with boring technical aspects of EU trade law. The second one is the one who decided that UK cannot deny prisoners the vote, and it's unrelated to the EU (Russia, for example, is a member). Ironically, it was founded by the UK itself after the second war.
It's sad really that the UK government has regressed so much in human rights that it considers a burden to abide by the rulings of the court it made itself.
This is an interesting point; I wonder if one can find historical analogues to better understand how the process goes.
Of course, the price of coal cannot decrease forever; as it sinks below cost mining will simply becoming unprofitable. This is already happening in Poland, mostly due to their inefficient mining.
Why are you talking about the "true" motive? This is also the _stated_ motive, they want to be able to track all big transactions. And the _stated_ motive for tracking all big transactions is to reduce financial crime, i.e., money laundering, tax dodging, etc. Which I think is also the true motive.