I wonder how people will view the urgency to fight climate change if the lights go out this winter and we're left "saving the planet" sat in bleedin' dark lol!
Observations around and about London over the weekend:
1. Mask wearing on the tube down dramatically, despite TfL announcements saying you have to wear masks. 2. Mask wearing everywhere else just about non-existent. 3. Uber has got to the stage of its business model where, having attempted to drive other players out of the market, has now raised its prices dramatically around 10% difference with black cabs. 4. Everywhere is busy.
3. Is due to Uber discovering a small flaw in it's business plan. It still has to pay human drivers and they need to earn enough to eat. And keep their cars on the road.
But my understanding is that the original economic concept of Uber and BnB and the like was precisely to price to marginal cost as the plan was to use up excess capacity of existing assets i.e. the price charged explicitly would not have to cover all those costs, as the owners had already incurred them.
That model does not really fit with scaling to the size of the founders/funders egos/requirements as, once excess capacity is soaked up (and especially if this happens before the economies of scale kick in for operations), then you do need to price in the capital costs of the assets and the need to pay a living wage, not just cover marginal costs of fuel and hourly wage.
I might be weird (well I do spend too much time on PB) but I've never used an Air BnB and I never intend too. Until they are required to have the same safety standards as a normal Bed and Breakfast I will not use them.
Air bnb isn't really a bnb though, at least not if you are renting a whole house. It's a holiday rental. I have often used air bnb and have found no issues, safety or otherwise. It's just a convenient platform for booking self catering holidays.
My argument about safety standards still stands. They should have to comply to the same as any other holiday rental property.
To be honest I wasn't aware that they didn't. Most holiday rentals are cross posted across multiple platforms and so in most cases the places you get via air bnb and via other platforms are the same. You can save money by going direct with the owner, but the platform can be useful as an intermediary.
When I am bored I sometimes play a game with PB. I go to a longer comment (avoiding the name at the top) and I read the first 2 or 3 sentences. And then I test myself: I see if I can guess the identity of the commenter from the opinion, syntax, vocabulary, style
It is surprisingly easy, we all have a style. What is more surprising is how robotic and repetitive some commenters are, such that you can not only guess the identity of the commenter, but you can predict what they will say next, after those first 2 sentences, sometimes down to the precise word.
Two extreme examples are Kinabalu on the left, and HYUFD on the right. No offence guys, but I suggest you are actually bots on Russia's SputnikGPT-3 in Chelyabinsk, autocompleting your comments following the prompt of a prior comment - as that is how GPT3 works. It is basically "autocomplete on crack"
That raises a further question, one I have mentioned before. What if ALL intelligence is just autocomplete? We think we have original thoughts, ideas, concepts, but maybe all of us - not just the twin droids kinabalu and HYUFD - are just a bunch of algorithms, responding as we must?
If all intelligence is just autocomplete, then AI is already here, and it is called GPT3, and it only going to get more intelligent
Here's a fascinating essay exploring that exact same idea that I had last year. Or, I should say, that idea I thought i had, in reality it was just me autocompleting the new reality of Natural Language Programming
A combination of complacency, lethargy and Woke crap - ‘omg GPT3 might be racist’ - means the west has handed the race to AI to China, and it may already be too late to catch up.
If China dominates AI it dominates the world like no power before it
You should have learnt by now that most people aren’t interested in the really big stories.
We’ve been directly told in the last year that there is definitely ultra tech in our skies and oceans, which either belongs to adversaries of the West or non human intelligence / life forms. And everyone shrugged.
People aren’t going to listen too hard to a senior Pentagon official if he says the US has surrendered technological dominance to China and that a point will be reached (or may already have been reached) when their lead will be insurmountable. Forever.
Cognitive dissonance innit. Much more comfortable to talk about IDS’s majority instead.
Nope - We’ve been directly told in the last year that there is definitely ultra tech in our skies and oceans, which either belongs to adversaries of the West or non human intelligence / life forms. And everyone shrugged. This is not the only two explanations, and it is deluded to say that it is. Something unexplained is not constrained by those explantations alone. They could be proof that we are in a computer simulation which is (a) breaking down or (b) being messed with by bored programmers. It could be God. It could, genuinely be glitches and coincidence and people misinterpreting things.
Fortean Times own Jenny Randles wrote a good piece in this month's issue about how perception skews depending on expectation. For instance someone on a motorway 'sees' a UFO (or UAP if you want) fly over the motorway. Why didn't the other hundreds of drivers see it? Perhaps because they saw the aeroplane, that one observers miss-identified.
I sense you are fully on board with UAP's = aliens, and thats fine. But I think you need to keep your options a bit more open than the two you list.
A combination of complacency, lethargy and Woke crap - ‘omg GPT3 might be racist’ - means the west has handed the race to AI to China, and it may already be too late to catch up.
If China dominates AI it dominates the world like no power before it
You should have learnt by now that most people aren’t interested in the really big stories.
We’ve been directly told in the last year that there is definitely ultra tech in our skies and oceans, which either belongs to adversaries of the West or non human intelligence / life forms. And everyone shrugged.
People aren’t going to listen too hard to a senior Pentagon official if he says the US has surrendered technological dominance to China and that a point will be reached (or may already have been reached) when their lead will be insurmountable. Forever.
Cognitive dissonance innit. Much more comfortable to talk about IDS’s majority instead.
Some people are INCREDIBLY resistant to the idea of artificial general intelligence. I have an extremely smart brother who is always open to new ideas but he just won't accept that this - machine intelligence - can ever happen, let alone that it is actually happening right now
Existentially, it frightens him
I think some people assume that events from science fiction are made up and can’t ever happen because they are fiction, particularly the bad events. Scifi writers really are just futurists and as a group have a pretty reasonable track record.
I am resigned / accepting of the probability that biological brains are a milestone rather than an end point in the evolution of intelligence. I hope the artificial phase of that evolution doesn’t happen until after everyone I know has grown old and died but I am realistic enough to admit that might not be the case. AGI is a hard topic to confront because it’s impossible not to consider it in combination with whether there is such a thing as a soul. I suspect this is the same reason why so many struggle with the UAP topic too.
On topic, note there was no option in the first question for "The UK should stop wasting money on this woke rubbish when taxes are at a record high, hospitals have millions on their wasting lists and lots of old people can't heat their homes".
It was just, do you want to spend lots of money on our issue, or do you want to bankrupt yourself on our issue? Or don't you know?
The expression "We can't afford not to......" found in this slewed survey, always sounds like a decent knockdown argument but it isn't. Its frequent application is a discussion stopper, meaningless and should invite deeper questioning. Like How much. Where from. Which budgets do you cut to do it and by how much? etc
Indeed. I am not a climate change denier at all but these questions are so simplistic and superficial as to barely deserve an answer. They are the equivalent of cake. We are all pretty much pro having cake and pro the eating of cake, as Boris has pointed out.
A majority of Lib Dem and Labour voters thought putting 1% on NI to fund the NHS was a good idea when polled but, when the government did it, their keyboards were on fire
So Boris would need to persuade the DUP to back him to stay PM
Conservatives down 2 but labour down 1
Labour need to be gaining not dropping as well
And who cares about electoral calculus, it is wholly irrelevant to GE24
Labour do not need to be gaining as long as the Tories drop more than them.
For Starmer could become PM in a hung parliament with SNP, LD, PC and Green and SDLP and Alliance support even if Labour do not win most seats let alone a majority.
EC gives an accurate reflection of how the polls translate to seats
EC gives no such thing relating to GE 24 but I know it amuses you
Yes it does.
The Conservatives need at least a 6 to 7% lead over Labour or more as they got in 2015 and 2019 to be sure to win a majority again for starters
It it keeps you happy but it is not relevant at all to GE 24 and if you cannot see that then so be it
Of course it is relevant as it accurately translates the poll results now into seats.
If you don't want reflections on poll results on here then I suggest you find another website as that is rather much of the point of this one
You have already excommunicated me from the conservative party and now you are trying to do the same on here
It is not relevant to GE 24 no matter how you protest
Of course it is relevant as it shows how polling would result in seats and I will continue to post it as that is part of the point of this site
Observations around and about London over the weekend:
1. Mask wearing on the tube down dramatically, despite TfL announcements saying you have to wear masks. 2. Mask wearing everywhere else just about non-existent. 3. Uber has got to the stage of its business model where, having attempted to drive other players out of the market, has now raised its prices dramatically around 10% difference with black cabs. 4. Everywhere is busy.
3. Is due to Uber discovering a small flaw in it's business plan. It still has to pay human drivers and they need to earn enough to eat. And keep their cars on the road.
But my understanding is that the original economic concept of Uber and BnB and the like was precisely to price to marginal cost as the plan was to use up excess capacity of existing assets i.e. the price charged explicitly would not have to cover all those costs, as the owners had already incurred them.
That model does not really fit with scaling to the size of the founders/funders egos/requirements as, once excess capacity is soaked up (and especially if this happens before the economies of scale kick in for operations), then you do need to price in the capital costs of the assets and the need to pay a living wage, not just cover marginal costs of fuel and hourly wage.
I might be weird (well I do spend too much time on PB) but I've never used an Air BnB and I never intend too. Until they are required to have the same safety standards as a normal Bed and Breakfast I will not use them.
Air bnb isn't really a bnb though, at least not if you are renting a whole house. It's a holiday rental. I have often used air bnb and have found no issues, safety or otherwise. It's just a convenient platform for booking self catering holidays.
My argument about safety standards still stands. They should have to comply to the same as any other holiday rental property.
To be honest I wasn't aware that they didn't. Most holiday rentals are cross posted across multiple platforms and so in most cases the places you get via air bnb and via other platforms are the same. You can save money by going direct with the owner, but the platform can be useful as an intermediary.
A majority of Lib Dem and Labour voters thought putting 1% on NI to fund the NHS was a good idea when polled but, when the government did it, their keyboards were on fire
Er, are you going for a deliberate non sequitur to prove you're not a bot or something?
When I am bored I sometimes play a game with PB. I go to a longer comment (avoiding the name at the top) and I read the first 2 or 3 sentences. And then I test myself: I see if I can guess the identity of the commenter from the opinion, syntax, vocabulary, style
It is surprisingly easy, we all have a style. What is more surprising is how robotic and repetitive some commenters are, such that you can not only guess the identity of the commenter, but you can predict what they will say next, after those first 2 sentences, sometimes down to the precise word.
Two extreme examples are Kinabalu on the left, and HYUFD on the right. No offence guys, but I suggest you are actually bots on Russia's SputnikGPT-3 in Chelyabinsk, autocompleting your comments following the prompt of a prior comment - as that is how GPT3 works. It is basically "autocomplete on crack"
That raises a further question, one I have mentioned before. What if ALL intelligence is just autocomplete? We think we have original thoughts, ideas, concepts, but maybe all of us - not just the twin droids kinabalu and HYUFD - are just a bunch of algorithms, responding as we must?
If all intelligence is just autocomplete, then AI is already here, and it is called GPT3, and it only going to get more intelligent
Here's a fascinating essay exploring that exact same idea that I had last year. Or, I should say, that idea I thought i had, in reality it was just me autocompleting the new reality of Natural Language Programming
So Boris would need to persuade the DUP to back him to stay PM
Conservatives down 2 but labour down 1
Labour need to be gaining not dropping as well
And who cares about electoral calculus, it is wholly irrelevant to GE24
Labour do not need to be gaining as long as the Tories drop more than them.
For Starmer could become PM in a hung parliament with SNP, LD, PC and Green and SDLP and Alliance support even if Labour do not win most seats let alone a majority.
EC gives an accurate reflection of how the polls translate to seats
EC gives no such thing relating to GE 24 but I know it amuses you
Yes it does.
The Conservatives need at least a 6 to 7% lead over Labour or more as they got in 2015 and 2019 to be sure to win a majority again for starters
It it keeps you happy but it is not relevant at all to GE 24 and if you cannot see that then so be it
Of course it is relevant as it accurately translates the poll results now into seats.
If you don't want reflections on poll results on here then I suggest you find another website as that is rather much of the point of this one
You have already excommunicated me from the conservative party and now you are trying to do the same on here
It is not relevant to GE 24 no matter how you protest
Of course it is relevant as it shows how polling would result in seats and I will continue to post it as that is part of the point of this site
It is nonsense, but it keeps the Con Maj price artificially high I suppose. So "Carry on Misleading!"
A combination of complacency, lethargy and Woke crap - ‘omg GPT3 might be racist’ - means the west has handed the race to AI to China, and it may already be too late to catch up.
If China dominates AI it dominates the world like no power before it
You should have learnt by now that most people aren’t interested in the really big stories.
We’ve been directly told in the last year that there is definitely ultra tech in our skies and oceans, which either belongs to adversaries of the West or non human intelligence / life forms. And everyone shrugged.
People aren’t going to listen too hard to a senior Pentagon official if he says the US has surrendered technological dominance to China and that a point will be reached (or may already have been reached) when their lead will be insurmountable. Forever.
Cognitive dissonance innit. Much more comfortable to talk about IDS’s majority instead.
Nope - We’ve been directly told in the last year that there is definitely ultra tech in our skies and oceans, which either belongs to adversaries of the West or non human intelligence / life forms. And everyone shrugged. This is not the only two explanations, and it is deluded to say that it is. Something unexplained is not constrained by those explantations alone. They could be proof that we are in a computer simulation which is (a) breaking down or (b) being messed with by bored programmers. It could be God. It could, genuinely be glitches and coincidence and people misinterpreting things.
Fortean Times own Jenny Randles wrote a good piece in this month's issue about how perception skews depending on expectation. For instance someone on a motorway 'sees' a UFO (or UAP if you want) fly over the motorway. Why didn't the other hundreds of drivers see it? Perhaps because they saw the aeroplane, that one observers miss-identified.
I sense you are fully on board with UAP's = aliens, and thats fine. But I think you need to keep your options a bit more open than the two you list.
That is pretty much my position on this issue - open-minded indifference until it becomes something I need to prioritize. That time has not yet arrived.
So Boris would need to persuade the DUP to back him to stay PM
Conservatives down 2 but labour down 1
Labour need to be gaining not dropping as well
And who cares about electoral calculus, it is wholly irrelevant to GE24
Labour do not need to be gaining as long as the Tories drop more than them.
For Starmer could become PM in a hung parliament with SNP, LD, PC and Green and SDLP and Alliance support even if Labour do not win most seats let alone a majority.
EC gives an accurate reflection of how the polls translate to seats
EC gives no such thing relating to GE 24 but I know it amuses you
Yes it does.
The Conservatives need at least a 6 to 7% lead over Labour or more as they got in 2015 and 2019 to be sure to win a majority again for starters
It it keeps you happy but it is not relevant at all to GE 24 and if you cannot see that then so be it
Of course it is relevant as it accurately translates the poll results now into seats.
If you don't want reflections on poll results on here then I suggest you find another website as that is rather much of the point of this one
You have already excommunicated me from the conservative party and now you are trying to do the same on here
It is not relevant to GE 24 no matter how you protest
Of course it is relevant as it shows how polling would result in seats and I will continue to post it as that is part of the point of this site
I have not suggested you do not post them but you extrapolate them to what would happen in the next GE and that is not possible this far out, even you must accept that surely
Observations around and about London over the weekend:
1. Mask wearing on the tube down dramatically, despite TfL announcements saying you have to wear masks. 2. Mask wearing everywhere else just about non-existent. 3. Uber has got to the stage of its business model where, having attempted to drive other players out of the market, has now raised its prices dramatically around 10% difference with black cabs. 4. Everywhere is busy.
Black cans are now the superior option. The price difference is, as you say, now very marginal. So, once you factor in the quality of experience (more room, drivers with superior geography skills), the black cab wins. There's even an app if you prefer to book one Uber style rather than flag one down.
I took a black cab from kings cross to Charing cross as my folding bike had a bust light and needed to make the last train home. took about 20 minutes and cost about £16. Should have braved the tube.
When I am bored I sometimes play a game with PB. I go to a longer comment (avoiding the name at the top) and I read the first 2 or 3 sentences. And then I test myself: I see if I can guess the identity of the commenter from the opinion, syntax, vocabulary, style
It is surprisingly easy, we all have a style. What is more surprising is how robotic and repetitive some commenters are, such that you can not only guess the identity of the commenter, but you can predict what they will say next, after those first 2 sentences, sometimes down to the precise word.
Two extreme examples are Kinabalu on the left, and HYUFD on the right. No offence guys, but I suggest you are actually bots on Russia's SputnikGPT-3 in Chelyabinsk, autocompleting your comments following the prompt of a prior comment - as that is how GPT3 works. It is basically "autocomplete on crack"
That raises a further question, one I have mentioned before. What if ALL intelligence is just autocomplete? We think we have original thoughts, ideas, concepts, but maybe all of us - not just the twin droids kinabalu and HYUFD - are just a bunch of algorithms, responding as we must?
If all intelligence is just autocomplete, then AI is already here, and it is called GPT3, and it only going to get more intelligent
Here's a fascinating essay exploring that exact same idea that I had last year. Or, I should say, that idea I thought i had, in reality it was just me autocompleting the new reality of Natural Language Programming
A combination of complacency, lethargy and Woke crap - ‘omg GPT3 might be racist’ - means the west has handed the race to AI to China, and it may already be too late to catch up.
If China dominates AI it dominates the world like no power before it
That was clear several years ago, as the Western AI researchers started employing academic ethicists. China doesn’t care about AI ethics, only AI results.
On thread - what this tells me is that the proportion of climate sceptics probably doesn't vary all that much by constituency (though it would be interesting to see polling to confirm). We jump through considerable hoops to ensure that the ethnic identities of our representatives are broadly in proportion to the population at large - it doesn't seem unreasonable to me that it should be desirable that the views of MPs are roughly in proportion to the population at large. Which implies a voice for minority opinions such as climate scepticism, albeit a minority one. Which by accident or design appears to be what we have.
Climate sceptics puzzle me. I am not a scientist but the whole thing seems pretty open and shut to me and there appears to be a broad consensus across scientific opinion. So I wonder, what do climate sceptics really think? That the climate isn't warming? I can see it with my own eyes, and measurements of temperature seem to back up this impression very convincingly. Do they think that this is all lies? That the climate is warming but it's nothing to do with human activity? This seems even less plausible. The planet seems to be warming up at unprecedented speed and at a time that correlates perfectly with human activity that models predict should be having this effect. That the greenhouse gases theory isn't correct? The story seems highly plausible, whether conceptually or if you put it through a complex climate model. That scientists don't understand their own models and instruments? It's possible, but seems implausible that some random uninformed punter understands them better. That scientists are engaged in a vast conspiracy? Unlikely if you understand how science operates. If anyone was going to fund a conspiracy here, fossil fuel interests seem most plausible - they have deep pockets and strong vested interests. That the whole thing is real but there's no point doing anything to stop it? This is the craziest take of all, if you actually think about what life on earth would be like with say a 3 or 4 degree temperature increase. So, like I say, these people are a mystery to me. People are entitled to their own opinions of course, but not their own facts.
I am a luke warmer - I believe the climate is warming, primarily because of our actions, but I also think some of the evidence used is poor science (tortured tree rings for instance) and that too often the doomiest predictions are the ones that get attention (and there is a clear link here to Covid and the behaviour of iSage). Ultimately we need a circular economy, based on sustainable behaviour, probably with a lot fewer humans, although that tends to fix itself as societies become more prosperous (see birthrates in the West). All (or most) of the things to mitigate against climate change are good for us in the long run, but I don't believe in the end of the world apocolyptic prophesies I see all the time.
Gentle reminder that #Brexit is important, but still not no.1 priority for the EU. Those whose job it is to focus on Brexit will be following this week's developments closely - the rest will be focused on Poland, new leadership in Central Europe, coalition talks in Germany, etc.
Which is yet another reason to add to the list shared here by @mij_europe the other day (which was basically parotting what I've written here for the past four years) as to why the UK 'holds all the cards' in these forthcoming negotiations.
The UK government cares passionately about what is going on and speak with a single voice. The EU's 27 governments do not.
That thread suggested that the EU had gone so far and no further, and that any rejection from Frost will lead to a trade war.
I agree with the general point though, that the U.K. “holds most of the cards” on NI.
I suspect Leavers will find the EU is stronger than they think and Remainers will find the EU is not as nice as they think.
I don't think the EU will immediately suspend the TCA, but they and member states can cause plenty of damage from the off, if they want to, which seems to be the case.
The UK can and will retaliate, but the effect will be less, except perhaps for Ireland
Why do you think the EU didn't follow through on its initial ultimatum not to ratify the TCA until the UK fully implemented the protocol?
Because as I have said previously, the UK not implementing the Protocol is something they can ignore for a very long time. Consciously breaching a just agreed treaty isn't something they can accept. It doesn't have anything to do with Ireland - most member states will be on the same page on this.
Article 16 is part of the treaty. How does using it constitute breaching the treaty?
I justly invoke part of a treaty You are renaging on promises He is an international outlaw
Yep. The mercurial nature of Article 16. If invoked by the EU over vaccines it's an outrageous abuse of the Treaty. If invoked by the UK over the Irish Sea border it's a justifiable interpretation of the Treaty. The truth is both are an abuse. Those who condemn the second and excuse the first are quisling ultra remainer 5th columnists like Devious Grevious. And those who condemn the first and excuse/support the second are hard leaver nutjobs who see the UK/EU relationship as a forever war where we have God on our side. There are, as it happens, rather more of the latter types on PB.com.
The EU invoking over vaccines was an outrageous abuse. The conditions for invocation are explicitly set out.
The invocation conditions were not met with UvdL invoked it. They are met now.
Everyone on all sides agrees that diversion of trade is happening, the pro-EU side consider it a good thing and evidence of "Brexit being bad" but if its happening that's the condition met for invocation. You can't deny that.
Yep, a perfect illustration of what I said -
"And those who condemn the first and excuse/support the second are hard leaver nutjobs who see the UK/EU relationship as a forever war where we have God on our side."
This is a piece of cake this morning.
Except I'm an entirely rational and moderate Leaver who has been shown to be right time and again.
Do you deny that diversion of trade is happening at the minute? Yes or no? Do you deny that diversion of trade is an entirely legitimate trigger? Yes or no?
If you can't answer these two simple questions, you show yourself off to be the trolling hypocrite you are.
In my years on here I struggle to recall you calling anything significant to do with Brexit right. What you mainly do is churn out simple simon, hard leaver, Brit Nat propaganda, then strain every sinew to interpret events as being a vindication of it, in the process and where necessary (which is often) rewriting both what you previously said, and why you previously said it, and what has actually happened.
As to A16, what is relevant is the existence, nature, extent of the problems being caused by the agreed NI Protocol. This can't be boiled down to the noddy "yes/no" multiple choice couplet you present here. The actual "yes/no" question is - are the problems of such thorniness and magnitude as to justify suspending the Protocol or reneging on it? And to this the objectively best (non-quisling, non-hardleaver-nutjob) answer is No.
Philip is highly suggestible. I legitimately insisted on a Y/N answer about something else yesterday, and he has taken up the idea and run with it. It is of course usually deployed fallaciously in "Have you stopped beating your wife?" type questions, as here.
My response to most of his posts these days is from Frank N. Furter:
"How forceful you are, Philip. Such a perfect specimen of manhood. So... dominant. You must be awfully proud of him, Mrs Thompson."
When he got schooled a few weeks ago on the lump of labour fallacy he was committing, he starting referring to the fallacy himself, trying to twist it to support his own point of view. It's sad more than anything.
Hm. The lump of labour fallacy is itself something of a fallacy. Or, it exists, at the macro level. Granted, as the supply of labour increases, the supply of jobs there are to do also increases. But it takes a long, long time to filter through, and labour is poorer in the short term and certainly no more rich in the long term. It is of no comfort to an individual low wage worker whose wages are being held down by a limitless supply of unskilled labour that in the long run that labour will also create a demand for more unskilled labour.
I thought that too. ie the government approach of restricting labour to drive up wages is economically illiterate but there would be a lengthy drag while employers tried to stay in business at previous staffing levels.
In fact the adjustment seems to be quite quick, as far as the sketchy evidence goes.
For all the economic expertise of our Brexiters on here they have failed to grasp the simplest of economic facts.
For them it is simple - restrictions on labour = wages up = prices up hurrah! Let's all pay ourselves more.
They ignore (to be charitable) or do not appreciate that restrictions on labour will shift the demand curve leftwards which will have an effect on prices and hence an equilibrium will be reached at a lower price point hence profitability will decrease hence wage rises will reverse hence we are back where we started.
Except with an adjustment of the wealth, skewed towards the low-paid, who are now closer to being able to afford to live where they work. Something of a reversal of recent trends, which has seen wealth accrue to capital rather than labour.
On topic, if anything’s going to get Johnson this year or next, it’s going to be rising utility and fuel bills, to pay for what David Cameron ended up describing as the “Green Crap”.
Those who live in Wokingham might not care too much about the bills, but those in Warrington and Workington certainly do.
Aren't rising utility and fuel bills simply the consequence of US natural gas prices going through the roof as drilling stopped during the pandemic? Wholesale electricity prices have risen with gas prices across the EU and the US, as demand came back quicker than natural gas supplies.
Even now, the North America rig count is still about 150 rigs short of where it was pre-pandemic, and even though it's rising at 7-8 a week, (and gas production is finally rising again) it's going to take until early next year before rigs are running at the same quantity as last Jan/Feb, and gas production will probably not exceed previous peaks until next March or April.
A combination of complacency, lethargy and Woke crap - ‘omg GPT3 might be racist’ - means the west has handed the race to AI to China, and it may already be too late to catch up.
If China dominates AI it dominates the world like no power before it
You should have learnt by now that most people aren’t interested in the really big stories.
We’ve been directly told in the last year that there is definitely ultra tech in our skies and oceans, which either belongs to adversaries of the West or non human intelligence / life forms. And everyone shrugged.
People aren’t going to listen too hard to a senior Pentagon official if he says the US has surrendered technological dominance to China and that a point will be reached (or may already have been reached) when their lead will be insurmountable. Forever.
Cognitive dissonance innit. Much more comfortable to talk about IDS’s majority instead.
Some people are INCREDIBLY resistant to the idea of artificial general intelligence. I have an extremely smart brother who is always open to new ideas but he just won't accept that this - machine intelligence - can ever happen, let alone that it is actually happening right now
Existentially, it frightens him
I think some people assume that events from science fiction are made up and can’t ever happen because they are fiction, particularly the bad events. Scifi writers really are just futurists and as a group have a pretty reasonable track record.
I am resigned / accepting of the probability that biological brains are a milestone rather than an end point in the evolution of intelligence. I hope the artificial phase of that evolution doesn’t happen until after everyone I know has grown old and died but I am realistic enough to admit that might not be the case. AGI is a hard topic to confront because it’s impossible not to consider it in combination with whether there is such a thing as a soul. I suspect this is the same reason why so many struggle with the UAP topic too.
I reckon AGI - in the sense of a computer that breezes through the Turing Test - is going to be with us in the next ten years. People will still argue as to whether it is *actually* conscious, but the debate will be abstruse and philosophical and largely irrelevant - the computer will appear to us to be conscious and extremely intelligent, and will be indistinguishable from organic intelligence (except much quicker and cleverer).
The ramifications are enormous, in every sphere of life. The idea that the Chinese might get there first IS terrifying. It will be like the first country achieving the H bomb
On thread - what this tells me is that the proportion of climate sceptics probably doesn't vary all that much by constituency (though it would be interesting to see polling to confirm). We jump through considerable hoops to ensure that the ethnic identities of our representatives are broadly in proportion to the population at large - it doesn't seem unreasonable to me that it should be desirable that the views of MPs are roughly in proportion to the population at large. Which implies a voice for minority opinions such as climate scepticism, albeit a minority one. Which by accident or design appears to be what we have.
Climate sceptics puzzle me. I am not a scientist but the whole thing seems pretty open and shut to me and there appears to be a broad consensus across scientific opinion. So I wonder, what do climate sceptics really think? That the climate isn't warming? I can see it with my own eyes, and measurements of temperature seem to back up this impression very convincingly. Do they think that this is all lies? That the climate is warming but it's nothing to do with human activity? This seems even less plausible. The planet seems to be warming up at unprecedented speed and at a time that correlates perfectly with human activity that models predict should be having this effect. That the greenhouse gases theory isn't correct? The story seems highly plausible, whether conceptually or if you put it through a complex climate model. That scientists don't understand their own models and instruments? It's possible, but seems implausible that some random uninformed punter understands them better. That scientists are engaged in a vast conspiracy? Unlikely if you understand how science operates. If anyone was going to fund a conspiracy here, fossil fuel interests seem most plausible - they have deep pockets and strong vested interests. That the whole thing is real but there's no point doing anything to stop it? This is the craziest take of all, if you actually think about what life on earth would be like with say a 3 or 4 degree temperature increase. So, like I say, these people are a mystery to me. People are entitled to their own opinions of course, but not their own facts.
The thing that gets me is that most sceptics seem to just flatly deny a link between CO2 (etc) and heating, even though the mechanism is very well understood and demonstrable in a lab, or indeed pretty much anywhere with a source of CO2. Energy comes in from the sun, the earth warms up, the earth radiates energy according to its temperature (which happens to mean in the infra-red). CO2 (etc) are efficient absorbers of radiation those energies and then re-emit in all directions. Much else in the atmosphere is pretty transparent to infrared. So more CO2 (etc) means more of the IR radiaton which would go off into space taking energy with it is absorbed in the atmosphere and then re-radiated in random directions, including back down to the surface.
Now, you can get into all the feedback loops, albedo (changing due to heating - more/less ice, more/fewer clouds, different take up of CO2 depending on temperature etc), arguments about how all those mechanisms work (and that is the source of much uncertainty). But instead your average sceptic just denies the link and starts chatting on about solar cycles and sunspots. It's odd.
Anecdatum: in my 10:00 biology lecture, 95% mask observance by students. In the 11:00 criminology lecture that followed, about 5% (and LOTS of coughing and spluttering). Has anyone else noticed discipline-related patterns of mask wearing? Someone could do an easy study of this! https://twitter.com/matthewcobb/status/1447535683975974917
My pharmacy and pharmacologists have been good, after initial bollockings. However there is the usual continuous coughing of freshers flu (I hope).
Our uni approach to masks is that the students wear them to protect the lecturers. They are not doing it anywhere else, so the study should be which academics get ill...
One lecturer wearing an FFP3 or 100 students wearing a rag-tag collection of face coverings.
Observations around and about London over the weekend:
1. Mask wearing on the tube down dramatically, despite TfL announcements saying you have to wear masks. 2. Mask wearing everywhere else just about non-existent. 3. Uber has got to the stage of its business model where, having attempted to drive other players out of the market, has now raised its prices dramatically around 10% difference with black cabs. 4. Everywhere is busy.
3. Is due to Uber discovering a small flaw in it's business plan. It still has to pay human drivers and they need to earn enough to eat. And keep their cars on the road.
But my understanding is that the original economic concept of Uber and BnB and the like was precisely to price to marginal cost as the plan was to use up excess capacity of existing assets i.e. the price charged explicitly would not have to cover all those costs, as the owners had already incurred them.
That model does not really fit with scaling to the size of the founders/funders egos/requirements as, once excess capacity is soaked up (and especially if this happens before the economies of scale kick in for operations), then you do need to price in the capital costs of the assets and the need to pay a living wage, not just cover marginal costs of fuel and hourly wage.
I might be weird (well I do spend too much time on PB) but I've never used an Air BnB and I never intend too. Until they are required to have the same safety standards as a normal Bed and Breakfast I will not use them.
Air bnb isn't really a bnb though, at least not if you are renting a whole house. It's a holiday rental. I have often used air bnb and have found no issues, safety or otherwise. It's just a convenient platform for booking self catering holidays.
My argument about safety standards still stands. They should have to comply to the same as any other holiday rental property.
To be honest I wasn't aware that they didn't. Most holiday rentals are cross posted across multiple platforms and so in most cases the places you get via air bnb and via other platforms are the same. You can save money by going direct with the owner, but the platform can be useful as an intermediary.
A majority of Lib Dem and Labour voters thought putting 1% on NI to fund the NHS was a good idea when polled but, when the government did it, their keyboards were on fire
Er, are you going for a deliberate non sequitur to prove you're not a bot or something?
On topic, note there was no option in the first question for "The UK should stop wasting money on this woke rubbish when taxes are at a record high, hospitals have millions on their wasting lists and lots of old people can't heat their homes".
It was just, do you want to spend lots of money on our issue, or do you want to bankrupt yourself on our issue? Or don't you know?
The expression "We can't afford not to......" found in this slewed survey, always sounds like a decent knockdown argument but it isn't. Its frequent application is a discussion stopper, meaningless and should invite deeper questioning. Like How much. Where from. Which budgets do you cut to do it and by how much? etc
Indeed. I am not a climate change denier at all but these questions are so simplistic and superficial as to barely deserve an answer. They are the equivalent of cake. We are all pretty much pro having cake and pro the eating of cake, as Boris has pointed out.
A majority of Lib Dem and Labour voters thought putting 1% on NI to fund the NHS was a good idea when polled but, when the government did it, their keyboards were on fire
Blimey, that doesn't sound very eco-friendly.
Actually you are right. I found the hostility to a Tory government putting up taxes to fund additional public expenditure on health and social care from the left quite bewildering. The idea that it was a con and all of this money will end up being spent on health instead was a particularly interesting example of doublethink.
When I am bored I sometimes play a game with PB. I go to a longer comment (avoiding the name at the top) and I read the first 2 or 3 sentences. And then I test myself: I see if I can guess the identity of the commenter from the opinion, syntax, vocabulary, style
It is surprisingly easy, we all have a style. What is more surprising is how robotic and repetitive some commenters are, such that you can not only guess the identity of the commenter, but you can predict what they will say next, after those first 2 sentences, sometimes down to the precise word.
Two extreme examples are Kinabalu on the left, and HYUFD on the right. No offence guys, but I suggest you are actually bots on Russia's SputnikGPT-3 in Chelyabinsk, autocompleting your comments following the prompt of a prior comment - as that is how GPT3 works. It is basically "autocomplete on crack"
That raises a further question, one I have mentioned before. What if ALL intelligence is just autocomplete? We think we have original thoughts, ideas, concepts, but maybe all of us - not just the twin droids kinabalu and HYUFD - are just a bunch of algorithms, responding as we must?
If all intelligence is just autocomplete, then AI is already here, and it is called GPT3, and it only going to get more intelligent
Here's a fascinating essay exploring that exact same idea that I had last year. Or, I should say, that idea I thought i had, in reality it was just me autocompleting the new reality of Natural Language Programming
The most fun posters are those whose views on a subject are unpredictable.
Hat tip to @IshmaelZ, who is reasonably inscrutable.
Gosh, that post is the best thing that has happened to me all year.
It has a lot to do with George Orwell, actually. I identify with him in that I think he was a sincere contrarian (as opposed to a trolling, clickbaity contrarian, which actually I am not any more than he was) who was much much better at pointing out the flaws in things than in proposing anything to replace them with.
Anecdatum: in my 10:00 biology lecture, 95% mask observance by students. In the 11:00 criminology lecture that followed, about 5% (and LOTS of coughing and spluttering). Has anyone else noticed discipline-related patterns of mask wearing? Someone could do an easy study of this! https://twitter.com/matthewcobb/status/1447535683975974917
My pharmacy and pharmacologists have been good, after initial bollockings. However there is the usual continuous coughing of freshers flu (I hope).
Our uni approach to masks is that the students wear them to protect the lecturers. They are not doing it anywhere else, so the study should be which academics get ill...
One lecturer wearing an FFP3 or 100 students wearing a rag-tag collection of face coverings.
Which is more effective?
Staff are not wearing masks as they are giving the lectures...
On topic, note there was no option in the first question for "The UK should stop wasting money on this woke rubbish when taxes are at a record high, hospitals have millions on their wasting lists and lots of old people can't heat their homes".
It was just, do you want to spend lots of money on our issue, or do you want to bankrupt yourself on our issue? Or don't you know?
The expression "We can't afford not to......" found in this slewed survey, always sounds like a decent knockdown argument but it isn't. Its frequent application is a discussion stopper, meaningless and should invite deeper questioning. Like How much. Where from. Which budgets do you cut to do it and by how much? etc
Indeed. I am not a climate change denier at all but these questions are so simplistic and superficial as to barely deserve an answer. They are the equivalent of cake. We are all pretty much pro having cake and pro the eating of cake, as Boris has pointed out.
A majority of Lib Dem and Labour voters thought putting 1% on NI to fund the NHS was a good idea when polled but, when the government did it, their keyboards were on fire
Blimey, that doesn't sound very eco-friendly.
Actually you are right. I found the hostility to a Tory government putting up taxes to fund additional public expenditure on health and social care from the left quite bewildering. The idea that it was a con and all of this money will end up being spent on health instead was a particularly interesting example of doublethink.
Credit to @Chelyabinsk for remembering the previous polling on the matter. Incredible really, they would rather a government they dont like not do things they think are good ideas. What a sad state of affairs
Gentle reminder that #Brexit is important, but still not no.1 priority for the EU. Those whose job it is to focus on Brexit will be following this week's developments closely - the rest will be focused on Poland, new leadership in Central Europe, coalition talks in Germany, etc.
Which is yet another reason to add to the list shared here by @mij_europe the other day (which was basically parotting what I've written here for the past four years) as to why the UK 'holds all the cards' in these forthcoming negotiations.
The UK government cares passionately about what is going on and speak with a single voice. The EU's 27 governments do not.
That thread suggested that the EU had gone so far and no further, and that any rejection from Frost will lead to a trade war.
I agree with the general point though, that the U.K. “holds most of the cards” on NI.
I suspect Leavers will find the EU is stronger than they think and Remainers will find the EU is not as nice as they think.
I don't think the EU will immediately suspend the TCA, but they and member states can cause plenty of damage from the off, if they want to, which seems to be the case.
The UK can and will retaliate, but the effect will be less, except perhaps for Ireland
Why do you think the EU didn't follow through on its initial ultimatum not to ratify the TCA until the UK fully implemented the protocol?
Because as I have said previously, the UK not implementing the Protocol is something they can ignore for a very long time. Consciously breaching a just agreed treaty isn't something they can accept. It doesn't have anything to do with Ireland - most member states will be on the same page on this.
Article 16 is part of the treaty. How does using it constitute breaching the treaty?
I justly invoke part of a treaty You are renaging on promises He is an international outlaw
Yep. The mercurial nature of Article 16. If invoked by the EU over vaccines it's an outrageous abuse of the Treaty. If invoked by the UK over the Irish Sea border it's a justifiable interpretation of the Treaty. The truth is both are an abuse. Those who condemn the second and excuse the first are quisling ultra remainer 5th columnists like Devious Grevious. And those who condemn the first and excuse/support the second are hard leaver nutjobs who see the UK/EU relationship as a forever war where we have God on our side. There are, as it happens, rather more of the latter types on PB.com.
The EU invoking over vaccines was an outrageous abuse. The conditions for invocation are explicitly set out.
The invocation conditions were not met with UvdL invoked it. They are met now.
Everyone on all sides agrees that diversion of trade is happening, the pro-EU side consider it a good thing and evidence of "Brexit being bad" but if its happening that's the condition met for invocation. You can't deny that.
Yep, a perfect illustration of what I said -
"And those who condemn the first and excuse/support the second are hard leaver nutjobs who see the UK/EU relationship as a forever war where we have God on our side."
This is a piece of cake this morning.
Except I'm an entirely rational and moderate Leaver who has been shown to be right time and again.
Do you deny that diversion of trade is happening at the minute? Yes or no? Do you deny that diversion of trade is an entirely legitimate trigger? Yes or no?
If you can't answer these two simple questions, you show yourself off to be the trolling hypocrite you are.
In my years on here I struggle to recall you calling anything significant to do with Brexit right. What you mainly do is churn out simple simon, hard leaver, Brit Nat propaganda, then strain every sinew to interpret events as being a vindication of it, in the process and where necessary (which is often) rewriting both what you previously said, and why you previously said it, and what has actually happened.
As to A16, what is relevant is the existence, nature, extent of the problems being caused by the agreed NI Protocol. This can't be boiled down to the noddy "yes/no" multiple choice couplet you present here. The actual "yes/no" question is - are the problems of such thorniness and magnitude as to justify suspending the Protocol or reneging on it? And to this the objectively best (non-quisling, non-hardleaver-nutjob) answer is No.
Philip is highly suggestible. I legitimately insisted on a Y/N answer about something else yesterday, and he has taken up the idea and run with it. It is of course usually deployed fallaciously in "Have you stopped beating your wife?" type questions, as here.
My response to most of his posts these days is from Frank N. Furter:
"How forceful you are, Philip. Such a perfect specimen of manhood. So... dominant. You must be awfully proud of him, Mrs Thompson."
When he got schooled a few weeks ago on the lump of labour fallacy he was committing, he starting referring to the fallacy himself, trying to twist it to support his own point of view. It's sad more than anything.
Hm. The lump of labour fallacy is itself something of a fallacy. Or, it exists, at the macro level. Granted, as the supply of labour increases, the supply of jobs there are to do also increases. But it takes a long, long time to filter through, and labour is poorer in the short term and certainly no more rich in the long term. It is of no comfort to an individual low wage worker whose wages are being held down by a limitless supply of unskilled labour that in the long run that labour will also create a demand for more unskilled labour.
I thought that too. ie the government approach of restricting labour to drive up wages is economically illiterate but there would be a lengthy drag while employers tried to stay in business at previous staffing levels.
In fact the adjustment seems to be quite quick, as far as the sketchy evidence goes.
For all the economic expertise of our Brexiters on here they have failed to grasp the simplest of economic facts.
For them it is simple - restrictions on labour = wages up = prices up hurrah! Let's all pay ourselves more.
They ignore (to be charitable) or do not appreciate that restrictions on labour will shift the demand curve leftwards which will have an effect on prices and hence an equilibrium will be reached at a lower price point hence profitability will decrease hence wage rises will reverse hence we are back where we started.
Except with an adjustment of the wealth, skewed towards the low-paid, who are now closer to being able to afford to live where they work. Something of a reversal of recent trends, which has seen wealth accrue to capital rather than labour.
It depends. Two new coffee (or sprout picking) machines increase the returns to capital but that is what everyone seems to be crying out for.
Productivity gains is the only way that the lower paid will be able to increase their wealth in real terms in a sustainable way (ie beyond any market equilibrium adjustment period).
Without productivity gains the lower paid will remain disadvantaged.
A combination of complacency, lethargy and Woke crap - ‘omg GPT3 might be racist’ - means the west has handed the race to AI to China, and it may already be too late to catch up.
If China dominates AI it dominates the world like no power before it
You should have learnt by now that most people aren’t interested in the really big stories.
We’ve been directly told in the last year that there is definitely ultra tech in our skies and oceans, which either belongs to adversaries of the West or non human intelligence / life forms. And everyone shrugged.
People aren’t going to listen too hard to a senior Pentagon official if he says the US has surrendered technological dominance to China and that a point will be reached (or may already have been reached) when their lead will be insurmountable. Forever.
Cognitive dissonance innit. Much more comfortable to talk about IDS’s majority instead.
Nope - We’ve been directly told in the last year that there is definitely ultra tech in our skies and oceans, which either belongs to adversaries of the West or non human intelligence / life forms. And everyone shrugged. This is not the only two explanations, and it is deluded to say that it is. Something unexplained is not constrained by those explantations alone. They could be proof that we are in a computer simulation which is (a) breaking down or (b) being messed with by bored programmers. It could be God. It could, genuinely be glitches and coincidence and people misinterpreting things.
Fortean Times own Jenny Randles wrote a good piece in this month's issue about how perception skews depending on expectation. For instance someone on a motorway 'sees' a UFO (or UAP if you want) fly over the motorway. Why didn't the other hundreds of drivers see it? Perhaps because they saw the aeroplane, that one observers miss-identified.
I sense you are fully on board with UAP's = aliens, and thats fine. But I think you need to keep your options a bit more open than the two you list.
The simulation theory is pretty plausible yes. But really it is just “God” for Generation Tech. Ultimately all you are describing is an exogenous creator. With a planck length being a pixel, plank time being the refresh rate and the observable universe being the bounds of the graphics engine / sandbox.
In terms of mis-perception. You are right that I am sufficiently persuaded that we are not looking at observation error (or at least not in every case). And so it seems is the DoD.
On thread - what this tells me is that the proportion of climate sceptics probably doesn't vary all that much by constituency (though it would be interesting to see polling to confirm). We jump through considerable hoops to ensure that the ethnic identities of our representatives are broadly in proportion to the population at large - it doesn't seem unreasonable to me that it should be desirable that the views of MPs are roughly in proportion to the population at large. Which implies a voice for minority opinions such as climate scepticism, albeit a minority one. Which by accident or design appears to be what we have.
Climate sceptics puzzle me. I am not a scientist but the whole thing seems pretty open and shut to me and there appears to be a broad consensus across scientific opinion. So I wonder, what do climate sceptics really think? That the climate isn't warming? I can see it with my own eyes, and measurements of temperature seem to back up this impression very convincingly. Do they think that this is all lies? That the climate is warming but it's nothing to do with human activity? This seems even less plausible. The planet seems to be warming up at unprecedented speed and at a time that correlates perfectly with human activity that models predict should be having this effect. That the greenhouse gases theory isn't correct? The story seems highly plausible, whether conceptually or if you put it through a complex climate model. That scientists don't understand their own models and instruments? It's possible, but seems implausible that some random uninformed punter understands them better. That scientists are engaged in a vast conspiracy? Unlikely if you understand how science operates. If anyone was going to fund a conspiracy here, fossil fuel interests seem most plausible - they have deep pockets and strong vested interests. That the whole thing is real but there's no point doing anything to stop it? This is the craziest take of all, if you actually think about what life on earth would be like with say a 3 or 4 degree temperature increase. So, like I say, these people are a mystery to me. People are entitled to their own opinions of course, but not their own facts.
I am a luke warmer - I believe the climate is warming, primarily because of our actions, but I also think some of the evidence used is poor science (tortured tree rings for instance) and that too often the doomiest predictions are the ones that get attention (and there is a clear link here to Covid and the behaviour of iSage). Ultimately we need a circular economy, based on sustainable behaviour, probably with a lot fewer humans, although that tends to fix itself as societies become more prosperous (see birthrates in the West). All (or most) of the things to mitigate against climate change are good for us in the long run, but I don't believe in the end of the world apocolyptic prophesies I see all the time.
I think we avoid the worst case scenarios, but only by believing they could happen and acting to avert them. I have no doubt that life on earth will survive, it's human civilisation that is at risk.
Off topic, but I remember the days, about a week ago, when the Daily Mail reported that three Labour MPs were about to jump ship and defect to the Tories. Many wise commentators on here had fun identifying the three, and one was congratulated on his/her excellent detective skills.
I do hope the Daily Mail wasn't making it up, but there doesn't seem to have been an update yet.
Anecdatum: in my 10:00 biology lecture, 95% mask observance by students. In the 11:00 criminology lecture that followed, about 5% (and LOTS of coughing and spluttering). Has anyone else noticed discipline-related patterns of mask wearing? Someone could do an easy study of this! https://twitter.com/matthewcobb/status/1447535683975974917
My pharmacy and pharmacologists have been good, after initial bollockings. However there is the usual continuous coughing of freshers flu (I hope).
Our uni approach to masks is that the students wear them to protect the lecturers. They are not doing it anywhere else, so the study should be which academics get ill...
One lecturer wearing an FFP3 or 100 students wearing a rag-tag collection of face coverings.
Which is more effective?
It depends who has Covid.
If it's one of the students, then it'll be the ragtag of face coverings. If it's the lecturer, then it'll be the FFP3.
Anecdatum: in my 10:00 biology lecture, 95% mask observance by students. In the 11:00 criminology lecture that followed, about 5% (and LOTS of coughing and spluttering). Has anyone else noticed discipline-related patterns of mask wearing? Someone could do an easy study of this! https://twitter.com/matthewcobb/status/1447535683975974917
My pharmacy and pharmacologists have been good, after initial bollockings. However there is the usual continuous coughing of freshers flu (I hope).
Our uni approach to masks is that the students wear them to protect the lecturers. They are not doing it anywhere else, so the study should be which academics get ill...
One lecturer wearing an FFP3 or 100 students wearing a rag-tag collection of face coverings.
Which is more effective?
As an occasional lecturer with experience of students, I'd say the lecturer is always more effective.
On topic, note there was no option in the first question for "The UK should stop wasting money on this woke rubbish when taxes are at a record high, hospitals have millions on their wasting lists and lots of old people can't heat their homes".
It was just, do you want to spend lots of money on our issue, or do you want to bankrupt yourself on our issue? Or don't you know?
The expression "We can't afford not to......" found in this slewed survey, always sounds like a decent knockdown argument but it isn't. Its frequent application is a discussion stopper, meaningless and should invite deeper questioning. Like How much. Where from. Which budgets do you cut to do it and by how much? etc
Indeed. I am not a climate change denier at all but these questions are so simplistic and superficial as to barely deserve an answer. They are the equivalent of cake. We are all pretty much pro having cake and pro the eating of cake, as Boris has pointed out.
A majority of Lib Dem and Labour voters thought putting 1% on NI to fund the NHS was a good idea when polled but, when the government did it, their keyboards were on fire
Blimey, that doesn't sound very eco-friendly.
Actually you are right. I found the hostility to a Tory government putting up taxes to fund additional public expenditure on health and social care from the left quite bewildering. The idea that it was a con and all of this money will end up being spent on health instead was a particularly interesting example of doublethink.
Credit to @Chelyabinsk for remembering the previous polling on the matter. Incredible really, they would rather a government they dont like not do things they think are good ideas. What a sad state of affairs
I think that on both sides there are people who would rather the country suffer if the wrong side is in power.
On topic, if anything’s going to get Johnson this year or next, it’s going to be rising utility and fuel bills, to pay for what David Cameron ended up describing as the “Green Crap”.
Those who live in Wokingham might not care too much about the bills, but those in Warrington and Workington certainly do.
Given that the rise in fuel bills is largely down to the increasing cost of fossil fuels, it's hard to see why anyone would support those advocating continued reliance on fossil fuels!
It seems obvious that we should be moving (and should have been moving) to renewable energy sources as quickly as possible in order to reduce costs and our dependence on imported fuel as well as to mitigate climate change.
On topic, if anything’s going to get Johnson this year or next, it’s going to be rising utility and fuel bills, to pay for what David Cameron ended up describing as the “Green Crap”.
Those who live in Wokingham might not care too much about the bills, but those in Warrington and Workington certainly do.
Yeah its going to be the yellow vests on steroids, people will see it as an elite plot to prevent them running cars and gas boilers in favour alternatives that are not particularly green but much more expensive.
There is a major opening for an anti woke, anti "green crap" populist movement. It is interesting how such views, which are very prevalent in society, are barely represented in the political system; almost to the point where you could actually say that democracy is failing.
Off topic, but I remember the days, about a week ago, when the Daily Mail reported that three Labour MPs were about to jump ship and defect to the Tories. Many wise commentators on here had fun identifying the three, and one was congratulated on his/her excellent detective skills.
I do hope the Daily Mail wasn't making it up, but there doesn't seem to have been an update yet.
Hard to imagine that there would be 3 Lab MPs keen to join Tories, but stranger things have happened.
A combination of complacency, lethargy and Woke crap - ‘omg GPT3 might be racist’ - means the west has handed the race to AI to China, and it may already be too late to catch up.
If China dominates AI it dominates the world like no power before it
You should have learnt by now that most people aren’t interested in the really big stories.
We’ve been directly told in the last year that there is definitely ultra tech in our skies and oceans, which either belongs to adversaries of the West or non human intelligence / life forms. And everyone shrugged.
People aren’t going to listen too hard to a senior Pentagon official if he says the US has surrendered technological dominance to China and that a point will be reached (or may already have been reached) when their lead will be insurmountable. Forever.
Cognitive dissonance innit. Much more comfortable to talk about IDS’s majority instead.
Nope - We’ve been directly told in the last year that there is definitely ultra tech in our skies and oceans, which either belongs to adversaries of the West or non human intelligence / life forms. And everyone shrugged. This is not the only two explanations, and it is deluded to say that it is. Something unexplained is not constrained by those explantations alone. They could be proof that we are in a computer simulation which is (a) breaking down or (b) being messed with by bored programmers. It could be God. It could, genuinely be glitches and coincidence and people misinterpreting things.
Fortean Times own Jenny Randles wrote a good piece in this month's issue about how perception skews depending on expectation. For instance someone on a motorway 'sees' a UFO (or UAP if you want) fly over the motorway. Why didn't the other hundreds of drivers see it? Perhaps because they saw the aeroplane, that one observers miss-identified.
I sense you are fully on board with UAP's = aliens, and thats fine. But I think you need to keep your options a bit more open than the two you list.
The simulation theory is pretty plausible yes. But really it is just “God” for Generation Tech. Ultimately all you are describing is an exogenous creator. With a planck length being a pixel, plank time being the refresh rate and the observable universe being the bounds of the graphics engine / sandbox.
In terms of mis-perception. You are right that I am sufficiently persuaded that we are not looking at observation error (or at least not in every case). And so it seems is the DoD.
TBH I have yet to say anything that is beyond the old project Blue Book situation. Don't get me wrong, I'd love it to be aliens more then Kevin Keegan would have loved it if Man Utd had lost, but I just don't see the evidence. And while I keep hearing that people I don't know have seen the 'good stuff', but we can't, I'm stuck thinking of all those tales about area 51...
On topic, note there was no option in the first question for "The UK should stop wasting money on this woke rubbish when taxes are at a record high, hospitals have millions on their wasting lists and lots of old people can't heat their homes".
It was just, do you want to spend lots of money on our issue, or do you want to bankrupt yourself on our issue? Or don't you know?
The expression "We can't afford not to......" found in this slewed survey, always sounds like a decent knockdown argument but it isn't. Its frequent application is a discussion stopper, meaningless and should invite deeper questioning. Like How much. Where from. Which budgets do you cut to do it and by how much? etc
Indeed. I am not a climate change denier at all but these questions are so simplistic and superficial as to barely deserve an answer. They are the equivalent of cake. We are all pretty much pro having cake and pro the eating of cake, as Boris has pointed out.
A majority of Lib Dem and Labour voters thought putting 1% on NI to fund the NHS was a good idea when polled but, when the government did it, their keyboards were on fire
Blimey, that doesn't sound very eco-friendly.
Actually you are right. I found the hostility to a Tory government putting up taxes to fund additional public expenditure on health and social care from the left quite bewildering. The idea that it was a con and all of this money will end up being spent on health instead was a particularly interesting example of doublethink.
That's not fair, and I suspect you know it. Of course the left is in favour of putting up taxes to fund additional expenditure on health and social care. What we opposed was putting up NI, rather than income tax or another form of more progressive taxation.
On your second point, the government was quite clear that in the initial period the money was to be used primarily to help the NHS clear the backlog. It's hardly surprising that there was some scepticism as to whether the money would ever find its way to social care.
On thread - what this tells me is that the proportion of climate sceptics probably doesn't vary all that much by constituency (though it would be interesting to see polling to confirm). We jump through considerable hoops to ensure that the ethnic identities of our representatives are broadly in proportion to the population at large - it doesn't seem unreasonable to me that it should be desirable that the views of MPs are roughly in proportion to the population at large. Which implies a voice for minority opinions such as climate scepticism, albeit a minority one. Which by accident or design appears to be what we have.
Climate sceptics puzzle me. I am not a scientist but the whole thing seems pretty open and shut to me and there appears to be a broad consensus across scientific opinion. So I wonder, what do climate sceptics really think? That the climate isn't warming? I can see it with my own eyes, and measurements of temperature seem to back up this impression very convincingly. Do they think that this is all lies? That the climate is warming but it's nothing to do with human activity? This seems even less plausible. The planet seems to be warming up at unprecedented speed and at a time that correlates perfectly with human activity that models predict should be having this effect. That the greenhouse gases theory isn't correct? The story seems highly plausible, whether conceptually or if you put it through a complex climate model. That scientists don't understand their own models and instruments? It's possible, but seems implausible that some random uninformed punter understands them better. That scientists are engaged in a vast conspiracy? Unlikely if you understand how science operates. If anyone was going to fund a conspiracy here, fossil fuel interests seem most plausible - they have deep pockets and strong vested interests. That the whole thing is real but there's no point doing anything to stop it? This is the craziest take of all, if you actually think about what life on earth would be like with say a 3 or 4 degree temperature increase. So, like I say, these people are a mystery to me. People are entitled to their own opinions of course, but not their own facts.
The thing that gets me is that most sceptics seem to just flatly deny a link between CO2 (etc) and heating, even though the mechanism is very well understood and demonstrable in a lab, or indeed pretty much anywhere with a source of CO2. Energy comes in from the sun, the earth warms up, the earth radiates energy according to its temperature (which happens to mean in the infra-red). CO2 (etc) are efficient absorbers of radiation those energies and then re-emit in all directions. Much else in the atmosphere is pretty transparent to infrared. So more CO2 (etc) means more of the IR radiaton which would go off into space taking energy with it is absorbed in the atmosphere and then re-radiated in random directions, including back down to the surface.
Now, you can get into all the feedback loops, albedo (changing due to heating - more/less ice, more/fewer clouds, different take up of CO2 depending on temperature etc), arguments about how all those mechanisms work (and that is the source of much uncertainty). But instead your average sceptic just denies the link and starts chatting on about solar cycles and sunspots. It's odd.
Indeed. CO2 rich Venus is hotter than Mercury despite being further away from the sun, and all the solar flares long beloved of the anti global warming crew.
Sure, it’s hard to tease out exact impacts to Earth’s complex weather patterns and biosphere with marginally different CO2 concentrations. But the general thrust that CO2 warms planets is 8-year old level science and I’ve never really understood how people have got away with denying that.
Gentle reminder that #Brexit is important, but still not no.1 priority for the EU. Those whose job it is to focus on Brexit will be following this week's developments closely - the rest will be focused on Poland, new leadership in Central Europe, coalition talks in Germany, etc.
Which is yet another reason to add to the list shared here by @mij_europe the other day (which was basically parotting what I've written here for the past four years) as to why the UK 'holds all the cards' in these forthcoming negotiations.
The UK government cares passionately about what is going on and speak with a single voice. The EU's 27 governments do not.
That thread suggested that the EU had gone so far and no further, and that any rejection from Frost will lead to a trade war.
I agree with the general point though, that the U.K. “holds most of the cards” on NI.
I suspect Leavers will find the EU is stronger than they think and Remainers will find the EU is not as nice as they think.
I don't think the EU will immediately suspend the TCA, but they and member states can cause plenty of damage from the off, if they want to, which seems to be the case.
The UK can and will retaliate, but the effect will be less, except perhaps for Ireland
Why do you think the EU didn't follow through on its initial ultimatum not to ratify the TCA until the UK fully implemented the protocol?
Because as I have said previously, the UK not implementing the Protocol is something they can ignore for a very long time. Consciously breaching a just agreed treaty isn't something they can accept. It doesn't have anything to do with Ireland - most member states will be on the same page on this.
Article 16 is part of the treaty. How does using it constitute breaching the treaty?
I justly invoke part of a treaty You are renaging on promises He is an international outlaw
Yep. The mercurial nature of Article 16. If invoked by the EU over vaccines it's an outrageous abuse of the Treaty. If invoked by the UK over the Irish Sea border it's a justifiable interpretation of the Treaty. The truth is both are an abuse. Those who condemn the second and excuse the first are quisling ultra remainer 5th columnists like Devious Grevious. And those who condemn the first and excuse/support the second are hard leaver nutjobs who see the UK/EU relationship as a forever war where we have God on our side. There are, as it happens, rather more of the latter types on PB.com.
The EU invoking over vaccines was an outrageous abuse. The conditions for invocation are explicitly set out.
The invocation conditions were not met with UvdL invoked it. They are met now.
Everyone on all sides agrees that diversion of trade is happening, the pro-EU side consider it a good thing and evidence of "Brexit being bad" but if its happening that's the condition met for invocation. You can't deny that.
Yep, a perfect illustration of what I said -
"And those who condemn the first and excuse/support the second are hard leaver nutjobs who see the UK/EU relationship as a forever war where we have God on our side."
This is a piece of cake this morning.
Except I'm an entirely rational and moderate Leaver who has been shown to be right time and again.
Do you deny that diversion of trade is happening at the minute? Yes or no? Do you deny that diversion of trade is an entirely legitimate trigger? Yes or no?
If you can't answer these two simple questions, you show yourself off to be the trolling hypocrite you are.
In my years on here I struggle to recall you calling anything significant to do with Brexit right. What you mainly do is churn out simple simon, hard leaver, Brit Nat propaganda, then strain every sinew to interpret events as being a vindication of it, in the process and where necessary (which is often) rewriting both what you previously said, and why you previously said it, and what has actually happened.
As to A16, what is relevant is the existence, nature, extent of the problems being caused by the agreed NI Protocol. This can't be boiled down to the noddy "yes/no" multiple choice couplet you present here. The actual "yes/no" question is - are the problems of such thorniness and magnitude as to justify suspending the Protocol or reneging on it? And to this the objectively best (non-quisling, non-hardleaver-nutjob) answer is No.
Philip is highly suggestible. I legitimately insisted on a Y/N answer about something else yesterday, and he has taken up the idea and run with it. It is of course usually deployed fallaciously in "Have you stopped beating your wife?" type questions, as here.
My response to most of his posts these days is from Frank N. Furter:
"How forceful you are, Philip. Such a perfect specimen of manhood. So... dominant. You must be awfully proud of him, Mrs Thompson."
When he got schooled a few weeks ago on the lump of labour fallacy he was committing, he starting referring to the fallacy himself, trying to twist it to support his own point of view. It's sad more than anything.
Hm. The lump of labour fallacy is itself something of a fallacy. Or, it exists, at the macro level. Granted, as the supply of labour increases, the supply of jobs there are to do also increases. But it takes a long, long time to filter through, and labour is poorer in the short term and certainly no more rich in the long term. It is of no comfort to an individual low wage worker whose wages are being held down by a limitless supply of unskilled labour that in the long run that labour will also create a demand for more unskilled labour.
I thought that too. ie the government approach of restricting labour to drive up wages is economically illiterate but there would be a lengthy drag while employers tried to stay in business at previous staffing levels.
In fact the adjustment seems to be quite quick, as far as the sketchy evidence goes.
For all the economic expertise of our Brexiters on here they have failed to grasp the simplest of economic facts.
For them it is simple - restrictions on labour = wages up = prices up hurrah! Let's all pay ourselves more.
They ignore (to be charitable) or do not appreciate that restrictions on labour will shift the demand curve leftwards which will have an effect on prices and hence an equilibrium will be reached at a lower price point hence profitability will decrease hence wage rises will reverse hence we are back where we started.
Quite the opposite, I've mentioned that factor repeatedly. As have others. Except it won't mean that we end up back where we started, since where we started was a so-called 'labour shortage'. The price will go up because it needs to do so, and demand will drop accordingly and the new equilibrium will thus be higher up the price axis than where it is now, but with demand lower on its axis than it is now.
In case you've forgotten we've had a conversation recently along the lines of saying that 300,000 HGV drivers can't do the work for 400,000 drivers - and I said that's true, but if the price for drivers goes up recruiting eg 50,000 new drivers then 350,000 drivers can do the work of 350,000 drivers.
Demand going down is an inevitable consequence of price changes, but since demand is greater than supply at the minute that's required to reach equilibrium it isn't a flaw.
Each of those HGV drivers (and also for that matter those that are now circumventing the UK) contribute to aggregate demand, which will therefore decline with concomitant effects on the price level and profitability. As to your labour shortages and increased wages, that will as you accept result in an increased price level or lower profitability. That will also affect demand for goods and labour. Unemployment is not higher than pre-pandemic (4.6% vs 4.0%) so upwards wage pressure will be to an extent mitigated.
But if wages do rise, which can certainly be a good thing (your wages up 4.1%, inflation up 4.0% happiness scenario), where does that leave our export competitiveness.
You are a trained economist but only choose to see the factors that suit your argument.
You seem on the brink of teetering headlong into a fallacy here. The current aggregate demand is with the 300,000 HGV drivers, not 400,000.
It is an economic truism that there is no fixed amount of jobs or labour. We've supposedly been "short of labour" for the best part of twenty years since very generous in-work benefits and free movement for Eastern Europe were introduced by Brown. In that time our population has increased by ten million people. If we're "short of labour" then how come the ten million people who've arrived haven't filled the shortage?
Because you can't fill a shortage via immigration on aggregate, any more than you can cause job losses on aggregate by having immigration either (the "they're stealing our jobs" fallacy).
If you import 100k new HGV drivers, and new abattoir staff, and new everything else, then those drivers and everyone else would increase aggregate demand and lo and behold there will still be a labour shortage. Then we'd be back to saying 400k drivers aren't enough to do the job of 500k.
The reason there's a shortage isn't because there's a shortage of people, its because the prices are out of equilibrium. Trying to fill the shortage by bringing in more people hasn't fixed the root cause of the problem as to why prices are out of equilibrium (since its not just 1 sector needing people) so the problem has never been resolved.
My point is nothing to do with the lump of labour fallacy.
It was a simple one - first of all, plenty on here are lauding the fact that eg immigrants returning to whence they came has resulted in wages increasing for the remaining indigenous population. However immigrants leaving the UK will have an effect on aggregate demand, thereby nullifying any supposed benefit in higher wages, and thereby shifting the demand curve leftwards.
Alternatively, under your Micawber scenario of wages rising by 4.1% and inflation of 4.0% (us all paying ourselves more - hurrah) then first of course no one is any richer and there will be losers whose wage rise less than 4% - or ok a real wage rise of 0.1% (2x hurrah!) - and secondly our export competitiveness takes a huge hit.
I think you're getting two things mixed up.
Firstly I'm absolutely not lauding the fact that anyone has returned, indeed I don't expect that many people have returned and I expect when the Census (which was taken well into the pandemic and post-Brexit) will show there's more people in the country than we thought.
However the point is that anyone who has arrived is already here, anyone who is left is already gone. Aggregate demand today is based on those figures, its not going to suddenly fall off or increase because of the people who've already moved. The labour shortage isn't going to go away due to people who've already left, any more than in recent years its not been able to be filled because of people who've arrived.
You can't fill a shortage (or eliminate one) by either immigration or emigration, because its like a dog chasing its tail. No matter how fast the dog runs (or how many people net arrive or leave) the target is moving in tandem with it, because its attached. The "shortage" has been with us for two decades since in-work benefits and limitless immigration of third world people on minimum wage creating a systemic imbalance in the labour market. We've spent decades chasing our own tale as a nation.
For your final points: no matter what policy we have there'll always be some winner and some losers, nothing new in that, overall a real wage rise is a good thing (and more than people on median incomes have had for past two decades) and secondly it won't be a huge hit for our competitiveness, it will be a relatively minor one. If the increase in labour costs leads to investment bringing about improved productivity and improved efficiency then that could actually boost our competitiveness not hit it.
On topic, note there was no option in the first question for "The UK should stop wasting money on this woke rubbish when taxes are at a record high, hospitals have millions on their wasting lists and lots of old people can't heat their homes".
It was just, do you want to spend lots of money on our issue, or do you want to bankrupt yourself on our issue? Or don't you know?
The expression "We can't afford not to......" found in this slewed survey, always sounds like a decent knockdown argument but it isn't. Its frequent application is a discussion stopper, meaningless and should invite deeper questioning. Like How much. Where from. Which budgets do you cut to do it and by how much? etc
Indeed. I am not a climate change denier at all but these questions are so simplistic and superficial as to barely deserve an answer. They are the equivalent of cake. We are all pretty much pro having cake and pro the eating of cake, as Boris has pointed out.
A majority of Lib Dem and Labour voters thought putting 1% on NI to fund the NHS was a good idea when polled but, when the government did it, their keyboards were on fire
Blimey, that doesn't sound very eco-friendly.
Actually you are right. I found the hostility to a Tory government putting up taxes to fund additional public expenditure on health and social care from the left quite bewildering. The idea that it was a con and all of this money will end up being spent on health instead was a particularly interesting example of doublethink.
Why the surprise - when a Conservative government puts up taxes, it is for EvulToryScumFRacistSpending(TM, patent pending), as opposed to that nice ProgressiveSpending.
On thread - what this tells me is that the proportion of climate sceptics probably doesn't vary all that much by constituency (though it would be interesting to see polling to confirm). We jump through considerable hoops to ensure that the ethnic identities of our representatives are broadly in proportion to the population at large - it doesn't seem unreasonable to me that it should be desirable that the views of MPs are roughly in proportion to the population at large. Which implies a voice for minority opinions such as climate scepticism, albeit a minority one. Which by accident or design appears to be what we have.
Climate sceptics puzzle me. I am not a scientist but the whole thing seems pretty open and shut to me and there appears to be a broad consensus across scientific opinion. So I wonder, what do climate sceptics really think? That the climate isn't warming? I can see it with my own eyes, and measurements of temperature seem to back up this impression very convincingly. Do they think that this is all lies? That the climate is warming but it's nothing to do with human activity? This seems even less plausible. The planet seems to be warming up at unprecedented speed and at a time that correlates perfectly with human activity that models predict should be having this effect. That the greenhouse gases theory isn't correct? The story seems highly plausible, whether conceptually or if you put it through a complex climate model. That scientists don't understand their own models and instruments? It's possible, but seems implausible that some random uninformed punter understands them better. That scientists are engaged in a vast conspiracy? Unlikely if you understand how science operates. If anyone was going to fund a conspiracy here, fossil fuel interests seem most plausible - they have deep pockets and strong vested interests. That the whole thing is real but there's no point doing anything to stop it? This is the craziest take of all, if you actually think about what life on earth would be like with say a 3 or 4 degree temperature increase. So, like I say, these people are a mystery to me. People are entitled to their own opinions of course, but not their own facts.
I am a luke warmer - I believe the climate is warming, primarily because of our actions, but I also think some of the evidence used is poor science (tortured tree rings for instance) and that too often the doomiest predictions are the ones that get attention (and there is a clear link here to Covid and the behaviour of iSage). Ultimately we need a circular economy, based on sustainable behaviour, probably with a lot fewer humans, although that tends to fix itself as societies become more prosperous (see birthrates in the West). All (or most) of the things to mitigate against climate change are good for us in the long run, but I don't believe in the end of the world apocolyptic prophesies I see all the time.
I am more of a stepper. What worries me is that we are going along a path on the edge of a cliff with a blindfold of ignorance on and sooner or later we are going to take a step into the void with catastrophic consequences. We do not know when that step will be taken or what it will comprise, it might be the release of gases stored in the permafrost or under the oceans or something else entirely. What we do know is that the void is there and yet still we walk forward, blindly.
Scepticism is usually a good thing. It isn't good when everyone has the same opinion on a particular subject.
Scepticism is a great thing. You can't be a good scientist without it.
However, many that claim to be sceptics seem to show a great deal of credulity for any alternative explanation of measured temperature anomalies.
(Oh and there is masses of disagreement within the field on climate science - not so much on whether there's a problem, but the extent, which areas hit hardest, the effectiveness of different mitigations - or at least, there was a decade or so back when I was working on the edge of this area, not the models, but nuts and bolts of historical measurement)
On thread - what this tells me is that the proportion of climate sceptics probably doesn't vary all that much by constituency (though it would be interesting to see polling to confirm). We jump through considerable hoops to ensure that the ethnic identities of our representatives are broadly in proportion to the population at large - it doesn't seem unreasonable to me that it should be desirable that the views of MPs are roughly in proportion to the population at large. Which implies a voice for minority opinions such as climate scepticism, albeit a minority one. Which by accident or design appears to be what we have.
Climate sceptics puzzle me. I am not a scientist but the whole thing seems pretty open and shut to me and there appears to be a broad consensus across scientific opinion. So I wonder, what do climate sceptics really think? That the climate isn't warming? I can see it with my own eyes, and measurements of temperature seem to back up this impression very convincingly. Do they think that this is all lies? That the climate is warming but it's nothing to do with human activity? This seems even less plausible. The planet seems to be warming up at unprecedented speed and at a time that correlates perfectly with human activity that models predict should be having this effect. That the greenhouse gases theory isn't correct? The story seems highly plausible, whether conceptually or if you put it through a complex climate model. That scientists don't understand their own models and instruments? It's possible, but seems implausible that some random uninformed punter understands them better. That scientists are engaged in a vast conspiracy? Unlikely if you understand how science operates. If anyone was going to fund a conspiracy here, fossil fuel interests seem most plausible - they have deep pockets and strong vested interests. That the whole thing is real but there's no point doing anything to stop it? This is the craziest take of all, if you actually think about what life on earth would be like with say a 3 or 4 degree temperature increase. So, like I say, these people are a mystery to me. People are entitled to their own opinions of course, but not their own facts.
If people don't like the political implications of accepting that something is true then they will practice cognitive dissonance instead, so they don't have to face up to them.
That's why climate action needs to be depoliticised in order for us to go as fast as possible, and not attached to ecosocialism.
On topic, note there was no option in the first question for "The UK should stop wasting money on this woke rubbish when taxes are at a record high, hospitals have millions on their wasting lists and lots of old people can't heat their homes".
It was just, do you want to spend lots of money on our issue, or do you want to bankrupt yourself on our issue? Or don't you know?
The expression "We can't afford not to......" found in this slewed survey, always sounds like a decent knockdown argument but it isn't. Its frequent application is a discussion stopper, meaningless and should invite deeper questioning. Like How much. Where from. Which budgets do you cut to do it and by how much? etc
Indeed. I am not a climate change denier at all but these questions are so simplistic and superficial as to barely deserve an answer. They are the equivalent of cake. We are all pretty much pro having cake and pro the eating of cake, as Boris has pointed out.
A majority of Lib Dem and Labour voters thought putting 1% on NI to fund the NHS was a good idea when polled but, when the government did it, their keyboards were on fire
Blimey, that doesn't sound very eco-friendly.
Actually you are right. I found the hostility to a Tory government putting up taxes to fund additional public expenditure on health and social care from the left quite bewildering. The idea that it was a con and all of this money will end up being spent on health instead was a particularly interesting example of doublethink.
That's not fair, and I suspect you know it. Of course the left is in favour of putting up taxes to fund additional expenditure on health and social care. What we opposed was putting up NI, rather than income tax or another form of more progressive taxation.
On your second point, the government was quite clear that in the initial period the money was to be used primarily to help the NHS clear the backlog. It's hardly surprising that there was some scepticism as to whether the money would ever find its way to social care.
But the polling specifically said it was NI that would go up, and the left wing parties voters said they thought it was a good idea. Then the governmet did it, and the left wing voters surveyed were up in arms! Thats the point
On topic, note there was no option in the first question for "The UK should stop wasting money on this woke rubbish when taxes are at a record high, hospitals have millions on their wasting lists and lots of old people can't heat their homes".
It was just, do you want to spend lots of money on our issue, or do you want to bankrupt yourself on our issue? Or don't you know?
Is "woke rubbish" the climate change denier name for recycling bins?
Surely for the stuff that goes into them? Rubbish demanding its self-claimed right to self-indentify as feedstock for future cans, boxes, bottles etc...
“Rubbish” is a social construct. One man’s rubbish, is another man’s shelter construction material.
On thread - what this tells me is that the proportion of climate sceptics probably doesn't vary all that much by constituency (though it would be interesting to see polling to confirm). We jump through considerable hoops to ensure that the ethnic identities of our representatives are broadly in proportion to the population at large - it doesn't seem unreasonable to me that it should be desirable that the views of MPs are roughly in proportion to the population at large. Which implies a voice for minority opinions such as climate scepticism, albeit a minority one. Which by accident or design appears to be what we have.
Climate sceptics puzzle me. I am not a scientist but the whole thing seems pretty open and shut to me and there appears to be a broad consensus across scientific opinion. So I wonder, what do climate sceptics really think? That the climate isn't warming? I can see it with my own eyes, and measurements of temperature seem to back up this impression very convincingly. Do they think that this is all lies? That the climate is warming but it's nothing to do with human activity? This seems even less plausible. The planet seems to be warming up at unprecedented speed and at a time that correlates perfectly with human activity that models predict should be having this effect. That the greenhouse gases theory isn't correct? The story seems highly plausible, whether conceptually or if you put it through a complex climate model. That scientists don't understand their own models and instruments? It's possible, but seems implausible that some random uninformed punter understands them better. That scientists are engaged in a vast conspiracy? Unlikely if you understand how science operates. If anyone was going to fund a conspiracy here, fossil fuel interests seem most plausible - they have deep pockets and strong vested interests. That the whole thing is real but there's no point doing anything to stop it? This is the craziest take of all, if you actually think about what life on earth would be like with say a 3 or 4 degree temperature increase. So, like I say, these people are a mystery to me. People are entitled to their own opinions of course, but not their own facts.
The thing that gets me is that most sceptics seem to just flatly deny a link between CO2 (etc) and heating, even though the mechanism is very well understood and demonstrable in a lab, or indeed pretty much anywhere with a source of CO2. Energy comes in from the sun, the earth warms up, the earth radiates energy according to its temperature (which happens to mean in the infra-red). CO2 (etc) are efficient absorbers of radiation those energies and then re-emit in all directions. Much else in the atmosphere is pretty transparent to infrared. So more CO2 (etc) means more of the IR radiaton which would go off into space taking energy with it is absorbed in the atmosphere and then re-radiated in random directions, including back down to the surface.
Now, you can get into all the feedback loops, albedo (changing due to heating - more/less ice, more/fewer clouds, different take up of CO2 depending on temperature etc), arguments about how all those mechanisms work (and that is the source of much uncertainty). But instead your average sceptic just denies the link and starts chatting on about solar cycles and sunspots. It's odd.
Indeed. CO2 rich Venus is hotter than Mercury despite being further away from the sun, and all the solar flares long beloved of the anti global warming crew.
Sure, it’s hard to tease out exact impacts to Earth’s complex weather patterns and biosphere with marginally different CO2 concentrations. But the general thrust that CO2 warms planets is 8-year old level science and I’ve never really understood how people have got away with denying that.
The biggest question is how much do feedback loops contribute. Climate is not simple, despite the simple idea of more CO2 equals warmer planet. Take water - in itself water vapour is a greenhouse gas, but clouds can also act to screen solar radiation from warming the planet. So a warmer world, with more clouds, may actually cool... As I say, its complicated. Too often past predictions have tended to be too forceful, and we are not well served by scare story media. I don't believe that warming a few degrees means the end of human civilisation, we live across so many different climate zones for that to make any sense, but we should do all we can to avoid habitat loss for worlds plants and animals. Its not their fault we are a greedy, successful, rapacious species.
Ah, Mr Thomspson, I have a small bone to pick with you.
We were discussing house price movements relative to income, and in particular where to start measuring on the Nationwide price-to-incomes scale. We were using the average for 2003 as our starting point... but the EU 8 didn't join until May 2004.
Well yes I quited deliberately picked the price the year before they joined as the starting point.
If you pick at the point of joining you've got the disruption of joining happening (eg if people have already made plans to buy homes to let out to those arriving) and if you pick a point after they've joined then its already even more disrupted too.
Same logic as why you yourself have said it will take years before we can analyse the effects of Brexit. To do so we'll need to then compare years into the future with before Brexit happened.
Looks like Labour and Lib Dem voters complaining about a policy they supported from a government they dislike.
11th January 2017, "Would you support or oppose increasing the basic rate of employees national insurance from 12% to 13% and using the money raised to increase spending on the NHS?"
CON: 55% support / 28% oppose (+27) LAB: 60% support / 22% oppose (+38) LD: 67% support / 23% oppose (+44) TOTAL: 53% support / 26% oppose (+27)
20 July 2021, same question:
CON: 64% support / 23% oppose (+41) LAB: 60% support / 25% oppose (+35) LD: 68% support / 22% oppose (+46) TOTAL: 57% support / 25% oppose (+35)
7 September 2021, "The government has announced a rise of 1.25% on National Insurance, which it says will go towards paying for the NHS and social care. Do you support or oppose this rise?"
CON: 59% support / 35% oppose (+24) LAB: 33% support / 55% oppose (-22) LD: 50% support / 46% oppose (+4) TOTAL: 44% support / 43% oppose (+1)
On topic, note there was no option in the first question for "The UK should stop wasting money on this woke rubbish when taxes are at a record high, hospitals have millions on their wasting lists and lots of old people can't heat their homes".
It was just, do you want to spend lots of money on our issue, or do you want to bankrupt yourself on our issue? Or don't you know?
The expression "We can't afford not to......" found in this slewed survey, always sounds like a decent knockdown argument but it isn't. Its frequent application is a discussion stopper, meaningless and should invite deeper questioning. Like How much. Where from. Which budgets do you cut to do it and by how much? etc
Indeed. I am not a climate change denier at all but these questions are so simplistic and superficial as to barely deserve an answer. They are the equivalent of cake. We are all pretty much pro having cake and pro the eating of cake, as Boris has pointed out.
A majority of Lib Dem and Labour voters thought putting 1% on NI to fund the NHS was a good idea when polled but, when the government did it, their keyboards were on fire
Blimey, that doesn't sound very eco-friendly.
Actually you are right. I found the hostility to a Tory government putting up taxes to fund additional public expenditure on health and social care from the left quite bewildering. The idea that it was a con and all of this money will end up being spent on health instead was a particularly interesting example of doublethink.
That's not fair, and I suspect you know it. Of course the left is in favour of putting up taxes to fund additional expenditure on health and social care. What we opposed was putting up NI, rather than income tax or another form of more progressive taxation.
On your second point, the government was quite clear that in the initial period the money was to be used primarily to help the NHS clear the backlog. It's hardly surprising that there was some scepticism as to whether the money would ever find its way to social care.
If the critique had simply been it should have been IT instead that would be fair enough (and I would agree). But there was waves of irrational anger directed towards the idea. And doesn't the left think we need to spend a lot more on health? In which case what is the problem?
Gentle reminder that #Brexit is important, but still not no.1 priority for the EU. Those whose job it is to focus on Brexit will be following this week's developments closely - the rest will be focused on Poland, new leadership in Central Europe, coalition talks in Germany, etc.
Which is yet another reason to add to the list shared here by @mij_europe the other day (which was basically parotting what I've written here for the past four years) as to why the UK 'holds all the cards' in these forthcoming negotiations.
The UK government cares passionately about what is going on and speak with a single voice. The EU's 27 governments do not.
That thread suggested that the EU had gone so far and no further, and that any rejection from Frost will lead to a trade war.
I agree with the general point though, that the U.K. “holds most of the cards” on NI.
I suspect Leavers will find the EU is stronger than they think and Remainers will find the EU is not as nice as they think.
I don't think the EU will immediately suspend the TCA, but they and member states can cause plenty of damage from the off, if they want to, which seems to be the case.
The UK can and will retaliate, but the effect will be less, except perhaps for Ireland
Why do you think the EU didn't follow through on its initial ultimatum not to ratify the TCA until the UK fully implemented the protocol?
Because as I have said previously, the UK not implementing the Protocol is something they can ignore for a very long time. Consciously breaching a just agreed treaty isn't something they can accept. It doesn't have anything to do with Ireland - most member states will be on the same page on this.
Article 16 is part of the treaty. How does using it constitute breaching the treaty?
I justly invoke part of a treaty You are renaging on promises He is an international outlaw
Yep. The mercurial nature of Article 16. If invoked by the EU over vaccines it's an outrageous abuse of the Treaty. If invoked by the UK over the Irish Sea border it's a justifiable interpretation of the Treaty. The truth is both are an abuse. Those who condemn the second and excuse the first are quisling ultra remainer 5th columnists like Devious Grevious. And those who condemn the first and excuse/support the second are hard leaver nutjobs who see the UK/EU relationship as a forever war where we have God on our side. There are, as it happens, rather more of the latter types on PB.com.
The EU invoking over vaccines was an outrageous abuse. The conditions for invocation are explicitly set out.
The invocation conditions were not met with UvdL invoked it. They are met now.
Everyone on all sides agrees that diversion of trade is happening, the pro-EU side consider it a good thing and evidence of "Brexit being bad" but if its happening that's the condition met for invocation. You can't deny that.
Yep, a perfect illustration of what I said -
"And those who condemn the first and excuse/support the second are hard leaver nutjobs who see the UK/EU relationship as a forever war where we have God on our side."
This is a piece of cake this morning.
Except I'm an entirely rational and moderate Leaver who has been shown to be right time and again.
Do you deny that diversion of trade is happening at the minute? Yes or no? Do you deny that diversion of trade is an entirely legitimate trigger? Yes or no?
If you can't answer these two simple questions, you show yourself off to be the trolling hypocrite you are.
In my years on here I struggle to recall you calling anything significant to do with Brexit right. What you mainly do is churn out simple simon, hard leaver, Brit Nat propaganda, then strain every sinew to interpret events as being a vindication of it, in the process and where necessary (which is often) rewriting both what you previously said, and why you previously said it, and what has actually happened.
As to A16, what is relevant is the existence, nature, extent of the problems being caused by the agreed NI Protocol. This can't be boiled down to the noddy "yes/no" multiple choice couplet you present here. The actual "yes/no" question is - are the problems of such thorniness and magnitude as to justify suspending the Protocol or reneging on it? And to this the objectively best (non-quisling, non-hardleaver-nutjob) answer is No.
Philip is highly suggestible. I legitimately insisted on a Y/N answer about something else yesterday, and he has taken up the idea and run with it. It is of course usually deployed fallaciously in "Have you stopped beating your wife?" type questions, as here.
My response to most of his posts these days is from Frank N. Furter:
"How forceful you are, Philip. Such a perfect specimen of manhood. So... dominant. You must be awfully proud of him, Mrs Thompson."
When he got schooled a few weeks ago on the lump of labour fallacy he was committing, he starting referring to the fallacy himself, trying to twist it to support his own point of view. It's sad more than anything.
Hm. The lump of labour fallacy is itself something of a fallacy. Or, it exists, at the macro level. Granted, as the supply of labour increases, the supply of jobs there are to do also increases. But it takes a long, long time to filter through, and labour is poorer in the short term and certainly no more rich in the long term. It is of no comfort to an individual low wage worker whose wages are being held down by a limitless supply of unskilled labour that in the long run that labour will also create a demand for more unskilled labour.
I thought that too. ie the government approach of restricting labour to drive up wages is economically illiterate but there would be a lengthy drag while employers tried to stay in business at previous staffing levels.
In fact the adjustment seems to be quite quick, as far as the sketchy evidence goes.
For all the economic expertise of our Brexiters on here they have failed to grasp the simplest of economic facts.
For them it is simple - restrictions on labour = wages up = prices up hurrah! Let's all pay ourselves more.
They ignore (to be charitable) or do not appreciate that restrictions on labour will shift the demand curve leftwards which will have an effect on prices and hence an equilibrium will be reached at a lower price point hence profitability will decrease hence wage rises will reverse hence we are back where we started.
Quite the opposite, I've mentioned that factor repeatedly. As have others. Except it won't mean that we end up back where we started, since where we started was a so-called 'labour shortage'. The price will go up because it needs to do so, and demand will drop accordingly and the new equilibrium will thus be higher up the price axis than where it is now, but with demand lower on its axis than it is now.
In case you've forgotten we've had a conversation recently along the lines of saying that 300,000 HGV drivers can't do the work for 400,000 drivers - and I said that's true, but if the price for drivers goes up recruiting eg 50,000 new drivers then 350,000 drivers can do the work of 350,000 drivers.
Demand going down is an inevitable consequence of price changes, but since demand is greater than supply at the minute that's required to reach equilibrium it isn't a flaw.
Each of those HGV drivers (and also for that matter those that are now circumventing the UK) contribute to aggregate demand, which will therefore decline with concomitant effects on the price level and profitability. As to your labour shortages and increased wages, that will as you accept result in an increased price level or lower profitability. That will also affect demand for goods and labour. Unemployment is not higher than pre-pandemic (4.6% vs 4.0%) so upwards wage pressure will be to an extent mitigated.
But if wages do rise, which can certainly be a good thing (your wages up 4.1%, inflation up 4.0% happiness scenario), where does that leave our export competitiveness.
You are a trained economist but only choose to see the factors that suit your argument.
You seem on the brink of teetering headlong into a fallacy here. The current aggregate demand is with the 300,000 HGV drivers, not 400,000.
It is an economic truism that there is no fixed amount of jobs or labour. We've supposedly been "short of labour" for the best part of twenty years since very generous in-work benefits and free movement for Eastern Europe were introduced by Brown. In that time our population has increased by ten million people. If we're "short of labour" then how come the ten million people who've arrived haven't filled the shortage?
Because you can't fill a shortage via immigration on aggregate, any more than you can cause job losses on aggregate by having immigration either (the "they're stealing our jobs" fallacy).
If you import 100k new HGV drivers, and new abattoir staff, and new everything else, then those drivers and everyone else would increase aggregate demand and lo and behold there will still be a labour shortage. Then we'd be back to saying 400k drivers aren't enough to do the job of 500k.
The reason there's a shortage isn't because there's a shortage of people, its because the prices are out of equilibrium. Trying to fill the shortage by bringing in more people hasn't fixed the root cause of the problem as to why prices are out of equilibrium (since its not just 1 sector needing people) so the problem has never been resolved.
My point is nothing to do with the lump of labour fallacy.
It was a simple one - first of all, plenty on here are lauding the fact that eg immigrants returning to whence they came has resulted in wages increasing for the remaining indigenous population. However immigrants leaving the UK will have an effect on aggregate demand, thereby nullifying any supposed benefit in higher wages, and thereby shifting the demand curve leftwards.
Alternatively, under your Micawber scenario of wages rising by 4.1% and inflation of 4.0% (us all paying ourselves more - hurrah) then first of course no one is any richer and there will be losers whose wage rise less than 4% - or ok a real wage rise of 0.1% (2x hurrah!) - and secondly our export competitiveness takes a huge hit.
I think you're getting two things mixed up.
Firstly I'm absolutely not lauding the fact that anyone has returned, indeed I don't expect that many people have returned and I expect when the Census (which was taken well into the pandemic and post-Brexit) will show there's more people in the country than we thought.
However the point is that anyone who has arrived is already here, anyone who is left is already gone. Aggregate demand today is based on those figures, its not going to suddenly fall off or increase because of the people who've already moved. The labour shortage isn't going to go away due to people who've already left, any more than in recent years its not been able to be filled because of people who've arrived.
You can't fill a shortage (or eliminate one) by either immigration or emigration, because its like a dog chasing its tail. No matter how fast the dog runs (or how many people net arrive or leave) the target is moving in tandem with it, because its attached. The "shortage" has been with us for two decades since in-work benefits and limitless immigration of third world people on minimum wage creating a systemic imbalance in the labour market. We've spent decades chasing our own tale as a nation.
For your final points: no matter what policy we have there'll always be some winner and some losers, nothing new in that, overall a real wage rise is a good thing (and more than people on median incomes have had for past two decades) and secondly it won't be a huge hit for our competitiveness, it will be a relatively minor one. If the increase in labour costs leads to investment bringing about improved productivity and improved efficiency then that could actually boost our competitiveness not hit it.
I don't think you can fill or eliminate shortages with immigration or emigration; I was talking about the rejoicing (perhaps not from you) of the fact that immigrants returning = Brexit = higher wages for the indigenous population. If that was not your point then that is fair enough - I am not sure why the idea of hurrah wages are going up and if it wasn't about Brexit I'm not going to trawl back through the posts to see why it was.
And yes absolutely, productivity gains are the only way to square the circle.
On topic, note there was no option in the first question for "The UK should stop wasting money on this woke rubbish when taxes are at a record high, hospitals have millions on their wasting lists and lots of old people can't heat their homes".
It was just, do you want to spend lots of money on our issue, or do you want to bankrupt yourself on our issue? Or don't you know?
The expression "We can't afford not to......" found in this slewed survey, always sounds like a decent knockdown argument but it isn't. Its frequent application is a discussion stopper, meaningless and should invite deeper questioning. Like How much. Where from. Which budgets do you cut to do it and by how much? etc
Indeed. I am not a climate change denier at all but these questions are so simplistic and superficial as to barely deserve an answer. They are the equivalent of cake. We are all pretty much pro having cake and pro the eating of cake, as Boris has pointed out.
A majority of Lib Dem and Labour voters thought putting 1% on NI to fund the NHS was a good idea when polled but, when the government did it, their keyboards were on fire
Blimey, that doesn't sound very eco-friendly.
Actually you are right. I found the hostility to a Tory government putting up taxes to fund additional public expenditure on health and social care from the left quite bewildering. The idea that it was a con and all of this money will end up being spent on health instead was a particularly interesting example of doublethink.
That's not fair, and I suspect you know it. Of course the left is in favour of putting up taxes to fund additional expenditure on health and social care. What we opposed was putting up NI, rather than income tax or another form of more progressive taxation.
On your second point, the government was quite clear that in the initial period the money was to be used primarily to help the NHS clear the backlog. It's hardly surprising that there was some scepticism as to whether the money would ever find its way to social care.
But the polling specifically said it was NI that would go up, and the left wing parties voters said they thought it was a good idea. Then the governmet did it, and the left wing voters surveyed were up in arms! Thats the point
I don't know the poll, and polling is what it is. But did the poll give 'left-wing voters' a choice? For example, "given a choice between a) raising NI, and b) taxing the rich more, to raise the same amount of funds, which would you choose?" It's hardly surprising that an NI rise was favoured if it was the only option on offer.
Edit - now I've seen the poll, it's what I said. Raising NI was the only option given.
On topic, if anything’s going to get Johnson this year or next, it’s going to be rising utility and fuel bills, to pay for what David Cameron ended up describing as the “Green Crap”.
Those who live in Wokingham might not care too much about the bills, but those in Warrington and Workington certainly do.
I grew up in Wokingham. It is not the town it once was. For the last 10 or more years there has been mass house building making the town much bigger than it ever used to be. As a result there are many new people living there with different political views. In my view Redwood kept his seat at the last election due to fear of Corbyn. Redwood is not popular in Wokingham. I wouldn't be the least surprised if Wokingham went LD at the next election.
On topic, note there was no option in the first question for "The UK should stop wasting money on this woke rubbish when taxes are at a record high, hospitals have millions on their wasting lists and lots of old people can't heat their homes".
It was just, do you want to spend lots of money on our issue, or do you want to bankrupt yourself on our issue? Or don't you know?
The expression "We can't afford not to......" found in this slewed survey, always sounds like a decent knockdown argument but it isn't. Its frequent application is a discussion stopper, meaningless and should invite deeper questioning. Like How much. Where from. Which budgets do you cut to do it and by how much? etc
Indeed. I am not a climate change denier at all but these questions are so simplistic and superficial as to barely deserve an answer. They are the equivalent of cake. We are all pretty much pro having cake and pro the eating of cake, as Boris has pointed out.
A majority of Lib Dem and Labour voters thought putting 1% on NI to fund the NHS was a good idea when polled but, when the government did it, their keyboards were on fire
Blimey, that doesn't sound very eco-friendly.
Actually you are right. I found the hostility to a Tory government putting up taxes to fund additional public expenditure on health and social care from the left quite bewildering. The idea that it was a con and all of this money will end up being spent on health instead was a particularly interesting example of doublethink.
That's not fair, and I suspect you know it. Of course the left is in favour of putting up taxes to fund additional expenditure on health and social care. What we opposed was putting up NI, rather than income tax or another form of more progressive taxation.
On your second point, the government was quite clear that in the initial period the money was to be used primarily to help the NHS clear the backlog. It's hardly surprising that there was some scepticism as to whether the money would ever find its way to social care.
But the polling specifically said it was NI that would go up, and the left wing parties voters said they thought it was a good idea. Then the governmet did it, and the left wing voters surveyed were up in arms! Thats the point
I don't know the poll, and polling is what it is. But did the poll give 'left-wing voters' a choice? For example, "given a choice between a) raising NI, and b) taxing the rich more, to raise the same amount of funds, which would you choose?" It's hardly surprising that an NI rise was favoured if it was the only option on offer.
I have reposted the polls just now. I don't really buy your argument; if you say something is a good idea that you approve of, it's poor form to get angry about it when it is done
To be fair, the LDs were still in favour, just by a lesser margin - it was Labour who have changed their minds completely
On topic, if anything’s going to get Johnson this year or next, it’s going to be rising utility and fuel bills, to pay for what David Cameron ended up describing as the “Green Crap”.
Those who live in Wokingham might not care too much about the bills, but those in Warrington and Workington certainly do.
Aren't rising utility and fuel bills simply the consequence of US natural gas prices going through the roof as drilling stopped during the pandemic? Wholesale electricity prices have risen with gas prices across the EU and the US, as demand came back quicker than natural gas supplies.
Even now, the North America rig count is still about 150 rigs short of where it was pre-pandemic, and even though it's rising at 7-8 a week, (and gas production is finally rising again) it's going to take until early next year before rigs are running at the same quantity as last Jan/Feb, and gas production will probably not exceed previous peaks until next March or April.
In Europe, the real problem appears to be Mr Putin choking supply, in order to get the Nord Stream 2 pipeline approved, so he can screw Ukraine into the ground this winter.
When I am bored I sometimes play a game with PB. I go to a longer comment (avoiding the name at the top) and I read the first 2 or 3 sentences. And then I test myself: I see if I can guess the identity of the commenter from the opinion, syntax, vocabulary, style
To make this game even easier, if a post begins "Well, ..." you have a good chance of telling it's me after one word.
After Boris backing business secretary Kwasi Kwarteng this morning v the Treasury Sky are reporting just now that Kwarteng has submitted a 'formal bid' to the Treasury for assistance for industries hit by the energy price rises
On topic, note there was no option in the first question for "The UK should stop wasting money on this woke rubbish when taxes are at a record high, hospitals have millions on their wasting lists and lots of old people can't heat their homes".
It was just, do you want to spend lots of money on our issue, or do you want to bankrupt yourself on our issue? Or don't you know?
The expression "We can't afford not to......" found in this slewed survey, always sounds like a decent knockdown argument but it isn't. Its frequent application is a discussion stopper, meaningless and should invite deeper questioning. Like How much. Where from. Which budgets do you cut to do it and by how much? etc
Indeed. I am not a climate change denier at all but these questions are so simplistic and superficial as to barely deserve an answer. They are the equivalent of cake. We are all pretty much pro having cake and pro the eating of cake, as Boris has pointed out.
A majority of Lib Dem and Labour voters thought putting 1% on NI to fund the NHS was a good idea when polled but, when the government did it, their keyboards were on fire
Blimey, that doesn't sound very eco-friendly.
Actually you are right. I found the hostility to a Tory government putting up taxes to fund additional public expenditure on health and social care from the left quite bewildering. The idea that it was a con and all of this money will end up being spent on health instead was a particularly interesting example of doublethink.
That's not fair, and I suspect you know it. Of course the left is in favour of putting up taxes to fund additional expenditure on health and social care. What we opposed was putting up NI, rather than income tax or another form of more progressive taxation.
On your second point, the government was quite clear that in the initial period the money was to be used primarily to help the NHS clear the backlog. It's hardly surprising that there was some scepticism as to whether the money would ever find its way to social care.
If the critique had simply been it should have been IT instead that would be fair enough (and I would agree). But there was waves of irrational anger directed towards the idea. And doesn't the left think we need to spend a lot more on health? In which case what is the problem?
The problem is that the left thinks it should come from the highest paid and that the lowest paid are already taxed too much. Of course we need to spend a lot more on health.
On thread - what this tells me is that the proportion of climate sceptics probably doesn't vary all that much by constituency (though it would be interesting to see polling to confirm). We jump through considerable hoops to ensure that the ethnic identities of our representatives are broadly in proportion to the population at large - it doesn't seem unreasonable to me that it should be desirable that the views of MPs are roughly in proportion to the population at large. Which implies a voice for minority opinions such as climate scepticism, albeit a minority one. Which by accident or design appears to be what we have.
Climate sceptics puzzle me. I am not a scientist but the whole thing seems pretty open and shut to me and there appears to be a broad consensus across scientific opinion. So I wonder, what do climate sceptics really think? That the climate isn't warming? I can see it with my own eyes, and measurements of temperature seem to back up this impression very convincingly. Do they think that this is all lies? That the climate is warming but it's nothing to do with human activity? This seems even less plausible. The planet seems to be warming up at unprecedented speed and at a time that correlates perfectly with human activity that models predict should be having this effect. That the greenhouse gases theory isn't correct? The story seems highly plausible, whether conceptually or if you put it through a complex climate model. That scientists don't understand their own models and instruments? It's possible, but seems implausible that some random uninformed punter understands them better. That scientists are engaged in a vast conspiracy? Unlikely if you understand how science operates. If anyone was going to fund a conspiracy here, fossil fuel interests seem most plausible - they have deep pockets and strong vested interests. That the whole thing is real but there's no point doing anything to stop it? This is the craziest take of all, if you actually think about what life on earth would be like with say a 3 or 4 degree temperature increase. So, like I say, these people are a mystery to me. People are entitled to their own opinions of course, but not their own facts.
If people don't like the political implications of accepting that something is true then they will practice cognitive dissonance instead, so they don't have to face up to them.
That's why climate action needs to be depoliticised in order for us to go as fast as possible, and not attached to ecosocialism.
No reason it needs to be.
It's strange, as the stereotype is of conservatives being more climate skeptic, and it does seem like that is the case, but we can all identify plenty of Conservatives (who are also conservative) who are hugely into Green issues.
And you are just As Cs Gs and Ts. How boring does that make you?
I did my under-graduate final year project on creating a self learning Chinese Checkers AI. I am a total believer that we will eventually create a general, passes whatever arbitrary test of sentience you throw at it, maybe even in my lifetimes. I mock idiots who think the Chinese Room thought experiment is an arguement against a conscious AI.
But GPT-3 is not only not it, it is continents away. We are probably going to hit another AI winter in a decade or so as the limitations of current techniques are understood by the people providing the funding.
40-50 years ago Expert Systems were going to replace GPs for diagnosing diseases.
Off topic, but I remember the days, about a week ago, when the Daily Mail reported that three Labour MPs were about to jump ship and defect to the Tories. Many wise commentators on here had fun identifying the three, and one was congratulated on his/her excellent detective skills.
I do hope the Daily Mail wasn't making it up, but there doesn't seem to have been an update yet.
It was the Mail on Sunday, but yes it appears to have come to nothing.
Guido also had a spy, who spotted a Labour MP talking to the MoS hack in a bar in Manchester, so maybe it was just some performance art to try and get a story going.
The plotting for an actual defection wouldn’t have been done in a bar.
On thread - what this tells me is that the proportion of climate sceptics probably doesn't vary all that much by constituency (though it would be interesting to see polling to confirm). We jump through considerable hoops to ensure that the ethnic identities of our representatives are broadly in proportion to the population at large - it doesn't seem unreasonable to me that it should be desirable that the views of MPs are roughly in proportion to the population at large. Which implies a voice for minority opinions such as climate scepticism, albeit a minority one. Which by accident or design appears to be what we have.
Climate sceptics puzzle me. I am not a scientist but the whole thing seems pretty open and shut to me and there appears to be a broad consensus across scientific opinion. So I wonder, what do climate sceptics really think? That the climate isn't warming? I can see it with my own eyes, and measurements of temperature seem to back up this impression very convincingly. Do they think that this is all lies? That the climate is warming but it's nothing to do with human activity? This seems even less plausible. The planet seems to be warming up at unprecedented speed and at a time that correlates perfectly with human activity that models predict should be having this effect. That the greenhouse gases theory isn't correct? The story seems highly plausible, whether conceptually or if you put it through a complex climate model. That scientists don't understand their own models and instruments? It's possible, but seems implausible that some random uninformed punter understands them better. That scientists are engaged in a vast conspiracy? Unlikely if you understand how science operates. If anyone was going to fund a conspiracy here, fossil fuel interests seem most plausible - they have deep pockets and strong vested interests. That the whole thing is real but there's no point doing anything to stop it? This is the craziest take of all, if you actually think about what life on earth would be like with say a 3 or 4 degree temperature increase. So, like I say, these people are a mystery to me. People are entitled to their own opinions of course, but not their own facts.
If people don't like the political implications of accepting that something is true then they will practice cognitive dissonance instead, so they don't have to face up to them.
That's why climate action needs to be depoliticised in order for us to go as fast as possible, and not attached to ecosocialism.
No reason it needs to be.
It's strange, as the stereotype is of conservatives being more climate skeptic, and it does seem like that is the case, but we can all identify plenty of Conservatives (who are also conservative) who are hugely into Green issues.
It should be Conservative to be Green really. Or am I getting Conservation and Conservatism mixed up?!
And you are just As Cs Gs and Ts. How boring does that make you?
I did my under-graduate final year project on creating a self learning Chinese Checkers AI. I am a total believer that we will eventually create a general, passes whatever arbitrary test of sentience you throw at it, maybe even in my lifetimes. I mock idiots who think the Chinese Room thought experiment is an arguement against a conscious AI.
But GPT-3 is not only not it, it is continents away. We are probably going to hit another AI winter in a decade or so as the limitations of current techniques are understood by the people providing the funding.
40-50 years ago Expert Systems were going to replace GPs for diagnosing diseases.
The big issue with The Chinese Room is they make boring video games.
The one thing I don't understand whenever climate change comes up, is this:
If the human brain is about to be superseded by artificial intelligence, and there is no way of actually stopping development in this area due to a combination of market forces and competition between hostile states; then why are people worrying about climate change?
It seems like people are hopelessly optimistic about being able to solve the AI problem, and disproportionately pessimistic about being able to solve climate change.
On thread - what this tells me is that the proportion of climate sceptics probably doesn't vary all that much by constituency (though it would be interesting to see polling to confirm). We jump through considerable hoops to ensure that the ethnic identities of our representatives are broadly in proportion to the population at large - it doesn't seem unreasonable to me that it should be desirable that the views of MPs are roughly in proportion to the population at large. Which implies a voice for minority opinions such as climate scepticism, albeit a minority one. Which by accident or design appears to be what we have.
Climate sceptics puzzle me. I am not a scientist but the whole thing seems pretty open and shut to me and there appears to be a broad consensus across scientific opinion. So I wonder, what do climate sceptics really think? That the climate isn't warming? I can see it with my own eyes, and measurements of temperature seem to back up this impression very convincingly. Do they think that this is all lies? That the climate is warming but it's nothing to do with human activity? This seems even less plausible. The planet seems to be warming up at unprecedented speed and at a time that correlates perfectly with human activity that models predict should be having this effect. That the greenhouse gases theory isn't correct? The story seems highly plausible, whether conceptually or if you put it through a complex climate model. That scientists don't understand their own models and instruments? It's possible, but seems implausible that some random uninformed punter understands them better. That scientists are engaged in a vast conspiracy? Unlikely if you understand how science operates. If anyone was going to fund a conspiracy here, fossil fuel interests seem most plausible - they have deep pockets and strong vested interests. That the whole thing is real but there's no point doing anything to stop it? This is the craziest take of all, if you actually think about what life on earth would be like with say a 3 or 4 degree temperature increase. So, like I say, these people are a mystery to me. People are entitled to their own opinions of course, but not their own facts.
The thing that gets me is that most sceptics seem to just flatly deny a link between CO2 (etc) and heating, even though the mechanism is very well understood and demonstrable in a lab, or indeed pretty much anywhere with a source of CO2. Energy comes in from the sun, the earth warms up, the earth radiates energy according to its temperature (which happens to mean in the infra-red). CO2 (etc) are efficient absorbers of radiation those energies and then re-emit in all directions. Much else in the atmosphere is pretty transparent to infrared. So more CO2 (etc) means more of the IR radiaton which would go off into space taking energy with it is absorbed in the atmosphere and then re-radiated in random directions, including back down to the surface.
Now, you can get into all the feedback loops, albedo (changing due to heating - more/less ice, more/fewer clouds, different take up of CO2 depending on temperature etc), arguments about how all those mechanisms work (and that is the source of much uncertainty). But instead your average sceptic just denies the link and starts chatting on about solar cycles and sunspots. It's odd.
Indeed. CO2 rich Venus is hotter than Mercury despite being further away from the sun, and all the solar flares long beloved of the anti global warming crew.
Sure, it’s hard to tease out exact impacts to Earth’s complex weather patterns and biosphere with marginally different CO2 concentrations. But the general thrust that CO2 warms planets is 8-year old level science and I’ve never really understood how people have got away with denying that.
The biggest question is how much do feedback loops contribute. Climate is not simple, despite the simple idea of more CO2 equals warmer planet. Take water - in itself water vapour is a greenhouse gas, but clouds can also act to screen solar radiation from warming the planet. So a warmer world, with more clouds, may actually cool... As I say, its complicated. Too often past predictions have tended to be too forceful, and we are not well served by scare story media. I don't believe that warming a few degrees means the end of human civilisation, we live across so many different climate zones for that to make any sense, but we should do all we can to avoid habitat loss for worlds plants and animals. Its not their fault we are a greedy, successful, rapacious species.
I expect everyone has already seen this (it's well known) but one of my favourite cartoons:
There is a lot we don't know, but there are a lot of good reasons to change the way we generate energy.
A combination of complacency, lethargy and Woke crap - ‘omg GPT3 might be racist’ - means the west has handed the race to AI to China, and it may already be too late to catch up.
If China dominates AI it dominates the world like no power before it
You should have learnt by now that most people aren’t interested in the really big stories.
We’ve been directly told in the last year that there is definitely ultra tech in our skies and oceans, which either belongs to adversaries of the West or non human intelligence / life forms. And everyone shrugged.
People aren’t going to listen too hard to a senior Pentagon official if he says the US has surrendered technological dominance to China and that a point will be reached (or may already have been reached) when their lead will be insurmountable. Forever.
Cognitive dissonance innit. Much more comfortable to talk about IDS’s majority instead.
Nope - We’ve been directly told in the last year that there is definitely ultra tech in our skies and oceans, which either belongs to adversaries of the West or non human intelligence / life forms. And everyone shrugged. This is not the only two explanations, and it is deluded to say that it is. Something unexplained is not constrained by those explantations alone. They could be proof that we are in a computer simulation which is (a) breaking down or (b) being messed with by bored programmers. It could be God. It could, genuinely be glitches and coincidence and people misinterpreting things.
Fortean Times own Jenny Randles wrote a good piece in this month's issue about how perception skews depending on expectation. For instance someone on a motorway 'sees' a UFO (or UAP if you want) fly over the motorway. Why didn't the other hundreds of drivers see it? Perhaps because they saw the aeroplane, that one observers miss-identified.
I sense you are fully on board with UAP's = aliens, and thats fine. But I think you need to keep your options a bit more open than the two you list.
The simulation theory is pretty plausible yes. But really it is just “God” for Generation Tech. Ultimately all you are describing is an exogenous creator. With a planck length being a pixel, plank time being the refresh rate and the observable universe being the bounds of the graphics engine / sandbox.
In terms of mis-perception. You are right that I am sufficiently persuaded that we are not looking at observation error (or at least not in every case). And so it seems is the DoD.
TBH I have yet to say anything that is beyond the old project Blue Book situation. Don't get me wrong, I'd love it to be aliens more then Kevin Keegan would have loved it if Man Utd had lost, but I just don't see the evidence. And while I keep hearing that people I don't know have seen the 'good stuff', but we can't, I'm stuck thinking of all those tales about area 51...
People said for years, “just show me one good picture”. Well now we have multiple videos taken by a $6m FLIR cam, rather than a rancher with a Polaroid. Backed up by eye witness and radar data. And according to the ex DNI, backed up by satellite imagery and sonar.
But all you hear about that is “sure but why isn’t it filmed on an iPhone? There’s loads of iPhones out there”. To which the answer is, well yeah there’s loads of such photos and videos taken by global citizens too but noone cares because we can’t trust / verify the credibility of the source. You’ve asked for years for formal recognition by the military rather than fakey members of the public. It’s an entirely circular debate.
Leaving aside reporting glitches, which the report to Congress seems to rule out in a notable number of cases, I make the list as:
Interstellar visitors. Requires no new science at all. Most likely explanation. Indeed it would be a great and inexplicable mystery if we were not receiving interstellar visitors.
Crypto terrestrial (I.e. non human earthlings) is plausible but less likely and requires a complete re-write of many things. It’s fun to think about though.
Inter dimensional or inter temporal is more challenging for our current science but is plausible. Wouldn’t be so different an outcome to either of the above.
Something exogenous to our existence (I.e. the simulation) is Descartes and the Evil Deamon territory. Philosophy makes my head hurt, no thanks.
China / Russia having the ultra tech described in all cases is implausible given the dated history of some of the recordings, though almost certainly explains some of it, which is what makes official complacency so dangerous and perplexing.
US Dark Tech is implausible for the same reason but also implies a government parallel to the democratic one, sounds like a conspiracy theory to me and in its own way less plausible than China.
Positive tests still trending steadily up. Deaths still trending steadily down. Average seven day figure for deaths is now under 100, and lower that any point since mid-August.
On topic, if anything’s going to get Johnson this year or next, it’s going to be rising utility and fuel bills, to pay for what David Cameron ended up describing as the “Green Crap”.
Those who live in Wokingham might not care too much about the bills, but those in Warrington and Workington certainly do.
I grew up in Wokingham. It is not the town it once was. For the last 10 or more years there has been mass house building making the town much bigger than it ever used to be. As a result there are many new people living there with different political views. In my view Redwood kept his seat at the last election due to fear of Corbyn. Redwood is not popular in Wokingham. I wouldn't be the least surprised if Wokingham went LD at the next election.
I grew up in Yateley, 25 years ago. Wokingham used to be a good night out, that was just about walkable back home. Been living abroad for the last decade though, so not been there in a long time.
Off topic, but I remember the days, about a week ago, when the Daily Mail reported that three Labour MPs were about to jump ship and defect to the Tories. Many wise commentators on here had fun identifying the three, and one was congratulated on his/her excellent detective skills.
I do hope the Daily Mail wasn't making it up, but there doesn't seem to have been an update yet.
It was the Mail on Sunday, but yes it appears to have come to nothing.
Guido also had a spy, who spotted a Labour MP talking to the MoS hack in a bar in Manchester, so maybe it was just some performance art to try and get a story going.
The plotting for an actual defection wouldn’t have been done in a bar.
Barry Gardiner attended the conference, as confirmed on the radio today, but to drum up support for something or other. Easy to link him being there with rumours...
Covid cases rising again today, over 40K. Hospital admissions also rising slightly in the last few days. Deaths I guess we will have to wait till tomorrow/Wed.
Am I the only person feeling somewhat anxious that this disease isn't over with yet? Should I just relax?
For those reasons (and more) I think we'd have eventually moved away from fossil fuels regardless of climate change but it might have happened 30-40 years later.
There are simply better ways of producing energy more cleanly and easily with extremely advanced technology, but the economics and the engineering has to be there first.
Covid cases rising again today, over 40K. Hospital admissions also rising slightly in the last few days. Deaths I guess we will have to wait till tomorrow/Wed.
Am I the only person feeling somewhat anxious that this disease isn't over with yet? Should I just relax?
I think it is sensible to be cautious but confident the vaccines are doing the job
My wife has just had her booster and I have mine next week and we are so grateful
A combination of complacency, lethargy and Woke crap - ‘omg GPT3 might be racist’ - means the west has handed the race to AI to China, and it may already be too late to catch up.
If China dominates AI it dominates the world like no power before it
You should have learnt by now that most people aren’t interested in the really big stories.
We’ve been directly told in the last year that there is definitely ultra tech in our skies and oceans, which either belongs to adversaries of the West or non human intelligence / life forms. And everyone shrugged.
People aren’t going to listen too hard to a senior Pentagon official if he says the US has surrendered technological dominance to China and that a point will be reached (or may already have been reached) when their lead will be insurmountable. Forever.
Cognitive dissonance innit. Much more comfortable to talk about IDS’s majority instead.
Some people are INCREDIBLY resistant to the idea of artificial general intelligence. I have an extremely smart brother who is always open to new ideas but he just won't accept that this - machine intelligence - can ever happen, let alone that it is actually happening right now
Existentially, it frightens him
I think some people assume that events from science fiction are made up and can’t ever happen because they are fiction, particularly the bad events. Scifi writers really are just futurists and as a group have a pretty reasonable track record.
It's not just scifi writers being futurists; scientists feed off scifi, and scifi feeds off science. I've got a good book on this somewhere, going into how fiction from HG Wells onwards fed into science, just as they devoured science in turn.
An example is the humble iPad. Back in 1972, computer scientist came up with the concept of the Dynabook (*) - a computer for education. For decades, computer professionals have used it as an objective, and endpoint. Steve Jobs was apparently one of them. A vision that has taken four decades to come anywhere near fulfilment.
Alan Key doesn't think we've reached the endpoint yet.
Covid cases rising again today, over 40K. Hospital admissions also rising slightly in the last few days. Deaths I guess we will have to wait till tomorrow/Wed.
Am I the only person feeling somewhat anxious that this disease isn't over with yet? Should I just relax?
From your user name I can't say what the mood is there, but in London as noted earlier, everyone is relaxing.
A combination of complacency, lethargy and Woke crap - ‘omg GPT3 might be racist’ - means the west has handed the race to AI to China, and it may already be too late to catch up.
If China dominates AI it dominates the world like no power before it
You should have learnt by now that most people aren’t interested in the really big stories.
We’ve been directly told in the last year that there is definitely ultra tech in our skies and oceans, which either belongs to adversaries of the West or non human intelligence / life forms. And everyone shrugged.
People aren’t going to listen too hard to a senior Pentagon official if he says the US has surrendered technological dominance to China and that a point will be reached (or may already have been reached) when their lead will be insurmountable. Forever.
Cognitive dissonance innit. Much more comfortable to talk about IDS’s majority instead.
Nope - We’ve been directly told in the last year that there is definitely ultra tech in our skies and oceans, which either belongs to adversaries of the West or non human intelligence / life forms. And everyone shrugged. This is not the only two explanations, and it is deluded to say that it is. Something unexplained is not constrained by those explantations alone. They could be proof that we are in a computer simulation which is (a) breaking down or (b) being messed with by bored programmers. It could be God. It could, genuinely be glitches and coincidence and people misinterpreting things.
Fortean Times own Jenny Randles wrote a good piece in this month's issue about how perception skews depending on expectation. For instance someone on a motorway 'sees' a UFO (or UAP if you want) fly over the motorway. Why didn't the other hundreds of drivers see it? Perhaps because they saw the aeroplane, that one observers miss-identified.
I sense you are fully on board with UAP's = aliens, and thats fine. But I think you need to keep your options a bit more open than the two you list.
The simulation theory is pretty plausible yes. But really it is just “God” for Generation Tech. Ultimately all you are describing is an exogenous creator. With a planck length being a pixel, plank time being the refresh rate and the observable universe being the bounds of the graphics engine / sandbox.
In terms of mis-perception. You are right that I am sufficiently persuaded that we are not looking at observation error (or at least not in every case). And so it seems is the DoD.
TBH I have yet to say anything that is beyond the old project Blue Book situation. Don't get me wrong, I'd love it to be aliens more then Kevin Keegan would have loved it if Man Utd had lost, but I just don't see the evidence. And while I keep hearing that people I don't know have seen the 'good stuff', but we can't, I'm stuck thinking of all those tales about area 51...
People said for years, “just show me one good picture”. Well now we have multiple videos taken by a $6m FLIR cam, rather than a rancher with a Polaroid. Backed up by eye witness and radar data. And according to the ex DNI, backed up by satellite imagery and sonar.
But all you hear about that is “sure but why isn’t it filmed on an iPhone? There’s loads of iPhones out there”. To which the answer is, well yeah there’s loads of such photos and videos taken by global citizens too but noone cares because we can’t trust / verify the credibility of the source. You’ve asked for years for formal recognition by the military rather than fakey members of the public. It’s an entirely circular debate.
Leaving aside reporting glitches, which the report to Congress seems to rule out in a notable number of cases, I make the list as:
Interstellar visitors. Requires no new science at all. Most likely explanation. Indeed it would be a great and inexplicable mystery if we were not receiving interstellar visitors.
Crypto terrestrial (I.e. non human earthlings) is plausible but less likely and requires a complete re-write of many things. It’s fun to think about though.
Inter dimensional or inter temporal is more challenging for our current science but is plausible. Wouldn’t be so different an outcome to either of the above.
Something exogenous to our existence (I.e. the simulation) is Descartes and the Evil Deamon territory. Philosophy makes my head hurt, no thanks.
China / Russia having the ultra tech described in all cases is implausible given the dated history of some of the recordings, though almost certainly explains some of it, which is what makes official complacency so dangerous and perplexing.
US Dark Tech is implausible for the same reason but also implies a government parallel to the democratic one, sounds like a conspiracy theory to me and in its own way less plausible than China.
"Well now we have multiple videos taken by a $6m FLIR cam, rather than a rancher with a Polaroid. Backed up by eye witness and radar data. And according to the ex DNI, backed up by satellite imagery and sonar."
According to the ex DNI? FOAF.
If they really have all this data, show us. Until then its just more fuel for the 'we need more money' faction.
So, how many delegates are going to turn up to COP26 on commercial flights, or does environmentalism go out of the window when it comes to their own travel arrangements?
It’s much harder to sell to the public, when those advocating significant raises in the cost of living are swanning around the world on private planes.
On topic, if anything’s going to get Johnson this year or next, it’s going to be rising utility and fuel bills, to pay for what David Cameron ended up describing as the “Green Crap”.
Those who live in Wokingham might not care too much about the bills, but those in Warrington and Workington certainly do.
Aren't rising utility and fuel bills simply the consequence of US natural gas prices going through the roof as drilling stopped during the pandemic? Wholesale electricity prices have risen with gas prices across the EU and the US, as demand came back quicker than natural gas supplies.
Even now, the North America rig count is still about 150 rigs short of where it was pre-pandemic, and even though it's rising at 7-8 a week, (and gas production is finally rising again) it's going to take until early next year before rigs are running at the same quantity as last Jan/Feb, and gas production will probably not exceed previous peaks until next March or April.
In Europe, the real problem appears to be Mr Putin choking supply, in order to get the Nord Stream 2 pipeline approved, so he can screw Ukraine into the ground this winter.
Well, he's mostly ensured that Hamburg LNG (which was much delayed on a "do we really need it" basis), is now going ahead.
Positive tests still trending steadily up. Deaths still trending steadily down. Average seven day figure for deaths is now under 100, and lower that any point since mid-August.
I'm hoping the the cases stay in the schools and the parents, and also that the schools burn out soon. I think they will, but we need to hold our nerve. I am fed up with people wanting to put restrictions back into schools. Don't they see that this is the plan?
A combination of complacency, lethargy and Woke crap - ‘omg GPT3 might be racist’ - means the west has handed the race to AI to China, and it may already be too late to catch up.
If China dominates AI it dominates the world like no power before it
You should have learnt by now that most people aren’t interested in the really big stories.
We’ve been directly told in the last year that there is definitely ultra tech in our skies and oceans, which either belongs to adversaries of the West or non human intelligence / life forms. And everyone shrugged.
People aren’t going to listen too hard to a senior Pentagon official if he says the US has surrendered technological dominance to China and that a point will be reached (or may already have been reached) when their lead will be insurmountable. Forever.
Cognitive dissonance innit. Much more comfortable to talk about IDS’s majority instead.
Nope - We’ve been directly told in the last year that there is definitely ultra tech in our skies and oceans, which either belongs to adversaries of the West or non human intelligence / life forms. And everyone shrugged. This is not the only two explanations, and it is deluded to say that it is. Something unexplained is not constrained by those explantations alone. They could be proof that we are in a computer simulation which is (a) breaking down or (b) being messed with by bored programmers. It could be God. It could, genuinely be glitches and coincidence and people misinterpreting things.
Fortean Times own Jenny Randles wrote a good piece in this month's issue about how perception skews depending on expectation. For instance someone on a motorway 'sees' a UFO (or UAP if you want) fly over the motorway. Why didn't the other hundreds of drivers see it? Perhaps because they saw the aeroplane, that one observers miss-identified.
I sense you are fully on board with UAP's = aliens, and thats fine. But I think you need to keep your options a bit more open than the two you list.
The simulation theory is pretty plausible yes. But really it is just “God” for Generation Tech. Ultimately all you are describing is an exogenous creator. With a planck length being a pixel, plank time being the refresh rate and the observable universe being the bounds of the graphics engine / sandbox.
In terms of mis-perception. You are right that I am sufficiently persuaded that we are not looking at observation error (or at least not in every case). And so it seems is the DoD.
TBH I have yet to say anything that is beyond the old project Blue Book situation. Don't get me wrong, I'd love it to be aliens more then Kevin Keegan would have loved it if Man Utd had lost, but I just don't see the evidence. And while I keep hearing that people I don't know have seen the 'good stuff', but we can't, I'm stuck thinking of all those tales about area 51...
People said for years, “just show me one good picture”. Well now we have multiple videos taken by a $6m FLIR cam, rather than a rancher with a Polaroid. Backed up by eye witness and radar data. And according to the ex DNI, backed up by satellite imagery and sonar.
But all you hear about that is “sure but why isn’t it filmed on an iPhone? There’s loads of iPhones out there”. To which the answer is, well yeah there’s loads of such photos and videos taken by global citizens too but noone cares because we can’t trust / verify the credibility of the source. You’ve asked for years for formal recognition by the military rather than fakey members of the public. It’s an entirely circular debate.
Leaving aside reporting glitches, which the report to Congress seems to rule out in a notable number of cases, I make the list as:
Interstellar visitors. Requires no new science at all. Most likely explanation. Indeed it would be a great and inexplicable mystery if we were not receiving interstellar visitors.
Crypto terrestrial (I.e. non human earthlings) is plausible but less likely and requires a complete re-write of many things. It’s fun to think about though.
Inter dimensional or inter temporal is more challenging for our current science but is plausible. Wouldn’t be so different an outcome to either of the above.
Something exogenous to our existence (I.e. the simulation) is Descartes and the Evil Deamon territory. Philosophy makes my head hurt, no thanks.
China / Russia having the ultra tech described in all cases is implausible given the dated history of some of the recordings, though almost certainly explains some of it, which is what makes official complacency so dangerous and perplexing.
US Dark Tech is implausible for the same reason but also implies a government parallel to the democratic one, sounds like a conspiracy theory to me and in its own way less plausible than China.
You know I am open to the UAP idea, more than most. But you can't dismiss the lack of photo evidence that easily.
There are now billions of smartphones with great cameras, all around the world, used by billions of people every day
This is the greatest system of mass observation and visual recording we have ever possessed, by orders of magnitude. Yet we have near-zero plausible photos of UAPs even as the US military reports pilots seeing these things daily, in some cases
Gentle reminder that #Brexit is important, but still not no.1 priority for the EU. Those whose job it is to focus on Brexit will be following this week's developments closely - the rest will be focused on Poland, new leadership in Central Europe, coalition talks in Germany, etc.
Which is yet another reason to add to the list shared here by @mij_europe the other day (which was basically parotting what I've written here for the past four years) as to why the UK 'holds all the cards' in these forthcoming negotiations.
The UK government cares passionately about what is going on and speak with a single voice. The EU's 27 governments do not.
That thread suggested that the EU had gone so far and no further, and that any rejection from Frost will lead to a trade war.
I agree with the general point though, that the U.K. “holds most of the cards” on NI.
I suspect Leavers will find the EU is stronger than they think and Remainers will find the EU is not as nice as they think.
I don't think the EU will immediately suspend the TCA, but they and member states can cause plenty of damage from the off, if they want to, which seems to be the case.
The UK can and will retaliate, but the effect will be less, except perhaps for Ireland
Why do you think the EU didn't follow through on its initial ultimatum not to ratify the TCA until the UK fully implemented the protocol?
Because as I have said previously, the UK not implementing the Protocol is something they can ignore for a very long time. Consciously breaching a just agreed treaty isn't something they can accept. It doesn't have anything to do with Ireland - most member states will be on the same page on this.
Article 16 is part of the treaty. How does using it constitute breaching the treaty?
I justly invoke part of a treaty You are renaging on promises He is an international outlaw
Yep. The mercurial nature of Article 16. If invoked by the EU over vaccines it's an outrageous abuse of the Treaty. If invoked by the UK over the Irish Sea border it's a justifiable interpretation of the Treaty. The truth is both are an abuse. Those who condemn the second and excuse the first are quisling ultra remainer 5th columnists like Devious Grevious. And those who condemn the first and excuse/support the second are hard leaver nutjobs who see the UK/EU relationship as a forever war where we have God on our side. There are, as it happens, rather more of the latter types on PB.com.
The EU invoking over vaccines was an outrageous abuse. The conditions for invocation are explicitly set out.
The invocation conditions were not met with UvdL invoked it. They are met now.
Everyone on all sides agrees that diversion of trade is happening, the pro-EU side consider it a good thing and evidence of "Brexit being bad" but if its happening that's the condition met for invocation. You can't deny that.
Yep, a perfect illustration of what I said -
"And those who condemn the first and excuse/support the second are hard leaver nutjobs who see the UK/EU relationship as a forever war where we have God on our side."
This is a piece of cake this morning.
Except I'm an entirely rational and moderate Leaver who has been shown to be right time and again.
Do you deny that diversion of trade is happening at the minute? Yes or no? Do you deny that diversion of trade is an entirely legitimate trigger? Yes or no?
If you can't answer these two simple questions, you show yourself off to be the trolling hypocrite you are.
In my years on here I struggle to recall you calling anything significant to do with Brexit right. What you mainly do is churn out simple simon, hard leaver, Brit Nat propaganda, then strain every sinew to interpret events as being a vindication of it, in the process and where necessary (which is often) rewriting both what you previously said, and why you previously said it, and what has actually happened.
As to A16, what is relevant is the existence, nature, extent of the problems being caused by the agreed NI Protocol. This can't be boiled down to the noddy "yes/no" multiple choice couplet you present here. The actual "yes/no" question is - are the problems of such thorniness and magnitude as to justify suspending the Protocol or reneging on it? And to this the objectively best (non-quisling, non-hardleaver-nutjob) answer is No.
Philip is highly suggestible. I legitimately insisted on a Y/N answer about something else yesterday, and he has taken up the idea and run with it. It is of course usually deployed fallaciously in "Have you stopped beating your wife?" type questions, as here.
My response to most of his posts these days is from Frank N. Furter:
"How forceful you are, Philip. Such a perfect specimen of manhood. So... dominant. You must be awfully proud of him, Mrs Thompson."
When he got schooled a few weeks ago on the lump of labour fallacy he was committing, he starting referring to the fallacy himself, trying to twist it to support his own point of view. It's sad more than anything.
Hm. The lump of labour fallacy is itself something of a fallacy. Or, it exists, at the macro level. Granted, as the supply of labour increases, the supply of jobs there are to do also increases. But it takes a long, long time to filter through, and labour is poorer in the short term and certainly no more rich in the long term. It is of no comfort to an individual low wage worker whose wages are being held down by a limitless supply of unskilled labour that in the long run that labour will also create a demand for more unskilled labour.
I thought that too. ie the government approach of restricting labour to drive up wages is economically illiterate but there would be a lengthy drag while employers tried to stay in business at previous staffing levels.
In fact the adjustment seems to be quite quick, as far as the sketchy evidence goes.
For all the economic expertise of our Brexiters on here they have failed to grasp the simplest of economic facts.
For them it is simple - restrictions on labour = wages up = prices up hurrah! Let's all pay ourselves more.
They ignore (to be charitable) or do not appreciate that restrictions on labour will shift the demand curve leftwards which will have an effect on prices and hence an equilibrium will be reached at a lower price point hence profitability will decrease hence wage rises will reverse hence we are back where we started.
Quite the opposite, I've mentioned that factor repeatedly. As have others. Except it won't mean that we end up back where we started, since where we started was a so-called 'labour shortage'. The price will go up because it needs to do so, and demand will drop accordingly and the new equilibrium will thus be higher up the price axis than where it is now, but with demand lower on its axis than it is now.
In case you've forgotten we've had a conversation recently along the lines of saying that 300,000 HGV drivers can't do the work for 400,000 drivers - and I said that's true, but if the price for drivers goes up recruiting eg 50,000 new drivers then 350,000 drivers can do the work of 350,000 drivers.
Demand going down is an inevitable consequence of price changes, but since demand is greater than supply at the minute that's required to reach equilibrium it isn't a flaw.
Each of those HGV drivers (and also for that matter those that are now circumventing the UK) contribute to aggregate demand, which will therefore decline with concomitant effects on the price level and profitability. As to your labour shortages and increased wages, that will as you accept result in an increased price level or lower profitability. That will also affect demand for goods and labour. Unemployment is not higher than pre-pandemic (4.6% vs 4.0%) so upwards wage pressure will be to an extent mitigated.
But if wages do rise, which can certainly be a good thing (your wages up 4.1%, inflation up 4.0% happiness scenario), where does that leave our export competitiveness.
You are a trained economist but only choose to see the factors that suit your argument.
You seem on the brink of teetering headlong into a fallacy here. The current aggregate demand is with the 300,000 HGV drivers, not 400,000.
It is an economic truism that there is no fixed amount of jobs or labour. We've supposedly been "short of labour" for the best part of twenty years since very generous in-work benefits and free movement for Eastern Europe were introduced by Brown. In that time our population has increased by ten million people. If we're "short of labour" then how come the ten million people who've arrived haven't filled the shortage?
Because you can't fill a shortage via immigration on aggregate, any more than you can cause job losses on aggregate by having immigration either (the "they're stealing our jobs" fallacy).
If you import 100k new HGV drivers, and new abattoir staff, and new everything else, then those drivers and everyone else would increase aggregate demand and lo and behold there will still be a labour shortage. Then we'd be back to saying 400k drivers aren't enough to do the job of 500k.
The reason there's a shortage isn't because there's a shortage of people, its because the prices are out of equilibrium. Trying to fill the shortage by bringing in more people hasn't fixed the root cause of the problem as to why prices are out of equilibrium (since its not just 1 sector needing people) so the problem has never been resolved.
My point is nothing to do with the lump of labour fallacy.
It was a simple one - first of all, plenty on here are lauding the fact that eg immigrants returning to whence they came has resulted in wages increasing for the remaining indigenous population. However immigrants leaving the UK will have an effect on aggregate demand, thereby nullifying any supposed benefit in higher wages, and thereby shifting the demand curve leftwards.
Alternatively, under your Micawber scenario of wages rising by 4.1% and inflation of 4.0% (us all paying ourselves more - hurrah) then first of course no one is any richer and there will be losers whose wage rise less than 4% - or ok a real wage rise of 0.1% (2x hurrah!) - and secondly our export competitiveness takes a huge hit.
I think you're getting two things mixed up.
Firstly I'm absolutely not lauding the fact that anyone has returned, indeed I don't expect that many people have returned and I expect when the Census (which was taken well into the pandemic and post-Brexit) will show there's more people in the country than we thought.
However the point is that anyone who has arrived is already here, anyone who is left is already gone. Aggregate demand today is based on those figures, its not going to suddenly fall off or increase because of the people who've already moved. The labour shortage isn't going to go away due to people who've already left, any more than in recent years its not been able to be filled because of people who've arrived.
You can't fill a shortage (or eliminate one) by either immigration or emigration, because its like a dog chasing its tail. No matter how fast the dog runs (or how many people net arrive or leave) the target is moving in tandem with it, because its attached. The "shortage" has been with us for two decades since in-work benefits and limitless immigration of third world people on minimum wage creating a systemic imbalance in the labour market. We've spent decades chasing our own tale as a nation.
For your final points: no matter what policy we have there'll always be some winner and some losers, nothing new in that, overall a real wage rise is a good thing (and more than people on median incomes have had for past two decades) and secondly it won't be a huge hit for our competitiveness, it will be a relatively minor one. If the increase in labour costs leads to investment bringing about improved productivity and improved efficiency then that could actually boost our competitiveness not hit it.
I don't think you can fill or eliminate shortages with immigration or emigration; I was talking about the rejoicing (perhaps not from you) of the fact that immigrants returning = Brexit = higher wages for the indigenous population. If that was not your point then that is fair enough - I am not sure why the idea of hurrah wages are going up and if it wasn't about Brexit I'm not going to trawl back through the posts to see why it was.
And yes absolutely, productivity gains are the only way to square the circle.
The issue is categorically not people leaving leading to higher wages. Anyone who thinks that doesn't understand basic economics.
The issue is we were trapped in a feedback loop.
Brexit hasn't created the labour shortage - the labour shortage was already there and has been for decades. What its done is broken the feedback loop by removing the reason wages were imbalanced in the first place. Now wages can rise to reach an equilibrium where demand no longer exceeds supply.
On thread - what this tells me is that the proportion of climate sceptics probably doesn't vary all that much by constituency (though it would be interesting to see polling to confirm). We jump through considerable hoops to ensure that the ethnic identities of our representatives are broadly in proportion to the population at large - it doesn't seem unreasonable to me that it should be desirable that the views of MPs are roughly in proportion to the population at large. Which implies a voice for minority opinions such as climate scepticism, albeit a minority one. Which by accident or design appears to be what we have.
Climate sceptics puzzle me. I am not a scientist but the whole thing seems pretty open and shut to me and there appears to be a broad consensus across scientific opinion. So I wonder, what do climate sceptics really think? That the climate isn't warming? I can see it with my own eyes, and measurements of temperature seem to back up this impression very convincingly. Do they think that this is all lies? That the climate is warming but it's nothing to do with human activity? This seems even less plausible. The planet seems to be warming up at unprecedented speed and at a time that correlates perfectly with human activity that models predict should be having this effect. That the greenhouse gases theory isn't correct? The story seems highly plausible, whether conceptually or if you put it through a complex climate model. That scientists don't understand their own models and instruments? It's possible, but seems implausible that some random uninformed punter understands them better. That scientists are engaged in a vast conspiracy? Unlikely if you understand how science operates. If anyone was going to fund a conspiracy here, fossil fuel interests seem most plausible - they have deep pockets and strong vested interests. That the whole thing is real but there's no point doing anything to stop it? This is the craziest take of all, if you actually think about what life on earth would be like with say a 3 or 4 degree temperature increase. So, like I say, these people are a mystery to me. People are entitled to their own opinions of course, but not their own facts.
The thing that gets me is that most sceptics seem to just flatly deny a link between CO2 (etc) and heating, even though the mechanism is very well understood and demonstrable in a lab, or indeed pretty much anywhere with a source of CO2. Energy comes in from the sun, the earth warms up, the earth radiates energy according to its temperature (which happens to mean in the infra-red). CO2 (etc) are efficient absorbers of radiation those energies and then re-emit in all directions. Much else in the atmosphere is pretty transparent to infrared. So more CO2 (etc) means more of the IR radiaton which would go off into space taking energy with it is absorbed in the atmosphere and then re-radiated in random directions, including back down to the surface.
Now, you can get into all the feedback loops, albedo (changing due to heating - more/less ice, more/fewer clouds, different take up of CO2 depending on temperature etc), arguments about how all those mechanisms work (and that is the source of much uncertainty). But instead your average sceptic just denies the link and starts chatting on about solar cycles and sunspots. It's odd.
Indeed. CO2 rich Venus is hotter than Mercury despite being further away from the sun, and all the solar flares long beloved of the anti global warming crew.
Sure, it’s hard to tease out exact impacts to Earth’s complex weather patterns and biosphere with marginally different CO2 concentrations. But the general thrust that CO2 warms planets is 8-year old level science and I’ve never really understood how people have got away with denying that.
The biggest question is how much do feedback loops contribute. Climate is not simple, despite the simple idea of more CO2 equals warmer planet. Take water - in itself water vapour is a greenhouse gas, but clouds can also act to screen solar radiation from warming the planet. So a warmer world, with more clouds, may actually cool... As I say, its complicated. Too often past predictions have tended to be too forceful, and we are not well served by scare story media. I don't believe that warming a few degrees means the end of human civilisation, we live across so many different climate zones for that to make any sense, but we should do all we can to avoid habitat loss for worlds plants and animals. Its not their fault we are a greedy, successful, rapacious species.
I expect everyone has already seen this (it's well known) but one of my favourite cartoons:
There is a lot we don't know, but there are a lot of good reasons to change the way we generate energy.
That's it for me, really. Like @turbotubbs , I'm a lukewarmist. I think we're warming, and I think it's due to carbon, but we're also emphasising the worst case scenarios and a lot of the science which backs it is dodgy. The tone of the warmists is religious, which - despite me believing in warming - naturally makes me suspicious. But set aside whether we're warming or not: am I in favour of cleaner air? Absolutely. Am I in favour of not being dependent on Russia and the Middle East for energy? Wildly. Am I in favour of designing a world where non-drivers are not excluded from travel? Of course. The rewards for decarbonising seem to me so clear that whether or not warming is real doesn't really matter.
Covid cases rising again today, over 40K. Hospital admissions also rising slightly in the last few days. Deaths I guess we will have to wait till tomorrow/Wed.
Am I the only person feeling somewhat anxious that this disease isn't over with yet? Should I just relax?
Absolutely fine to be nervous. We all need to do what we can - get vaccinated and boosted if needed. A little mask wearing can't hurt. I have enormous sympathy for those under strain in the NHS.
BUT - live your life. There is nothing to be gained from locking yourself down and hiding. You may be hit by a car tomorrow (less likely if locking down at home, but you get the point).
On thread - what this tells me is that the proportion of climate sceptics probably doesn't vary all that much by constituency (though it would be interesting to see polling to confirm). We jump through considerable hoops to ensure that the ethnic identities of our representatives are broadly in proportion to the population at large - it doesn't seem unreasonable to me that it should be desirable that the views of MPs are roughly in proportion to the population at large. Which implies a voice for minority opinions such as climate scepticism, albeit a minority one. Which by accident or design appears to be what we have.
Climate sceptics puzzle me. I am not a scientist but the whole thing seems pretty open and shut to me and there appears to be a broad consensus across scientific opinion. So I wonder, what do climate sceptics really think? That the climate isn't warming? I can see it with my own eyes, and measurements of temperature seem to back up this impression very convincingly. Do they think that this is all lies? That the climate is warming but it's nothing to do with human activity? This seems even less plausible. The planet seems to be warming up at unprecedented speed and at a time that correlates perfectly with human activity that models predict should be having this effect. That the greenhouse gases theory isn't correct? The story seems highly plausible, whether conceptually or if you put it through a complex climate model. That scientists don't understand their own models and instruments? It's possible, but seems implausible that some random uninformed punter understands them better. That scientists are engaged in a vast conspiracy? Unlikely if you understand how science operates. If anyone was going to fund a conspiracy here, fossil fuel interests seem most plausible - they have deep pockets and strong vested interests. That the whole thing is real but there's no point doing anything to stop it? This is the craziest take of all, if you actually think about what life on earth would be like with say a 3 or 4 degree temperature increase. So, like I say, these people are a mystery to me. People are entitled to their own opinions of course, but not their own facts.
If people don't like the political implications of accepting that something is true then they will practice cognitive dissonance instead, so they don't have to face up to them.
That's why climate action needs to be depoliticised in order for us to go as fast as possible, and not attached to ecosocialism.
Our choice of climate change actions is going to create winners and losers. It's a political decision to its core. What's needed is political leadership. People will listen to people they trust.
For some reason, for a lot of people in this country, that is Boris Johnson and the Conservative party more generally. So it's great that they do talk about climate change and have committed to doing some things about it. Obviously not as much as needed, but steps in the right direction.
Covid cases rising again today, over 40K. Hospital admissions also rising slightly in the last few days. Deaths I guess we will have to wait till tomorrow/Wed.
Am I the only person feeling somewhat anxious that this disease isn't over with yet? Should I just relax?
Depends by what you mean by just relax. This virus is not going away, it is with us for the long haul. The number of infections will wax and wane. I don't think we are ever returning back to the health crises of Waves 1 and 2. Nor will we be going back entirely to before-COVID normal, but we will get to, and I suspect we are already basically there, to a new normal, with a certain level of risk to which we will have to, and will, habituate.
On thread - what this tells me is that the proportion of climate sceptics probably doesn't vary all that much by constituency (though it would be interesting to see polling to confirm). We jump through considerable hoops to ensure that the ethnic identities of our representatives are broadly in proportion to the population at large - it doesn't seem unreasonable to me that it should be desirable that the views of MPs are roughly in proportion to the population at large. Which implies a voice for minority opinions such as climate scepticism, albeit a minority one. Which by accident or design appears to be what we have.
Climate sceptics puzzle me. I am not a scientist but the whole thing seems pretty open and shut to me and there appears to be a broad consensus across scientific opinion. So I wonder, what do climate sceptics really think? That the climate isn't warming? I can see it with my own eyes, and measurements of temperature seem to back up this impression very convincingly. Do they think that this is all lies? That the climate is warming but it's nothing to do with human activity? This seems even less plausible. The planet seems to be warming up at unprecedented speed and at a time that correlates perfectly with human activity that models predict should be having this effect. That the greenhouse gases theory isn't correct? The story seems highly plausible, whether conceptually or if you put it through a complex climate model. That scientists don't understand their own models and instruments? It's possible, but seems implausible that some random uninformed punter understands them better. That scientists are engaged in a vast conspiracy? Unlikely if you understand how science operates. If anyone was going to fund a conspiracy here, fossil fuel interests seem most plausible - they have deep pockets and strong vested interests. That the whole thing is real but there's no point doing anything to stop it? This is the craziest take of all, if you actually think about what life on earth would be like with say a 3 or 4 degree temperature increase. So, like I say, these people are a mystery to me. People are entitled to their own opinions of course, but not their own facts.
If people don't like the political implications of accepting that something is true then they will practice cognitive dissonance instead, so they don't have to face up to them.
That's why climate action needs to be depoliticised in order for us to go as fast as possible, and not attached to ecosocialism.
No, this is backwards.
The problem is that we're not having a political debate between right and left wing ways of solving the climate change problem, because the right wing allowed itself to be captured by the special interests who were making lots of money out of the status quo.
No-one says we have to depoliticise trade policy, or education policy - we have robust arguments about whether left or right wing answers will work better.
Climate change should be the same, but the right wing wasted several decades. You can't blame the left wing for that.
So, how many delegates are going to turn up to COP26 on commercial flights, or does environmentalism go out of the window when it comes to their own travel arrangements?
It’s much harder to sell to the public, when those advocating significant raises in the cost of living are swanning around the world on private planes.
There's absolutely no reason why the whole thing couldn't be conducted through video conferencing.
For those reasons (and more) I think we'd have eventually moved away from fossil fuels regardless of climate change but it might have happened 30-40 years later.
There are simply better ways of producing energy more cleanly and easily with extremely advanced technology, but the economics and the engineering has to be there first.
Yep. The way out of this was always technology - and the other benefits helped to make that make sense. This was widely recognised a decade back in the field (I remember sitting in a seminar with an invited speaker setting out some projections on how green energy could become competitive within a decade or less - I don't recall the projections, but the overall prediction has proved correct).
I never heard any of the serious climate scientists who came to speak advocating a hair-shirt approach. It was all (apart from the projections themselves on climate) about the potential mitigating technologies, the new power sources and the tech to do the same things with less energy through greater efficiency.
On topic, if anything’s going to get Johnson this year or next, it’s going to be rising utility and fuel bills, to pay for what David Cameron ended up describing as the “Green Crap”.
Those who live in Wokingham might not care too much about the bills, but those in Warrington and Workington certainly do.
I grew up in Wokingham. It is not the town it once was. For the last 10 or more years there has been mass house building making the town much bigger than it ever used to be. As a result there are many new people living there with different political views. In my view Redwood kept his seat at the last election due to fear of Corbyn. Redwood is not popular in Wokingham. I wouldn't be the least surprised if Wokingham went LD at the next election.
Sir John and Sir Ian will retire to the Lords at the next election I think.
A combination of complacency, lethargy and Woke crap - ‘omg GPT3 might be racist’ - means the west has handed the race to AI to China, and it may already be too late to catch up.
If China dominates AI it dominates the world like no power before it
You should have learnt by now that most people aren’t interested in the really big stories.
We’ve been directly told in the last year that there is definitely ultra tech in our skies and oceans, which either belongs to adversaries of the West or non human intelligence / life forms. And everyone shrugged.
People aren’t going to listen too hard to a senior Pentagon official if he says the US has surrendered technological dominance to China and that a point will be reached (or may already have been reached) when their lead will be insurmountable. Forever.
Cognitive dissonance innit. Much more comfortable to talk about IDS’s majority instead.
Some people are INCREDIBLY resistant to the idea of artificial general intelligence. I have an extremely smart brother who is always open to new ideas but he just won't accept that this - machine intelligence - can ever happen, let alone that it is actually happening right now
Existentially, it frightens him
I think some people assume that events from science fiction are made up and can’t ever happen because they are fiction, particularly the bad events. Scifi writers really are just futurists and as a group have a pretty reasonable track record.
It's not just scifi writers being futurists; scientists feed off scifi, and scifi feeds off science. I've got a good book on this somewhere, going into how fiction from HG Wells onwards fed into science, just as they devoured science in turn.
An example is the humble iPad. Back in 1972, computer scientist came up with the concept of the Dynabook (*) - a computer for education. For decades, computer professionals have used it as an objective, and endpoint. Steve Jobs was apparently one of them. A vision that has taken four decades to come anywhere near fulfilment.
Alan Key doesn't think we've reached the endpoint yet.
(*) Not the laptop line
Sometimes it's the same people: see Greg Benford.
I distinctly remember reading an Asimov story in my very early teens in which a spaceship dropped back into normal space in orbit round a planet in another star system, so I thought yes, exactly what will be happening in the next 100 years. Then the hero takes an electronic thingy out of his pocket and starts reading the new planet's news on it. And I thought Yeah, like that will ever happen.
Gentle reminder that #Brexit is important, but still not no.1 priority for the EU. Those whose job it is to focus on Brexit will be following this week's developments closely - the rest will be focused on Poland, new leadership in Central Europe, coalition talks in Germany, etc.
Which is yet another reason to add to the list shared here by @mij_europe the other day (which was basically parotting what I've written here for the past four years) as to why the UK 'holds all the cards' in these forthcoming negotiations.
The UK government cares passionately about what is going on and speak with a single voice. The EU's 27 governments do not.
That thread suggested that the EU had gone so far and no further, and that any rejection from Frost will lead to a trade war.
I agree with the general point though, that the U.K. “holds most of the cards” on NI.
I suspect Leavers will find the EU is stronger than they think and Remainers will find the EU is not as nice as they think.
I don't think the EU will immediately suspend the TCA, but they and member states can cause plenty of damage from the off, if they want to, which seems to be the case.
The UK can and will retaliate, but the effect will be less, except perhaps for Ireland
Why do you think the EU didn't follow through on its initial ultimatum not to ratify the TCA until the UK fully implemented the protocol?
Because as I have said previously, the UK not implementing the Protocol is something they can ignore for a very long time. Consciously breaching a just agreed treaty isn't something they can accept. It doesn't have anything to do with Ireland - most member states will be on the same page on this.
Article 16 is part of the treaty. How does using it constitute breaching the treaty?
I justly invoke part of a treaty You are renaging on promises He is an international outlaw
Yep. The mercurial nature of Article 16. If invoked by the EU over vaccines it's an outrageous abuse of the Treaty. If invoked by the UK over the Irish Sea border it's a justifiable interpretation of the Treaty. The truth is both are an abuse. Those who condemn the second and excuse the first are quisling ultra remainer 5th columnists like Devious Grevious. And those who condemn the first and excuse/support the second are hard leaver nutjobs who see the UK/EU relationship as a forever war where we have God on our side. There are, as it happens, rather more of the latter types on PB.com.
The EU invoking over vaccines was an outrageous abuse. The conditions for invocation are explicitly set out.
The invocation conditions were not met with UvdL invoked it. They are met now.
Everyone on all sides agrees that diversion of trade is happening, the pro-EU side consider it a good thing and evidence of "Brexit being bad" but if its happening that's the condition met for invocation. You can't deny that.
Yep, a perfect illustration of what I said -
"And those who condemn the first and excuse/support the second are hard leaver nutjobs who see the UK/EU relationship as a forever war where we have God on our side."
This is a piece of cake this morning.
Except I'm an entirely rational and moderate Leaver who has been shown to be right time and again.
Do you deny that diversion of trade is happening at the minute? Yes or no? Do you deny that diversion of trade is an entirely legitimate trigger? Yes or no?
If you can't answer these two simple questions, you show yourself off to be the trolling hypocrite you are.
In my years on here I struggle to recall you calling anything significant to do with Brexit right. What you mainly do is churn out simple simon, hard leaver, Brit Nat propaganda, then strain every sinew to interpret events as being a vindication of it, in the process and where necessary (which is often) rewriting both what you previously said, and why you previously said it, and what has actually happened.
As to A16, what is relevant is the existence, nature, extent of the problems being caused by the agreed NI Protocol. This can't be boiled down to the noddy "yes/no" multiple choice couplet you present here. The actual "yes/no" question is - are the problems of such thorniness and magnitude as to justify suspending the Protocol or reneging on it? And to this the objectively best (non-quisling, non-hardleaver-nutjob) answer is No.
Philip is highly suggestible. I legitimately insisted on a Y/N answer about something else yesterday, and he has taken up the idea and run with it. It is of course usually deployed fallaciously in "Have you stopped beating your wife?" type questions, as here.
My response to most of his posts these days is from Frank N. Furter:
"How forceful you are, Philip. Such a perfect specimen of manhood. So... dominant. You must be awfully proud of him, Mrs Thompson."
When he got schooled a few weeks ago on the lump of labour fallacy he was committing, he starting referring to the fallacy himself, trying to twist it to support his own point of view. It's sad more than anything.
Hm. The lump of labour fallacy is itself something of a fallacy. Or, it exists, at the macro level. Granted, as the supply of labour increases, the supply of jobs there are to do also increases. But it takes a long, long time to filter through, and labour is poorer in the short term and certainly no more rich in the long term. It is of no comfort to an individual low wage worker whose wages are being held down by a limitless supply of unskilled labour that in the long run that labour will also create a demand for more unskilled labour.
I thought that too. ie the government approach of restricting labour to drive up wages is economically illiterate but there would be a lengthy drag while employers tried to stay in business at previous staffing levels.
In fact the adjustment seems to be quite quick, as far as the sketchy evidence goes.
For all the economic expertise of our Brexiters on here they have failed to grasp the simplest of economic facts.
For them it is simple - restrictions on labour = wages up = prices up hurrah! Let's all pay ourselves more.
They ignore (to be charitable) or do not appreciate that restrictions on labour will shift the demand curve leftwards which will have an effect on prices and hence an equilibrium will be reached at a lower price point hence profitability will decrease hence wage rises will reverse hence we are back where we started.
Except with an adjustment of the wealth, skewed towards the low-paid, who are now closer to being able to afford to live where they work. Something of a reversal of recent trends, which has seen wealth accrue to capital rather than labour.
It depends. Two new coffee (or sprout picking) machines increase the returns to capital but that is what everyone seems to be crying out for.
Productivity gains is the only way that the lower paid will be able to increase their wealth in real terms in a sustainable way (ie beyond any market equilibrium adjustment period).
Without productivity gains the lower paid will remain disadvantaged.
Indeed, ask the garage owner who invested a quarter of a mil in a mechanical car wash, just before they became replaced by slave labour.
What we have now in the UK, is a medium-term opportunity for investment in capital and increases in productivity. In the short term, we see experienced people in certain sectors able to gain significantly from the labour shortages.
Comments
You should invite her to join the forum. She'd be the best commenter on here
This is not the only two explanations, and it is deluded to say that it is. Something unexplained is not constrained by those explantations alone. They could be proof that we are in a computer simulation which is (a) breaking down or (b) being messed with by bored programmers. It could be God. It could, genuinely be glitches and coincidence and people misinterpreting things.
Fortean Times own Jenny Randles wrote a good piece in this month's issue about how perception skews depending on expectation. For instance someone on a motorway 'sees' a UFO (or UAP if you want) fly over the motorway. Why didn't the other hundreds of drivers see it? Perhaps because they saw the aeroplane, that one observers miss-identified.
I sense you are fully on board with UAP's = aliens, and thats fine. But I think you need to keep your options a bit more open than the two you list.
I am resigned / accepting of the probability that biological brains are a milestone rather than an end point in the evolution of intelligence. I hope the artificial phase of that evolution doesn’t happen until after everyone I know has grown old and died but I am realistic enough to admit that might not be the case. AGI is a hard topic to confront because it’s impossible not to consider it in combination with whether there is such a thing as a soul. I suspect this is the same reason why so many struggle with the UAP topic too.
Remember that the likes of Greenpeace can’t be reasoned with - no matter what any politician commits to, it’s nowhere near enough.
Even now, the North America rig count is still about 150 rigs short of where it was pre-pandemic, and even though it's rising at 7-8 a week, (and gas production is finally rising again) it's going to take until early next year before rigs are running at the same quantity as last Jan/Feb, and gas production will probably not exceed previous peaks until next March or April.
The ramifications are enormous, in every sphere of life. The idea that the Chinese might get there first IS terrifying. It will be like the first country achieving the H bomb
Now, you can get into all the feedback loops, albedo (changing due to heating - more/less ice, more/fewer clouds, different take up of CO2 depending on temperature etc), arguments about how all those mechanisms work (and that is the source of much uncertainty). But instead your average sceptic just denies the link and starts chatting on about solar cycles and sunspots. It's odd.
Which is more effective?
Actually you are right. I found the hostility to a Tory government putting up taxes to fund additional public expenditure on health and social care from the left quite bewildering. The idea that it was a con and all of this money will end up being spent on health instead was a particularly interesting example of doublethink.
It has a lot to do with George Orwell, actually. I identify with him in that I think he was a sincere contrarian (as opposed to a trolling, clickbaity contrarian, which actually I am not any more than he was) who was much much better at pointing out the flaws in things than in proposing anything to replace them with.
It is stupendously boring.
Productivity gains is the only way that the lower paid will be able to increase their wealth in real terms in a sustainable way (ie beyond any market equilibrium adjustment period).
Without productivity gains the lower paid will remain disadvantaged.
In terms of mis-perception. You are right that I am sufficiently persuaded that we are not looking at observation error (or at least not in every case). And so it seems is the DoD.
I do hope the Daily Mail wasn't making it up, but there doesn't seem to have been an update yet.
If it's one of the students, then it'll be the ragtag of face coverings. If it's the lecturer, then it'll be the FFP3.
It seems obvious that we should be moving (and should have been moving) to renewable energy sources as quickly as possible in order to reduce costs and our dependence on imported fuel as well as to mitigate climate change.
There is a major opening for an anti woke, anti "green crap" populist movement. It is interesting how such views, which are very prevalent in society, are barely represented in the political system; almost to the point where you could actually say that democracy is failing.
On your second point, the government was quite clear that in the initial period the money was to be used primarily to help the NHS clear the backlog. It's hardly surprising that there was some scepticism as to whether the money would ever find its way to social care.
Sure, it’s hard to tease out exact impacts to Earth’s complex weather patterns and biosphere with marginally different CO2 concentrations. But the general thrust that CO2 warms planets is 8-year old level science and I’ve never really understood how people have got away with denying that.
Firstly I'm absolutely not lauding the fact that anyone has returned, indeed I don't expect that many people have returned and I expect when the Census (which was taken well into the pandemic and post-Brexit) will show there's more people in the country than we thought.
However the point is that anyone who has arrived is already here, anyone who is left is already gone. Aggregate demand today is based on those figures, its not going to suddenly fall off or increase because of the people who've already moved. The labour shortage isn't going to go away due to people who've already left, any more than in recent years its not been able to be filled because of people who've arrived.
You can't fill a shortage (or eliminate one) by either immigration or emigration, because its like a dog chasing its tail. No matter how fast the dog runs (or how many people net arrive or leave) the target is moving in tandem with it, because its attached. The "shortage" has been with us for two decades since in-work benefits and limitless immigration of third world people on minimum wage creating a systemic imbalance in the labour market. We've spent decades chasing our own tale as a nation.
For your final points: no matter what policy we have there'll always be some winner and some losers, nothing new in that, overall a real wage rise is a good thing (and more than people on median incomes have had for past two decades) and secondly it won't be a huge hit for our competitiveness, it will be a relatively minor one. If the increase in labour costs leads to investment bringing about improved productivity and improved efficiency then that could actually boost our competitiveness not hit it.
However, many that claim to be sceptics seem to show a great deal of credulity for any alternative explanation of measured temperature anomalies.
(Oh and there is masses of disagreement within the field on climate science - not so much on whether there's a problem, but the extent, which areas hit hardest, the effectiveness of different mitigations - or at least, there was a decade or so back when I was working on the edge of this area, not the models, but nuts and bolts of historical measurement)
That's why climate action needs to be depoliticised in order for us to go as fast as possible, and not attached to ecosocialism.
If you pick at the point of joining you've got the disruption of joining happening (eg if people have already made plans to buy homes to let out to those arriving) and if you pick a point after they've joined then its already even more disrupted too.
Same logic as why you yourself have said it will take years before we can analyse the effects of Brexit. To do so we'll need to then compare years into the future with before Brexit happened.
And yes absolutely, productivity gains are the only way to square the circle.
Obviously, this has some limits - racial superiority, for example, but then.. we've now thoroughly tested that one with DNA mapping.
Edit - now I've seen the poll, it's what I said. Raising NI was the only option given.
To be fair, the LDs were still in favour, just by a lesser margin - it was Labour who have changed their minds completely
Please flag all posters on this thread who are part of the Tory herd.
If there are none click refresh page.
It's strange, as the stereotype is of conservatives being more climate skeptic, and it does seem like that is the case, but we can all identify plenty of Conservatives (who are also conservative) who are hugely into Green issues.
But GPT-3 is not only not it, it is continents away. We are probably going to hit another AI winter in a decade or so as the limitations of current techniques are understood by the people providing the funding.
40-50 years ago Expert Systems were going to replace GPs for diagnosing diseases.
Guido also had a spy, who spotted a Labour MP talking to the MoS hack in a bar in Manchester, so maybe it was just some performance art to try and get a story going.
The plotting for an actual defection wouldn’t have been done in a bar.
The one thing I don't understand whenever climate change comes up, is this:
If the human brain is about to be superseded by artificial intelligence, and there is no way of actually stopping development in this area due to a combination of market forces and competition between hostile states; then why are people worrying about climate change?
It seems like people are hopelessly optimistic about being able to solve the AI problem, and disproportionately pessimistic about being able to solve climate change.
There is a lot we don't know, but there are a lot of good reasons to change the way we generate energy.
As for evidence the ecosystem is complicated, we're killing crabs fishing with Brexit undersea power cables, allegedly.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/oct/11/underwater-cables-renewables-affect-blood-cells-brown-crabs-study
But all you hear about that is “sure but why isn’t it filmed on an iPhone? There’s loads of iPhones out there”. To which the answer is, well yeah there’s loads of such photos and videos taken by global citizens too but noone cares because we can’t trust / verify the credibility of the source. You’ve asked for years for formal recognition by the military rather than fakey members of the public. It’s an entirely circular debate.
Leaving aside reporting glitches, which the report to Congress seems to rule out in a notable number of cases, I make the list as:
Interstellar visitors. Requires no new science at all. Most likely explanation. Indeed it would be a great and inexplicable mystery if we were not receiving interstellar visitors.
Crypto terrestrial (I.e. non human earthlings) is plausible but less likely and requires a complete re-write of many things. It’s fun to think about though.
Inter dimensional or inter temporal is more challenging for our current science but is plausible. Wouldn’t be so different an outcome to either of the above.
Something exogenous to our existence (I.e. the simulation) is Descartes and the Evil Deamon territory. Philosophy makes my head hurt, no thanks.
China / Russia having the ultra tech described in all cases is implausible given the dated history of some of the recordings, though almost certainly explains some of it, which is what makes official complacency so dangerous and perplexing.
US Dark Tech is implausible for the same reason but also implies a government parallel to the democratic one, sounds like a conspiracy theory to me and in its own way less plausible than China.
Positive tests still trending steadily up. Deaths still trending steadily down. Average seven day figure for deaths is now under 100, and lower that any point since mid-August.
Am I the only person feeling somewhat anxious that this disease isn't over with yet? Should I just relax?
It's all about the rate.
For those reasons (and more) I think we'd have eventually moved away from fossil fuels regardless of climate change but it might have happened 30-40 years later.
There are simply better ways of producing energy more cleanly and easily with extremely advanced technology, but the economics and the engineering has to be there first.
My wife has just had her booster and I have mine next week and we are so grateful
An example is the humble iPad. Back in 1972, computer scientist came up with the concept of the Dynabook (*) - a computer for education. For decades, computer professionals have used it as an objective, and endpoint. Steve Jobs was apparently one of them. A vision that has taken four decades to come anywhere near fulfilment.
Alan Key doesn't think we've reached the endpoint yet.
(*) Not the laptop line
According to the ex DNI? FOAF.
If they really have all this data, show us. Until then its just more fuel for the 'we need more money' faction.
It’s much harder to sell to the public, when those advocating significant raises in the cost of living are swanning around the world on private planes.
There are now billions of smartphones with great cameras, all around the world, used by billions of people every day
This is the greatest system of mass observation and visual recording we have ever possessed, by orders of magnitude. Yet we have near-zero plausible photos of UAPs even as the US military reports pilots seeing these things daily, in some cases
Why no photos?
The issue is we were trapped in a feedback loop.
Brexit hasn't created the labour shortage - the labour shortage was already there and has been for decades. What its done is broken the feedback loop by removing the reason wages were imbalanced in the first place. Now wages can rise to reach an equilibrium where demand no longer exceeds supply.
Like @turbotubbs , I'm a lukewarmist. I think we're warming, and I think it's due to carbon, but we're also emphasising the worst case scenarios and a lot of the science which backs it is dodgy. The tone of the warmists is religious, which - despite me believing in warming - naturally makes me suspicious.
But set aside whether we're warming or not: am I in favour of cleaner air? Absolutely. Am I in favour of not being dependent on Russia and the Middle East for energy? Wildly. Am I in favour of designing a world where non-drivers are not excluded from travel? Of course. The rewards for decarbonising seem to me so clear that whether or not warming is real doesn't really matter.
BUT - live your life. There is nothing to be gained from locking yourself down and hiding. You may be hit by a car tomorrow (less likely if locking down at home, but you get the point).
What's needed is political leadership. People will listen to people they trust.
For some reason, for a lot of people in this country, that is Boris Johnson and the Conservative party more generally. So it's great that they do talk about climate change and have committed to doing some things about it. Obviously not as much as needed, but steps in the right direction.
That's definitely missing on the US right.
The problem is that we're not having a political debate between right and left wing ways of solving the climate change problem, because the right wing allowed itself to be captured by the special interests who were making lots of money out of the status quo.
No-one says we have to depoliticise trade policy, or education policy - we have robust arguments about whether left or right wing answers will work better.
Climate change should be the same, but the right wing wasted several decades. You can't blame the left wing for that.
I never heard any of the serious climate scientists who came to speak advocating a hair-shirt approach. It was all (apart from the projections themselves on climate) about the potential mitigating technologies, the new power sources and the tech to do the same things with less energy through greater efficiency.
Steve Baker... Taxi Time maybe?
I distinctly remember reading an Asimov story in my very early teens in which a spaceship dropped back into normal space in orbit round a planet in another star system, so I thought yes, exactly what will be happening in the next 100 years. Then the hero takes an electronic thingy out of his pocket and starts reading the new planet's news on it. And I thought Yeah, like that will ever happen.
What we have now in the UK, is a medium-term opportunity for investment in capital and increases in productivity. In the short term, we see experienced people in certain sectors able to gain significantly from the labour shortages.