- >When the root causes are massive delusion, indulging in ridiculous conspiracy theories, general resentment that other people want to be treated fairly, cult-of-personality-like worship of a dictator, etc. Then unfortunately the root-cause is ignorance and the problem is unfixable.
And how do you know all this? You're pretty quick at finding root causes.
- I will take that link at face value, so Trump is just as bad as Obama? Great, they're both loathsome in my book. Count me in. :)
>He was banned for inciting violence using Twitter's platform.
He supposedly incited people with his rally speech. Besides, I don't think the mob was checking Trumps twitter feed for instructions. The violence seemed premeditated to me.
- >I'll prognosticate that the close compatriots of the violent insurrectionists who are currently enjoying three hots and a cot courtesy of the US Government will almost certainly engage in more violent acts. Probably fairly soon.
I hear most people on the left support reforming criminals, and finding underlying root-causes. Do you?
- >That Russia helped Trump is generally agreed upon.
It is only agreed upon when you don't talk to people outside of your own echo chamber. In 2016, people were just shocked that so many people could vote for a loathsome person like Trump. Dems were unhappy and looked for someone to blame, except themselves for running such a weak candidate. 2020 was just as fair an election, and Trump got even more votes than 2016.
>Sure, there are subreddits that commonly exaggerated the truth about the Russia thing. Should they should get banned, since r/donaldtrump got banned for supporting violence?
What is the standard? Misinformation is OK? Anyway, I don't think an argument here will change anyone's views. People will eventually realize that the Dems have been conning their supporters for quite a while now.
- >wanting to try to tackle a problem where millions of people of this country can’t be trusted to personally vet what they read/watch online?
Yeah, I don't trust them to do anything remotely competent here. They've happily accepted ad spend from Trump, as-if the past four years were any different. Google is the problem, not the solution. They're an advertising and surveillance company - the last company to be trusted on "vetting" anything. They're entire business model is to get people to click on ads and open their wallet based on "marketing" - which itself is a form of manipulation. For me, Google is at a negative trust level.
- Wait, are you seriously claiming Trump won because of Russia? Or do you agree that the ridiculous Russia narrative pushed by Dems was total BS?
Here is a nice article on the whole situation:
https://taibbi.substack.com/p/russiagate-is-wmd-times-a-mill...
>Totally different than something like "the election was rigged", which was tested and failed in court, but still gets shouted from the rooftops, leading to dangerous outcomes like what we saw in DC.
Yes, that was untrue, ridiculous, and in the end became dangerous. I'm pointing out the usual hypocrisy on both the left and the right when it comes to their own pet causes.
- Its the usual political BS that comes out of there. We don't need this "political insight" from a surveillance/advertising company that makes money by tricking you into clicking on an ad or convincing you to buy some trinket that some other random company made. Maybe one day, instead of forming these unions they would just quit and stop enabling Google.
- No, what I'm saying is not up for debate is the fact that control gets shared when you take someone else's money. Its a known framework in which everyone operates.
Your "shareholders are known for" is simply a BS talking point. Every person who has a 401K is probably a shareholder somewhere. All those hundreds of millions of people value long term stability too. Nintendo is not a penny stock.
- >The default state of a human is an agnostic. If you are born and nobody tells you the Good Word, you live your entire life without religion.
There are some interesting arguments that we evolved to become hard-wired for religion. Fear during early evolution was probably the driver for this, all the earthquakes, volcanoes, hurricanes, death by germs etc. We invented religion as a means to explain stuff - the solar cycle, disease, etc, etc. Turns out those explanations were wrong, but our biology is still the same ..
- > if I take your position that racism in policing doesn't exist, and that the police are treating everyone equally:
Please don't do this. Its obvious OP didn't even remotely mean or say this.
They clearly said that there is some level of racism, not that it doesn't exist at all. Is it the greatest problem facing America? I'd argue its not even in the top 10.
- Its happening everywhere, in every political arena. I'm hearing very similar things happening in other countries as well. The hilarious part is every political side believing they are the only ones with facts. It sort of reminds me of how civilizations collapse - esp. the 'barbarians' overpowering 'civilized' Europe. All current mainstream political parties have these barbarians within them. They don't all take violent forms, but they infect people with memes and thoughts that go counter to facts and logic. In general though, I think its the slow decline of hard news with a corresponding amplification of emotional porn/entertainment/opinion/drama. The massive amount of noise that is generated makes it hard to find the signal, and social media isn't helping because they make money when "news" is more entertainment/drama than boring facts. In short, we're f?ked, and we're going to say f?ked for a while.
- Saying there was absolutely zero fraud in this election is inaccurate, but saying the election was "stolen" is inaccurate as well. Every election has irregularities - most of it is people making honest mistakes on forms. As is typical, it is fairly minor in this election as well. Big picture - there are problems with electronic voting that have been researched into by many academics. I believe we must insist that the source code to all voting systems to be made public.
- >* Establish a network of "Research Universities" from each country in the World (sort of UN of Universities). The poorer countries can be partially funded by richer countries. This is to ensure that knowledge flows are not constrained due to lack of resources.
Agreed, a lot of grant funding now has an open access rider on it, so research doesn't get stuck behind a paywall.
> Research in the various Sciences have to be clearly identified as "Critical" or Not. The former is funded and managed completely differently than the latter.
How do you ensure that this classification of critical/non-critical happens accurately? How do you hire for this team, and what metrics would you use to judge their performance? How do you ensure that this 'non critical' funding isn't simply a waste of money? This solution seems to just push the same problem further down the road.
>For example, research in vaccines/cancer is considered critical while research in "battery chemistry"(currently a hot area of research) is not.
I work in vaccines, and I don't agree with this blanket assertion. How do you deal with vaccine technology that is junk and will never produce a safe and efficacious product?
>In the former case, all we keep tabs on is "some progress" and not necessarily an external deadline i.e. researchers are given the freedom to keep working on it with self-imposed and self-defined milestones.
So unlimited funding for unlimited projects as long as they are critical according to some review committee? We might have a tiny problem doing that.. :)
>* Finally, No "Research" project should ever be overseen by purely "Administrative/Finance/MBA" types. Only Core Domain Experts should be granted oversight with the above mentioned helping as needed.
We should have a large tent. Financial management is a critical component of any successful project. "Core Domain Experts" will likely have limited time, given their other commitments and own personal research to work on. Also, there needs to be a thorough vetting and oversight to make sure that these experts aren't just funding projects that their buddies are working on.
I think you have some good ideas, but as you can probably imagine too, its no easy task proposing a working model, and getting it adopted world-wide :)
- > If you're a great fundraiser, why do you even need the University?
Because funds don't cover certain operational costs. You also lease lab space/equipment/staff from the university, etc.
Everyone can identify problems with the existing model, its rather difficult to propose workable solutions!
- Please note that the [1] NIH, for e.g., does fund speculative/exploratory research. You will not however, get unlimited funding. So if you fail to show at-least something you probably wont get renewed. There isn't a perfect funding model that also prevents wastage.
[1]
Exactly. However people seem reluctant to grant this to Trump supporters. They seem to be always lumped together as evil racists.