Category Archives: Liberating Thoughts

Geek Stuff, General, Liberating Thoughts, Politics, Preparing for the worst

Double Checking AI

Why can’t we run an AI check on AI output, asking it to evaluate the output for bias? It can review the output for racial, sexual, gender, socioeconomic, political, and any other number of potential biases, then put out a summary chart so you have overview of the inherent bias in the report.

You should be able to submit any article or post you are reading for this treatment.

Interesting, Word Press has added an AI Assistant to preview what you are about to publish. This is what it provided for this article.

The idea of using AI to evaluate the output for bias is intriguing. It could be helpful to:

1. Conduct thorough research on existing AI models for bias evaluation.

2. Collaborate with AI experts to develop a system that can detect and summarize potential biases.

3. Test the system extensively by submitting various articles and posts for evaluation.

4. Consider integrating the AI Assistant into the publishing process to provide users with a comprehensive overview.

5. Ensure transparency by clearly communicating the limitations and scope of bias evaluation to users.

The addition of an AI Assistant to preview content in WordPress is indeed an interesting development.

General, Liberating Thoughts, Politics

Happy New Year! 2020

Happy New Year! 2020 – the year of Hindsight! I hope it is your best one yet.

2019 wasn’t the best of years, though we did get a chance to visit Ireland, meet some cousins, and attend a Worldcon, as well as a brief visit to Iceland on the way back. Between travel and medical issues I only got to spend half a year on the golf course. The good news is that, medically, I am back in the pink for 2020. Physically, I need to continue the exercising and stretching I began last year with the Silver Sneakers program down at the gym. That should also help on the golf course.

As we enter the election year, I am conflicted. I support Bernie Sanders wholeheartedly. I believe his Democratic Socialism platform is the best for the US moving into the 21st century. Our own Constitution starts with “We the People” and mandates to:

  • form a more perfect union,
  • establish justice,
  • insure domestic tranquility,
  • provide for the common defense,
  • promote the general welfare,
  • secure the blessings of liberty for ourselves and our descendants,

if that’s not Socialism, I don’t know what would be. But, the man is 78 years old; I really believe he would not survive first first term. I wish he had a groomed successor in his 50’s ready to go, but the other Democrats in the running don’t seem ready to adopt his platform. This also means his VP pick will be critical and I expect that “politics” will give us a less than optimal successor. It will be an interesting year.

I do think it is time for Congress to take back its constitutional duties and to stop ceding them to the executive. Especially sending American sailors, marines and soldiers into combat at the whim of the executive. Congress opened the door about letting the Executive use military force without direct Congressional approval and the Executive has ripped the door off the hinges. Our military actions throughout the world over the past 70 years have not been the actions of a democratic republic promoting its ideals to the world.

What we do seem to be doing is making the world safe for business. Not safe for the people who patronize the businesses but the businesses themselves. And to add some confusion to the mix, businesses are becoming multi-national and and by making the world safer for business we are making it less safe for ourselves, since if the business is engaging in practices our country deems unsafe, they will just move to another country that doesn’t prohibit or limit those practices. The practices are still unsafe and continue to create a harmful environment; it is just at a remove from us. And we still protect the overall business that is engaging in these practices. Realistically, we need to ban/prohibit these businesses from doing business in our country if we find them engaging in practices that we prohibit here because they are harmful.

Business concentrates money, politics concentrates power, concentrated money buys concentrated power, concentrated power can intensify concentrated money. We need to break this cycle. Let’s start by diffusing the power. Let Representatives have a maximum number of constituents, say 100,000 per Representative. Triple the size of the Senate and let the top three vote-getters be seated in each Senatorial election. Set a restriction that a person cannot hold successive terms of office. A Congressional incumbent can not run for the same office, but they can run in the following election when they are not the incumbent.

Congress should also incorporate sunset timelines into every bill, say 20-25 years, then the bill/law expires. Of course Congress may just reaffirm all the sunsetting bills en mass, so we restrict that so no more than half of the sunsetting bills can be approved in a bundle. The rest must be approved on to case-by-case basis.

On the money side:

  • 90% estate taxes on estates in excess of $5,000,000 should help prevent the concentration of wealth.
  • Political contributions can only come from registered voters or Citizens. Get businesses out of politics.
  • All political contributions are publicly available for review.
  • 90% income tax on incomes over $5,000,000 should help as well.

Actually, I have a whole income taxing scheme that I will discuss in a later post.

Happy New Year! Let the Fun Begin!

Liberating Thoughts, Politics

Heard from the Donald

I got my first note from Donald Trump today, asking for money. Actually it was a joint effort from the DJTP (Donald J Trump for President) campaign and the RNC.

He wants to make America Great Again. I already thought it was Great – could be better, but still Great.

Among the bullet items he highlights as Democratic goals are:

  • They won’t be satisfied with Obamacare until health care is 100% government-run.
    • You’re right. A single-payer healthcare system is the best one for the American public.
  • They won’t rest until every illegal immigrant is given complete amnesty and the right to vote as hardened, life-long Democrat.
    • I don’t see any problems with giving taxpayers amnesty. Of course, the right to vote is restricted to citizens so the rest of the statement is a blatant lie and fear-mongering.
  • They won’t stop demonizing their opponents until political correctness replaces free speech.
    • If we replace the term ‘political correctness’ with ‘treating others with respect’ then where’s the problem? Trump, for one, and others, don’t seem to know the meaning of respect and thus wonder why they are demonized.

From Day 1, DT is going to build a wall on the Mexican Border, and Mexico will pay for it to keep US happy. Some property rules Donald, you can build what you want on your property but you pay for it. Unless you are the Donald Trump who contracts for jobs that are done and then not paid for.

On Day 1, DT will end the executive orders that attacked the Second Amendment. I checked and see that Obama has called for improving the background check process, enforcement of existing gun laws, and improving the communications between federal, state, and local law enforcement.  I don’t know why he wants to repeal these.

He’s going to create GREAT jobs. He doesn’t say what those jobs are. Possibly he expects several hundred million Americans will become Corporate Executives? So who’s going to cook our food, serve our food, and empty the trash? You know, if you paid the cooks, the servers, and the janitors a proper wage, they could have great jobs.

“We’re going to make America Great Again by making our military so big, so strong and so powerful, nobody will mess with us.”  We already have the biggest, strongest, most powerful military in the history of the world. Nation states don’t mess with us. Guerrilla groups do mess with us. And being the biggest, baddest bully on the block doesn’t historically work against guerrillas. Generally, you have to you have to sucker them with kindness to make them go away.

Veterans have been treated badly under the Obama regime. No, I think they have been treated badly by a Republican Congress. I don’t see that changing under any president.

The liberals hate him and are about to unleash a vicious, brutal, and expensive campaign. (Nothing but the best for the Donald.)  I don’t think the campaign needs to be vicious and brutal, all they need to do is replay Trump’s past statements and make fun of him.   Oh, I forgot, the truth is vicious and brutal.

Then he goes on to solicit money.

In the postscript there was a bit “politics is a team sport”. Politics is NOT a sport. Maybe too many Americans are forgetting that. It annoyed me verily that the networks were covering the debates and the primaries as sport. Who’s up, who’s down, who slipped, who hit a home run. they are treating it like a horse race with many other sports thrown in. Politics is NOT a sport.

 

 

Economics, General, Liberating Thoughts

Debt History

I have been reading David Graeber’s Debt: the first 5,000 years and find it very interesting. The initial question posed is “Surely one has to pay one’s debts.” And from there Graeber looks back 5,000 years from an anthropologist’s point of view at debt, credit, money and economies.

I learned many variations on ‘accepted truths’ . Economists like to start the history of economics with the early human societies developing barter, then money, then credit. Adam Smith in Wealth of Nations started this paradigm and it has been repeated by the following generations. This is used to establish a ‘natural order’ of economics. Yet, the anthropologist finds that early societies built their economies on a credit based  exchange of commodities. Before credit it may have been favor based exchanges. And with credit comes debt and some manner of quantifying debt. It doesn’t have to be money; it may be tokens or tallies or other symbolic measures.

Eventually money, coinage, is developed – apparently simultaneously in Greece, India and China. Not only are states able to demand their taxes in coin, they can use the coin to pay their armies rather than provision them with commodities out of their treasuries.  This puts the coinage into the general population which lets them pay their taxes.

The philosophers start discussing the abstracts concept of symbols and reality, since money isn’t really real, virtual materialism.

Religions grow and start to collect and hoard the coins and start preaching different concepts of sin and debt and obligation and guilt.  Somehow they are all tied together. Different religions approach debt in different ways.  Do you owe a debt to your forebears for being there? Do you owe a debt to your parents or your community just for being there? Do you owe a debt incurred by your parents? Unto how many generations?

There are discussions of human economies and commercial economies. Contrast the unique value of an individual with the anonymous  value of a hunk of metal.

There is some exploration of the nature of the relationship between debtor and creditor. As long as is debt one can not be equal to the creditor. Even more interesting is the situation where a debt paid in full implies the two are equal and that just will not do. Then societal rules can be stretched, twisted and strained to prevent the equality from happening.

One item I found interesting was the relationship of the Chinese need for silver – to keep its coinage system working since they didn’t want to use paper money – to  the European invasion of the Americas.  And there is the oft-repeated theme of armies enslaving people to work in the mines to get the mineral wealth to pay the armies. Seems to have happened quite a bit once they decided to start paying armies in coin.

A market involves using money to go from one commodity to another. Money is just an intermediary. With capitalism, money is used to make money. Money makes money through interest and debt. This is an ever spiraling growth of that will collapse on itself and probably take society with it. Graeber’s discussion of the last 40 years is very interesting and gives me pause as to what we might experience over the next 30-40 years.  Given 5,000 years of history bearing down on us, I don’t think we can be agile enough to avoid a heavy shock.

Graeber shows that throughout history, human societies rebel against onerous debt. They have a Grand Jubilee and reset the meter. I don’t know if I want to see it happen or not.

I highly recommend Debt: the first 5,000 years for a thoughtful read.

 

Liberating Thoughts, Politics

Questions for the candidates

I see that the Republicans are having their little love fest in South Carolina. I have a few questions I would like for them to address and to expand upon as they see fit.

  • What do they envision as a more perfect union?
  • What sort of justice would they establish?
  • What is domestic tranquility?
  • How will they provide for the common defense?
  • How will they promote the general welfare?
  • What are the blessings of liberty and how do we secure them for ourselves and our prosperity?

I know the devil is in the details, but I would like to see if we have some agreement on the basics. I would like to see the Democrats answer the same set of questions. Anyone running for federal office should try answering them.

And another question to add to the others-

  • Do we the people have a basic right to privacy?

 

 

Liberating Thoughts, Politics

Building Walls

From Thomas Jefferson’s Letter to the Danbury Baptists, Jan 1, 1802

Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between Man & his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only, & not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should “make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,” thus building a wall of separation between Church & State.

I think this draws a pretty strong link between the establishment clause of the first amendment and the phrase “separation of church and state”, although some anal types will argue that he said ‘between’ not ‘of”. 

I think that many Republican candidates are unclear on the concept of ‘concept’. Delaware, Delaware, Colorado, Nevada.

I see Daily Kos has some links to Republicans in their own words, but here I wonder about ‘context’ more than ‘concept’

General, Liberating Thoughts, Politics

And then the super computer starts smoking…

I remember taking an oath when I enlisted in the Navy Reserve many years ago.

Federal law requires everyone who enlists or re-enlists in the Armed Forces of the United States to take the enlistment oath. The oath of enlistment into the United States Armed Forces is administered by any commissioned officer to any person enlisting or re-enlisting for a term of service into any branch of the military. The officer asks the person, or persons, to raise their right hand and repeat the oath after him. The oath is traditionally performed in front of the United States Flag and other flags, such as the state flag, military branch flag, and unit guidon may be present.

In the Armed Forces EXCEPT the National Guard (Army or Air)

I, (NAME), do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and that I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. So help me God.

In the National Guard (Army or Air)

I, (NAME), do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States and the State of (STATE NAME) against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and that I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the Governor of (STATE NAME) and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to law and regulations. So help me God.

Guide Note: There has been some controversy about whether the phrase “So help me God” is mandatory. I have seen officers allow enlistees to omit these words, if they choose, according to their religious preference and beliefs. However, federal law does not appear to make any part of the oath optional. See 10 United States Code, Section 502.

(From:)

Now, what happens if the first part, defending the Constitution, is under attack from the second part, the president and the appointed officers? The third part, the UCMJ, clarifies it all with reference to obeying Lawful Orders. Of course, how is a simple enlisted service member supposed to know the difference? They are just following orders from the educated officers. Pity they don’t make acing the civics course a prerequisite for enlistment.

(Compare with the President’s oath of office)