Ask a Comedian

When we want solutions to the “world’s big problems” who do we go to? Often it is politicians, or senior managers and business leaders, or various types of “public intellectuals”. Is this a good idea? Well, considering they are the exact people who have got us into this mess, maybe not!

At the other end of the spectrum we have people who are so naive and ignorant that their opinions are probably worth even less. Examples of these people might be climate protestors, university students, and social rights activists. Listening to these clowns is just as bad as listening to the politicians.

So who should we listen to? Me, of course! No, I’m not that arrogant. I’m going to suggest, British standup comedian, Jimmy Carr. Now you might be surprised by that idea, but hear me out.

Like a lot of comedians, who appear like crude simpletons on the surface, Jimmy has a level of intellectualism behind the facade which is worth listening to. In a recent podcast he featured in he offered some ideas to solve some major current political and social issues, and they made a lot of sense – in other words, they agreed with my own thoughts!

Here’s idea number one: give women who have children tax relief. This idea has been implemented in Hungary where a women there with four children or more will be exempted for life from paying income tax. Fewer children offer lower tax reductions.

What benefit would be gained from this? Well, the population in many Western countries is falling and this places an economic burden on current generations as the general population ages. Some countries birth rates mean their populations are actually reducing because the natural fertility is below the 2.1 (if I remember correctly) per couple required to maintain the population.

You might say that immigration is another possible solution to this. In Hungary they ban Muslim migrants, but Jimmy did’t comment on this. I wouldn’t necessarily ban immigration completely, but I would only allow immigrants who have skills the country needs (and that would include Muslims).

So this would encourage more births and return the country to a more balanced profile of ages in the population. It would also increase the income of women who lose pay from having time off to raise children, making the “gender pay gap” (which doesn’t really exist, but let’s not go there right now) less of an issue.

If the birth rate became too high, the tax relief levels could be modified to aim for the target birth rate. This would apply to new applicants for the scheme, because those who already signed up get the benefits for life.

Remember also, that those extra children will grow up, get jobs, and start paying tax themselves. Brilliant, isn’t it!

Here’s another idea: put small nuclear reactors in every town in the country. Once they were installed and running, power would be effectively free for the life of the reactor, which could be 30 years.

Small reactors have been used in submarines and other places for decades with very few problems. And remember that the tiny number of nuclear accidents in the past were all the result of gross mismanagement of old nuclear technology, and even then there were few casualties (except perhaps Chernobyl, which was incredibly badly handled). Also note that nuclear has the lowest death and injury rate of any power generation technology (including solar) so it really isn’t the problem it is often portrayed as.

If a country (Jimmy suggested Britain) did this, it could encourage investment by offering free power. Even if the pay rate for the workers was higher than other countries, it might be offset by free power, and this might return industries to the country which have moved to where operation costs were cheaper.

I think the numbers would need to be run on this to see how viable the idea is, but it is worth us getting over the infantile fear of nuclear technology and at least considering it.

Just briefly, here are two other ideas…

First, protestors are pathetic. They think gluing themsleves to a road and disrupting people’s lives is productive. What about getting a proper degree in the STEM fields, instead of gender studies, and researching ways to really improve environmental standards? Of course, many of these people are too stupid to get a real degree but it’s an excellent rhetorical point, at least.

And what about drug laws? Well, make all drugs legal but only for mature people. Jimmy suggested over 45 years of age, but that sounds a bit crazy. I believe the usual age quoted for a fully mature brain is 23, so maybe the limit should be 25 instead. Drug liberalisation laws of this sort laws have been created in Portugal, and according to most assessments, have been quite successful.

Maybe you think all of these ideas are crazy, or maybe you like some of them, or even all of them. I think they have merit and show a way that lives could be improved using classic economic techniques to encourage “good” behaviour. And whatever else you say, at least someone is thinking about genuinely innovative ways to improve the future.

You want genuinely innovative ideas? Just ask a comedian!

More Unpopular Opinions

If you don’t have some unpopular opinions you probably should examine your perspectives and consider whether your opinions are really yours or whether you are just parroting what other people think you should say.

By “unpopular” here, I don’t necessarily mean opinions which would not be supported by the majority of people. What I mean is those which are contrary to the standard narratives advocated for by the majority of the media, and mainstream institutions.

In fact, it is surprising how often what i think might be a controversial opinion is actually supported by many people, including those who I might expect wouldn’t agree with it. I found this out recently with my pro-Israel blog post “Which River?” from 2024-03-21 where several people told me privately they agreed but didn’t want to say so publicly, along with a few people who agreed in the comments, and one who didn’t.

I have already written one post on this subject, titled “Unpopular Opinions” from 2022-05-24, but this is more a follow up. So what other unpopular opinions do I have? Well, first let me say that I am not particularly committed to any of these. I could be wrong on them all, and I will accept that if the facts change, so these are opinions based on what I see as the facts now. OK, here they are…

1. Donald Trump. We’re off to a good, controversial start, right? I actually quite like Trump. I mean, he obviously has some faults, the main one arguably being that he doesn’t have a “filter” and just says whey he thinks. But I prefer that to the dishonest drivel we get from most politicians. I agree with about half of his policies, which isn’t bad, and the main reason I might not vote for him is because he’s so divisive, but who isn’t?
2. Obama. Maybe the antithesis of Trump and admired by so many for his speaking skills, but look at his record. He won the Nobel Peace Prize while bombing 8 Muslim countries, including hospitals, yet people have the cheek to say Trump is anti-Islamic. Really?
3. The origin of COVID. I think the lab leak theory is seriously worth considering. I mean, a new disease appears right next to a lab researching that exact type of modified virus. What are the chances? I don’t think it was deliberately released, because why do that right next to the place researching it? It was very likely an accident. And before you say that’s a conspiracy, remember some conspiracies are true!
4. Jeffrey Epstein. I think you would have to be pretty naive to think that Epstein’s death was a suicide. He was self-centered and not the sort of person I would consider would take his own life. And he had so many contacts in high places that surely there were plenty of people out there who might have felt more comfortable with him out of the way. I have some good cartoons about this. One shows a message: “Hilary Clinton sent you a suicide request” and has 2 options “Accept” and “Accept”. Another shows Bill Clinton saying “I did not have suicidal relations with that man”!
5. Climate Change. I have mentioned this before but for completeness I will add it here as well. I think the climate is changing and very likely a significant part of that is a result of human activity. But I think we are fooling ourselves of we think we can fix it. While countries like China are furiously building new coal fired power plants we are making tiny but expensive changes to the way we live. Why? It can’t be because it makes any difference, so it must be pure virtue signalling.
6. Minority groups. If I haven’t offended you yet, this should do it. I think so-called minority groups, like black people in the US, Maori in NZ, and women are actually inferior to “old white guys” in some ways. It isn’t necessarily a matter of the genetics of their sex or race, it is a cultural issue. Back people have a massive rate of broken families which relates directly to their education and then success in adult life. Women are more likely to want balance in their life and tend to be less aggressive in attaining their work goals. So there is no systemic anti-black racism and there is no gender wage gap. It’s all nonsense because people are not prepared to accept their own deficiencies. Note that any criticism above is of a statistical nature because there are plenty of highly successful black people, Maoris, and women, which proves my point that anyone can succeed.
7. Activism. There used to be a time when activism in support of “minority groups” (sorry to keep using that term with the scare quotes, but I just can’t think of a better one) like gay people, women, etc was necessary, but eventually it reaches a point where it becomes counter-productive. Many forms of feminism today are just making everyone less happy, and the trans activists must be a constant source of annoyance to many trans people, who might want to just live their lives like everyone else instead of being at the center of a massive political debate. Surely the activists are making life worse for many of the people they think they represent.

Well, that’s probably enough naughty opinions for today. I suspect no one will be offended by them all, but there probably won’t be too many who agree with them all either. Remember, they’re just opinions, which I might change in future, not some call to action for genocide or even cancellation. Try not to be too offended!

DEI must Die!

Well, apparently the opinions expressed here haven’t been controversial enough lately (I’m beng sarcastic, after the recent Hamas vs Israel post) so maybe it’s time to get into something genuinely problematic. Let’s try diversity, and especially diversity quotas!

A trend in recent years, which actually originated back in the 1960s when a lot of this trendy critical theory nonsense started, is for organisations and companies to be particularly aware of diversity and quotas for “disadvantaged” groups in society.

Originally this was often called “affirmative action”, which sounds good, doesn’t it? I mean it’s a lot better than “negative action” or “affirmative inaction”. But, as is almost always the case, the nice words hide something deeply problematic.

Now the same basic concept is known as DEI, or diversity, equity, and inclusion. Similarly to what I mentioned above, the alternative of uniformity, inequity, and exclusion sounds so much worse, but again, the reality behind the facade is far from what it might appear to be.

According to current theory, especially in the area of postmodernist and critical theory, if a group in society is not achieving as well as the dominant group then it must be because the dominant group is unfairly repressing the others. In effect, because this is only ever applied to modern Western countries, old white guys are stopping women, black people, trans people, etc from achieving what they could do otherwise.

I’m sure there are some situations where is some truth in this, and it was probably more common in the past, but it isn’t the primary issue any more, assuming it ever was. Let’s look at a few examples…

Women aren’t as widely represented in engineering as we would expect given that they make up 50% of the population. According to critical theory this is because men stop them from achieving in that area. Note that there is no need to provide evidence for this assertion because critical theory just inherently assumes it is true.

But, of course, it isn’t. Women are over-represented in other areas which might be considered more prestigious than engineering, such as medicine. What happened there? Did the old white guys fail to apply their evil influence? In reality, men and women are different, and women are more interested in “people centered” professions like medicine, and men are more interested in “thing centered” subjects like engineering. Note that there are plenty of men interested in people, and plenty of women interested in things, but there is a general trend which explains the differences we see.

So when there are demands for more women in STEM fields (often related to engineering) we are making at least 5 big mistakes: First, we are suggesting women should do something they may not be naturally interested in. Second, we might choose women in preference to men who would be better at the job. Third, we drive down the general level of competence in that profession. Fourth, when we see a “minority” group in a non-traditional job, we might be tempted to think they are there because of quotas rather than skill. And finally, we apply these rules unevenly, because there doesn’t end to be any programs trying to get more men into medicine!

I’m sorry to have to say this but I will, because it’s probably not just me who feels this way. When I see a woman engineer I presume she is not fully competent and got there through quotas. When I see a Maori doctor I presume he or she is less competent than others, and again is in the job to fulfil a quota. I know that I am often wrong, because there are plenty of good female engineers and good Maori doctors, but on average I would be right.

So DEI is not even really doing the “minority” group a favour, because it just creates suspicion and resentment. Note that when I see an old white guy in any role I assume he is competent (although he often won’t be) because there are no extraneous processes favouring him!

In recent years DEI has been applied to some critical areas, such as air traffic control. In the same time, accidents and near misses have increased noticeably. Now correlation does not necessarily imply causation, and there could be other reasons for the increase, but again diversity quotas cause suspicion.

There is a “competency crisis” heading our way as diversity is used more as a selection criterion than competence is. If we don’t hire the most competent people, standards will drop. If we revert to using competence, that might mean that most engineers are men and most doctors are women, but what’s wrong with that? People get to do what they are naturally best at, and we get higher standards as a result. DEI must Die!

More is Less

When is more less? Does that even make any sense? Well, in many contexts, I think it does. Specifically for this post, there is a point in every system, organisation, or company where adding more people results in less efficiency rather than more, and I think that pertains to not just positive outcomes per person involved, but also in absolute terms.

When Elon Musk took over Twitter he fired about 80% of the workforce. Since then, Twitter (now known as X) just seems to have got better. I use it a lot, almost every day, and it superficially at least, seems faster, more reliable, and even more accurate, thanks to the new community notes feature which is genuinely useful.

If you don’t know, community notes is a “fact checking” system powered by X users and relying on a consensus of views. It has alerted me on several occasions to material which was either untrue or biased, and I have never seen an occasion where it got its facts wrong.

So after losing 80% of its workforce (that is over 6000 individuals) things are better than ever. I really have to wonder what those thousands of people were doing. I would have to conclude that they weren’t making Twitter better, and I might even conclude they were making it worse!

This seems to be a clear example where more people lead to a less positive outcome, and it makes me wonder whether Twitter was an outlier in this, or whether every organisation might benefit from the same approach.

Here in New Zealand our education system seems to be worse than it ever was, despite the previous government increasing the number of people working in the Ministry of Education from 2700 employees (which many people might argue was already overblown and inefficient) to 4400. I have to wonder whether a mass layoff of 80% of those people might be justified.

Note that I am not talking about firing teachers here. These are all bureaucrats whose function might not be well defined and who might have difficulty in justifying their existence. A certain number of teachers are required to maintain teacher to pupil ratios and, unless we significantly restructure how we do education, I can’t see how reducing their numbers might help. Maybe we could move 80% of the bureaucrats into teaching roles?

But that’s probably not possible, because most of them wouldn’t have teaching skills. Why someone would work for the Ministry of Education and have no teaching skills is an interesting question. I must confess here that I am making an assumption about that, so if they are all qualified teachers I withdraw this criticism (you know I won’t need to though, don’t you).

My friend Fred (not his real name) works for a large organisation which has hired an increasing number of bureaucrats in recent years. When asked, many of these people cannot even give a clear description of what they do. beyond a job title like “business quality objective executive assistant” or “deputy vice president of equity and inclusion”. You look at these and just know they are a waste of space.

But it might be even worse than that. It might not be that these clowns are just a waste of money, they more likely actually stopping productive people getting things done. It would be interesting to apply the same process to them that Musk used at Twitter.

If you follow Sturgeon’s Law, that 90% of everything is crap, you might be tempted to fire 90% instead of 80, but I would suggest a more measured approach. Look for people with ridiculous job titles and give them a month leave. If things improve (as determined by a vote of the employees of that organisation) then ask them not to return.

I have a Dilbert cartoon which illustrates this quite well. A manager puts out an announcement “all employees not currently doing essential work can take the afternoon off” and then watches from a window as some employees leave, and says “this will be the easiest round of layoffs ever”.

Unfortunately, those people are often good for nothing else, so they might become unemployed. I think the current low unemployment in many countries is because about half (that’s my estimate based on nothing in particular) of workers effectively do nothing of any value (see my blog post titled “The Rise of BS Jobs” from 2023-04-03). But it’s cheaper to pay them an unemployment benefit to do nothing than a substantial salary to get in the way of everyone else.

Maybe more unemployment could be a good thing? After all, more is less.

A Bad Look

There are certain things which are technically legal and within the rules but are still quite reasonably thought of as bad. Sometimes they can even be justified by looking logically at the benefits against the drawbacks. But even then, they are usually still bad.

This particularly applies in politics, where perceptions are often more important than reality, so politicians and other public figures need to be particularly aware of this. By now, if you live in New Zealand, you might already know of an example of this phenomenon. Yes, it our new prime minister and the payments he accepted to pay for his accomodation in our capital city, Wellington.

The PM is already pretty rich, having been, amongst other things, CEO of our national airline, and he is being well paid as prime minister too. He owns seven houses, and one is worth almost $8 million, so he’s not short of cash.

And one of the major policy directions of his government is saving money by cutting back on existing services and downsizing government departments. So you might think at this point that he might want to set an example by saving the taxpayer a bit on what we pay for his accomodation.

But apparently not.

He initially accepted a payment of $1000 per week to pay for accomodation in Wellington – in an apartment he owns. Was he entitled to this? Yes. Do other politicians accept similar payments? Yes. Was it within the rules and not illegal in any way? Yes. Should he have done it? No.

It really is a bad look. How can you respect a person who tells everyone else to save money for the benefit of the country yet accepts a payment himself which he doesn’t really need? You really can’t. And the fact that he is now repaying it shows he at least accepts his error, or maybe he is just trying to make the best of a bad situation.

Note that I did vote for a party (Act) which is part of the government that the PM leads, and I don’t necessarily think he is a bad prime minister, although so far I certainly don’t think he’s a good one either. To be fair, I can’t think of any good ones, so that doesn’t necessarily mean much!

You might say that $52,000 to allow a good leader to live in the center of government of the country could easily result in that being paid back many times over if he does a good job, but that’s not really the point. As I said above, it’s about perceptions, and the fact that he didn’t even think of that shows he is either politically naive (he’s quite new to politics so that’s a fair explanation) of very entitled (also possible, considering his senior management positions).

I also have to say that this is a very common problem.

Maybe the greatest demonstration of a total inability to understand how their actions are perceived is the people who attend climate conferences. Large numbers of private jets (400 of them in the most recent one, see my blog post titled “No More Leaders” from 2021-11-11) fly from all over the world, emitting a lot of carbon into the atmosphere, to a conference aimed at reducing the amount of carbon being released into the atmosphere.

Again, it’s possible that if the conference is successful the amount of atmospheric carbon saved might be a lot more than the amount released by the jets of the leaders at the meeting, but again that’s not the point. If the elites are asking the rest of us to make sacrifices to save the climate (let’s not even get started about whether climate change is real or not) then it’s hard to take them seriously when they won’t make sacrifices themselves.

It might be legal. It might be practical. But it’s a still a bad look.

Just Mostly Useless

There’s a pretty convincing argument (at least to me, but also to many others) that our education system is broken. How? Well, here are a few possible ways: truancy is extremely high, exam results are not as good as they were, education seems to be warped by extreme leftist narratives, and students are learning material which is of limited practical use.

Now, I am going to add a few provisos on what I have said. First, the current government seems to have made an effort to get back to (useful?) basics. Second, school should not be all about practical skills, because appreciation of the arts, and more abstract subjects are also important. Third, there might be reasons (such as the effects of COVID) for the high truancy rate, which the educators could not reasonably be blamed for.

But despite this, I think the education system is terrible. It is more about teaching students what to think rather than how to think, like it is claimed happened in the past. Despite me adding that word “claimed” here, I do think there is some truth in that. Education has been dominated by leftist ideology for many years, but is seems to be getting worse in recent years.

A meme I recently saw on Facebook suggested some alternative, more practical, skills which might be taught at school. They were: taxes, coding, cooking, insurance, basic home repair, self defense, survival skills, social etiquette, personal finance, public speaking, car maintenance, stress management, and maintenance management.

So these seem to fall into some groups, namely basic living skills (cooking, etc), financial skills (like tax and insurance), survival skills, social skills (etiquette, etc), and one vocational skill: coding (that is, programming).

I think this is a bit of a mixture of good and bad, depending on exactly what is intended for each of these. For example, by “survival skills” do they mean knowing how to survive in a zombie apocalypse, or similar? Is coding really necessary, when the vast majority of people really only need to know how to operate a computer? How much car maintenance is still possible, given the complexity of modern cars?

But while the details might be arguable, I still think the basic idea has some merit.

I know that when entering the workforce I had little idea about tax, finance, insurance, and similar matters, and I have noticed my son and daughter don’t know any more or less than me, so it is getting no better.

Social skills are a difficult one, because they are very much a personal, cultural thing. What one person thinks is an essential element of etiquette another might find irrelevant and outdated. However there might be room for some extra guidance there.

On further reflection, the coding one might have some merit, because programming really does require logical, systematic, and careful thought. If those skills could be carried over into other areas of life, whether they were used for actual programming or not might not be that important.

But moving on from these suggestions I would like to offer an alternative model. Teach the basics, because everyone should know how to read and write at a useful level, how to do some basic maths, and know a bit about topics like history, geography, music, art, etc. But at the same time, teach basic living skills like how taxation and insurance work, how to check the oil and water in your car, and how to cook at a basic level.

But after that, teach what really matters: how to think. This would include how to be skeptical, how to evaluate political and scientific claims, and how to debate your views as well as evaluating those of other people.

There are far too many subjects – which admittedly I only know about through anecdotes, so I claim no definite knowledge in this are (there’s a skepticism skill being utilised) – where a particular answer is required, but many others might be able to be justified through a sufficiently good argument. The last thing we need is people spouting the conventional talking points instead of thinking for themselves.

My education was revolutionised by one lecturer. It was in second or third year psychology at university (many years ago, so it’s hard to remember exactly) who taught us paranormal psychology. He had a very skeptical approach and showed that alleged special abilities, like ESP and psychokinesis, were tricks, or had conventional explanations. I saw that things were rarely what they seem on the surface. That was probably the most valuable thing I have ever learned!

And everything I use in my job today, I taught myself. Of course, that did rely on the basics of reading, writing, and maths I got from school, so I’m not saying education is completely useless; just mostly useless!

Another Year Gone

Well, that’s another year gone, I guess, so what’s happened? Well, what you might remember depends on what is important to you, but let me very briefly (because this is my new compact blog format, right) list a few highlights for me.

First, we seem to have lost interest in COVID. I mean, it’s still here, and we have many people dying from it every week, but no one cares any more, except for maybe good ol’ Bad News Baker himself, AKA Doctor Doom. I guess COVID just doesn’t have any political purpose any more, and it’s no longer useful for scaring people.

So climate change has been brought back to fullfil that role. Of course, it was always there, and I have to emphasise that I think it is a real thing. I just think the popular political portrayal of it is utterly ridiculous, and the solutions are even worse.

We have the war in Ukraine to continue to be outraged about, but that has been upstaged a bit by the conflict in Gaza. That has certainly produced some of the most absurd nonsense I have ever seen, including the so stupid it’s funny phenomenon of “LGBTs for Gaza”. Do these clowns really not know what happens to sexually diverse people in countries with Islamic law? I can send them some videos of people being thrown off buildings and stoned if that might help, but I suspect it wouldn’t.

I am fairly firmy on the side of Israel in this conflict, in case you were wondering. I’m not saying Israel is without blame, and that the people of Gaza have always been treated fairly, but even if there are no absolute goods and bads in this, or any other conflict, I think there is one side which is far more moral than the other.

I think the most disturbing and dangerous trend of recent decades has peaked and is on the way out. That, of course, is woke-ism, and it really does seem to have lost its appeal to many. Of course, there are still those who will cling to it until the bitter end, but global trends cannot be resisted.

Related to that subject, the last vestiges of “Ardernism” are being eradicated here in New Zealand. We now have a center-right government, and the two smaller parties will make sure that the vacuous National party is forced to eliminate most of the woke garbage Ardern introduced.

In a slightly less controversial area, let’s look at technology. This really is a continuation of the dominance of artificial intelligence, and maybe the start of the popular acceptance of virtual and augmented reality.

The rise of AI seems obvious: it’s everywhere now. It’s writing news and other material, creating music and art, and being used as an additional element in many other technologies. And Apple have released a virtual and augmented reality headset. Sure, it’s too expensive right now, but those who have used it love it, and when Apple join a technology market that usually means that is about to go mainstream (in the past, this happened with computers, laptops, MP3 players, smartphones, tablets, and smart watches).

Now, I could go on, but I must remember my promise for shorter blog posts. So let’s just leave it there. No doubt I will be commenting in detail on these subjects in the new year.

TL;DR

In this item I want to talk a little bit about this blog. From today I am going to try to reduce the length of these posts, and maybe do them a bit more often to compensate. A couple of regular readers have commented that they find them a bit long, one going to the extreme of saying she “loses the will to live” before she gets half way, and others having a more simple response of “TL;DR” (too long; didn’t read).

Another problem some readers have is that I sometimes go a bit off topic during a post. This is true, because I don’t always know myself what direction they might go in when I start. In many ways they are a way I have of exploring my own ideas, and I don’t always know where that might lead!

Finally, the previous blog posts are a bit of a struggle to convert to podcasts. They usually become 5 to 10 minutes of audio, which takes about ten times that time to process, so shorter posts will make that process easier. By the way, I hope you noticed the little “speaker” icons in the list of blog posts which link to podcasts of some of them. You can also subscribe to my podcasts using a podcasting program using the RSS link there.

So in future you can expect shorter posts which are more focussed on a single topic. Despite this criticism, I do thank everyone who regularly reads this blog. There are currently 2259 posts, with 5759 comments, and well over 6 million total views.

It would be great if more people would leave comments. If you agree with what I say, say so, if not, say why. Just “Yes, you are right, as per usual” or “You are talking rubbish because…” would be appreciated. Note that I try to reply to people who disagree with me respectfully, so don’t be scared!

By the way, I am hoping my web site will record its 50 millionth view before the end of the year. You all knew this blog is just part of my web site, right?

If you are reading this on my site (ojb.nz) rather than WordPress you can click “MAIN MENU” at the top of this page to go to the top level where you can choose from the main areas of the site: aircraft, astronomy, photography, wine, Mac computers, and other subjects (cars, comments, computers, debates), as well as this blog and my podcasts. You can also just type “ojb.nz” into your web browser to visit at any time.

So again, thanks to my readers and I hope you appreciate the new format.

People or Parrots?

There’s a sad predictability about how many issues in the world are perceived by certain groups in society. When the latest Israel versus Hamas conflict began I could almost tell ahead of time what different people would say, based on their opinions on other, completely unrelated, subjects.

I will say here that a few people have surprised me, on both sides: some people who I thought might be more supportive of Israel have come out on the side of Hamas, and the opposite has also happened. But, despite this, there is an unfortunate tendency for people who believe one apparently unrelated thing will also believe in the Palestinian cause.

Here are a few unrelated causes where I have noticed a correlation with attitudes to the Israel-Palestine conflict: that Marxism has advantages over capitalism, or that climate change is an immediate existential danger, or that trans people who were born men are actually women.

The last one is particularly bizarre. I have seen many signs in pro-Palestine protests with captions such as “Queers for Palestine”. Do these people know how gender non-conforming people tend to be treated in the Islamic world? If they turned up in many Islamic countries with that sign they could easily be thrown off a buiding and then be stoned. Why would a queer (or trans, bi-sexual, etc) person support that?

Here’s an interview with Jordan Peterson I recently saw which also illustrates this phenomenon…

Interviewer: I’m married, and modern marriage has lot to recommend it. I do also think it’s a patriarchal institution. It’s literally…

Peterson: Why do you think that? Because you think virtually everything in society is due to the patriarchal society. It’s easy to think that because you only have to think one thing; a one thing answer for everything. Part of the problem too, for this sort of discussion, and I consider it a manifestation of ideological possession, is it’s predictable.

Interviewer: Having a coherent ideology does mean that it’s predictable. It’s one logical thing that follows from another.

Peterson: I’m not hearing what you think; I’m hearing how you are able to represent the ideology you’ve been taught. It’s not that interesting. I’m not hearing anything about you. I can replace you with someone who thinks the same way as you. It means that you’re not here. It’s not pleasant.

Now it is possible that what the interviewer claimed: that one part of her ideology (notice she admitted that’s what it was) logically follows from another, but I don’t buy that, for two reasons: first, there is no rational connection between the elements of the ideology, so how can one flow from the other; and second, the beliefs of most of these people are predictable and uninteresting, just like Peterson said.

And when they are asked for justification, they always repeat the same old trite platitudes about the patriarchy, the evils of capitalism, white supremacy, and other nonsense.

As is my habit, I am criticising the woke left here, but I should emphasise that the same argument applies to other people on the political extremes, such as the so-called far right. However, mainstream society already recognises those deficiencies more often than similar problems on the left.

You might also say that my opinions are predictable, but I would challenge that, to an extent. I know that my rants against woke-ism have become somewhat predictable, but I do have nuanced views on many of these issues. For example, I agree that global warming is real, but don’t agree with many of the proposed solutions. I don’t think trans men are women, but I do support same-sex marriage. I think Israel is right in trying to eliminate Hamas, but I think they should be more careful about how they cause so many civilian casualties.

So I would hope that my views are less than predictable, and I have been abused and threatened by people on both the left and right, so I kind of figure I must be in about the right place. By the way, I don’t take these on-line threats too seriously, because “keyboard warriors” rarely have enough gumption to actually do anything in the real world!

As I have said in past posts, individuality and being yourself is important to me. I would like to repeat a quote from Friedrich Nietzsche here, which sums this up nicely: “The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself.”

I don’t think the people who repeat these tedious, obsequious catch-phrases, like “free Palestine, from the river to the sea” are “owning themselves” (except in the more modern, colloquial sense of that term). They are just parroting something they have heard somewhere else, and think that is the right thing to say to signal that they are on “the right side of history”. Like Peterson said: they are not here, it’s not that interesting, and it isn’t pleasant.

Probably the group most susceptible to this is young people, especially older school-age children and university students. It is often these groups we see being the most irrational, hysterical, and predictable in their protests. They take the most extreme views and tend to repeat standard talking points rather than producing anything original.

This shouldn’t be surprising, since we know people below about the age of 23 have incomplete brain function, and are at their most susceptible to peer pressure. In many ways they cannot be blamed for their irrationality. But older people, who have never “grown up” and learned to think for themselves are far more deserving of our derision.

They should have learned to think for themselves, and should have more balanced and less predictable views. But in many cases, that is not what we see.

What are they: people or parrots?

How to Fix Health

Maybe the most concerning thing about our dysfunctional country (and others) right now is the state of the health system. OK, sure, you could probably argue that the state of education is as bad, and maybe the current status of democracy in general is also a concern, but when it comes to having a direct and immediate effect on people’s lives, health might be the biggest problem.

It’s difficult to tell from the stats whether this claim is valid, although waiting times, shortages of health professionals, and unaffordable costs are all well documented. But I’m more making this claim based on various individual’s experiences. Yes, I know, I often dismiss anecdotes, but in a discussion like this I think they are relevant, and the data seems to back them up as well.

A friend of mine, who is a retired medical professional, has spent a bit of time recently as a patient in this system, and agrees that it is inefficient and frustrating to deal with. During a stay in hospital he couldn’t find a doctor to discuss his medical issues with, for example. No doctor? In a hospital?

So the biggest problem seems to be lack of staff. This applies to both the hospital system and general practitioners. We don’t seem to be training enough medical professionals, and many that we do train head overseas, especially to Australia, for better pay and conditions.

Additionally the health system is very politicised and the current bunch of muppets we have in government have decided to centralise a lot of the operations in Wellington, at great cost, and apparently while making things even worse.

That’s not surprising to me, because I believe the bigger the organisation, the worse it is run, and the less efficient it is (obviously there are exceptions, but I believe there is a clear trend in this direction). Obviously, governments and international organisations, like the UN, are the ultimate manifestation of this bungling incompetence.

So, what’s the answer?

Like most jobs, I suspect the majority of a doctor’s time is spent on relatively mundane tasks, but there are occasional more complex issues to tackle. Maybe we should try minimising the amount of simple, routine work so they can concentrate on the more complex stuff, but how would we do this?

Well as a technology geek, I unsurprisingly would offer a technological solution: artificial intelligence!

As I have said in previous posts, I have really seen a rapid expansion in the utility of this technology in recent years, and that has meant it is now being used in many places where it wasn’t a few years back. It’s being used to perform complex tasks in image processing, creating original written text, creating completely artificial new video, helping with search, answering questions in a natural way, and aiding in a variety of other tasks humans have had to tackle on their own in the past.

And this includes tasks in medicine. I’ve heard the argument that those other functions I listed above are trivial, and that medicine is far more complex, but in my opinion, the complete opposite is true. Sure, you have to remember a lot of facts to be a medical professional, but the level of creativity and complex processing of facts is actually quite low. In fact, to a computer, processing an image or creating an original piece of fiction is far more complex than generating a diagnosis for a disease.

Already AI is performing as well as, or better than humans in various medical tasks, such as analysing test results, x-rays, MRI scans, etc. And I think that diagnosing a medical condition should be far simpler than that. So we could not only allow AI to perform more mundane tasks to free up doctors to do more complex things, but we could possibly replace the doctors completely!

I rarely visit a doctor, because I am strangely healthy, but when I do there are two major things I notice: first, I know what the problem is but can’t prescribe what I need to fix it; or second, the doctor gets it wrong. OK, I’ve got to be honest here: that is probably not an entirely fair appraisal, but my experience with my and other people’s interactions with medical professionals is they get it wrong as much as they get it right. I’m always advising people to get a second opinion for diagnoses they see as doubtful.

So I suspect that not only could AI replace doctors, but it would do a far better job at the same time. And remember, an AI can diagnose hundreds of people simultaneously, and is far cheaper to train!

Currently, it is impractical to have an AI controlled machine, like a robot of some sort, take blood samples or perform other tests, so the more mundane tasks could still be done by humans, but they wouldn’t need anywhere near the level of training doctors are given now, and it is only a matter of time before machines can take over those tasks as well.

At this point, many people will be feeling a bit uncomfortable about this proposed future, and I fully understand that, but it is a solution to many of our current problems, and looking at the state of health care in the world today, it’s hard to see how the outcome could be much worse.

Here are a few details on how this idea might happen…

All doctors would need to train their replacements. That’s a standard way to humiliate a workforce which is about to be replaced with something cheaper and/or better, so why not. So they would continue working as the are now, except the systems they type their notes into would be connected to AI systems. Note that this would require no extra work on their part.

The doctor’s and the AI’s diagnoses would be compared and used to improve the performance of both. When it got to the point that the AI was consistently outperforming the human, then the patient could just feed the AI the information it needs directly, probably through the internet from their homes.

Anything beyond the AI’s abilities, tests, etc, could go to the remaining human doctors, but eventually they could go as well. Of course, the test results (blood tests, MRI, etc) would all be examined by AI systems trained in a similar way.

Note that one reasons I avoid doctors is that there tend to be a lot of sick people there. If you aren’t too bad before you go to a doctor, there’s a good chance you’ll catch something from all the sick people waiting to be seen. Also note that it seems standard practice to have to wait 15 to 30 minutes in this environment before seeing the doctor, even when you have organised a specific time. It’s almost as if they want you to get sick, but that’s just a crazy conspiracy!

This future seems inevitable to me, and the main thing stopping it will probably be medical people trying to protect their jobs and status in society, but that sort of thing never lasts forever.

Note that many other professions could be given similar treatment: lawyers and accountants for example. Ironically, it is the highest paid professions, and those often held in the highest esteem, which might be the easiest to replace. I kind of like that!