Category Archives: Web Article Review

Bill Gates’s Robot Tax

In this interview, Bill Gates proposes a “robot tax”. The basic idea is that if and when automation starts to increase productivity, you could tax the increase in profits and use the money to help any workers displaced by the automation. Gates’s idea is to use the money to repurpose these workers to jobs that are not easily automated and are currently undervalued in the marketplace, such as teaching and childcare.

The Fourth Turning

Supposedly Steve Bannon is influenced by a book called The Fourth Turning that hypothesizes a cyclical view of history. Wikipedia refers to its primary author, Neil Howe, as an “amateur historian”, although he actually does have a history degree from Yale. Here is Howe talking about his own book in the Washington Post.

Along this cycle, we can identify four “turnings” that each last about 20 years — the length of a generation. Think of these as recurring seasons, starting with spring and ending with winter. In every turning, a new generation is born and each older generation ages into its next phase of life.

The cycle begins with the First Turning, a “High” which comes after a crisis era. In a High, institutions are strong and individualism is weak. Society is confident about where it wants to go collectively, even if many feel stifled by the prevailing conformity. Many Americans alive today can recall the post-World War II American High (historian William O’Neill’s term), coinciding with the Truman, Eisenhower and Kennedy presidencies. Earlier examples are the post-Civil War Victorian High of industrial growth and stable families, and the post-Constitution High of Democratic Republicanism and Era of Good Feelings…

Finally, the Fourth Turning is a “Crisis” period. This is when our institutional life is reconstructed from the ground up, always in response to a perceived threat to the nation’s very survival. If history does not produce such an urgent threat, Fourth Turning leaders will invariably find one — and may even fabricate one — to mobilize collective action. Civic authority revives, and people and groups begin to pitch in as participants in a larger community. As these Promethean bursts of civic effort reach their resolution, Fourth Turnings refresh and redefine our national identity. The years 1945, 1865 and 1794 all capped eras constituting new “founding moments” in American history.

Supposedly, Bannon’s theory is that the 2008 financial crisis is the latest “fourth turning”. There are lots of critical takedowns of these ideas online, calling them “pop history” or “pseudoscience”. For example, here is the original New York Times review of the book in 1997, and here are recent articles in Huffington Post, Business Insider, and The Nation.

the new exoplanets

This long NASA article first gets you excited about the possibility of life on eight new planets it has just discovered, and then throws cold water (actually, make that lethal X-rays) all over your excitement. Still, the possibility of some kind of “slime” exists, which I guess is something.

Scientists are pondering the possibilities after this week’s announcement: the discovery of seven worlds orbiting a small, cool star some 40 light-years away, all of them in the ballpark of our home planet in terms of their heft (mass) and size (diameter). Three of the planets reside in the “habitable zone” around their star, TRAPPIST-1, where calculations suggest that conditions might be right for liquid water to exist on their surfaces—though follow-up observations are needed to be sure…

Recent findings suggest life would have an uphill battle on a planet close to a red dwarf, largely because such stars are extremely active in their early years—shooting off potentially lethal flares and bursts of radiation…

But so little is known about how life gets its start, and how common or rare it might be in the cosmos, that tenacious life on M-dwarf planets remains a distinct possibility.

However rare life might be, it would make all the difference to find it in just one more place besides Earth. Because if we find it in one more place, and are sure it arose independently of Earth, that would mean it is probably present in many more places. If we never find life anywhere else, we could consider the possibility of seeding other planets with some kind of life from Earth. This way, even if we don’t last forever, intelligent life would have a chance to arise again after a few billion years.

what Americans believe

Apparently Survey Monkey does a weekly poll of what actual Americans actually believe. Respondents are self-selected, but Survey Monkey tries to use demographic weighting to obtain representative results. A few interesting outcomes from the February 22 edition:

  • 54% disapprove of Trump, and 43% strongly disapprove.
  • 55% disapprove of Democrats in Congress and 59% disapprove of Republicans.
  • 60% have confidence in the judicial system.
  • 52% have a favorable impression of the Affordable Care Act.
  • 56% oppose building a border wall with Mexico.
  • 47% would like to see National Parks expanded, and only 9% would like to see them shrunk.
  • 68% oppose taxpayer-funded vouchers for private school.
  • 80% support NATO.
  • 66% are worried about a major war in the next four years.
  • 58% have a family member or close acquaintance who is an immigrant.

If I had more time I wouldn’t mind having a more thorough understanding of the sampling and weighting involved, but on their face these numbers just support the idea that our politics is broken. Our politicians are not delivering policies that a majority of Americans would support, which suggests our voting system is not delivering politicians who really represent us.

U.S. Endangered Species Act

The Los Angeles Times says a Trump administration attack on the Endangered Species Act could be coming. The last paragraph of the article has a links to number of (sincere) criticisms of the act and ideas for how it could be improved.

The act does have its shortcomings. The focus is on habitat preservation, which is important, but scientists now believe there need to be more adaptive solutions, such as public-private partnerships to integrate wildlife habitats with development, and more efficient use of the act as the nation adapts to changing habitats. That should be the road map for revising the act, and conservationists from the left and right need to pressure Congress to ensure pro-development forces don’t destroy the act under the guise of fixing it.

best cities for living without a car

We’re number 5! Well, that might not sound so good, but in a country where there just aren’t many practical living choices that don’t require a car, I think it’s pretty good. I also found this graphic (is this a “bump chart”?) from Redfin interesting.

Source: Redfin.com https://www.redfin.com/blog/2017/02/the-best-cities-for-living-without-a-car.html

Bohm dialogue

From Wikipedia: Bohm Dialogue (also known as Bohmian Dialogue or “Dialogue in the Spirit of David Bohm”) is a freely flowing group conversation in which participants attempt to reach a common understanding, experiencing everyone’s point of view fully, equally and nonjudgementally.[1] This can lead to new and deeper understanding. The purpose is to solve the communication crises that face society,[2] and indeed the whole of human nature and consciousness. It utilizes a theoretical understanding of the way thoughts relate to universal reality. It is named after physicist David Bohm who originally proposed this form of dialogue.

I would like to be part of a team some day where a range of ideas can be thoroughly explored without shouting and arguing, and where nobody feels like they have lost if their initial pet idea is not the final decision.

UPS trucks don’t turn left

UPS claims to save a lot of time, fuel, and reduce accidents significantly by avoiding left turns at intersections with no left turn signals. In other words, they circle right until they get where they need to go, and it ends up saving time, energy, and lives. I’m glad to see this – as someone who makes 99% of my own trips on foot, I know vehicles turning left with fast-moving oncoming traffic are incredibly risky for pedestrians. Some people are jerks and have no respect for human life. But during those other 1% of trips where I am the driver, I understand why even well-intentioned, ethical people can put pedestrians at risk – because you are so focused on the cars and making a safe turn you are just not looking for pedestrians. I think most left turns should be eliminated (or left turn signals put in, or pedestrian scrambles, or lights turned off in favor of stop signs) purely on safety grounds, but if doing that wouldn’t even cost drivers any time or money the argument gets even stronger.

the Anthropocene

When exactly did the Anthropocene begin? Trying to measure that is important to certain people. The answer according to certain of those certain people is 1950…

According to their calculations, human activity eclipsed the sun, Earth, and errant falling stars as the dominant process shaping life on this planet around 1950. “This coincides with things like the first nuclear bombs, which put traceable radiation in the atmosphere, which is visible in the sedimentary record,” says Gaffney. They aren’t the first to fix on the post-war period. The 1950s mark what many researchers call the Great Acceleration, when the booming middle class caused spikes in global GDP, agricultural land use, paper production, dam building, personal vehicle ownership, international tourism, and other markers of consumption. Steffen and Gaffney’s equation just adds more oomph to the argument that the Anthropocene began in the same era as color TVs.