The interesting thing is that these days the maps people most use are digital ones. They can be updated instantly for everyone who uses them. But, even in that world you have problems.

In many countries it’s a legal requirement that the maps reflect the country’s definition of its borders. That means that in some cases Google Maps has 3 versions of a map, the one shown to users in country X (say India), the one shown to users in country Y (say China) and the one shown to users in the rest of the world, where the border is marked as disputed.

Changing the electoral system means passing laws.

The people who pass laws are elected representatives.

The current electoral system works well for the current elected representatives (kinda by definition, because it’s what got them elected).

So, the laws won’t get changed because the people who have the power to pass the new law aren’t going to pass a law that disadvantages them.

Case in point, the Liberal Party of Canada promised that if elected they’d reform the electoral system and get rid of first past the post. But, of course, FPTP is a massive advantage for the two main parties, the Liberals and the Conservatives. So, when they won the election, they quickly backed out of that promise. The only parties still promising to get rid of FPTP are the smaller parties who would have a big advantage if FPTP went away – but, of course, these small parties can’t win elections because of FPTP, so their promises to get rid of it are empty because they will never be in a position to make that change.

Even just the map of the world is outdated pretty much by the time it’s taught.

In 2023 Micronesia made a fairly minor change from the former name, “Federated States of Micronesia”. But, in 2022 Turkey now wants you to use its metal name: Türkiye.

Then there’s the new country of South Sudan, Bougainville on its way to splitting from Papua New Guinea. And Kosovo shows another problem – whether its an independent country or not depends on who you ask. That includes regions like South Ossetia, Transnistria, Catalonia and Taiwan.

Then there are things that students are taught that we’ve known are wrong for over a century, but the fully correct version is too complex for anything below a university course. Like, Newton’s laws are appropriate for high school, but they’re known to be incorrect and are simplifications of Einstein’s refinements. But, they’re close enough for most purposes, and understanding Einstein’s stuff is pretty hard. Same with models of the atom.

And, history is another subject where the deeper you dig, the more the generalizations you’re taught are shown to be wrong. The names and dates might be the same, but the reason X happened is often a whole lot more complex than the simple reasons given in high school.

However many the AI decides to give me.

So, it’s not really a good use case of an LLM.

The slippery slope thing is definitely an issue. If you have a dishonest, biased moderator (say someone from Fox News) they could really twist things. Even if you have a moderator who is trying as hard as possible to be unbiased, they’re bound to have some unconscious biases. On the other hand, fact checking is a pretty solved problem in reputable media. Not everything can be fact-checked, but even when facts are in dispute, they can often say what the source of the claim is. The problem is that they’re not used to doing it in real time. Proper fact checking often takes hours, not seconds.

Maybe one idea would be to have a rule at the debate saying that if you were planning to cite any statistic at all, you had to provide a source ahead of time to the moderator. They could then pre-emptively fact check all those statistics, and if they came up during the debate, the moderator could instantly fact-check them. If the candidate used a statistic they hadn’t had pre-approved the moderator would interrupt them, just like a judge in a case where a lawyer was trying to talk about something they hadn’t entered into evidence.

The modern debate format is pretty much useless. It’s too bad that the TV networks need the debate more than the candidates need it. Otherwise, the TV networks could impose restrictions like real-time fact checking, moderators who could (and would) mute candidates, tough questions that candidates didn’t like, following up and asking a question again if a candidate dodged a question, and so-on.

Everyone capable of thought should have opinions.

The full scene if anyone’s interested.

Carl Weathers is an interesting contrast to Arnold. Arnold got his muscles by focusing on how he looked, on bodybuilding. Weathers developed his physique training for professional gridiron football. He played college football, then in the NFL (coached by John Madden) and CFL. Arnold used his unique physique as a way to get into movies without ever training as an actor. Weathers was studying theatre arts while playing college football, and finally finished the degree in 1974 just after retiring from pro football. He went on to get a master of theatre arts later.

Both of them pivoted extremely successfully to comedy later in their careers, with Weathers doing Happy Gilmore and Arrested Development, and Arnold doing his whole variety of comedy movies.

Also, good to know that Weathers loved this scene:

“Predator, the handshake. That’s iconic,” says Weathers, grinning from ear to ear. “The director shot that scene beautifully. And it’s a great movie. You put that movie in the theater today and it works just as well as it did back in 1987.”

https://www.thedailybeast.com/baby-carl-weathers-has-a-stew-going

On one hand, Assange is a shitty person. One woman woke up to him sticking his dick in her without her consent and without a condom. On the same trip he’d had sex with a different woman who had also insisted on his using a condom, which he reluctantly did… but then the condom mysteriously broke. While a guest of the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, where he was hiding out to duck the Swedish charges, he smeared shit on the walls and refused to bathe. He also helped the Russian GRU interfere in the 2016 Presidential Election, either as a useful idiot or a willing collaborator.

On the other hand, as shitty as he is, he was effectively a journalist. With Wikileaks he released leaked footage of a US helicopter firing on civilians in Iraq. He released reports on corruption by Kenyan leaders. He released internal scientology documents. The world needs journalists who will publish stories about things that powerful people, governments and churches don’t want people to know.

On the other, other hand, at times he hung his sources out to dry, like he did with Bradley / Chelsea Manning.

The plea deal he agreed to is bullshit. The charge of “conspiracy to commit computer intrusion” was basically encouraging a source to leak information to him. That’s journalism. “Conspiracy to obtain and disclose national defence information” was again, journalism. He was encouraging whistleblowers to report on wrongdoing by the government.

Even the plea deal is bullshit. He pled to violating the espionage act for… what? He didn’t break into anything himself. He wasn’t given a security clearance which he then violated. He wasn’t even American, in America, or working for the government. He was acting as a journalist receiving information from a whistleblower.

So, IMO, there’s nothing much to celebrate here. A shitty person pled to a bullshit charge, setting a bad precedent for journalism, and is now free. Lose, lose.

How do you define “earsay”?

Another similar “shortcut” I’ve heard about was that a system that analyzed job performance determined that the two key factors were being named “Jared” and playing lacrosse in high school.

And, these are the easy-to-figure-out ones we know about.

If the bias is more complicated, it might never be spotted.

Yes, “Bias Automation” is always an issue with the training data, and it’s always harder to resolve than anyone thinks.

When the choice is between status quo and a fascist, status quo isn’t so bad.

If there’s ever a way to undo first-past-the-post, that should be the focus. FPTP requires you to vote strategically to keep the greater evil out, but that frequently means voting for the lesser evil. Get rid of this need to vote strategically and maybe you can have a meaningful choice.

That’s virtua, not virtual.

Yep. Because stealing is a crime that goes back thousands of years. It was an old crime by the time the 10 commandments were written down. Meanwhile, copyright infringement is a new thing that’s maybe a few centuries old at most, and it’s a lot more morally ambiguous. Is it wrong to infringe on a monopoly that the government has given a corporation over the sharing of a tangible expression of an idea? Maybe sometimes? Maybe not other times?

One woman can deliver a baby in an hour, if she’s a doctor or a midwife.

Their are other misteaks people make aswell, alot of people don’t know english good.

Most people don’t live in Northern Ontario.

Most Ontarians live in cities.

Humans are descended from apes, humans are apes, and humans are cousins of the other modern apes.

We’re not descended from chimpanzees, but both we and chimpanzees descend from another ape.