The last two races have been interesting, but both times it was because of incidents beyond the drivers' control. We need races that are interesting not because of safety cars or botched pit stops, but because we have evenly matched drivers in evenly matched vehicles... but it doesn't like that will be the case until 2022.

Verstappen is the closest to Hamilton in talent, but he is still young and still makes mistakes. The Hamilton of the last couple of seasons has just been relentless in his consistency, an improvement to the already formidable driver we saw in the Rosberg years. No-one can challenge Hamilton until the car reset in 2022. Verstappen has talent but not the car, Bottas has the car but although he's a good driver he's just not in Hamilton's class.

I should add that Hamilton's position on the BLM issue has been impressive, too. He really has used his power in the sport as a force for good.

Yes, this is a part of my point in the post that started the thread:

I live in a developed nation, one of those where the job market might suffer if remote working began to ignore international borders. We have had outsourcing to cheaper nations for a long time now, but it has tended to be the outsourcing of self-contained units of the company - I am thinking of IT helpdesks in particular, as that is perhaps the most common - where the work is moved to a remote office in a cheaper nation. If employees in the home nation change from all working in the same office to each working from their homes, it is perhaps not a huge leap to imagine this happening in the cheaper nation too, indeed this has already happened earlier in the year as we had simultaneous lockdowns across the world, and the people in the foreign outsourced office were working from their own homes. It's just one step further to employ remote individuals rather than a remote central office.

There are of course new obstacles that this might throw up. We've mentioned basic equipment and infrastructure (a stable internet connection), but there could also be issues with for example different time zones, and a lack of familiarity with (or trust of) 'foreign' academic qualifications. I'm sure there are others.

But... I do think that we have started on this road now. And it could be a great driver towards reducing inequality across the world.

Thanks for this. It is interesting to get opinions from around the world. I do hope that remote working will create more opportunities both within countries and between countries. As you indicate though, simply saying that a job can be performed from anywhere doesn't magically confer equal opportunities around the globe. Many people in certain countries are hampered by poor working conditions and lack of vital equipment such as laptops, and also poor infrastructure, most pertinently unreliable or slow internet connection. So the move towards more remote-working won't magically solve inequality of opportunity, but I do believe and hope that it will at least go some way towards improving job opportunities in poorer countries as well as in poorer regions within rich countries.

I agree with the point that evolutionary biology has rewarded a degree of selfishness, and that natural selection has embedded it in our natures. But I would argue that our evolutionary history has in general only rewarded mild degrees of selfishness, and that higher levels of selfishness have been counterproductive to an individual's survival and ability to pass on their genes. We have evolved as social animals, living in tribal groups of somewhere of the order of 100 people. Arguably much of our intelligence has evolved through the need to build and maintain a complex web of inter-personal bonds, knowing who to trust and who not to, and establishing reciprocal altruism. We can argue convincingly that for a species of solitary creature, selfishness will certainly be selected for, and selflessness will not. I think we are on less solid ground arguing the same for social animals.

Beyond this... I'm not in favour of outright communist-style absolute equality of outcome, I'm more in favour of democratic socialism, a capitalism-lite where truly progressive taxation of both income and wealth work to remove some of the most egregious excesses, and government intervention works for the benefit of the whole population, and removes all innate privilege. This may be a dream that is unlikely to see reality.

I would say that most modern national governments do exhibit extremely selfish tendencies, but I think this is not because all or most people are extremely selfish, but rather that the sort of people who seek power tend to be more selfish than those who do not. If instead we base our assessment of human nature not on politicians, but on volunteers and charity workers, and for example the employees of MSF, who could work extremely well-paid jobs in private healthcare, but instead choose to risk their lives in war zones in the most troubled parts of the world... if we base our assessment on these people, then I would say humans don't seem particularly selfish at all.

Do you mean cannot, or should not? This is quite a distinction.

Scenario: Biden wins.

What is Trump's response?
a) he graciously concedes defeat,
b) he refuses to admit he has lost, claims that the election was rigged, refuses to leave the White House, and starts legal proceedings,
c) something else.

Consider the huge number of mail-in votes that there will be because of the pandemic, and Trump's various tweets and comments about mail-in votes being fraudulent.
Consider that the election outcome depends largely on a few swing-states, some of which have Republican-controlled legislatures.
Consider Trump's previous record on accepting defeat in anything (graciously or otherwise).

I actually think that option B is reasonably likely.

This is of course true, but let me outline the position of the company where I work, as I believe it is representative of a general trend:
- Covid has cost the business a lot of money; the business is therefore more focused than ever on cutting costs.
- Many employees have been working remotely since lockdown, and productivity has remained consistent.
- Expensive offices have been sitting empty.
- In the short-term, offices have been set up to run at limited capacity if required, complying with social distancing rules. In practice most people continue to WFH, and if they all wanted to return then the offices could only accommodate a small proportion of them. So a degree of WFH has to continue until the pandemic is over.
- Longer-term, leases can be allowed to expire, and owned buildings can be sold, resulting in much reduced costs and, in the case of owned buildings, selling or renting them out (if anyone wants them) can generate significant revenue.

Companies can improve their position by either generating new revenue, or by cutting costs. The pandemic is ongoing, and for most companies (Amazon and co excepted) there is little chance of increasing revenue. The most viable option is to cut costs. You can do that either by reducing workers (which reduces the amount of work you can do, and so the amount of revenue you can generate), or you can do it by reducing outgoings such as maintaining expensive offices.

This presents other issues. For example, the connection dropping, or someone sitting just out of shot feeding the pupil the correct answers.

In this instance there was bias based on the previous performance of the school, such that good students in badly performing schools were unfairly penalised, and bad students at good schools escaped unscathed. There's a quick overview here.



This really is the whole point of my thread. At the moment, in situations like that of the exam grades in my example, an unfair algorithm can be unpicked and assessed for bias, and corrections can be made or the whole thing can be thrown out. There is a degree of transparency to the process. What I am suggesting is that in the very near future, we are likely to lose that transparency, that our lives and life-chances will in part be determined by machine-learning algorithms where there is no accountability, and no possibility of even understanding how the results were arrived at. In the exams example, it was a simple human algorithm. If instead the outcomes had been determined by machine-learning, there may have been a suspicion of unfairness, but no way to prove if that was actually the case, and no evidence available to challenge the decision.

Recently in the UK there has been a furore over algorithm-determined school exam results. The pandemic meant that pupils couldn't sit exams, and an algorithm was devised that determined what results each pupil would get. However, many pupils, particularly those from disadvantaged backgrounds, received worse than predicted results, whereas pupils from more affluent backgrounds suffered no ill effects. There were widespread protests at the perceived unfairness, and the algorithm was hauled out into the open and dissected. The formula was quite rudimentary, and the inbuilt bias perfectly clear for anyone with a basic grasp of maths to see. The outcome was  that the protests were upheld, and the unfair results overturned.

The reason this could happen is that the algorithm was devised by people. Their assumptions and their methods could be unpicked and understood. However, the trend, now that we are in the era of big data, is for machine-learning. Computers can devise much more efficient processes than can humans. If the same thing had happened in a few years' time, it is quite likely that the grades would have been determined by machine-learning, with initial data fed in, results coming out, and no human understanding how the processing from input to output works. Indeed, with the computer itself unable to explain (because we have not yet reached that level of AI). This combination of factors, machine-learning on the one hand, and the computer being unable to explain its reasoning on the other, leads to an absolute removal of all accountability for decisions that can have a profound impact on people's lives. Humans can argue convincingly that they have simply input some initial parameters, and had no part in the decision-making. But those machine-learning decisions can't be pulled into the open, can't be dissected, can't be understood. Machine-learning without sentient computers means that all accountability is thrown away. No-one is responsible for anything. Now this may change once AI reaches a sufficient level that a computer can explain its reasoning in terms that humans can understand... but that is years or decades away, and until we reach that point, the possibilities look quite scary. We live in a competitive world, and the advantages of machine-learning are too tempting for countries and companies to pass up. ML is pursued fervently, no matter the implications. Will we really throw away accountability for (and understanding of) a lot of really important decisions?

The pandemic has thrown many companies into unprecedented financial difficulties, and there is now a huge incentive to cut costs wherever possible. Couple this with the fact that it's impossible to maintain social distancing in what was previously a full office, and suddenly remote working seems a more viable option than expensive city-centre offices. Companies have also seen during lockdown that remote-working productivity (from those workers who haven't been furloughed) has remained consistent with the pre-pandemic level.

I think that in many countries and many industries, a mental shift has occurred and remote-working will expand hugely.
But I agree with your point that it won't happen everywhere. There are minimum requirements, such as a fast and stable internet connection, that aren't available in certain parts of the world.

I suspect you won't get this far down the list, as you've been inundated with applications... but I'll try anyway

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He could win it. It's often awarded more for political reasons than on merit. The infamous mass-murderer Henry Kissinger won it back in the 70s.

I don't like Trump, but it could be argued that his pursuit of US isolationism and retreat from the world stage is actually more conducive to global peace than what a lot of previous presidents have achieved.

I'm in favour of equality of opportunity, where everyone gets the same chance to succeed. I also think that the rampant inequality of outcome that we have in modern societies needs to be addressed as a matter of urgency, and certain well-worn progress paths need to be removed (e.g., in the UK: Eton->Oxbridge->Conservative government).

But at the same time, I don't think absolute enforced equality of outcome is desirable. We need to permit a certain level of inequality in order to give people something to strive for, so that those who try harder or who have more talent are better rewarded... otherwise I think society stagnates. It's all a matter of keeping that permitted inequality to a reasonable level, and ensuring that inequality is based on merit rather than circumstance or an accident of birth.

This is becoming more possible because of the rise of big data. This is what enables effective machine learning... and computer-devised efficiency improvements will no doubt be hugely superior to those devised by purely human algorithms. However this does bring its downsides, too - the question of accountability in terms of who is responsible if things go wrong, and also the 'black box' nature of ML means that humans will not be able to understand how and why certain decisions have been made. Of course this can be rectified by advances in AI such that a computer is able to communicate its reasoning... but that is further in the future.

That seems pretty solid to me, particularly now that you've added some ETH.

Whenever I see these threads, the first thing I look is to make sure that the OP has a decent proportion in Bitcoin... that is definitely a good idea, and you have done it.

Too often you see people going all-in on alts, on the basis that Bitcoin is 'too high already'. That's a huge gamble, and in my opinion a mistake... Bitcoin is the basis for all of crypto, and is also generally more resilient when the market suddenly drops.

The money comes from returns on existing wealth. The system is set up so that the rich get richer. The richer you are, the greater the benefit.

_{https://newrepublic.com/article/117429/capital-twenty-first-century-thomas-piketty-reviewed}

The current system is unfair because it rewards the already-rich disproportionately to any talent or effort. A wealth tax might be the answer to reducing inequality.

I just can't imagine Trump ever admitting that he's lost in a two-horse race. The world inside his head bears little relation to reality at the best of times. Has he ever admitted he's been wrong about anything, or competed in something where he acknowledged that he did not win? His actions as president demonstrate that he regards laws as a hindrance rather than a necessary constraint. I do think this is a genuine potential outcome - I don't know whether he'll win or lose, but if he does lose, there's got to be a reasonable chance that he refuses to acknowledge that he's lost, refuses to relinquish the presidency, and starts all manner of legal objections.

I do agree with you about how it's a bad thing that the UK is run by the Eton/Oxbridge elite, and how they are entitled to run the country not on merit, not on talent, but on happening to be born to wealthy parents from 'elite' establishment families. This is a huge problem (and I think largely because we didn't have a 'French-style' revolution).

But we seem to have differing opinions on the EU. It's not perfect, but I see it as a restraining mechanism that acts to thwart some of the worst ambitions of the Eton/Oxbridge set. The Tories who are most rabidly fervent about leaving are the ultra-right who are desperate to free themselves from EU oversight so that they can dismantle workers' (and human) rights, and further entrench their own privileges. Leaving the EU delivers us even further into their grasp than we are already.

I don't know which countries you're in, but here in the UK the government is desperately trying to get WFH people to return to their offices, in order to increase the number of people in city centres so that they can help the businesses there that rely on foot traffic. The government is interested only in the economy, they have zero interest in the health and wellbeing of the population.

Yes, you're right, seems sensible to bet for Biden if you can get good odds. I suppose with gambling sites, they are adjusting their odds based on how much money is being bet (at what odds) on each party, so it doesn't purely reflect the candidates' chances.

I wonder what the odds are on Trump losing, but then refusing to accept that he's lost, and barricading himself in the White House? Got to be worth a bet.

I can relate to this point. Before Covid, I used to WFH occasionally. But now I have been WFH since March, and there is certainly the temptation to log-on in the evening and at weekends, 'just for a few minutes'. As for whether the expectation from bosses is an 'always available' mentality, that's not the case where I am, but I appreciate it can be different elsewhere.

But I do prefer WFH and hope it will continue in the longer term.