20 Matching Annotations
  1. Jul 2023
    1. I wish there was a certain question 01:22:26 that was asked to people who wanted to wield immense amounts of power that is often not asked. And that question is this. What would it take for you to think that you are no longer necessary in power?
      • critical question for all top leaders
        • I wish there was a certain question that was asked to people who wanted to wield immense amounts of power that is often not asked. And that question is this.
          • What would it take for you to think that you are no longer necessary in power?
        • In other words, what is the goal that you want to achieve with your power,
          • that if you were to achieve it, you would think it's time to step down?
        • And the reason that question is so important is because
          • it would cause most politicians to freeze like deer in the headlights.
        • They've never thought about it.
        • For them, power is the goal.
        • It would expose them as having never thought about it.
        • And for those who do actually answer that question, they would put themselves on the record as what they think their power is for, such that if they actually achieve it, they can retire.
        • And I think that's something that would be a great screening mechanism to see how people answer that question.
        • Most power-hungry people in leadership positions think, "I am God's gift to power, and therefore I should inhabit this role as long as I can stay here,"
          • which is why dictators cling to power as long as they can.
    2. So if you have a president 01:19:36 or a prime minister who's won an election, there's no training, there's no oversight, there's no scrutiny other than journalists from the outside. There's often not a criminal background check for politicians before an election. And yet when you end up as a tour guide, you have all sorts of safeguarding, you have training.
      • recommendation
        • politicians and other leaders need deep training and constant scrutiny as a condition to being in those positions
        • it is unthinkable that a tour guide position should have more training than a president of a country!
    3. we should have some psychological screening at the top jobs. I think that there should be an expectation that people who are about to control nuclear weapons, that can literally wipe out our species, should, at a minimum, be subject to a psychological test.
      • recommendation
        • mandatory psychological testing for politicians
  2. Jun 2022
    1. politicians were especially sensitive to collective illusions even more so because if you think about it all they want to do is get reelected right like that's like the job of a politician is to get reelected so they are exquisitely sensitive to 00:30:57 what they think their constituents believe right and so it makes them susceptible to this and so like and you probably know this like if i don't know about you but like the number of at the national level the number of 00:31:09 of republican elected officials who will tell me privately of course i know this wasn't rigged right but then they'll tell you but but i think most of my constituents do now they're not going out and lying about it 00:31:21 they'll just say nothing right thinking that their silence isn't causing any harm but in fact it's causing great harm this is so um eye-opening because i'm thinking about other domains now i'm just curious like how many 00:31:34 christians actually believe in an afterlife like if you actually privately ask them like go down the standard beliefs of like christianity or i don't mean to pick on christianity by the way any any any religion any religion 00:31:47 i'm so curious have you done that study i'm curious oh but that's that'd be a great study because here's one of the tricky parts with with group belonging is that you know you think about groups whether especially like political 00:31:59 parties whatever they aggregate a bunch of different dimensions of things right like like if so it's funny like why do i with our two-party system why do i have to be why do i have to hate gay people to believe in free markets 00:32:12 right like it doesn't make any sense but they they so you know groups that that pull together you know a lot of different things um it's almost what we do find is it's the same kind of jagged profile thing we talked about last time 00:32:25 which is we know for sure there's no like average democrat or republican in terms of their own beliefs against the party's stated platform um and so like i would be shocked if that's not the case when it comes to religious 00:32:37 identity right but it's certainly something we could do be good research

      Politicians are exquisitely sensitive to collective illusions, and that means educating politicians is a leverage point!

  3. Mar 2022
  4. Feb 2022
    1. Stephan Lewandowsky. (2022, January 15). This is an extremely important development. The main vector for misinformation are not fringe websites but “mainstream” politicians who inherit and adapt fringe material. So keeping track of their effect is crucial, and this is a very welcome first step by @_mohsen_m @DG_Rand 1/n [Tweet]. @STWorg. https://twitter.com/STWorg/status/1482265289022746628

  5. Jan 2022
  6. Apr 2021
    1. Adam Finn. ‘There Are Some News Outlets & Politicians Incorrectly Reporting and Criticising Respectively MHRA for Advising against Use of OxAZ in under 30s. Neither MHRA nor EMA Have Done This. JCVI Have Expressed a Preference for Alternative Vaccines for Healthy under 30s in the UK Context’. Tweet. @adamhfinn (blog), 8 April 2021. https://twitter.com/adamhfinn/status/1380031766703058944.

  7. Aug 2019
    1. Per capita administrative costs may be higher in Medicare. For instance, in 2009 they were $509 in Medicare and $453 in private insurance. Medicare costs are lower as a percentage of the total only because total claims costs tend to be much higher in Medicare than in private insurance. This is because Medicare’s older and less healthy population file the claims costs. Medicare shifts administrative costs to doctors, hospitals, nursing homes, home health agencies, and other medical professionals who must comply with Medicare’s huge and complex regulatory requirements. Compliance with tens of thousands of pages of Medicare rules, regulations, guidelines, billing, and other paperwork requirements consumes vast amounts of time, energy, and effort on the part of the private-sector professionals who participate in the Medicare program. Medicare fails to effectively control waste, fraud, and abuse in the program. This failure of administration results in the staggering loss of tens of billions of taxpayer dollars each and every year. Private-sector health plans, policing their billing, have no comparable record in accumulating such enormous losses.

      The administration is afraid of losing money and would want to lose money on top of the money they owe other countries.

    2. Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., with his “Medicare for All” legislation—suggest Americans would enjoy a health care utopia if only the government took over.

      I feel there will be to much regulation to go through

    3. In 2017, Canadians were on waiting lists for an estimated 1,040,791 total procedures. Often, wait times are lengthy. For example, the median wait time for arthroplastic surgery (hip, knee, ankle, shoulder) ranges from 20 weeks to 52 weeks. In the British National Health Service, cancelations are common. Last year, the National Health Service canceled 84,827 elective operations in England for nonclinical reasons on the day the patient was due to arrive. The same year, it canceled 4,076 urgent operations in England, including 154 urgent operations canceled two or more times. Times of high illness are a key driver in this problem. For instance, in flu season, the National Health Service canceled 50,000 “non-urgent” surgeries. In Canada, private insurance is outlawed (as it would be under Sanders’ proposal). In 2017, “an estimated 63,459 Canadians received non-emergency medical treatment outside Canada.” In Britain, private insurance is permitted—but it is an additional cost to the taxes that British citizens pay for the National Health Service. Escaping the system is an option for the wealthy, or for those who are willing to forego other expenditures to get the care they want or need.

      So this could be away into a universal insurance like Canada.

    4. 71 percent of all working families. 85 percent of taxpaying Medicaid recipients. 66 percent of taxpaying Medicare recipients. 65 percent of young adult workers. 57 percent of workers in firms under 50 employees.

      There to many gaps to fill. If some where to do one of these there percentage will either inflate or decrease

    5. In most versions of single-payer, most private health insurance is either outlawed or restricted, and most public health programs are absorbed into the single, national health insurance program.
  8. Jan 2019
    1. “You have to play t h e g a m e t o f i n d o u t w h y y o u ’ r eplaying the game. It’s the future, Piku

      Is that like Pelosi saying "You have to pass the bill to find out what's in the bill?"

  9. Dec 2018
    1. A prerequisite for war, as well as bigotry, is that one sees a people or a country as a stereotype, as something sub-human or non-human; this is why politicians spend so much time trying to create stereotypical images for those countries they want to go to war with.
  10. Mar 2017
  11. Oct 2013
    1. Public officials ought not to be selected by lot. That is like using the lot to select athletes, instead of choosing those who are fit for the contest; or using the lot to select a steersman from among a ship's crew, as if we ought to take the man on whom the lot falls, and not the man who knows most about it."

      We don't do this, we elect people who turn out to be incompetent.

    1. Indeed he has often been advised by me, among others, that while men who are in public life and desire to be in favor must adopt the principle of doing what is most serviceable and noble and of saying what is most true and just, yet they must at the same time not neglect to study and consider well how in everything they say and do they may convince the people of their graciousness and human sympathy

      This sounds like many politicians today. We are facing a government shutdown in 3 hours and both sides are at a standstill. No one is willing to work together to find a solution they both stand on the sides saying 'my way or the highway'