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Twitter to introduce pronoun field

17 February 2019

With many users already displaying their preferred pronouns in their profiles, Twitter has decided to introduce a pronoun field which all users will be encouraged to fill. Robots will be required to use the it/its pronoun, with humans having to pass an “I am not a robot” captcha test before being allowed to enter their pronouns in a free text field.

“Twitter believes passionately in freedom of expression,” said a spokesperson, “and one of the most important forms of expression is to tell others what pronouns you want to be called by.”

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The political polarisation of climate change

16 April 2018

Climate change is often seen as a leftwing issue. Those on the left are more likely than those on the right to see climate change as a major problem. Labour voters are twice as likely as Conservative voters to be very concerned about climate change and to accept that it is caused by human activity. Conversely, Conservatives are twice as likely to be unconcerned, feel that climate change has been &#

Source

CCL UK »

Steven Pinker during a lecture for Humanists UK

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Enlightenment Now

23 February 2018

I went to see Stephen Pinker on Monday night, interviewed by Decca Aitkenhead of the Guardian, talking about his latest book, Enlightenment Now, an argument for science, rationalism and humanism. Bill Gates’ new favourite book apparently, knocking his previous favourite, Pinker’s Better Angels of Our Nature, off the top spot.

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What’s going to happen to the carbon price floor?

21 November 2017

There’s a budget tomorrow, and as we reported recently, some energy companies have been putting pressure on the chancellor to increase the carbon price floor, the UK’s carbon tax, currently set at £18 per tonne, which has helped us reduce the proportion of our electricity we get from burning coal, the dirtiest fossil fuel of them all, though if we want to completely phase out coal burning by 2025…

Source

CCL UK »

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Indulgent purity

6 August 2017

Some of us, maybe all of us to some extent, like our principles to be pure, unsullied by the messiness of reality.

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A geeky argument for equality

24 July 2017

Suppose you accept the idea of the singularity, that we’ll pretty soon come to a point where machine intelligence equals and then surpasses human intelligence (or if not pretty soon, then at some point in the future if we don’t first destroy ourselves), what would the consequences of that be?

Who would be running the world? Who, or what, would be generating the wealth, and who would be claiming benefits?

Do we really need a new ism?

17 July 2017

And what’s this ecomodern one mean anyway? The eco suggests ecology, but the idea grows out of a disillusionment with the current environmental movement in that the solutions it’s offering up are simply not viable and their approach is often counter-productive, alienating large sections of the public with their finger-wagging, telling us all how we should be living. There’s also the aversion so many have to technologies that could reduce our impact on the planet, such as nuclear power and genetic engineering.

The ism that underlies ecomodernism is rationalism. It’s about finding rational solutions to the problems we face. Of course, many traditional environmentalists would argue that the solutions they propose are entirely rational, that to go for nuclear power or genetic engineering would be insane.

When the Earth disappeared

23 June 2017

This was a very graphic thought that came to me the other day, which looked like an X-rated party political broadcast, though shot on a Hollywood blockbuster budget.

The camera glides around a city, eavesdropping on bits of conversation. We’re drifting upwards, passing through clouds, seeing the coastline of Britain through the gaps, then seeing the curvature of the earth, fuzzy at the edge.

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What is green energy?

21 June 2017

This term gets used a lot in stats: how much of our energy is green? How much of Denmark’s or Germany’s or China’s or France’s? It depends what you consider green.

Most people would I think imagine that green energy means renewables. If a company said it invested in green energy projects, would you be surprised if you found out they’re investing in a nuclear startup that wants to build small modular reactors (SMRs)?

Emotion vs. rationalism in the US presidential election

4 August 2016

I watched the most frightening panorama programme I’ve ever seen just now on the possibility of Donald Trump becoming president. Hillary Clinton may have many flaws but I think she’s very much the one on the side of rationalism in this election. Trump could become the most powerful person in the world ffs and what can we do about it? We just have to sit by and watch it happen, hoping that it doesn’t.

I remember drafting a letter to some Ohio resident as part of the ill fated Guardian campaign to stop Bush being re-elected (but I never sent the letter). I thought that was a pivotal election, that if Bush won it would be a calamity, but here we are twelve years later and the world didn’t end, did it? I was worried that if Bush won it would be game over for the climate, and maybe one day some post-cataclysmic historian will conclude that the Bush-Kerry election of 2004 was as much a turning point for the climate as was the 2000 Bush-Gore election.