FT, is not withholding truths, for any reasons of your own, as fake, as fake news pushed for any reasons of its own?

Sir, I refer to Tim Harford’s “Hard truths about fake news”, March 4.

Given the fact that juicy/irrelevant or fake news/stories are usually so much more “interesting” for readers (like Harford and I) than many real fact based news/stories, Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg clearly faces a tremendous conflict on interests. That of course because Facebook makes most (if not perhaps all of its income) when its users (like Harford and I) click on the ads attracted by these juicy/fake stories/news.

But is Harford someone to discuss this matters as an outsider? He writes in the Financial Times, and one of the greatest true financial real horror stories/news ever, must be about how bank regulators could get it so wrong so as to in Basel II assign a tiny 20% risk weight for what is so dangerous for the banking system, the AAA rated, and a huge 150% risk weight to the totally innocuous below BB- rated. But, has FT picked up on that? No! 

Because of some unexplained internal reasons FT knows best of, notwithstanding my soon 2.500 letters on subprime banking regulations, notwithstanding its motto of “without fear and without favour”, FT has kept mum on that story.

Sir, is not withholding truths, for any reasons of your own, just as fake as fake news pushed for commercial, political or any other reasons of its own? 

PS. Harford writes: “as a loyal FT columnist, I need hardly point out that the perfect newspaper is the one you’re reading right now”. That is an interesting point, which begs the question: Is columnists’ loyalty to their own newspaper something crucial for good journalism or good newspapers?

PS. Harford writes: “Reading the same newspaper every day is a filter bubble too.” Oops, careful there Tim, you are entering into the very delicate theme of groupthink and intellectual incest.

@PerKurowski

Let robots make us an offer we can’t refuse, for us to allow them to supplant us; perhaps a Universal Basic Income?

Sir, Simon Kuper writes about “How to cope when robots take your job” October 9.

Before I got censored, there too, in 2012, in an Op-Ed in Venezuela titled “We need worthy and decent unemployments” I wrote: “What politician does not speak up for the need to create decent and well paid jobs for young people? But, if that's not possible, and the economy is not able to deliver that on its own ... What on earth are we to do?” 

And I followed that up with “The power of a nation, and the productivity of its economy, which so far has depended primarily on the quality of its employees may, in the future, also depend on the quality of its unemployed, as a minimum in the sense of these not interrupting those working.”

And so perhaps not only journalists but all other who end up unemployed because of robots too, should require those employing robots to pay a out a Universal Basic Income, as a quid-pro-quo for us allowing these to supplant us. Or if they have better ideas, let the robots themselves make us an offer we can’t refuse.

Ideally that could allow many to operate on the fringe margins of earnings, allowing them to keep busy with what they most like to do.

For journalists the alternative could be to get really creative so as to obtain some ad income from a story that goes viral. Sadly, in that case, the temptations of sacrificing truth in order to gain virality might prove to hard to resist… as we already see happening more and more, here and there and everywhere.

PS. Look at it this way. If robots send us into early retirement, should not robots pay taxes too? Should not the employers of robots have to pay payroll taxes for these? That could help to fund our Universal Basic Income. And that could also help us humans to compete with the robots for jobs on a more level playing ground. 

PS. A Universal Basic Income is a step-ladder that will allow us to reach up easier to the gig-economy.

PS. If then taxing robots funds our living by means of a Universal Basic Income, could we all become a robots owning gentry,  reading and writing poetry like Jane Austen’s landed gentry?

PS. Where does Donald Trump suggest we build the wall against the robots who threaten American jobs, and who is going to pay for it?

P.S. How many jobs have robots taken from humans only because robots are not subject to minimum wages and payroll taxes?

PS. Soon unemployed PhD’s will not even be able to drive taxis in New York, as driverless cars will be deemed safer.

PS. I have been concerned with growing structural unemployment for a long time, like to the point of suggesting It's time to just scratch each other's backs.

PS. By the way, in all statistics on employment, where can we find information on how many robots gained employment, for instance in the USA during the last quarter of 2016?

PS. When playing the employment game, humans & robots face same par salary, but robots count with extra payroll tax handicap strokes

PS. Grandparents, can you imagine the horrors if your grandchildren come to depend on dumb artificial intelligence and on 3rd class robots?

PS. I anställning spelet, har både mänskor och robotar samma par lön, men robotar har 31,34% extra arbetsgivaravgift slag.

PS. Here some disorderly lose cannon questions about life in the just around the corner Robot/Automation La-La-Land

PS. Dwindling workforces puts the International Labour Organization (ILO) at a crossroad: To unionize unemployed or robots?

PS. At what rate should we tax robots? A very high one in order to make us humans more competitive, or a fairly low one to allow robots to do as much heavy lifting as possible for us in our economy?

@PerKurowski ©

The more you trust someone to be telling you the truth, the more you might come to believe something not true.

Sir, Robert Shrimsley writes on the always incredibly interesting and incredibly difficult issue of finding who are to be trusted for telling the truth… for instance on the web, “Google searches go beyond #Thedress to a bigger truth” March 6.

And Shrimsley refers to a Google research paper proposal to “move away from the wisdom of crowds and back to established authority”.

With respect to “wisdom of crowds”, I fully agree with that as a minimum a major revision is in order since those “crowds” on the web cannot be taken as being real crowds in the traditional sense.

But, on the use of “established authority”, these might neither have much to do with what we think (or hope) they used to be... These now represent more something like network authorities or ideological affinity authorities.

So how would I proceed if Google?

For a starter, and since I know gaming is always a possibility, I would leave the door open for at least 25 percent of pretending Truth-Sayers to be ushered in by Lady Luck, meaning presenting varied opinions from those who have done no merits at all to be telling the truth, picked out by means of a lottery.

Second I would use an algorithm that takes away qualifying points from any established authority that uses incestuous cross-references… meaning the “you quote me and I quote you” kind of affairs.

Third, I would use an algorithm that equally takes away qualifying points from any established authority that conforms excessively with political or ideological point of views held by anyone side of the big divide.

And finally I would end all publishing of possible truths with the following: Warning: the more trusted someone can be to be telling you the truth, the greater the possibility that you fall for something that is not true.