stadia42

The non-paywalled start of the article reads like a ChatGPT answer to a high school essay question (i.e., no new insight beyond things anyone knows).

BTW, why is the article now flagged? Is it because it's paywalled?

None, and that's exactly how many blog articles I wrote on this topic.

This is not an ad hominem attack. It's fair to ask about an author's credentials when they write a public article. (I do believe he lacks the credentials, but happy to hear a counter-argument.)

To remark - none. To be taken seriously -- probably some, otherwise the noise of millions of bloggers is too much to handle. Which credentials, I'm not sure, hence my question.

FWIW, the author has university education and is currently a Visiting Professor of Science and Religion at Union Theological Seminary, New York. I personally don't find it relevant to the topic, but was curious to see what others thought.

Of course you don't. I thought, however, that you may need some credentials to be upvoted by an audience of highly technical readers.

"repulsive to the general public because regular people, on some level, understand that everyone has an unconditional right to the safety and dignity"

I want to point out a couple errors in your statement.

1. The correct verb to use is "feel", rather than "understand". "Understand" can only refer to an objective fact that can be verified, proven, etc.

2. While some "regular people" (including myself) share your views, it is not all of them, and not even an overwhelming majority of them. In fact, I suspect it's only a minority, perhaps a tiny minority of people worldwide who actually agree with you (and me). So perhaps a better way to say it, "repulsive to me and others who share my beliefs because we...".

These may seem like small things, but actually writing the way you do make your statements sound like a religious tract (kinda like "Human beings understand that God's will is absolute"). I doubt that was your intent.

Yes, a regular occurrence for the social issues that are either uncontroversial (e.g., reducing poverty, improving education, dealing with pandemics) or only lightly controversial (e.g., climate change, misinformation in the media, etc.).

For the more controversial topics, the talks are vetted more carefully, to make sure they align with the political position of the company, and that they don't raise too much opposition from any groups within the company.

The goal of the speaker is to convert as many (preferably influential) people as possible to their viewpoint. The goal of the hosting employee is typically the same, at least for the controversial issues (since those are usually highly politicized). The goal of the host company is to promote themselves as a bastion of certain (good, from their perspective) ideas, and/or as a place for thoughtful discussions.

No, I didn't mean that I cheat, and therefore everyone else cheats. I meant that the one time he got to see what's going on, he found that nearly everyone cheats. Unless he has some evidence to the contrary, a reasonable conclusion is that cheating is near-universal.

Evidence to the contrary could be, for example, that this class was very different from a typical class in some way, etc.

The professor surely knows that cheating is near universal because the incentive structure of modern life makes cheating optimal in expectation. Nothing he can do will change this fundamental fact. So why bother?