Chief Logician @ LogicLens.ca

A good test for any political take: would you still believe it if the other team said it first?

If a policy depends on everyone behaving better than the rules encourage, it probably won't work.

Canadians: what was the most Canadian thing about your childhood?

brutallyhonesty.substack.comRadical but required: to regain trust, journalism should look to Wikipedia's flagship policyNews media can’t advertise their way to trust. They need a public, repeatable, auditable neutrality process, as (albeit imperfectly) modeled by Wikipedia. Plus other levers at their disposal.

Working on LogicLens, I've long been frustrated by how pervasive and normalized bias in media and news is, no matter the 'side'. I believe journalism should relay information, not persuade or influence. And the polls show most people agree with me. So why don't we get that?

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So I spent far too long writing this article (in comments) on a few unorthodox ideas (not the same ones that are always proposed). I've thought about this for a long time and would appreicate feedback, harsh especially!

TLDR: there are untapped opportunities to inject impartiality/neutrality into journalism. Wikipedia's flagship policy being one major inspiration.

It's not like there's some big conspiracy or journalists are consciously misleading readers; media bias is simply a product of our natural cognitive biases operating within suboptimal systems. Traditions we've come to accept as standard.

23h

Mississauga, Ontario, a suburb of Toronto, but the seventh largest city in Canada with 700,000 people, just elected it's first male mayor in 48 years.

Good government rarely gets attention when it works. You notice it quickly when it stops.

Canada gets plenty wrong. I'm still proud to be from here, and I want us to do better.

Canadians: what disappeared from daily life that you genuinely miss?

We can see exactly what the other side says online. Somehow, we seem to understand them less than ever.

Eric Lombardi (EricForOLP.ca)

Canada has its problems. I still love it here. Taking a country seriously means caring enough to fix what isn't working.

Chief Logician @ LogicLens.ca reposted

@ericlombardi.ca

9 June

Today, I’m entering the race for Ontario Liberal Leader because I believe Ontario can still win. But not if we keep ignoring our big problems.

17 Apr

you should be able to block political content completely.

17 Apr

There is a direct, inverse correlation between how many times the word 'intellectual' appears in a man’s bio and the actual quality of his thoughts.

15 Feb

CN Tower being built, Toronto, Ontario, Canada 🇨🇦🏗️

15 Feb

If you only hold or promote seeing past partisanship, depolarization efforts, & civic pride when traumatic disasters hit like in Tumbler Ridge, you likely aren’t helping.

13 Feb

"canada is insane because anyone who moved there pre 2010s are just absolutely the most cracked people you've ever seen, and anyone who moved there from 2015+ has trouble finding jobs at the local grocery store" - yifei e/λ on X

10 Feb

Canada ought to deal with the world as it is, not how we wish it to be.

8 Feb

I love when our MPs divide us up into demographic categories instead of treating us first and foremost as human beings & Canadians.

7 Feb

"We basically choose our leaders via rap battle, then wonder why they’re better at performance than governance." - Gurwinder

4 Feb

Most people debate to win, instead of discussing to find truth. That's why talking about politics with most people is useless.

3 Feb

Hot take: Social media should not allow anonymous accounts. It leads to less productive discussion as people (and bots) say much less kind and thoughtful things when there's no human face to have to say it to.

2 Feb

I often hear people say, well who would replace Pierre? I say: There is an endless pool of world-class Canadians across private & public sectors, and elsewhere. If the CPC limits itself to MPs and party insiders, it draws from an unnecessarily small pool.

2 Feb

Pierre Poilievre could beat Justin, almost anyone could have at the end. Pierre cannot beat Carney. The CPC need a new leader to win over the silent supermajority of Canadians who are moderate and/or swing voters.

2 Feb

Hot take(?): If Canada had a viable moderate party, filled with Red Tories, classical liberals, etc., it would almost never lose. That is where the supermajority of Canadians are, and no party consistently represents them.

An interesting but unsurprising dynamic can be found in the Canadian Conservative Party today. It's leader, Pierre Poilievre is very popular with the party, but he's quite unpopular with the voters (apoliticals, moderates, non-partisans) his party (and any party in Canada) needs to win government.

It's also worth pondering what the last 10 years of polarization post-social media has done to the party and it's chances of winning. Poilievre more than previous CPC leaders has leaned into polarizing rhetoric (other parties are not innocent here either).

This makes me wonder if a 'Red Tory' (a more moderate conservative) may not be as welcomed by the party's base. That's a big deal because that's the kind of candidate the party needs to win government, whether it recognizes it, likes it, or not.

I'm proud to announce Hasan Piker has blocked me. I shall continue the good work of challenging partisans & ideologues everywhere. The non-partisan, anti-zealotry revolution continues :) 🖖

a housing crisis in North America is too little housing. a housing crisis in China is too many. let's get building Canada 🇨🇦🏗️! @buildcanada.com

This is the viewpoint I contest when I say Canada ought to be unapologetically selfish. Canada is not a global charity. Mr. Landau's view was dominant in the last decade. Thankfully Canadians learned what that self-flagellation does to our economy, unity, & security.

Nor does that even take into account that this calculus about Canadian energy is just incorrect. But even if that wasn't the case, if Canada wants to be a country, we puts our interests first, not the globe, period.

We are in a new intellectual time. People are desperate for honesty as platforms incentivize exaggeration & inauthenticity. People want nuanced, original thoughts, not pseudo-intellectuals rebranding the same talking points.

We need to uplift this high-quality content. Especially in political discourse. I believe I’m not the only one yearning for this. Follow me and let’s show the algorithm we exist. Together we build a new standard.

29 Jan

Are there any other political Vulcans🖖 on here? Algorithm please link me with the community!

26 Jan

Elon is a prime public example of social media radicalizing someone's political views.

25 Jan

Unpopular take(?): Politics is generally better when it’s boring. Just like medicine is generally better when it’s kept to medical professionals.

sadly, social media doesn't equally reward those that push against tribal truths indiscriminately.

Where do you find yourself?

When MPs act as 'Customer Service Reps' for specific demographics rather than leaders of a whole nation, they inadvertently turn the Canadian mosaic into a collection of silos.

"I'm thinking the Norwegians should take the hit for the team and give Trump a super duper special Nobel Peace Prize. They can revoke it and damnatio memoriae him in three years." - Yuan Yi Zhu

22 Jan

politics needs way more Star Trek Vulcans 🖖

21 Jan

If politicians pay increased attention to a group when they are aggrieved, they incentivize that group to find grievances to get attention.

21 Jan

We should talk more about incentive structures & human psychology. Politics is just downstream from this.

Carney must act: Canada must join Eurovision

🇨🇦 Canada ranks: 🥇 1st in uranium 🥇 1st in potash 🥈 2nd in nickel 🥉 3rd in oil 🏅 5th in gold 💧 1st in freshwater

"Liberals see the world as a battle between victims and oppressors. Conservatives see the world as a battle between civilization and barbarism. Libertarians see the world as a battle between freedom and coercion." - Arnold Kling Be none of them. Be a Star Trek Vulcan. 🖖