Posts by BenWilson
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Cracker: Breaking the Silence, in reply to Joe Wylie,
The ability of scientist to be evil is certainly one problem, but I think there's an even more pernicious problem lurking underneath any merging of science and power. The very nature of science is to question the truth. It's in many ways a fundamentally anarchic system, and shackled by power from any access to the huge resources that modern science needs, if any program is seen as too unorthodox, that really hampers science's own ability to do what it actually does.
This already happens within science as it already is. It's already got its own power structures, it's own orthodoxy. They're already very powerful people. I don't think they need that increased. To me, their power should flow from their rectitude, not from a governmental decree.
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Cracker: Breaking the Silence, in reply to Marc C,
There seems to be a lot of silence, no comments, is it, because people reflect on all this important stuff, or is it that they also know no answers?
Or both? It is a hard question. Especially the question about the level to which scientists should gain power. I have to say I don't think that's a good idea, but in not doing something like that, there is certainly a downside. It's the same downside that democracy as a system faces all round - it's way slow to change, and gets stuff wrong for a long time.
However, the danger on the other side seems to me the greater. The arbitrary power by small cliques, even well meaning cliques, has far more potential to go spectacularly wrong. In going even a little bit wrong, it savagely undermines its own precious status as beacon of truth. It's too much to give any institution control over both truth AND power. Who then would be left to speak truth TO power? We have tried this kind of model before, it's called theocracy. At a time when enough people believe that their religion is a powerful channel to truth, it might seem like a good time to put the religion in charge of society. How quickly that turns to custard, and destroys whatever good that religion might have stood for beforehand. Is there any reason to think that, given such a position, that scientists would not act in the same human way? I don't think it's worth the risk to find out. I like science too much to fuck it up like that.
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Speaker: Confessions of an Uber driver, in reply to goforit,
hope you are keeping up the fight with uncle Gubber(Uber)
Oh, yes. That I am.
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Speaker: Confessions of an Uber driver, in reply to goforit,
I'm not aware of one. It would presumably be dictated by how young one could get a full driver's license and hold it for 2 years. What's that? 18?
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I know this because I'm getting a steady stream of confused young guys who come to the driver pages trying to get the truth. Being honest young fellows, some of them, they called the NZTA to find out what the law was and got the baffling answer that not one word Uber told them was true.
This has been my work for the last 3 weeks. Sorry it's taking me time to get the next article out.
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Speaker: Confessions of an Uber driver, in reply to Stephen Judd,
My own one puts all the liability on me, and I’m pretty sure it’s pro-forma what everyone gets, even the newbies who are being signed up at a massive rate every day for the last 3 weeks. So yeah, the letter of the agreement says Uber doesn’t have to pay anything. This is not, of course, how they represent it when they say verbally or in weasel words emails to “rest assured”, that they will cover your costs if your insurance company doesn’t.
Personally, I’m not worried. I have actual commercial insurance, because I have an actual P endorsement and my vehicle has a COF. These were questions that the insurance company asked, of course. I would have had to lie to them to get anything other than commercial insurance. Which, I presume, is what most of the drivers are now doing.
ETA: Lying, that is, rather than getting commercial insurance. Because Uber does not require commercial insurance now, nor any of the other compliance aspects of driving passengers for hire or reward. Not one of the laws is now being respected. Zero. Zilch. They're making their own laws for the entire service. They have literally invented a legal fiction called "Ridesharing", which has no formal recognition in law, and are using that to trick hundreds and hundreds of immigrants and students into breaking the law to make money for them.
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Speaker: Confessions of an Uber driver, in reply to FletcherB,
So, Uber would have to cover you because they’d told you they would, no?
Who knows? Would you want to test that one in court?
ETA: I'm not sure I'd want to be holding Uber to a policy they never gave me any copy of. What am I even holding them to? How could I know? How could I prove it?
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Speaker: Confessions of an Uber driver, in reply to goforit,
Who knows? If you don't have a copy of a policy, you effectively don't have a policy. You have a gratuitous promise. Obviously the real reason you can't see the policy is because it would be an absolute disaster for Uber if anyone hostile got their hands on it.
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Speaker: Confessions of an Uber driver, in reply to goforit,
Had some fun stuff come in today. Since Uber no longer require you to have commercial vehicle insurance, drivers inquired as to whether the insurance companies would actually pay out, given that you'd be driving commercially. Uber's response was that they have their own insurance policy to cover any claims that are refused by the other insurance companies. When asked whether the drivers could see this policy, since they're basically claiming it covers those drivers, so it would be nice to get some of the detail, the answer was "No. No you can't". In writing, no less.
Not entirely sure how the insurance companies would feel about Uber doing that for their customers. As far as I'm aware, you're meant to disclose any other policies you're covered by to your insurer.
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Speaker: Confessions of an Uber driver, in reply to goforit,
Yup. Their response that they're "still working on generating an invoice" is a little bit laughable when we all know it's a computer generated thing that comes instantaneously. Furthermore, it's not code that needs to be written. It's code that they would have had to unwrite to get it to stop sending the invoices that were normal before. In fact, I can still get them, now, for the older trips.