The Need For Critical Thinking
Children, quite rightly, expect adults to look out for them. Maybe, when we grow up, we continue to expect others in authority to look after us. Or we WANT to believe they care. The more fools we are.
Last night my bank called and said they my credit card was not going to work as they ‘feared’ the PIN had been compromised. I was told to visit a branch to obtain a new PIN or wait ten days for them to mail me one. Being too much of a consumer, I said I would go to the branch the next day. Not being one of these clever AI computers, I forget about this need for a new PIN, and while waiting for the bank to open at 10:00 am (it is tough to get up early when you are a banker with billions in profits, it is true), I went into the grocery store, bought some groceries and, yes, the PIN no longer worked. But the cashier said, “No worries, just tap” – and of course it worked! So, what security does a PIN provide, I wondered?
This is actually the second time since March that the PIN has, somehow, gone AWOL. While waiting for the PIN to be re-set at the bank, I asked the bank manager why the card still worked “with a tap or swipe” when they thought the card had been – or might have been – compromised – and you know what the answer was? I understood him to say that it is YOUR money at risk once the PIN number is suspect, so if there is a problem, you will lose…and the bank has no liability! You didn’t know that, did you? These are nice guys, looking out for their customers! Another responsibility shifted onto us.
Which reminds me of two other stories…both about how our CARING governments pretend they are ‘protecting’ us. At the Pearson airport one day, some 20 years ago, while taking off our shoes and proving we didn’t have any liquids in bottles over 100 ml, I started talking to a gentleman next to me who happened to be the President of the largest maker of explosives in the world, and he explained how even 40 ml of flammable or explosive could bring down a ’plane, and, worse, he remarked that the most common explosives in the world (used daily in mines in Northen Ontario, for example, and ubiquitous at construction sites everywhere) were not discoverable by this vast expenditure on security at airports – and that even detonators were not discoverable as they could be easily assembled from parts in your carry-on bag… As chance would have it, I was flying that day to the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, where, believe it or not, I met a Professor at Batelle whose job included testing the equipment used at airports for explosives. He also confirmed that the most common explosives used in construction were not capable of being recognized by the expensive equipment and staff at airports. Makes you feel comfortable, doesn’t it?
The follow-on story from this one above happened at Miami airport, where as a result of absurd delays at security, I started talking to a gentleman in a suit beside me about their inability to detect common explosives, despite all the claims, and he proceeded to give me his business card as a scientist at a well-known US nuclear facility, saying “I’m not surprised. Do you know they can only detect one or two isotopes out of the thousands that could be used in nuclear dirty bombs? And these isotopes are readily present in the environment (such as your basement, coal ash, sludge at water treatment plants, etc.) – the elements thorium and uranium, for instance give us such gifts as radium and radon gas, and well, there are really bad isotopes, polonium, cobalt as well….Just be grateful terrorists are generally stupid….” Charming piece of information, n’est-ce pas?
This all reminds you a bit of the COVID panics about masks and vaccines, doesn’t it? We humans are lazy, and don’t think about what we are being told. Just like sheep…we WANT to believe things we really should question. After all, woe it is if you stand up and ask the one that question that our lord and masters demand that we accept….especially if your wife/employer/friends is/are sitting beside you, and is/are now glaring at you, as they all gleefully accept what has been ladled out to them in the trough….
The issue is not that governments and corporations are consciously or unconsciously misleading us, or stoking paranoia to modify behaviour to its/their whims, (although that is sometimes quite obviously the case), but rather that we, everyday people, need to be on guard to question what “security” the bank really offers its customers, and to assume what we are about to hear is likely not going to be the truth….ESPECIALLY from governments!
It’s not a big step from this to fake information, fake TV reports, fake court cases….is it? And, be afraid – A.I. is coming, and it is going to know everything, and can’t be wrong – right?
The starting Image is from The Daily Telegraph, 11/11/22, an illustration of a ‘dirty’ bomb explosion over a city CREDIT: ImageBank4u/Shutterstock.
