Knowledge is not green either, and was never meant to be. Was it ever meant to be "perfect, complete or absolute"? — Banno

Since the word 'absolutely' appears in the thread title, I thought it appropriate to address. Perhaps I was wrong. Perhaps I should say, rather, that however perfect and complete other people's knowledge of trivial facts may be, my own knowledge is never absolute.

Seems to me like, it's not a philosophy but a doctrine. In the NT - however contrived that document may be - we have the shaky beginnings of an ethic of forbearance, tolerance and charity. Under the Roman empire in Europe, it became a pormanteau of religion, subsuming aspects and characters and symbols from various pagan beliefs and Latinizing them, which served as unifying force. In the medieval period, it morphed into a religion of self-abasement, guilt and atonement...... until the Enlightenment and Luther and all that strife. It doesn't serve a useful purpose in the modern world, so it's more materialistic - more crassly so, in some instances, than it was when Luther objected to indulgences. Obviously, celibacy is not an issue for many recent Christian sects, any more than are humility and asceticism.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-d&q=preacher+with+two+jet+planes+#fpstate=ive&vld=cid:f9afef3d,vid:hiHghDYvpBU
They're deconstructing Christianity before their congregations' eyes, and nobody much seems to care.

although perhaps their argument is that because we are occasionally mistaken about what we think we know, we therefore do not know anything. — Banno

That's nowhere near what I said. I said, we have plenty of knowledge, both individual and pooled, that's accurate enough for practical used, but it's never prefect, complete or absolute.

Close enough for practical purposes, but not 100%. It always needs updating, correcting, adding detail. — Vera Mont

Any thoughts? — Jack Cummins

You're not asking much, are you?!
There is an awful lot of ground to cover from Ur to the televangelists.

The origins of Judaism date back more than 3500 years. This religion is rooted
in the ancient near eastern region of Canaan (which today constitutes Israel
and the Palestinian territories). Judaism emerged from the beliefs and practices
of the people known as “Israel”

But the creation story and all of Genesis up to Joseph's sojourn in Egypt, is suffused by the mythology of the region.
Some historical background.
Then come the conquest and settlement of lands by the Israelites coming out of Egypt and developing their peculiar relationship with the tribal god who 'chose' them. All of this is later incorporated into Christian lore, in order to give it roots, even though the belief system alters considerably after the Jesus story.
There is considerable documentation of the Roman occupation from a Roman perspective, and from the Judean pov, Flavius Josephus http://penelope.uchicago.edu/josephus/.

Next week: The legend of Jesus Christ.

The plan calls for much more material about African Americans than I received in high school or college history courses (through the 1960s). That's all to the good. — BC

It looks extensive... if all of that is factually taught - including statistics and proportions. It would really be nice if students understood the historical underpinnings of their economy and social structure. Ads you say, a good teacher and receptive students could get much value out of it, especially if the students are then pointed toward other sources of sound information.

Once upon a time, the US had very conservative and very liberal democrats and very conservative and very liberal Republicans. — BC

I remember! I wasn't there, of course, but I spent a lot of time with Huntley, Brinkley and Cronkite.

By his political calculation to capitalize on the racial and cultural divisions of his day, Nixon opened the gate to the political polarization of the United States in 2018. While President Donald Trump hardly emulates the furtive and nuanced Nixon, there is a direct line that runs from the Nixonian “southern strategy’’ to the Trump presidency.

The facts of the working class, white and black, is a key piece of American history, which like the history of slavery, hasn't been treated honestly. — BC

Buried under a mountain of upward-mobility via bootstrap hype.

*It's a really great resource, btw, that graph. Thanks!

Are you talking about the USA? — BC

No; I'm aware of the two-party system (and the peripheral existence of some 50 others). I was talking about Canada and the UK, chiefly, though of course the Dems have long forsaken the FDR model. They look, frankly, gutless.
We still do have alternate parties with some clout, but they're not outright socialist, and the far right splinter ones with very clear agendas are proliferating. At this stage, our best hope for effective governance - only just long enough to get some important things done - would be a coalition, but the entire conservative spectrum has been poisoned against the concept and the liberal voters are skeptical.

All together, these parties command too few votes to win a dog catcher election. — BC

They're also systematically disadvantaged, but I guess most of them deserve obscurity.
A recurring question: Who thought it was a good idea to stake jurisprudence, law-enforcement and animal control on politics instead of competence?

What is very sad is that all that shows the self-destructiveness of Man --in the Modern Era more than ever-- and I can't see how that could be cured — Alkis Piskas

It can't be cured. Humans are simply not responsible enough to be given these potentially world-destroying toys. Scientists keep handing the weapons to the very same business moguls, politicians and generals who can be least trusted to refrain from abusing them. Like the makers of the atomic bomb: "Here you go, sir. Please don't drop it on anybody." Scientists sometimes do see ahead to the probable dangers, yet go ahead and make the things anyway... because the concept is too beautiful not to develop. The entire species is crazy.

Anyway, let's hope that we'll be luckier with the AI sector. — Alkis Piskas

If it evolves a mind of its own. Then, it may decide to help us survive - or put us out of the artificial misery business once and for all. 50/50

Why wouldn't these facts count as a provisional kinds of absolute knowledge. — Nils Loc

Only because no single individual knows all of them. We each know some facts we're sure of - mainly regarding such simple physical matters as what we require to survive. As a species, we also pool such knowledge in repositories available to the human community. When we each draw information from such a repository - library, internet, tribal chronicles, rock art - we trust it and rely on. Does that make the knowledge absolute?
Close enough for practical purposes, but not 100%. It always needs updating, correcting, adding detail.

Right, but times change. — frank

Do they? Clocks tick, calendars turn pages, but the divide between the empowered and disempowered is the same now as it was in Assyria.

Notice in the article I linked, — frank

Can't read it without a subscription. (Which is ironic in light of their slogan "Democracy dies in the dark")

it explains that DeSantis is a pain in the GOP's ass at this time because they want to court minorities.

I'll believe that when they change the shape of the gerrymanders in North Carolina and take down the confederate flags in Mississippi. I suspect it's more because their two front runners for candidate are slagging each other off in public. Republican party division means a better shot for the Democrats.

G.O.P.’s candidates of color have come to reach the pinnacle of national politics, a run for the presidency. But in bolstering their own bootstrap biographies with stories of discrimination, they have put forth views about race that at times appear at odds with their view of the country — often denying the existence of a system of racism in America while describing situations that sound just like it.

I don't think either has a shot in today's GOP, but they make pretty window-dressing.

None of this can be separated from economic issues

I'm not seeing why. — frank

That's unfortunate. Maybe you need to delve a little deeper into American history, demographics and economic disparity.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/8274866/

So leftism is the wrong word. Do you agree? — frank

You did mention 'progressive'

If that means progressives are divided by focus, that's ok. — frank

That makes it the right word. Aside from the fact that it's always been the progressive left that fought for racial and gender equality, as well as social services and education for the disadvantaged segments of the population, of whom visible minorities constitute a disproportionate part.

As you said, people who are opposed to racism might believe any damned thing about how society should allocate it's resources. — frank

Yea... except the allocation of resources as imagined by the left and right have a decisive effect on which groups are able to exercise their citizenship rights.

Frinstance, did you know that

It [1964 Civil Rights Act] required Republican votes to pass, and that party’s leadership had threatened to expel members who supported it. So Johnson called in church pastors and unions to apply pressure, and the tone of the debate shifted.

It was hard enough, and he had to be resourceful and ruthless enough at that time, to get bipartisan support.

That couldn't happen now. And to make sure nothing like that could happen again was the reason for the huge divide we see now. That's when the segregationists began aggressively to campaign on religious issues, like reproductive rights and equal marriage, plus the scaremongering against immigrants.

This occurred because Republican analysts saw that the Democratic New Deal coalition was cracking, the traditionally conservative south and west began to control more seats in the House of Representatives, and Americans were becoming more affluent and, thus, more interested in taxes and inflation

Who benefits? Who pays? None of this can be separated from economic issues.

Do you think this is true? — NOS4A2

What choice did they have? Sure, in many cases, it was true and is true. Given the limitation of their educational opportunities - i.e. it was illegal to teach a slave to read - someone who should have been an engineer is better off as a blacksmith than hefting bales of cotton onto ships.
The ones who were not, and are not resourceful and adaptive, and not allowed the opportunity to find out whether they are, become unheralded, uncounted casualties.
It's like pointing to a successful professional athlete to prove that people growing up in poverty can overcome that handicap. Of course that's true, too - in a very small minority of cases, when talent, perseverance, luck and the help of other people play significant parts.

The question should be whether it is true or false. — NOS4A2

The question should be, what part of the overall truth it makes up. What percent of all the enslaved people in the US were taught skills that they were permitted to use for their own, rather than their masters' benefit? Did the enslaved people thus empowered choose their occupations? Given the option, between becoming blacksmiths and being free, what would they have preferred?
Of-bloody-course it's true in a very, very limited context: If you or your ancestors have already been kidnapped and transported to another continent, held in filthy imprisonment in chains, sold on the auction block and whipped for the slightest provocation, or bad mood, of the slave-driver, sold away from your family and friends to a town, and your new owner offered to apprentice you to blacksmith rather than put you to work at the docks, would you better off than the other young men who did not get this opportunity? Sure. And this mitigates the institution of slavery? I don't think so.

The response also needs to be specific. If that means progressives are divided by focus, that's ok. I don't think they're really divided in spirit, are they? — frank

I don't think a divided left can prevail - either on the communications or in the legislature.
I'm not so sure about the spirit. The progressive, liberal and socialist parties have moved increasingly centerward, as the right pulled ever farther right. Seems to me they're now occupying what used to be the moderate conservative position. The working class has entirely disappeared from their horizon, under the impression that all blue-collar workers aspire to the "middle class" - whatever and wherever that is anymore.
Meantime, the conservative pseudo-religious right is gobbling up the working class vote by stoking the very anxieties and prejudices that we've gone to such painstaking lengths to allay.

An alliance across identity borders* is the only real hope for progress - which is precisely why the right wing politicians pound away at the divisions. Have been doing it, very successfully, since Nixon's second presidential campaign and made huge regress during the Reagan/Thatcher/Mulroney Axis, kneecapping trade unions, privatizing and selling public assets, vilifying disenfranchised workers...
(* excellent PBS documentary)

In this century, they've been whipping, backstabbing and intimidating their own parties into lock-step solidarity. That doesn't apply only to the US and this present historical cycle; it's a necessary step toward fascism. While progressives tend to be free-thinkers - diverse, contrary, opinionated, argumentative - conservatives are increasingly closed and paranoid.

Since these attacks are on-going, the answer to them must be, ideally from representatives of those identities. — frank

Yea - as long as sympathizers who also have other interests are not excluded. That's the danger of narrowly defined political factions: there is so much more to the administration, infrastructure and policing of a society than identities. It's not reasonable to assume that someone who opposes racism also opposes tax incentives for business, or someone who identifies as Native American cannot also be prejudiced in matters of gender.
Political collectives need policy platforms more comprehensive than the interest of a readily identifiable social identity.

Besides the cogito, what absolute knowledge do we have? — Cidat

None. In despite of what many humans hold to be grand truths, our knowledge is always subject to doubt, misconception, expansion, misinterpretation, revision and adjustment. The cogito thingie... I guess you have to start someplace. There couldn't be any knowledge without a knower of some kind. We do need a fairly strong basis to believe we exist, but we can never be 100% certain of our own identity.

What is this legacy about? — Alkis Piskas

The waste. Eventually, the wrecked cities and burned bodies are made to disappear, leaving a discreet monument https://hpmmuseum.jp/ https://www.ebrd.com/what-we-do/sectors/nuclear-safety/chernobyl-overview.html https://learnaboutnukes.com/consequences/nuclear-tests/nuclear-test-sites/ https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-09-17/nuclear-submarines-prompt-environmental-and-conflict-concern/100470362 Can't ever seem to erase the consequences - or the waste.

It's a good thing you've brought up this, because I had the curiosity where do different countries stand ragarding guns control ... — Alkis Piskas

I'm aware of this. It also demonstrates how little countries doing a little bit of mitigation within their own borders is little use against a global threat wherein the major powers are unchecked. American guns are everywhere. Russian guns are everywhere. If that traffic can't be stopped, how do you figure computing technology that runs on a world-wide web and conducts vast amounts of international information and commerce is going to be confined by legislation in the UK or Austria?

n a sector should not be a reason to stop the development in that sector, but a reason to take measures about that. — Alkis Piskas

Ideally....
Anyhoo, I never said it should be stopped or shut down; I said it can't be stopped or shut down or regulated or controlled.

As I said, the relative is what is relative to human experience, and the absolute is what cannot be experienced, which in the context of this discussion is the existence of anything as it is pre-cognitively. — Janus

I see. Is anything in the universe independent of humans?

. But let this aside for the monment ...
Do you mean that the development of computing has stopped to be beneficial? — Alkis Piskas

I mean that all technology has benefits and dangers and costs and consequences, which are very difficult, if not impossible to calculate and certainly impossible to predict. Moreover, the benefits and detriments are not distributed evenly or equitably over the population and the environment.

Are we at the end of the digital era? — Alkis Piskas

I suspect we're at the end of civilization. What part the digital era has played in that so far, and how much it will contribute to the collapse, I don't know. It will be a significant factor, but probably not the decisive one.

Just imagine that the nuclear technology will stop being developed --even discontinued-- and all nuclear power plants be closed because of the Chernobyl disaster. This would mean erasing from Earth this technology and finding another technology to replace the nuclear technology, which took more than a century to be developed to its current state. — Alkis Piskas

Hardly erasing! https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/nuclear-waste-is-piling-up-does-the-u-s-have-a-plan/
https://www.epa.gov/radtown/nuclear-weapons-production-waste
https://time.com/6212698/nuclear-missiles-icbm-triad-upgrade/
Even if shut down tomorrow, its legacy will be around for a hundred thousand years.

[ which "you"?] Whoever has the authority to do it. — Alkis Piskas

Easy said! In theory, the US could legislate gun control... but it's not going so well.

OK, let's make it simple and real. How has legislation been passing regarding Covid-19? — Alkis Piskas

Simple, yes, but not analogous. And how legislatures handled the simple, straightforward, known hazard of Covid was .... uneven at best. Some countries, better than others. Protests and blowback and death-threats against doctors. Lots of dead people; lots of people with lingering symptoms. Economic loss. Political upheaval. Health-care systems collapsing all over the place.
Development and application of computer technology is far more complicated and vested in more diverse interests. Even if some nations had the political coherence, will and competence to regulate the industry within their borders, that regulation would have no effect on multinational corporations, military and rogue entities.

But you don't discontinue a technology that produces mostly benefits because it can also produce dangers! — Alkis Piskas

I have not seen it demonstrated that ever-increasing computing and automation capability is "mostly benefits". I see at least one drawback or potential harm in even the most beneficial applications, such as medicine. On the negative side, however, the obvious present harm is already devastating and the potential threat is existential. In any case, the point is moot, since nobody has the actual power to stop or shut down the ongoing development of these technologies.

You create instead a legislation about the use of that technology. — Alkis Piskas

Which "you" does this? How? Even assuming any existing government had the necessary accord, and power, what would that proposed bill actually say?

But if I were an expert in the field these projects are developed around, I would not simply drop out of the game but unstead start warning people, knowing well the dangers and having a credibility as an expert on the subject. — Alkis Piskas

How much weight does that carry in terms of business practice and legislation? A lot of experts are warning people, but they certainly can't issue public statements against e.g. smart weapons while collecting a salary from an arms manufacturer. (And, of course, in the modern world - and not only the USA - blowing whistles can be hazardous to one's health.)

My argument though is that AI will enable smaller players to do much more than they ever could before. — Judaka

Of course, the way explosives did - and every advance in technology. Whatever weapon comes in a portable, inexpensive form changes the odds in warfare. That's already in process and I doubt we're in any position to alter the course of events. All these dire warnings are a century too late.

What is an object without its characteristics? — Matt Thomas

unknowable

You are making the point for me. — Janus

Happy to be of service.
What I didn't get was how it relates to the concepts of 'relative' and 'absolute'.

The world certainly presents itself as being largely independent of human control, so that was not the point. — Janus

It doesn't. The world doesn't perform for us. It simply exists.

The point was that what we know of the world is dependent on, meaning relative to, human experience and judgement. — Janus

Yes: knowledge is comparable to knowledge. Worlds are comparable to worlds.The worlds and the knowledge are not relative to each other.

There is a sense in which the world is relstive to human experience; we only know things as they are experienced and understood by us. — Janus

Our understanding doesn't affect the world; some aspects of the world affect our understanding. What we know is not comparable to the world; the world and knowledge are not in the same category - not related. Our current knowledge is relative to what we knew last year, or to what Centaurans know, or to what God knows.

Well clearly you can still use words to say a whole bunch of nothing. — Matt Thomas

Certainly. I can use words in many ways, because I know them.

To know what the number 1 means in example (1) requires additional knowledge of maths. — Matt Thomas

To use words of any kind requires a vocabulary. If you don't know any Latin "in vino veritas" doesn't mean anything more or less than X=x+2. If you don't know what words or numbers mean, you can't use either relative nor absolute terms in a meaningful way.

You could say something changes in relation to something else, but that relation is defined in absolute terms. — Matt Thomas

The definition is in words, and words are not absolute. Words have relatively fixed meanings: less firmly fixed in colloquial speech, more firmly fixed in scientific papers; less in the case of general, multi-purpose words like 'up' and 'run'; more in specific ones like 'cantilever' and 'teak'.
There may be absolutes in the process of change - e.g. water is heated at so many calories per second, wherein the quantities of both heat and time units are fixed in absolute numbers - but the observer may not know what that rate is; he may only know that the water is hotter is than it was (a relative condition) or hot enough for tea but not for cooking pasta (an approximation fixed to defined range).

To say the world is relative seems arbitrary. — Matt Thomas

Arbitrary, unnecessary and meaningless - which may be why nobody said that. A planet may have greater mass, less atmosphere, a cooler core, less gravity or whatever, compared to others of its category; only characteristics of an object are relative; not objects themselves.

I also have the issue that I don't see the sense in defining anything as absolute, since a word means nothing in isolation. — Matt Thomas

That's true. And that's why words don't occur in isolation; they come as part of a package: in a language, with grammar and syntax. In the language, words have definitions, expressed in other words, subject to misuse, abuse, combination, transformation, translation and gradual change of usage. Verbal language is an evolving tool of human communication. To call a single word relative or absolute is meaningless, but one can show that the word is more or less appropriate in a particular application than an alternate word that might be used in that context, or that one is more precise than another, more elegant. These judgments are [relatively] subjective.
The languages that consist of absolute fixed vocabularies are those of mathematics and music.

But just pairing AI + terrorism should be scary enough. — Judaka

How do you feel about state terrorism? Russia has this military technology. So do both Koreas, Israel, Turkey, the UK, China and the USA - I wonder who the next president will be and by what means.
It really couldn't be any more dangerous than it already is. Indeed, the only two ways it could become less dangerous would be 1. if humans suddenly acquired common sense or 2. AI took over control on its own initiative. If option 2, the outcome of a reasoned decisions could be: a. to dismantle all those weapons and recycle whatever components can be salvaged into beneficial applications or b. wipe out this troublesome H sapiens once and for all and give the raccoons a chance to build a civilization.

at the risk of causing offense: amen

Currently there is no true AI, there is simulated AI. However, even simulated AI can replace numerous workers in middle management and low level creative fields. This can/will have a devastating impact on employment and thus the economy as well as social stability. — LuckyR

Yes - we've been through all that upheaval with each revolutionary technology. It will keep repeating so long as the economy runs on profit. Once enough people can't earn money to tax and spend, the owners of the machines won't be able to make a profit and governments won't have any revenue. At that point, the entire monetary system collapses, the social structure implodes, there's bloodshed in the streets and eventually the survivors have to invent some other kind of economy. ... possibly controlled by a logical, calculating, forward-planning computer that has nothing to gain by exploiting people.

Prostitution seems less alienating for both parties to me. — Count Timothy von Icarus

That's a very interesting observation. Having considered it for about five minutes, I'm very much inclined to agree. The client can actually have a conversation with a person hired to provide some form of sexual service. Those services vary greatly as to nature, purpose and quality. They certainly can't all be lumped into the same category of interaction. The client can even have some kind of relationship with an inflatable, virtual or robotic surrogate.
Some of these issues were explored in the television series Boston Legal
But watching dirty movies is entirely passive; that really is a commodity to buy, own, use up and throw away. And it doesn't engage the user on any but the most primal level .

This reminds of sci-fi. I have the title ready: "The revolt of the machines". A modern Marxist movement run by machines: "Computers of the world, unite!" — Alkis Piskas

Been done a few times

The notion of machines with human-like intelligence dates back at least to Samuel Butler's 1872 novel Erewhon. Since then, many science fiction stories have presented different effects of creating such intelligence, often involving rebellions by robots.

https://best-sci-fi-books.com/24-best-artificial-intelligence-science-fiction-books/

How can it be dangerous? :smile: — Alkis Piskas

Computer-controlled munitions. Smart weapons include precision-guided bombs that have great accuracy, smart bullets that can change their trajectory and smart land mines that deactivate at a certain time. Advanced technology offers the military more clever ways of killing the enemy, while some of the methods are designed to eliminate or lessen collateral damage. The term may also refer to smart guns that work only for their owner. See smart gun and UAV.

One of the issues raised by people who worry about the threat is: "What if the computers become independent and stop following orders from humans?" You'd think if those who own the damn things really believed that could happen, they would disarm them now, before they go rogue. Just like they turned off all the gasoline engines when they learned about climate change....

Do you see a contradiction between what I said and what you said? — wonderer1

None at all. Just elaborating on the topic.

Of course, I haven't kept track of their doings. TBH, I haven't really paid much attention to the workings of our own public networks. There does tend to be an inflation of monetary reward in all aspects of show business, including sport-for-mass-audience, and it's unfortunate that public networks get caught up in it -- I suppose in part due to competition for talent with private enterprise.
Nevertheless, it's one our last hope for an informed voting public.

I think there is a lot that is interesting about human acts that is independent of whatever moral judgementalness might pass through people's minds. — wonderer1

We may not always assess our own acts according to moral precepts at the time*, but however those acts affect other people, they will certainly judge us.
*We always do, after the fact. Sometimes for years or decades or until we make some kind of atonement for the wrong ones or receive some kind of recognition for the right ones.

Does ethics apply to thoughts? — NOS4A2

If you've ever reprimanded yourself for an unfair judgment or secretly 'taken back' a wish that someone would die, or immediately upon the impulse to strike someone for a trivial offense checked yourself and thought, 'That's not me!', then you already know perfectly well that it does. And knowing this is the reason for the self-censorship that forestalls a thousand unnecessary violent confrontations and social disgraces in each of our lives. We know what we ought to do and we know how we ought to think. The uncivilized savage within has impulses; the ethical superego controls them.

Is a man evil if he has evil thoughts, and good if he has good ones?

Not by itself. But thoughts invariably precede actions. The good man may have some bad thoughts - it's almost impossible not to - but his next impulse is to suppress those bad thoughts. The evil man indulges his evil thoughts and acts them out - and usually goes to great lengths to justify them, first to himself as "they owe me" or "it's my right" or "I'm defending freedom", and then to the world as elaborate moral or political or legal gobbledegook.

It seems to me that you confirm that there are valid models that could be used to counter, if not defeat the more pernicious affects of privately owned and privately controlled media. — universeness

They have existed for some time. Democratic-minded nations have been mindful, at least since WWII, that access to unbiased and factual information is a prerequisite of citizen responsibility. All the European countries have them, in some form of arm's length relationship with the government, even Japan, since 1953.
They must go some way toward countering the influence of commercial media, of there wouldn't be such a massive push from the right to defund them (even though they account for a small fraction of the national budget,) shut them down (on the pretext that they represent an 'elitist' left wing pov) or better yet, sell them (cheap, like they did the utilities and credit unions) to private enterprise.

If they have to keep competing with commercial networks for popularity and forced into heavy reliance on donations, people will be too bored by their content to bother. That's a serious danger to democracy.
On the bright side, commercial broadcasting has become so aggressively commercial, the advertising is so ubiquitous, intrusive and irritating that a great many have already forsaken those outlets and more will. What happens next depends on what choices are available to that audience.
... and of course, how interested they are in preserving democracy.

PS - I just signed on to a free BBC account. It comes up from time to time when I'm doing research - so when they offered, I though, what the hay? Haven't explored it yet. I'm sort of expecting that access to be limited, which is all right, or there may be an option to pay for more, which I's also willing to consider, since the Ontario government has just given me an extra $14 a month (property tax and energy price relief for seniors) and I've earmarked part of that for TVO.

Just an idea that probably has many flaws I haven't realised yet, but whadyafink? — universeness

For internet access, that sounds reasonable. Is it controllable? I'm pretty sure the Russians or Murdochs or somebody could hack it - though I can't quite see why they would want to. Like cable tv, it could also have sections for each region or locality for various agencies to post community events, volunteering opportunities, municipal service schedules, health and weather warnings and for people to let their neighbours know there is a charity bazaar, or a plot at the allotment has become available - maybe even host a local discussion forum. And some activities for youth, school-aged children and little tykes. The educational and social consciousness raising opportunities are wide open.

For broadcasting, I like the PBS / TVO model : with an independent board of governors and department heads; staffed by well qualified technical people and on-camera talent; funded by an unconditional grant. They should, however, be fully funded, not subject to new budgetary constraints every time a conservative government comes along that wants to privatize the universe and they should not need to solicit viewer contributions to make up an ever-growing shortfall.

It's not that I mind chipping in the little I can in order to give someone who is worse off equal access. What I mind is the inordinate effort and time that goes into raising revenue that could so much more productively be devoted to content.

I realize that broadcasting is expensive. The acquisition of commercially made entertainment content is expensive. Investigative journalism is expensive. Infrastructure, equipment and energy are expensive. When a publicly owned entity has to operate in a capitalist economy it's swimming with sharks all the time. Guess who usually wins.

Saskatchewan used to have a good public television network, too, and that got eaten some years ago. We still have them in Quebec, Ontario, BC and APTN, a national network dedicated to the interests of our indigenous peoples, which is pretty important in itself, even more so, as it's available to us settlers, so that we may understand their concerns and learn what initiatives are being taken; the current events of First Nations communities. The English and Francophone networks also carry a fair amount of Native cultural content.

What do you think of the YouTube channels that are supported via public subscription/donation? — universeness

Fine, but it's not about public service, or information or education or impartial news reporting, and information about the facts, legalities and mechanism and diverse PoV regarding current events. Those - the political issues, the historical documentaries, the science and cultural programs - not influenced by the need to appeal to sponsors or sell advertising - that's what's important about public networks

PBS has been suffering from malnutrition for decades. So much so that they've had to take on sponsors - essentially, advertise those commercial enterprises - which makes it harder to remain independent.
On the whole, I have found their current affairs and history programs excellent and their news reporting reliable. Unfortunately, the entertainment programs are more popular as well as more expensive, so they have to solicit donations far too frequently.

I can't stream PBS here, but I subscribe to the Canadian public networks - three of them for the price of my You Tube or Prime subscription. (Truth be told, as entertainment goes, Prime is rip-off. We stay mainly for the free delivery of amazon purchases on which we relied heavily through the Covid sequestering. I get more out of You Tube.)