Letters, Nov. 5

Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 05/11/2024 (337 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Rest in peace

Re: Former judge and senator Murray Sinclair dies at 73 (Nov. 4)

I was very sorry to hear of Justice Murray Sinclair’s passing this morning. He did so much to reconcile the Indigenous and other communities in Canada that I always considered him to be our Nelson Mandela. We were fortunate to have him. He will be missed.

Frank A. Johnson

Winnipeg

Canada needs more people like Murray Sinclair: intelligent, wise and thoughtful. My condolences to his family and community, and our country.

Judy Herscovitch

Winnipeg

The cost of Portage and Main

Re: Cost of reopening Portage and Main expected to jump by $8 million (Nov. 1)

There could be an ulterior motive for Mayor Scott Gillingham’s “aggressive timeline” and “short-term pain” in rushing the opening of Portage and Main to pedestrians. Increased cost is perhaps part of his premature announcement to close the underground, yet to be studied, supposedly.

Spending more now at the surface will inflate the cost to keep the underground open if above-ground work must be redone. Diverting taxpayer money from other unmet needs thereby strengthens the mayor’s already-made decision to close the underground.

Eliminating the protected passage fragments the four corners of Portage and Main for much of the year, leaving Exchange residents like me disconnected from downtown and undermining nearby businesses that depend on foot traffic. The Métis National Heritage Centre, for example, will lose sheltered, walkable access to three corners, the skywalk system and much of downtown.

The greater the cost, unfortunately, the less likely such concerns will matter and the more likely Mayor Gillingham’s ill-considered decision will simply be rubber-stamped.

Jim Clark

Winnipeg

The proposed opening has already ballooned from $13 million to $21 million from the sole bidder. May I suggest a different plan: let’s postpone the Transit plan a year and allow for a re-tender that may attract lower bids and allow the work to be done during gentler weather.

Jerome Phomin

Winnipeg

So, we’re informed that the opening of Portage and Main is over budget by $8 million. The overall cost would be north of $20 million. To add insult to injury, a consultant opined that, “It would be difficult to pin down the project’s price.” This is an insult to every taxpayer in Winnipeg!

Can you imagine managing your own finances in this way? You’d be broke before you know it.

In my opinion, with any project, we need to step back and reassess. Maybe this project needs to be scaled back or scrapped completely. Perhaps the concourse should not be a priority. It could be eliminated, along with the need to have pedestrians causing traffic delays. Lest we forget that 65 per cent of taxpayers are opposed to this project going forward. We have some huge monetary decisions that need to be considered such as the Arlington Bridge, roads, homelessness, public safety and public transit.

Kudos to Coun. Jeff Browaty and others for sounding the warning alarm.

Let’s hope that public works will vote to cancel this project, or at the very least delay it until the all options have been reviewed.

Ken Campbell

Winnipeg

Past payouts to seniors misguided

Re: Failure to focus on affordability risks real damage (Editorial, Nov. 1)

Thank you to the Free Press for this excellent editorial about Ontario Premier Doug Ford. Ford is giving 15 million Ontarian adults and children a $200 cheque. Total cost will be $3.6 billion. Buying votes is expensive.

This reminds me of the letters my life partner Chris Vogel and I received from former Manitoba premier Brian Pallister in 2020. They were signed simply “Brian,” and he gave us each $200 dollars because we are seniors. Seniors of our generation are comparatively wealthy, and lots of us did not need the money.

In both cases, this was a lot of public money that could have been put to much better use.

Richard North

Winnipeg

AI not so intelligent

The whole artificial intelligence (AI) discussion humours me. Everyone imagines that AI has just arrived and that it is something new and different from anything we have seen before. It is not.

Computers have been around for decades and they still operate based on an electrical binary system. Neurons are not strictly electrical binary switches — yes they can turn on and off (zero and one) like binary switches, but they also react to chemical transmissions, which means they act like both digital (binary) and analog (varying frequency) transmitters. This gives the brain infinite superiority over computers, even when computers have many times the number of switches than a brain has.

As for programs, the brain has a program that changes instantly in real time based on unlimited input. Computer programs change only when instructed to do so.

Yes, you can build a computer program that changes according to a constant stream of varying input that also alters the program in real time, but it is still doing it with only a binary set of switches. AI is simply such a program, one that can access unlimited amounts of data and change its program over and over for extended periods of time, but in the end it is way behind what a brain can do given the same amount of time and data.

These programs we call AI are just the same programs we wrote in university 40 years ago, the only difference now is that we can make them run many times faster and with much more varied data, so that to the layperson it looks like it is something new and different.

AI will become something different, and something to really fuss about, when manufacturers such as HP learn to build organic computers that use neuron-like switches capable of both binary and chemical transmissions. One day it will happen, and your computer will not be a metal box with a pile of chips in it, it will be a vat of liquid material, and the programs it runs will not be a series of binary switches, they will be chemical strings much like DNA that currently can represent six billion bits.

Until then, AI will continue to be just another program. Yes, they are programs that are constantly becoming more complex and are finding more sophisticated solutions to our computational questions, but still very crude compared to the programs that currently reside in each of our brains.

AI may be able to replicate a Picasso painting but it will never be able to construct one of its own origin and imagination. It still requires a brain to do that.

Steve Oetting

Winnipeg

Off on a tangent

Re: Everything fall-ing into place (Nov. 2)

I read with amusement a comment written by Russell Wangersky in Saturday’s paper in which he says a reader wrote to him to say that he writes columns in unconnected paragraphs that aren’t anything like cohesive pieces.

My thoughts returned to my readings during my studies in the master of education program at the U of M. I read there are linear and there are tangential thinkers. To simplify, linear thinkers carry one thought in their head while tangential thinkers carry many strains of thought at the same time. While at one time tangential thinking was thought to be a disorder, today it is recognized as a way that unlocks creativity and innovation.

Much has been written about the influence of tangential thinking and the benefits derived, only one being brainstorming. Great reading there. As one tangential thinker to another, Russell Wangersky, I love and look forward to reading your column in the Saturday paper. The only thing better is a one-on-one conversation with another tangential thinker.

Dale Ward

Winnipeg