Is Eng­lish the most impor­tant lan­guage in the world? Is all lan­guage trans­lat­able? Which parts of which lan­guages are incom­pat­i­ble with oth­er lan­guages and how do dif­fer­ent groups of indi­vid­u­als deal with that? Will glob­al­iza­tion accel­er­ate the loss of cer­tain native lan­guages? What are the con­se­quences of focus­ing on learn­ing the dom­i­nant lan­guages and not focus­ing on pre­serv­ing native lan­guages?

Is there any alter­na­tive gov­ern­ment struc­ture bet­ter than democ­ra­cy? What’s beyond democ­ra­cy? Is it impor­tant to have everyone’s voice being heard or is it the major­i­ty opin­ion that counts? Does the whole vot­ing sys­tem rep­re­sent a nation? What if vot­ing is not com­pul­so­ry in Aus­tralia?

Do the arts mat­ter? What does Arts Edu­ca­tion means to Aus­tralians and how do the Arts for­mu­late the char­ac­ter of a Nation? Can the arts inspire change, pro­voke thoughts in human life or are they a com­plete waste of time? Is it just extra mon­ey spent sat­is­fy­ing our need for enter­tain­ment? Is Arts edu­ca­tion as impor­tant as Sports edu­ca­tion in shap­ing a nation’s wealth and health? Or is Sport more mean­ing­ful than Arts?

It is impos­si­ble to change the mind of peo­ple after they reach a cer­tain age.

Eth­i­cal behav­iour is more dif­fi­cult for the rich.

It is OK to use ani­mals in research if it ben­e­fits humans.

A read­ing list for this top­ic is at http://thormay.net/unwiseideas/DiscussionTopics/Animals-in-research.htm

Only a tiny per­cent­age of any pop­u­la­tion will ever be knowl­edge­able about pub­lic affairs. This is a good thing.

Many multi­na­tion­al busi­ness­es have tran­scend­ed effec­tive con­trol by nation­al gov­ern­ments.

It is impos­si­ble for Aus­tralian busi­ness­es to enter into joint ven­tures in many inter­na­tion­al juris­dic­tions with­out com­pro­mis­ing ethics.

Seg­ments of the med­ical pro­fes­sion are com­pro­mis­ing pub­lic health by ped­dling drugs. Is this true? In pub­lic sur­veys of trust, doc­tors are always rat­ed the most trust­wor­thy mem­bers of soci­ety. How­ev­er, an exam­i­na­tion of the his­to­ry of med­ical ethics yields results that are far from reas­sur­ing. What is going on here? In a way, patients are hostage to doc­tors. Do patient fears and help­less­ness cre­ate a kind of Stock­holm Syn­drome which leaves space for pro­fes­sion­al abuse?

Visu­al arts skills, music or per­for­mance skills are crit­i­cal for the voca­tion­al suc­cess of very large num­bers of stu­dents, so should not be regard­ed as option­al extras in edu­ca­tion fund­ing.

The most eco­nom­i­cal­ly suc­cess­ful soci­eties have always depend­ed upon a high lev­el of gov­ern­ment col­lu­sion with com­merce and indus­try, if not con­trol. This argu­ment is a way of say­ing that the “invis­i­ble hand” of the mar­ket is not enough to main­tain an effi­cient mar­ket, at least beyond vil­lage lev­el. There has to be an inde­pen­dent umpire, or forced con­trol (dic­ta­tor, mafia … )

“Demo­c­ra­t­ic soci­eties are less like­ly to make war than dic­ta­tor­ships”. What is the evi­dence?

Our com­plex soci­eties are approach­ing the lim­its of edu­ca­bil­i­ty for large num­bers of cit­i­zens (e.g. “func­tion­al” lit­er­a­cy hov­ers at around 50% in most “advanced” soci­eties). Even those select­ed in schools for high intel­li­gence (e.g. many doc­tors) seem unable to absorb, retain and use crit­i­cal­ly all of the knowl­edge nec­es­sary to prac­tice their pro­fes­sions com­pe­tent­ly. With less able stu­dents, good teach­ers often real­ize that there comes a point of dimin­ish­ing returns for teach­ing effort, so dif­fi­cult choic­es have to be made.

Pub­lic trans­port should be free

The larg­er a coun­try is, the less effec­tive its democ­ra­cy becomes.