Year: 2017

Must Anti-Discrimination Be Scientific? — On the “Google Ideological Echo Chamber” Incident

Culture & Public Commentary2017.08.14
Must Anti-Discrimination Be Scientific? — On the “Google Ideological Echo Chamber” Incident
Recently, a memo circulating internally at Google was exposed. The author argued that the company’s gender imbalance was not a problem at all, because women are naturally unsuited to being programmers; and if one really wanted to promote diversity, one should promote “ideological diversity” rather than gender or ethnic diversity, because conservative ideology is currently suffering from discrimination. After the memo was exposed, public opinion exploded, everyone turned on the employee, and Google decisively fired him. At first I didn’t think much of it. Of course I do not agree with this male employee’s remarks, and Google had nothing to say for firing him. But then I read some rebuttal…
freedom philosophy of science commentary sociology
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2017年8月14日
How Technology Has Shaped Our Daily Life: Getting Out of Bed

Teaching & Courses2017.08.10
How Technology Has Shaped Our Daily Life: Getting Out of Bed
The previous post on the first week’s class only wrote half of it. In fact, the first half of that class was the introduction, and the second half discussed the first case study, so I’ll continue that here. As for the second week’s class, the original plan was for four classmates to speak for half a class each, and for me to speak for half a class; but the classmates’ sense of participation was too strong, and the time wasn’t strictly controlled either (since it was the first time, I deliberately didn’t try to force control), so the three classmates’ reports, together with discussion, took up a full two hours….
everyday life technology China history
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2017年8月10日
How Technology Has Shaped Our Daily Lives: An Introduction

Teaching & Courses2017.08.02
How Technology Has Shaped Our Daily Lives: An Introduction
Last Saturday in Room 706 I gave the first lecture in the course series How Technology Shapes Our Everyday Life. The first lecture consisted of two parts: first, an introduction to the overall philosophical framework; second, the first case study. In the future, each class is planned to include one more case study, while the first half of the class will be mainly presentations and discussion led by students. The introduction consists of two parts, “working out the problem” and “method.” First, I casually took apart each word in the course title and discussed it at some length, bringing in some views and styles from philosophy of technology; second, I…
philosophy everyday life technology course
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2017年8月2日
Supplementary Notes on PhD Admissions Requirements [No Longer Valid]

Teaching & Courses2017.07.28
Supplementary Notes on PhD Admissions Requirements [No Longer Valid]
Tsinghua University suddenly changed its policy again and took back the admission rights of all its tenure-track professors, so the recruitment notice is temporarily invalid. Let’s wait until I’ve struggled my way to tenure and then talk about it…… The recruitment notice was published, and already several students have contacted me to express their intention to apply. Why not say exactly how many? Because I’m not entirely sure myself. Most students simply expressed their intention in a brief way, without further contact, and some are not from this year’s cohort. I have now successfully been added to Tsinghua’s admissions roster, and after the summer vacation, in September, I will be…
philosophy scholarship course admissions
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2017年7月28日
Bitcoin: A Layperson’s Introduction

Web3 & Bitcoin2017.07.27
Bitcoin: A Layperson’s Introduction
After hyping Bitcoin for so many years, I’ve written quite a few articles, but on careful reflection, I still haven’t written a popular explanation of Bitcoin’s basic principles. Although you can find a ton of them with a casual search online, I haven’t found one that really suits my taste. During a spell of battling Shanghai’s heat, I had a sudden urge to write one myself and see how it goes. (This article is obviously not very timely; what’s hot lately is the Bitcoin fork crisis. I posted two Weibo updates about this issue recently, and they’re appended at the end.) I hope to explain Bitcoin’s basic principles in as…
technology Web3 Bitcoin value
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2017年7月27日
Blog Update Basically Complete

Site Matters2017.07.13
Blog Update Basically Complete
Finally, I’ve managed to tinker everything into place. The main changes were a new blog theme and a complete overhaul of the category structure—quite a fresh new look, wouldn’t you say? As for the category structure, I have completely abandoned the old “Thought-History-Epic” system, and greatly reduced the number of categories as well. The new system is mainly organized by genre, and only under “Essay” have I further divided things into several major thematic categories. When designing the category structure, I no longer thought in terms of abstract logical coherence, but instead considered when readers would actually need to click into a category. Generally speaking, readers who follow my blog…
blog website
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2017年7月13日
Course Plan: How Technology Shapes Our Daily Lives

Teaching & Courses2017.07.05
Course Plan: How Technology Shapes Our Daily Lives
Again invited by 706 Youth Space, I am preparing to open a course during the summer vacation, starting in late July, once a week, for about 5 to 6 classes. They are experimenting with the “project-based learning” format. I don’t know it in depth; broadly speaking, it is nothing more than a course form centered on students, guided by questions, and distinguished by interactive discussion. I am also willing to explore a livelier teaching format. Know Thyself The course I plan to teach falls within the fields of the history of science and philosophy of technology. On the one hand, this field is extremely profound; on the other hand, its…
philosophy everyday life technology history
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2017年7月5日
The Blog Is Being Redesigned

Site Matters2017.07.03
The Blog Is Being Redesigned
First, I’m starting with the blog theme and have resolved to change the old theme. Enable the CommentPress annotation theme (in the end I didn’t use this plugin; I used Inline Comments). While I’m tuning the new theme, the blog may often act up…… Next, I’ll redesign the category structure.
blog website
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2017年7月3日
The Blame for “Health” Scams Shouldn’t Be Put on the Audience

Culture & Public Commentary2017.06.25
The Blame for “Health” Scams Shouldn’t Be Put on the Audience
Yet another commissioned piece from *China Science Daily*. Last time, I finished the commissioned piece in half a day; perhaps that efficiency left a good impression on the paper. This time they came looking for me again to write something, and lately I’ve been so busy I’m almost falling ill. I had originally meant to refuse, but after taking a look at the topic and thinking I’d probably be able to dash off something fairly quickly, I tried writing it. In the end I finished it in two hours, meals included. It was, after all, just an essay, so the standards didn’t need to be too high, and that was…
China science commentary the masses
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2017年6月25日
Science Popularization Should Stand on the Opposite Side of “Innovation”

History of Science & Scholarship2017.05.22
Science Popularization Should Stand on the Opposite Side of “Innovation”
This piece appeared today in the *China Science Daily*; it is an impromptu essay I dashed off in half a day after being commissioned to write it. The original title was “How to Understand the Relationship Between Science Popularization and Technological Innovation”; when it was published, the title was changed and two paragraphs were cut. The cuts were actually pretty good, so I’ll just post the reprint here directly: http://news.sciencenet.cn/sbhtmlnews/2017/5/323655.shtm Since 2001, the third week of May every year has been designated the National Science and Technology Activity Week; this year is already the 17th edition. Science and Technology Week is positioned as a “mass science and technology activity,” aimed…
science history of science history tradition
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2017年5月22日