Year: 2018

Can a Screen Change the Fate of Education?

Culture & Public Commentary2018.12.14
Can a Screen Change the Fate of Education?
It has also been posted on Jiemian; for reposting, please contact Jiemian~ When it was published, the title was changed somewhat clickbaity, becoming “It Is Hard for a Screen Alone to Change the Fate of Education; Bullet Chat May Be Able To.” In fact, that sentence is not quite accurate. What I meant was that there may be many ways to change the fate of education, and this screen may not be the right direction. But since we’re dealing with mass media, I’m willing to accept a bit of clickbait in the title; the content itself was not changed much. When it was published, I deleted a middle section, “The…
commentary internet history of technology education
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2018年12月14日
How Can Ethics in the Technological Age Welcome the Future? [Fourth Commentary]

Culture & Public Commentary2018.12.09
How Can Ethics in the Technological Age Welcome the Future? [Fourth Commentary]
This one was also published on Jiemian (for reprints, please contact Jiemian), but it was not a commissioned piece. I wrote it casually and sent it to them. The feedback was that the quality was worse than the previous two, which may have had something to do with the rather rambling way I wrote this one, or perhaps with the fact that the issues this article faced were more tangled and its viewpoint correspondingly more moderate. Still, they did publish it, but with very extensive changes: the title was altered (Can Technological Progress Really Tailor Human Value Preferences?), and the He Jiankui theme was also removed (don’t ask why; just…
technology commentary tradition value
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2018年12月9日
Is Eugenics Justifiable? — A Delayed Judgment [Third Review]

Culture & Public Commentary2018.12.07
Is Eugenics Justifiable? — A Delayed Judgment [Third Review]
At the turn from the 19th to the 20th century, as Darwin’s theory of evolution gained popularity, “eugenics” arose one after another in several countries in Europe and America. Various countries adopted all kinds of compulsory or incentivizing birth-control policies, encouraging some people (the healthy, the highly intelligent) to have more children, while suppressing the reproduction of others (the sick or the “low-end population”). It was not until eugenics became linked with genocide in Nazi hands that it finally fell into disrepute. So after World War II, in addition to trying the Nazis for their crimes, the international community also abolished eugenic policies one after another. With the rise of…
philosophy technology commentary modernity
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2018年12月7日
The Abdication of Royal Power and the Reform of the International System of Units

History of Science & Scholarship2018.12.07
The Abdication of Royal Power and the Reform of the International System of Units
Published in the *Chang’e* supplement of *Science and Technology Daily*; it has now also been turned into a WeChat public account article, with only minor changes made at publication. In fact, the piece had been commissioned back then, but I caught a cold and it was delayed for a while; only now have I remembered to make it up. On November 13, the 26th General Conference on Weights and Measures, held in Versailles, France, passed a resolution revising the International System of Units and redefined four units, including the kilogram, in terms of physical constants. With that, all seven base units of the International System of Units will have been…
history of science science history decentralization
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2018年12月7日
The Disappearance of “Grace” — A Second Discussion of the He Jiankui Affair

Culture & Public Commentary2018.12.05
The Disappearance of “Grace” — A Second Discussion of the He Jiankui Affair
The commission came from Jiemian (for reprints, please contact Jiemian); when it was published, the title was changed to “Gene Technology and the Disappearance of Human Gratitude and Awe,” and the content was hardly altered. It is said that when my mother was pregnant with me, she heard some folk remedy from somewhere, saying that if she wanted my skin to be a bit fairer, she should eat watermelon every day. The result was that this remedy clearly had no effect; after eating dozens of watermelons, she still gave birth to me dark and sturdy… Wanting one’s child to be smart, beautiful, and healthy is every parent’s wish. In order…
technology commentary Heidegger modernity
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2018年12月5日
“Passing the Buck” Is the Greatest Danger Exposed by the He Jiankui Incident

Culture & Public Commentary2018.12.04
“Passing the Buck” Is the Greatest Danger Exposed by the He Jiankui Incident
The Chinese Science News commissioned this piece, which was published on December 4, 2018, on page 1, “Top News”. At the time of publication, the title was changed to “Who Should Bear Responsibility for the He Jiankui Incident,” and the content was also somewhat polished. I am posting the original draft here. Recently, the birth of two gene-edited babies has shocked the world and brought the issue of science-and-technology ethics into the public eye. In recent years, China’s scientific and technological development has been rapid, and in many fields it has already caught up with the international standard, even reaching world-class levels. But as the He Jiankui incident has exposed,…
technology China commentary genes
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2018年12月4日
Can VR Save Us from Our Smartphone Addiction?

AI & the Future of Technology2018.11.12
Can VR Save Us from Our Smartphone Addiction?
This article was commissioned by Jiemian (for reprints, please contact Jiemian) and was adapted from an earlier article. Jiemian is a very good new media outlet that I have long followed, so being able to contribute was an honor; it feels much better than publishing in traditional newspapers or magazines. The original title at submission was “Could Being Addicted to VR Be a Kind of Salvation?” When it was published, it was changed to “Can VR Save Us from Our Smartphone Addiction?,” which is a bit more precise, so I will use that title here as well. The content was slightly altered in publication, so I am posting the original…
technology media McLuhan VR
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2018年11月12日
Viète and the Transformation of Mathematics from Antiquity to Modernity

History of Science & Scholarship2018.11.09
Viète and the Transformation of Mathematics from Antiquity to Modernity
Published in the Chang’e supplement of Science and Technology Daily on November 9; I cobbled this piece together from a general invitation for submissions. Science and Technology Daily has launched a new column, “Stories from the History of Science,” which is rather good. If any students want to submit something, I can make the connection. Of course, the mentality of the traditional media is still rather old-fashioned—for example, they always hope to draw out some kind of scientific spirit… Viète (François Viète, 1540–1603) was a famous mathematician of the Renaissance. Contemporary middle school students are probably not unfamiliar with his name, because the “formula for finding the roots” of the…
history of science science history mathematics
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2018年11月9日
AR Glasses and the “Brain in a Vat”

AI & the Future of Technology2018.10.26
AR Glasses and the “Brain in a Vat”
My doctoral student Yao Yu recently gave a presentation in the reading seminar, discussing a phenomenological reconstruction of Putnam’s “brain in a vat” thought experiment. He chose the topic himself, and I thought it could be done, but I was very dissatisfied with what he actually produced. I won’t repeat my criticisms here; I’ll just briefly note here my own understanding of the “brain in a vat.” First of all, the reason Putnam proposed the thought experiment of the “brain in a vat” was absolutely not to reintroduce some new version of “external-world skepticism.” In the skeptical sense, there is nothing novel about a brain in a vat. I think…
technology phenomenology VR analytic philosophy
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2018年10月26日
Review of The Meaning of Science

History of Science & Scholarship2018.10.19
Review of The Meaning of Science
This is a commissioned review. My original title was “The Meaning of Philosophy of Science”; when it was published in the China Science Daily, it was changed to “Thinking at the Edge of Science.” I actually didn’t like either title all that much, so I won’t put a title here. In any case, this is just a review of the book. Commissioned reviews always tend to lean a little toward saying nice things; in fact, this book is just so-so, and I’m not particularly recommending it. Still, what I say in the text below about an introduction to philosophy of science positioned as “non-academic” is worth writing about. Shanghai…
book reading philosophy of science book review Scientific Revolution
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2018年10月19日