Author: 胡翌霖

A Conversation with Teacher Wu at the Yejiaxuan Reading Salon

AI & the Future of Technology2020.10.11
A Conversation with Teacher Wu at the Yejiaxuan Reading Salon
Thanks to Teacher Wang Wei and Teacher Wu, I put together this conversation with Teacher Wu, and it felt a bit like Teacher Wu was checking my homework. I thought the conversation went rather well. Some of the issues it touched on, especially concerning historiographical concepts, I may have a chance to write about in more detail later. The following is the transcript, compiled by the salon’s official staff 整理的文字稿, and I made some revisions to it, though I cannot guarantee its accuracy. If you would like to reprint it, please contact 文素THU. Host Wang Wei: Good evening, distinguished guests, teachers, and students! I am Wang Wei, Executive Deputy Director…
philosophy technology history of science philosophy of science
阅读全文

2020年10月11日
“A History of the Technology and Philosophical Study of Blockchain” Receives National Social Science Fund Grant

History of Science & Scholarship2020.10.05
“A History of the Technology and Philosophical Study of Blockchain” Receives National Social Science Fund Grant
Many crypto folks have often hoped I would write a bit more on related topics, and now that’s good: for the next couple of years I really am going to come back to writing about blockchain. The social science fund project I applied for was fortunate enough to be approved: “Research on the History of Technology and Philosophy of Technology of Blockchain.” This is a combination of my academic interests and the blockchain field. At first I had wanted to paste the main body of the application directly, but a colleague reminded me that when the social science fund project is finalized, they need to check for plagiarism, so one…
Web3 Bitcoin history of technology decentralization
阅读全文

2020年10月5日
In what sense is “basic science” the cause of “bottlenecking”?

AI & the Future of Technology2020.10.03
In what sense is “basic science” the cause of “bottlenecking”?
In that earlier interview transcript, what I posted as the “original draft” was in fact not the original draft either; the part about “basic theoretical research” was added only at the reporter’s prompting. As for the proposition that “the reason for the bottleneck is weak basic research,” I myself actually have reservations about it. Of course, I am willing to partly support this view, first because the official wording that “encourages free exploration and full exchange and debate” is indeed rare and valuable. Second, in a certain sense, this formulation is correct. But we have seen many completely wrong tendencies. For example, some people think that in order to break…
China technology history of science commentary
阅读全文

2020年10月3日
Is Digital Currency Beautiful? — A Review of *The New Currency War*

Web3 & Bitcoin2020.09.25
Is Digital Currency Beautiful? — A Review of *The New Currency War*
Published in China Science Daily (2020-09-24, page 7, book review). This book is actually not all that great; at first glance I thought it would be about Bitcoin, but it turns out the real topic is digital payments. Bitcoin is only mentioned in passing, and even then in a conspiratorial way. To be frank, if you can talk conspiracy theories about such a completely transparent open-source project, that only shows there is definitely something off with your intelligence. I would still write the review, on the one hand because it was commissioned, and on the other because, even with conspiracy theories mixed in, the problems this book wants to address…
book reading technology Bitcoin book review
阅读全文

2020年9月25日
An Interview with China Discipline Inspection and Supervision News on Questions of Science and Technology

Culture & Public Commentary2020.09.24
An Interview with China Discipline Inspection and Supervision News on Questions of Science and Technology
The published version can be found here: http://www.jjjcb.cn/content/2020-09/24/content_95300.htm There are quite a lot of changes in the published version of my wording, but these changes were also reviewed and approved by me, so I suppose this counts as a necessary compromise. Of course I have my own more independent thoughts, but when dealing with official media, I am also willing to seek common ground while reserving differences, and take the opportunity to pass along a couple of things I want to say. It is quite obvious that the interviewer wanted to locate the cause of the “chokepoint” problem in the weakness of “basic science.” I agree with this point, but…
China technology commentary Scientific Revolution
阅读全文

2020年9月24日
Course Outline: Philosophy of Science and Reading the Original Texts

Teaching & Courses2020.08.25
Course Outline: Philosophy of Science and Reading the Original Texts
“Selected Readings in Classics of the Philosophy of Science” was the first course I was in charge of after coming to Tsinghua, aimed at incoming graduate students in the Department of History of Science. At the time, the Department of History of Science still had only a few teachers, and someone had to teach philosophy of science, so naturally I was assigned to this course. My own research leans toward the history of technology and the philosophy of technology. I am broadly familiar with orthodox philosophy of science, but it is not my specialty. But in my view, orthodox philosophy of science is definitely something one has to study; there…
philosophy of science course Aristotle Kant
阅读全文

2020年8月25日
Rules for Authorship on Coauthored Papers

History of Science & Scholarship2020.08.11
Rules for Authorship on Coauthored Papers
Professor Wu’s published papers and books are almost always single-authored; he has never coauthored papers with students. Naturally, I followed suit, and under normal circumstances I also tend toward working independently, while encouraging students to pursue research on their own and not giving much thought to questions of joint authorship. Still, of course, I am not rigid to the point of stubbornness. For various reasons, I have recently begun trying to coauthor papers with students. But this is not something to be done casually or blindly: why coauthor at all, under what circumstances one may be listed as an author, who should be first author and who second author—these questions…
scholarship paper
阅读全文

2020年8月11日
Course Summary for General History of Technology (Spring 2020)

Teaching & Courses2020.08.06
Course Summary for General History of Technology (Spring 2020)
The History of Technology survey course has now run through its third round. The course summaries for the first year and second year were both quite detailed, so students who want an overview of the course can refer to those earlier installments. This year’s summary will be written a bit more briefly. This year, because of the pandemic, the spring semester was taught entirely online. Since it was my first time doing an online format, I didn’t add any new material; instead I just reheated yesterday’s leftovers, selecting relatively mature parts from the previous two years and teaching them again. With the teaching plan adjusted for next semester, I will…
history of science course Scientific Revolution Introduction to Philosophy of Technology
阅读全文

2020年8月6日
Why Must Philosophy Be Obscure? — Reflections on a Perfect-Score Zhejiang Essay

Culture & Public Commentary2020.08.04
Why Must Philosophy Be Obscure? — Reflections on a Perfect-Score Zhejiang Essay
A recent Zhejiang Gaokao essay that scored full marks has sparked heated discussion, but the target of the criticism is often “obscurity.” The author opened by quoting Heidegger, famous for being obscure, and thereby deepened the stereotype of philosophy = obscurity. In my view, the key to that full-mark essay is not “obscurity,” but “posing,” that is, feigning obscurity. Some philosophers are obscure because they often construct a grand edifice of thought, weaving together a self-consistent conceptual system; if an outsider is not familiar with the basic patterns, then even a few scattered phrases are hard to understand. It is like a mathematical formula: if you are not familiar with…
philosophy scholarship commentary Aristotle
阅读全文

2020年8月4日
Driverless Driving: Transforming the World Like Automobiles Did? — A Review of “The Age of Automation”

AI & Scholarship2020.07.23
Driverless Driving: Transforming the World Like Automobiles Did? — A Review of “The Age of Automation”
This article was published in Sai Xiansheng. The title was “Can driverless cars change the world, just as automobiles once did?” In fact, I did not read this book very closely; the article was mainly written on the basis of inspirations from a cursory reading, and around my own thoughts on the relevant issues. The automobile, invented and popularized from the late nineteenth century to the early twentieth, can be said to be one of the most important, or most emblematic, inventions of modern industrial society. The automobile industry brought together a series of the most cutting-edge industrial technologies of the time—steel, materials, petroleum, chemicals, and so on—thus driving the…
book reading technology book review Introduction to Philosophy of Technology
阅读全文

2020年7月23日