Author: 胡翌霖

Suixuan Is Moving

Site Matters2019.07.03
Suixuan Is Moving
I’m in the process of moving the site from Alibaba Cloud to Amazon AWS. There’s no need to go into the reasons; AWS is very easy to use, so let’s try it first. At present, I’ve already copied the old site yilinhut.com to the new site yilinhut.net . Comments on the old site are suspended; the new site is working normally. I will eventually point yilinhut.com to the new site as well, but for now there still needs to be a period of handover. For example, I still need to look into how to set up the email server, how to handle domain name resolution, and so on. So for…
website
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2019年7月3日
The “Two Cultures” Debate Is Long Outdated

Culture & Public Commentary2019.07.02
The “Two Cultures” Debate Is Long Outdated
Published in China Science Daily (2019-06-28, p. 5, Culture) In 1959, the British writer C. P. Snow proposed the thesis of the “two cultures” in a lecture, sparking intense debate. Even sixty years later, the topic is still with us, and seems not to have gone out of date. But I want to put forward a seemingly out-of-place claim: the two-cultures debate is already passé, and there is not much point in still fretting over the issue Snow raised. First, let us return to the context of the time and see just what split between what two cultures Snow was actually talking about. Nowadays, when many people talk about…
culture science sociology intellectuals
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2019年7月2日
Should We ‘Bid’ to Snatch Up Talent?

Culture & Public Commentary2019.06.17
Should We ‘Bid’ to Snatch Up Talent?
Published in Chinese Science News (2019-06-17, p. 1, Top News); some edits were made at the time of publication. The original draft is posted here. This article is a kind of forcibly optimistic reading. In fact, I am quite worried: even if it really is a demand made of the government, in the end the government will probably not change much, and it will still be carried out as a matter of disciplining intellectuals. But, how should I put it? If everyone interprets things in a more positive direction, the world will become a little better too. Recently, the General Office of the CPC Central Committee and the General Office…
China freedom commentary intellectuals
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2019年6月17日
Humans and Technology in Evolution—Technology Also Needs “Protected Areas for Diversity”

AI & the Future of Technology2019.05.02
Humans and Technology in Evolution—Technology Also Needs “Protected Areas for Diversity”
Last week I went to give a lecture at 新华·知本读书会. Both Book City Magazine and Pengpai’s book-reading crowd published records of it, and both were arranged quite well. Here I’m reposting the transcript from The Paper (authorized). Pengpai’s arrangement reconstructed my line of thought better, and the clickbait title also captured the essence. My originally planned lecture title was “Humans and Technology in Evolution: Parasitism or Symbiosis,” and I actually wanted to focus mainly on the cyborg direction. But during preparation I found that cyborgs are really not so easy to talk about, so I toned down the subtitle. Thus the title revised by Pengpai—“Technology Also Needs a ‘Diversity Preserve,’…
technology history of technology Introduction to Philosophy of Technology environment
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2019年5月2日
Personality Philosophy vs. Propositional Philosophy: On the Inevitability of the Decline of Continental Philosophy and the Immortality of Its Significance

History of Science & Scholarship2019.04.20
Personality Philosophy vs. Propositional Philosophy: On the Inevitability of the Decline of Continental Philosophy and the Immortality of Its Significance
I had mentioned this in passing on Weibo before, and because it was rather short, I didn’t plan to put it on the blog. Yesterday, at the small reading group, this question came up again, and after thinking it over I decided to post it after all, since it is ultimately a question about the basic orientation of philosophy. Byzantines Should Regard Themselves as Romans As a student of Wu, my philosophical position is of course inclined toward continental phenomenology, but in fact I am not very willing to call myself a phenomenologist or a continental philosopher. It is much like how, after the division of the Eastern and Western…
philosophy scholarship philosophy of science media
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2019年4月20日
Salute to the Strivers! — Striving for the Capitalist or Striving for All Humanity? (Comments on 996)

Culture & Public Commentary2019.04.15
Salute to the Strivers! — Striving for the Capitalist or Striving for All Humanity? (Comments on 996)
Recently I’ve posted someremarks on Weibo about the 996 issue, and there’s already quite a bit of text; I’ve excerpted it here and will also fill it out further What I was first responding to was Jack Ma’s representative statement: Last night I had a conversation with my colleagues at Alibaba about the hot-button issue of 996 at work. Today many young people are facing this problem. I think that if you choose to win your own happiness and success through struggle and effort, you may want to seriously reflect on what I’m about to say; but if you want your future to be happier and more joyful than ordinary…
China freedom commentary sociology
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2019年4月15日
Who Can Sell Black Hole Photos? Visual China Can, but So Can You

Culture & Public Commentary2019.04.12
Who Can Sell Black Hole Photos? Visual China Can, but So Can You
This piece was also commissioned by Jiemian, but fittingly it was released under CC-BY (Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License) permission: as long as the author information (Hu Yilin / Jiemian Commentary) is clearly credited, it may be used free of charge. [caption id="attachment_7573" align="alignnone" width="900"] Credit:ESO/C. Malin[/caption] On April 10, 2019, the first “black hole” photograph ever taken by humankind was released in a high-profile manner, attracting the world’s attention. However, in China, beyond sparking people’s interest in black holes, this photo also detonated another topic. People noticed that the image had been included on a website called “Visual China,” and a copyright notice had been attached to…
science freedom commentary internet
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2019年4月12日
Upgrading One’s Worldview Is Not So Easy—A Review of Worldview

History of Science & Scholarship2019.03.05
Upgrading One’s Worldview Is Not So Easy—A Review of Worldview
This is a commissioned book review, published in China Science Daily (2019-03-01, Section 7, Book Review) The original title was: Before “Cognitive Upgrading,” It Is Even More Important to Understand the Foundations of Cognition When it was published, the title was changed (for the better), section headings were added, and some omissions were made. For example, the rather severe criticism I originally made of the translation was toned down quite a bit; I was informed in advance by the editor that I agreed to that. In addition, the embedded “advertisement” (for the Department of History of Science at Tsinghua) was removed, and the short final passage on Greek pseudo-history was…
book reading history of science philosophy of science Aristotle
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2019年3月5日
Writing Robot: The Conflict Between Education and Technology

AI & the Future of Technology2019.02.19
Writing Robot: The Conflict Between Education and Technology
Still a submission for Jiemian, with the published title changed to “The Writing Robot Has Arrived: Smash It to Pieces, or Throw Up Your Hands and Surrender?” Recently, the “writing robot” has burst onto the scene and sparked heated debate. Because it can imitate a child’s handwriting to finish copying textbook passages, copying new characters, and even hand-copying a class newspaper, some parents angrily smashed the machine to bits, while others welcomed it with open arms and wanted to buy one to help their children cope with “boring homework.” The “writing robot” is a new thing, but the conflict it reflects is not new. In essence, it is the distance…
philosophy technology commentary education
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2019年2月19日
Don’t Universities for the Elderly Teach You How to Play Games?

AI & the Future of Technology2019.02.16
Don’t Universities for the Elderly Teach You How to Play Games?
This Spring Festival, my wife and I, as usual, went home to keep our parents company. This year was a bit special: on the one hand, we finally finished our wedding ceremony last year (we had already been legally married long ago, but the ritual was only just completed), which put our parents’ minds at ease; on the other hand, they were also, one after another, just entering retirement. My parents had been retired in name for a long time, but in practice they had been running their own storefront all along. Last year they finally rented the shop out and let go of it to enjoy life for themselves….
technology education value game
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2019年2月16日