标签：commentary

The whole world has erupted into a shouting match—what right does a museum have to step in and play peacemaker?

Culture & Public Commentary2026.05.17
The whole world has erupted into a shouting match—what right does a museum have to step in and play peacemaker?
Published in Science Times (2026-05-15, p. 4, Culture); here is the original draft. You may be scrolling on your phone at this very moment, have seen this astonishing title, and clicked in to have a look. If you saw this article in the printed newspaper, that is quite rare, but even then you must have first noticed these eye-catching headlines. In this age of mass media, this age of information explosion, this age of the attention economy, the foremost question for information providers is not whether the content can withstand scrutiny from every angle, or whether it can withstand the test of time, or whether the author has deep accumulations,…
culture commentary history internet
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2026年5月17日
Gathering All the Books in the World—Can the Library of Alexandria of the AI Era Endure?

AI & Scholarship2026.04.23
Gathering All the Books in the World—Can the Library of Alexandria of the AI Era Endure?
This article was published in China Science Daily (2026-04-23, p. 3, General), with the title changed to AI Can Now Read “All the Books in the World”; Do Humans Still Need to Read Books?. It was edited down and divided into sections at publication; the original draft is posted here: Around 295 BCE, Ptolemy I commissioned the Greek scholar Demetrius to build a magnificent library and Mouseion (an academic institution) in the city of Alexandria. Demetrius proposed the grand vision of “collecting all the books in the world,” and it received the continuing support of the Ptolemaic royal house. The first three Ptolemies carried the project forward one after another,…
scholarship commentary internet knowledge
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2026年4月23日
How Science Museums in China Can Innovate by Bringing Forth the New

Culture & Public Commentary2025.09.12
How Science Museums in China Can Innovate by Bringing Forth the New
Published in Science Times (2025-08-28, p. 3, general), with the title changed to “The first users of science museums should not be teenagers, but scholars” In this summer vacation, which is about to end, science museums have joined the ranks of the many must-check-in tourist destinations. For parents, if they want their children to take part in some edutainment-oriented activities, science museums are obviously one of the best choices. In recent years, our country has continuously increased investment in science museum construction. According to Xinhua News Agency, the number of science museums open free of charge in China increased from 92 in 2015 to 409 in 2024, with an average…
China history of science scholarship science
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2025年9月12日
Talking About Trump

Culture & Public Commentary2025.03.05
Talking About Trump
When Was America at Its Greatest? So-called “Make America Great Again” — but at exactly which period in history was America the greatest? This historical question actually determines how one judges present policy and the respective international situation. One standard answer is the post–Cold War period. At that time, the United States stood alone in glory, unrivaled, becoming the sole hegemon, the world’s policeman, imperious and overbearing. But in terms of industrial capacity and total GDP, America during this period was only about one quarter of the world. The highest share of GDP should have been at the end of World War II. By then, the whole world had been…
commentary value democracy civilization
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2025年3月5日
Will Digital Musk and Digital Musk Become Friends?

AI & Scholarship2022.07.24
Will Digital Musk and Digital Musk Become Friends?
Published in China Business News, 2022-07-24 Recently, Musk said “已经做过了” (“I’ve already done it”) in a remark that sparked attention and heated discussion. The question he was replying to was: “If you could upload your brain to the cloud and talk to your virtual version, would you become friends?” Musk was most likely joking, but not long ago Google did in fact have a programmer who, after talking with an AI, concluded that the AI had awakened self-awareness and tried to fight for rights for his “AI friend.” For now, consciousness uploading or AI awakening probably has not yet happened, but we can indeed begin with a thought experiment: what…
technology commentary AI self
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2022年7月24日
Why Is the Cat Version of “The God of Medicine” Wrong?

Culture & Public Commentary2022.05.07
Why Is the Cat Version of “The God of Medicine” Wrong?
This commissioned article was published in Science and Technology Daily (2022-05-05, p. 3, general section), with the title changed to “Why Was the ‘Cat Version of the Drug God’ Criminally Detained?” This was a change that deviated greatly from my original intent, and there were also some important alterations to the article’s content, especially the final paragraph. I understand why such rewriting happened, so I did not object further. My view is that the cat-version drug god did something wrong, but that does not mean the reason for detaining her is correct. I am not defending her detention; I am defending scientific research ethics and research norms. A few years…
science commentary law experiment
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2022年5月7日
Freedom of Speech and Social Media

Culture & Public Commentary2021.01.11
Freedom of Speech and Social Media
This article was written spontaneously, as a stream-of-consciousness piece prompted by my own feelings; it is shared only on Suixuan, and please do not reprint it. Trump’s social media accounts being banned set off a discussion about freedom of speech. Aside from the arguments that have never reached consensus, today’s discussions of freedom of speech do in fact involve some new conditions that have only emerged in the past decade or so. This is the rise of large social media websites. They have carved out an autonomous space in the network world, and in many cases have replaced what used to be understood as public space. Whether, and how, the…
culture freedom media commentary
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2021年1月11日
“Leisure” as “Responsibility” — Why Must We Critique Capitalism?

Culture & Public Commentary2021.01.05
“Leisure” as “Responsibility” — Why Must We Critique Capitalism?
Recently Pinduoduo has once again made the topic of 996 hot, and I said: “Whether overtime is reasonable, whether it is legal, how it should be compensated, how it should be punished—let those questions be set aside for the moment. In any case, we should first make one thing clear: whether or not one works overtime has nothing to do with ‘personal striving.’ Because after I get off work I can study like mad, I can take on side jobs like mad, I can devote myself to public welfare… There are plenty of worthwhile causes to struggle for. To limit a person to struggling only for one boss is not…
culture freedom commentary civilization
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2021年1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…
technology China history of science commentary
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2020年10月3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…
technology China commentary Scientific Revolution
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2020年9月24日