标签：commentary

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 government
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2019年6月17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
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
From Melamine to Thesis Plagiarism Checks: A Completely Meaningless Detection-and-Evasion Battle

Culture & Public Commentary2019.02.15
From Melamine to Thesis Plagiarism Checks: A Completely Meaningless Detection-and-Evasion Battle
An impromptu submission to Jiemian; I finished writing it at noon and it went up in the afternoon~ The recent Zhai Tianlin incident made “CNKI” and its plagiarism-checking technology quite the sensation. Netizens spontaneously helped run plagiarism checks on Zhai Tianlin’s paper and found the rate of duplication to be as high as 40%, causing his image as a top student to collapse. I’m not particularly interested in Zhai Tianlin’s image crisis; I’m more inclined to hitch a ride on the hot topic and talk about my own views on plagiarism-checking technology for theses. Plagiarism checking has been popular for many years now. I have always taken a critical and…
technology China scholarship commentary
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2019年2月15日
Is Chinese Studies Anti-Science?

Chinese Civilization & the Way of Chinese2019.01.25
Is Chinese Studies Anti-Science?
At the request of China Science Daily, this was published in the January 28, 2019, issue of China Science Daily, page 1. Recently, two things within the education system have stirred up heated discussion: one is the “mind-boggling exam paper” from Beihai College of Art in Guangxi, and the other is Sun Nan and his wife sending their child to attend a “Guoxue class.” These incidents are by no means accidental isolated cases. Some commentators have already linked them to “Quan Jian,” seeing in them all the spread of a certain “anti-intellectualism,” or, to put it another way, a lack of public scientific literacy. The college that produced the mind-boggling…
China freedom commentary education
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2019年1月25日
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 education history of technology internet
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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 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