标签：freedom

Review of Radical Markets: Also on Why the Crypto Movement Should Be Radical

Culture & Public Commentary2023.06.10
Review of Radical Markets: Also on Why the Crypto Movement Should Be Radical
This piece, along with the earlier The Liberation of People in the Digital Age, was written as copy for PTADAO. The final text was excerpted to form A One-Page Clear White; if you’re interested, you can go take a look there. Here I’m posting the original version of the book review. Lately I’ve joined some Web3 chat groups and occasionally put out a few views. For example, a few days ago I was discussing the significance of stablecoins with someone, and I said that cryptocurrency was from the very beginning meant to upend the old system of central banks and fiat money. If the entire blockchain market turns around and…
book reading freedom Web3 Bitcoin
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2023年6月10日
Do We Still Need to “Read” in the Age of “Swiping”?

AI & Scholarship2023.04.21
Do We Still Need to “Read” in the Age of “Swiping”?
The original title of this article was “Does the Age of Artificial Intelligence Still Need Reading?”, published in China Science Daily (2023-04-21, p. 1, News, the title was changed to “Do We Still Need to ‘Read’ in the Age of ‘Scrolling’?”》, and on the WeChat public account the title was changed again to Just for This Reason, in the Age of “Scrolling” We Still Need to “Read”. I myself think the newspaper title is better, so I use it here. What follows is the original draft; it was lightly polished for publication, and when citing it, please use the newspaper version. World Book Day is coming again soon. Books are…
culture scholarship freedom AI
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2023年4月21日
Can General Education Outmaneuver the Majors? — A Loose Talk from Course Assessment Methods to ChatGPT

AI & Scholarship2023.03.19
Can General Education Outmaneuver the Majors? — A Loose Talk from Course Assessment Methods to ChatGPT
Note: I originally just wanted to vent a bit about the feelings stirred up by a wave of severely plagiarized assignments, but as it turned out the discussion naturally drifted into AI, and things got a bit loose. Let’s leave it at that for now. The two courses I taught last semester—A General History of Technology and Introduction to Philosophy of Technology—have only just now finally been brought to a close. Normally, my courses use in-class exams during the last week of the term, but because of the outbreak of the pandemic at the end of last semester, the university suggested changing the final-exam process and arranging two exam sessions,…
technology scholarship freedom education
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2023年3月19日
Play to Action—On Human Liberation in the Digital Age

Culture & Public Commentary2023.01.03
Play to Action—On Human Liberation in the Digital Age
This essay is a brief ideological manifesto written for a certain project. The idea was not initiated by me, but I was the main writer. It has something to do with ‘华文道’, but it is actually for another project proposal: https://prickly-ink-544.notion.site/da60bd1225aa49c2b6868d7011a617b3 In fact, the ideas of ‘华文道’ also broadly accord with this essay, so the two can be used as references for each other. As Marx said, “The hand-mill gives you society with the feudal lord; the steam-mill society with the industrial capitalist” (Capital), every technological transformation is an opportunity to build a new social form and reshape human civilization. What we are seeing now is that a series of…
freedom Web3 blockchain public sphere
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2023年1月3日
Huawendao Offline AMA, First Session: White Paper Presentation

Chinese Civilization & the Way of Chinese2022.11.13
Huawendao Offline AMA, First Session: White Paper Presentation
The first offline presentation event of “Huawendao” was held on September 23, 2022, at Meta Space in Wudaokou. What follows is a written transcript. First Half: Reading and Discussing the White Paper “Hua”: I’m one of the three initiators of Huawendao, I’m “Hua,” and today I’ll be reading through and explaining our white paper section by section. If anyone has any questions in the middle, please feel free to raise them at any time. What I’m talking about today is already the second version of our white paper. The first version was actually longer, with more than ten thousand characters, but after many people read it, they all said it…
technology China freedom Web3
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2022年11月13日
Huawendao White Paper, Version 2.1.1

Chinese Civilization & the Way of Chinese2022.09.30
Huawendao White Paper, Version 2.1.1
In the past two days, an article lamenting Chinese Web3 entrepreneurs went viral far beyond its usual reach, which prompted me to publish ahead of schedule the DAO I have been gradually preparing to build. The popularity of that article shows that the need among Chinese entrepreneurs for recognition is still very widespread. So in fact, it is not hard to build a Chinese help Chinese community; what is hard is to genuinely carry forward the positive elements of Chinese culture, rather than understanding what “Chinese” means in a negative, oppositional sense (non-white, non-Western, non-English, and so on). Why is the Jewish community so strong? The key is still that…
technology China freedom Web3
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2022年9月30日
Confronting “Complexity” — A Review of Big Science

History of Science & Scholarship2022.09.16
Confronting “Complexity” — A Review of Big Science
This article was published in China Science Daily (2022-09-16, Section 3, Books), with the title changed to “Confronting the ‘Complex’ Head-On — A Compound of Science, Capital, and Politics in the Age of Big Science, Scientists Can No Longer ‘Cultivate Themselves Alone’” When we speak of America’s research environment or science policy, the first thing that usually comes to mind is Vannevar Bush’s Science: The Endless Frontier, a report Bush submitted to then-President Roosevelt in 1945. The report emphasized the importance of basic research, arguing that the government should provide funding support for basic scientific research, but must also respect scientists’ independence and autonomy. Bush’s report was indeed far-reaching in…
book reading science freedom Scientific Revolution
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2022年9月16日
NFT-ifying Behavioral Histories: The Return of Value to Meaning

Culture & Public Commentary2022.08.02
NFT-ifying Behavioral Histories: The Return of Value to Meaning
I had a sudden awakening around the end of last year and the beginning of this year, and embraced new concepts like the metaverse, NFT, and Web3. But there is still one new concept about which I have always been somewhat reserved: DAO. DAO stands for “decentralized autonomous organization.” In fact, it is also an old concept. I remember that when I first got into Bitcoin, Babite seemed to be planning to do DAO (or something similar), and I also witnessed the The DAO incident that later led to the Ethereum fork. My view has actually remained fairly consistent: I think DAO is a good concept, but the ways it…
China freedom history Web3
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2022年8月2日
Heavenly Endowment

Life & Notes2022.04.01
Heavenly Endowment
At 11:39 a.m. on April 1, 2022, a new life came squalling into the world. Yes, I have a daughter now~ I chose her name a few days earlier: Hu Tianyu. Don’t worry, I’m not suddenly going to turn into a shameless kid-showoff. Writing in the public sphere will not become excessively intimate. On the one hand, this post is a special commemoration; on the other, it is also an excuse to talk about certain general topics through my daughter’s name. Back in the day my grandfather gave me a name: “Tian Ding,” meaning roughly that my fate was decreed by Heaven. In the end, though, it was never used….
everyday life freedom Heidegger democracy
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2022年4月1日
Historical Significance or Practical Significance? — “Science: The Endless Frontier”

History of Science & Scholarship2022.01.26
Historical Significance or Practical Significance? — “Science: The Endless Frontier”
This article was first published in the January 2022 issue of Book Town https://read.douban.com/ebook/337719818/?&dcs=provider-63699269-%E3%80%8A%E4%B9%A6%E5%9F%8E%E3%80%8B%E6%9D%82%E5%BF%97 with slight revisions; the original manuscript is posted here. Is the Bush Report Outdated? Vannevar Bush’s Science: The Endless Frontier was originally a report Bush submitted to Roosevelt in 1945. That report laid the tone for U.S. science and technology policy after World War II and had a far-reaching influence. In 2021, CITIC Press published yet another new edition, with the cover and contents adorned with many commendations and comments, including a joint recommendation from more than twenty scholars and entrepreneurs at home and abroad, led by Ren Zhengfei and Shi Yigong. In its online promotion,…
technology China book reading science
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2022年1月26日