5 ms·

This article notes that Tang is a digital minister and has experience with information technology. My impression is that Taiwan has a very healthy and balanced

by usui 6y ago

This article notes that Tang is a digital minister and has experience with information technology. My impression is that Taiwan has a very healthy and balanced demographic of politicians. I have seen Taiwanese mathematicians, doctors, engineers, and chemists fill important government roles involving the spotlight and advocacy. It seems that people of technical expertise in Taiwan have an equally viable chance at entering politics and policy-making. This is not to say that scientists, engineers, or doctors make for better policymakers. Perhaps there is a case to be made that career politicians have skillsets that validate the need to specialize in politics. However, the stereotype of career politicians is that of ignorance with no understanding of subject matter for the things that they make policies for. This impression was cemented further after the hearing between Zuckerberg and Congress about Facebook. This video even plays it for laughs: "Zuckerberg explains the internet to Congress", https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ncbb5B85sd0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ncbb5B85sd0. For the government to help its people, it needs to incentivize diversity within its ranks so that it can understand the variety of issues that it faces. It also needs to be able to adapt to changing realities. Regarding what Tang talks about: I frequently think that what is happening over there are the emulations of unethical experiments (I hear the TV show Black Mirror is similar) that the Western world would never be able to pull off. Regardless of where one stands on this issue, I do not think it can be denied that a lot can be learned about how these systems operate at scale or how the machine runs. From the reports and stories that we get to hear about, it seems like the Chinese government is implementing technology at scales that most countries could ever dream of doing. Or rather, most countries could only dream of creating technological systems of control with the degree of acceptance by the populace, with degree of penetration and overall dissemination. Western governments have implemented comparable systems, like the ones that Edward Snowden pointed out. However, if governments did not worry about hiding questionable activity, maybe it could double down on the level of sophistication and expand on its capabilities.

lowdose 6y ago
China also made the life of almost a billion Chines better by a factor of 50 in 30 years time. > I frequently think that what is happening over there are the emulations of unethical experiments that the Western world would never be able to pull off. Could you point to a specific year in the 20th century after WW II that no Western government was conducting an unethical experiment? I seriously cannot think of an example so Im open to the fact you know more about my known unknowns.
- kv_hrishikesh 6y ago
  >Could you point to a specific year in the 20th century after WW II that no Western government was conducting an unethical experiment? Are you justifying unethical experiments on Uighurs by the chinese government ?
- usui 6y ago
  > China also made the life of almost a billion Chines better by a factor of 50 in 30 years time. I agree with you. This is why populations, no matter which population it is, are more likely to accept the government who has substantially increased the quality of life of the average citizen. This is a very hard position to disagree with, I think. Many citizens in the Western world also have had stable political systems despite the massive wrongdoings of their governments because for the most part, governments have not overstepped their bounds in comparison to the stability provided. It's like having a goodness-to-shittiness ratio that each citizen subconsciously evaluates with an accompanying flowchart. The average citizen thinks to himself or herself: Is my government doing bad things? Yes. Is my government doing good things? Yes. Is the government doing enough bad things to make me care? No. If the answer is yes, then the next question is: Do I care enough to do something about it? Most of the time, the answer is no because society pushes me to remain being a busybody (job, life responsibilities, etc.) or I just don't care. > Could you point to a specific year in the 20th century after WW II that no Western government was conducting an unethical experiment? I could have phrased that better: All governments are capable and have a history of some kind of unethical experiment. I think that it is rarer that it is at this level of scale and with this level of technical sophistication. My thought was that generally, a Western government would not successfully pull off this prototype with neither the degree of success or extent. I personally do not know what is happening at the granular level and I do not pretend to know. I wish I did, and for that matter, at any point in time there will be shady things going on that we do not know. Maybe we will learn in a few decades. For the first time, we get to see what control through the digital lens of information technology looks like when combined with the capacity to enact state-sanctioned violence. It's like the cyberpunk genre, except privately-owned corporations do not yet have a significant capacity to use violence. Maybe we'll have the honor of seeing that by the end of this century. On that note, the closest thing the USA has done in subjugating populations of citizens in a systematic way is the internment camps of Japanese Americans for no reason. They apologized 4 decades later. What good is an apology if you've been waiting for most of the victims to die anyway? Nonetheless, it still gained notoriety (eventually), and people still fought for recognition afterward.

by usui 6y ago

lowdose 6y ago

China also made the life of almost a billion Chines better by a factor of 50 in 30 years time. > I frequently think that what is happening over there are the emulations of unethical experiments that the Western world would never be able to pull off. Could you point to a specific year in the 20th century after WW II that no Western government was conducting an unethical experiment? I seriously cannot think of an example so Im open to the fact you know more about my known unknowns.

kv_hrishikesh 6y ago
>Could you point to a specific year in the 20th century after WW II that no Western government was conducting an unethical experiment? Are you justifying unethical experiments on Uighurs by the chinese government ?
usui 6y ago
> China also made the life of almost a billion Chines better by a factor of 50 in 30 years time. I agree with you. This is why populations, no matter which population it is, are more likely to accept the government who has substantially increased the quality of life of the average citizen. This is a very hard position to disagree with, I think. Many citizens in the Western world also have had stable political systems despite the massive wrongdoings of their governments because for the most part, governments have not overstepped their bounds in comparison to the stability provided. It's like having a goodness-to-shittiness ratio that each citizen subconsciously evaluates with an accompanying flowchart. The average citizen thinks to himself or herself: Is my government doing bad things? Yes. Is my government doing good things? Yes. Is the government doing enough bad things to make me care? No. If the answer is yes, then the next question is: Do I care enough to do something about it? Most of the time, the answer is no because society pushes me to remain being a busybody (job, life responsibilities, etc.) or I just don't care. > Could you point to a specific year in the 20th century after WW II that no Western government was conducting an unethical experiment? I could have phrased that better: All governments are capable and have a history of some kind of unethical experiment. I think that it is rarer that it is at this level of scale and with this level of technical sophistication. My thought was that generally, a Western government would not successfully pull off this prototype with neither the degree of success or extent. I personally do not know what is happening at the granular level and I do not pretend to know. I wish I did, and for that matter, at any point in time there will be shady things going on that we do not know. Maybe we will learn in a few decades. For the first time, we get to see what control through the digital lens of information technology looks like when combined with the capacity to enact state-sanctioned violence. It's like the cyberpunk genre, except privately-owned corporations do not yet have a significant capacity to use violence. Maybe we'll have the honor of seeing that by the end of this century. On that note, the closest thing the USA has done in subjugating populations of citizens in a systematic way is the internment camps of Japanese Americans for no reason. They apologized 4 decades later. What good is an apology if you've been waiting for most of the victims to die anyway? Nonetheless, it still gained notoriety (eventually), and people still fought for recognition afterward.