9 ms·

Singapore is a weird place. During the flight, the stewardesses walked around and handed everybody something - I was expecting a wet towel, but in fact it was a

by Mizza 6y ago

Singapore is a weird place. During the flight, the stewardesses walked around and handed everybody something - I was expecting a wet towel, but in fact it was a card in multiple languages which says "If you are about to bring any amount of drugs into the country, you are going to be executed." Lovely first impression to set the tone. Other than the omnipresent paranoia, the thing that struck me as the most bizarre is that almost nothing in the country is oriented around children. The fertility rate is basically the lowest in the world, as the way of maintaining the population seems to be simply skimming the top few percent of qualified workers from India, China, and other southeast Asian countries, people who will essentially live at the office until they have made enough money to return home, or simply retire and die alone in the country. Another strange thing was the way the city is planned - everything is concentrated to a district. For instance, rather than having record shops peppered around the city, there is a the "record shop area", where there are a dozen record shops in a single place. It's like this for lots of things - books, refrigerators, etc. The food was great though. I'm craving laksa just thinking about it..

noobermin 6y ago
>almost nothing in the country is oriented around children. Spoken truly like someone who never left the airport.
- Mizza 6y ago
  I was there for nearly two weeks and explored as much as I could. That was my impression. I just checked, and Singapore actually does have the lowest fertility rate in the world, by a large margin: 0.83. The notorious infertile Japan is at 1.41. I think makes a difference to the culture.
  - noobermin 6y ago
    You actually need to see where people live, hdbs to see schools, playgrounds and such. The low fertility rate is common amongst developed countries. On the other hand, the government has explicit policies to encourage marrying, like not offering hdbs to single people under 35. You certainly won't see families if you don't leave the downtown area. I'm implying two weeks isn't representative of the city as a whole. The article did a better job of it.
    - schoen 6y ago
      I stayed in a friend's apartment in an HDB and saw schools, playgrounds, and parks, which were all in use—though I'd say children were still less visible overall than in San Francisco, which is also known for having fewer children than most of the U.S.
    - serf 6y ago
      >The low fertility rate is common amongst developed countries. The point of the parent comment is that Singapore's fertility rate is markedly lower than other developed countries.[0] It's beyond the common average. In any other data set, the extreme outliers would be considered abnormal -- a fertility rate that low is not common among developed countries. [0]: https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/fields/356rank.html https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/...
      - tuatoru 6y ago
        The gap in reproduction rate, number of daughters per woman, is probably even larger, now that sex selection is routine in Asian countries.
RyJones 6y ago
Agreed on the observation about nothing for kids. I saw some, but even compared to Tokyo or Osaka, it was sparse.
- blatant 6y ago
  Are Tokyo and Osaka notably sparse compared to American cities?
  - RyJones 6y ago
    In some ways, yes; in others, no. Maybe I was in the wrong parts of Tokyo/Osaka, but I do try to walk all over the place when I travel; there weren't a lot of families going out to eat, or at the malls/shopping areas, or whatever. However, you'll see train cars full of young kids going to and from school, unsupervised as far as I could tell. There are parks with play equipment all over, and I would run into kids during the day at combinis or 7/11s or whatever being kids. Probably more like what I remember growing up in the 70s was like in the US. I can't imagine a couple dozen third-fourth-fifth graders jumping on a train unsupervised in the US. A lot more children out riding bikes unsupervised, as well. I was in Tokyo for the golden week last year; there were lots of kids and parents running around. It might be that Tokyo is an internal tourist destination for that week that skewed my perception, though.
    - yomly 6y ago
      I love how in Japan children are free to go wherever unsupervised and there is essentially an unwritten rule that adults all just keep an eye on them. And as a result children as young as 6/7 can take public transport to get to school on their own. A real mark of how safe a place is...
    - kalleboo 6y ago
      > It might be that Tokyo is an internal tourist destination for that week that skewed my perception, though. It's rather the opposite - families leave Tokyo to visit the grandparents still living in more rural areas. But when schools are out you'll always see more kids.
schoen 6y ago
> a card in multiple languages The version that I remember is this one https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/92/Death_for_Drug_Traffickers_Under_Singapore_Law.jpg/640px-Death_for_Drug_Traffickers_Under_Singapore_Law.jpg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/92/De... but I'm sure there are other versions sending the same message! > everything is concentrated to a district I've also noticed this in São Paulo, Brazil, which reportedly has about 60 streets with particular kinds of specialized retail. https://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruas_de_com%C3%A9rcio_especializado_da_cidade_de_S%C3%A3o_Paulo https://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruas_de_com%C3%A9rcio_especial... (I remember visiting the commercial kitchen supply street because I wanted to bake some cupcakes, and cupcake tins were considered a specialist item. I also feel like I once wandered into a street that specialized in plastic flowers—I guess probably R. Cantareira, which also seems to do a lot of other plastic stuff, or part of the nearby R. 25 de Março?) > food was great though The best I've ever eaten anywhere in the world, I think!
- trustmeimdrunk 6y ago
  SP is mostly mixed used all around. Land-use and zoning pretty much doesn't exist throughout most of it sprawling and winding bairros. And it is: absolutely sprawling. crappy transport means youll find rendunancy between neighbhorhoods for most things, but each neighbhorhood does it differently. There are indeed specialized districts in the centro for specialized products, a neighborhood for motorcyles, a neighborhood for tech, a neighborhood for oriental stuff, a neighborhood for perfume manufacturing, a neighborhood for packaging, a neighborhood for professional restaurant gear, a building for cheap wholesale counterfeiting, a neighborhood for smoking crack with thousands of othrr users, k sections of various kneighborhoods for kgetting transvestite kprostitutes, etc. K Overall most of sao paulo is a web of somewhat self-contained microcosms. And what you find in each neighborhood is determined by the mixture and manner of demographics that frequent the place. The overlaps of these demographics makes for infinite novelty. I spent 10 years in the city and it blew by me faster than I wish it had. It is beyond a mere cyberpunk aesthetic. The vibe is unnamed. Ive walked, biked, skated, and used public transportation through about 60-80% of the city and surrounding metropolitan area. I left a few months ago to pursue a quiet life of naturalist adventures along the coast, but Sao Paulo was the absolute best choice for a person like me to have spent his 20s.
rashkov 6y ago
I wonder, would there be an opportunity to flush any substances down the toilet, at that point? Sounds like a potentially terrifying situation, considering the number of stories I’ve heard from friends and family about accidentally flying with marijuana that they were unaware of was left over in a backpack or whatnot.
- Mizza 6y ago
  You would have to use the airplane toilet. Immediately after stepping off the plane, you are scanned by some kind of scanning IR(?) camera, which I assumed was looking for drugs. I actually had some vitamins in a baggie which I was shitting bricks about, but the actually immigration point was very polite and chill, much moreso than, say, JFK.
  - schoen 6y ago
    I think the IR camera was more likely to have been looking for fever than drugs. I don't mean to say that Changi doesn't have drug-detection mechanisms, but the commonest use of IR cameras at international airport gates is to try to find passengers who are showing signs of infectious disease.
  - mnky9800n 6y ago
    I travel internationally a lot for work, well I used to anyways, lol. Going to America is always the worst experience. It's longer from point a to b, there's more security theater, and I always get some snide remark from the border crossing person about being an American not living in America.
- dehrmann 6y ago
  I know someone who accidentally brought a joint into Singapore but wasn't caught. The thresholds seem high enough that there aren't random tourists getting hung over it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Misuse_of_Drugs_Act_(Singapore)#Thresholds https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Misuse_of_Drugs_Act_(Singapore... I also wonder what would happen if you declare the drugs. Would they assume good intent (because you declared the drugs), and let you surrender them without penalty?
api 6y ago
Singapore is in my opinion the world's scariest dystopia. There are many dystopias, but few of them are anything but. Nobody moves to North Korea, and the dystopian aspects of other less thoroughly awful places are things everyone complains about and few want to copy. Singapore is scary because it's a dystopia with many desirable characteristics. It's a dystopia with curb appeal, one that could be sold to people. The thing about a deal with the devil is that it works. The devil pays out. It only costs you your soul. As for the absurdly low fertility rate: many creatures refuse to reproduce in zoos. Singapore is a zoo for homo sapiens, a safe environment optimized for every textbook metric of health and built on totalitarianism "with a velvet glove." As William Gibson summed the place up: "smile or die."
- serf 6y ago
  >Singapore is scary because it's a dystopia with many desirable characteristics. It's a dystopia with curb appeal, one that could be sold to people. that's exactly my impression, too. My friends tell me how great the food is, and how clean the area is; meanwhile i'm thinking about caning laws and drug executions -- this tells me that Singapore has enough appeal that some folks can sort of breeze past the really grim stuff. That's a scary trait.
  - api 6y ago
    There are a lot of people from SF on here. I think that's part of what powers HN's wing of totalitarian utopians. SF is itself a dystopia, an open air psychiatric hospital that is simultaneously unaffordable and smells like piss. People need to realize though that SF is a bubble and that its problems are as strange as its virtues. SF is not only dysfunctional but peculiarly so, and its disease is not common elsewhere. I call it "the world's only six figure slum." I find utopias scary in general. Not only do they always have a mass grave or a gas chamber hidden away somewhere, but even without considering the underbelly they sort of by definition represent a local maximum. Studying evolution and AI/ML made me fear the local maximum as an existential danger. It's one of my Fermi paradox speculations. Maybe it's easier to create a utopia than to build a starship. Find a local maximum, get stuck, and wait for a black swan. A utopia is a luxury lounge waiting room for extinction. I can't see a society like Singapore settling Mars or sending the first probe to Proxima Centauri. I'll take my junkies, batshit crazy politics, and litter on the streets. Just give me good music and spaceships plz. God (and who knows what else... Cthulhu f'tagn!) bless the USA. I wonder if the local maximum evolutionary dynamics of a utopia isn't the reason they always have a mass grave or two. Evolution has natural mechanisms to escape local maxima (search phrase: evolution of evolvability). The local maximum must therefore be enforced. Life has to be actively held there. "Smile or die."
pjc50 6y ago
"Disneyland with the Death Penalty" (1993): https://www.wired.com/1993/04/gibson-2/ https://www.wired.com/1993/04/gibson-2/ Thinking about the area, haven't the majority of Far East countries since independence been effectively one-party states? Some have been "democratic", but with the same party winning the elections every time. Singapore and South Korea could be seen as examples of successful "planned economies", but from a rightwing-authoritarian point of view with a Western-orientated politics. (The lack of visible children is likely a result of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_planning_in_Singapore#Stop-at-Two https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_planning_in_Singapo... )
- Barrin92 6y ago
  it's also quite funny how Singapore generally avoids language such as "planned" or "state owned", and rather refers to its many state owned businesses as "government-linked", it reminds me a little bit of Palantir's "forward deployed engineers". It's no wonder that Gibson has come up a lot in this thread because that kind of Blue Ant-esque language is all over Singapore and this strange fusion of government and private power that you see in places like Singapore.
- hatenberg 6y ago
  Nothing shows the ignorance of most mof the western world about modern Asia most than falling back to 27 year old articles at every time a place is mentioned. I guess we all need to reference Reagan's Star Wars program whenever we talk about the US to get an equivalent feel. As someone living here (queue US coworkers 'why would you move to China?'), that article has not aged well. Children are so so much better supported here than the US its not even funny. Public libraries, lavish playgrounds, sports activities, public transport (yes your 8 year old can take the metro to school, safely), science programs, free museums, ...
  - ValentineC 6y ago
    Singaporean here. If anything, one reason I'd say that Singapore isn't like Disneyland now is because its "management" has lost touch with the ground, and things aren't as well-maintained as Disneyland. My estate (a ruling-party-managed one, too) is showing its age, with plenty of rats and cockroaches running about at night.
Melting_Harps 6y ago
> Other than the omnipresent paranoia, the thing that struck me as the most bizarre is that almost nothing in the country is oriented around children. The fertility rate is basically the lowest in the world, as the way of maintaining the population seems to be simply skimming the top few percent of qualified workers from India, China, and other southeast Asian countries, people who will essentially live at the office until they have made enough money to return home, or simply retire and die alone in the country. I've been revisiting Brave New World after watching the series on something called 'Peacock,' which honestly bares little resemblance to the plot of the book (John the Savage is less a cautionary tale of these types of Societys and more Revolutionary apparently) and the ideas of acceptable Dystopias by Huxley in his presentations at Berkely were brought up. One woman asking why only Tyrannical Governments would use these methods, and could they not also be used by so-called 'democratic' institutions for the same end. Huxley scoffs the idea as greater 'pessimism' than he holds. The idea of being encumbered by replacement rates with fertility seems blase if you can simply import a perpetual underclass for what you cannot outsource to serve your affluent Citizen class seems like the long-term goals of any despot/regime. That would probably ensure long-standing dynasties, and political stability more than anything imaginable, as dark as that is it aptly reflects the current Human Condition. In a way I think this was the US' goal in the 21st Century as we've seen the shortage of STEM really be a Cooperate driven regression in wages (and probably working conditions) for its domestic population. With that said, you can see what the opposite can create as Hong Kong has descended in to the most typical (accurate?) representation of a Cyberpunk Dystopia. Its entirely tragic to see, but Human resilience against all odds against a tyrannical juggernaut (China/CCP) is still something to take solace in and an archetype for a Heroism in all cultures. Even as it dissects everything unique and of value in that city-state its worth paying attention to serve as the cautionary tale of how primitive Humans still are. For even more context (masochistic watching), consider 10 years [1] on Netflix, who recently refused to take down that and Joshua Wong's Documentary [2] on the events in Hong Kong. 1: https://www.netflix.com/title/81012294 https://www.netflix.com/title/81012294 2: https://www.netflix.com/title/80169348 https://www.netflix.com/title/80169348
JimDabell 6y ago
> Other than the omnipresent paranoia, the thing that struck me as the most bizarre is that almost nothing in the country is oriented around children. I’ve been living in Singapore for a year and don’t really understand what you are talking about with either of these things. Singapore is one of the safest places in the world – people go running alone at night without a second thought, you see young kids wandering around unaccompanied, violent crime is low, etc. Just last night I saw three kids who weren’t even teenagers cycling past me from the beach with fishing gear after dark. I don’t see any "omnipresent paranoia", if anything it’s the complete opposite. What paranoia did you see? As far as being oriented around children, there’s playground equipment in all the parks and condos, kids pools in the condos, there’s a bunch of family-friendly things all over the country to see and do, the government has all kinds of incentives for people to start families, etc. What do you think is missing?
sfifs 6y ago
> that almost nothing in the country is oriented around children As I'm actually living in Singapore for several years with a small child, i find this comment quite strange. I've lived in and visited many cities in the world and would be hard pressed to find any place more child friendly or with a variety of experiences oriented for Children - lots of it for free. Walks and Trails, Parks, Arts and crafts, Libraries, free concerts and performances almost every other day, beaches. Every residential locality as several parks and playgrounds, even the commercial districts has play areas for kids (often free) if you research a bit.... Kids ride free till age 7 on public transport and i see 10 year old kids go to school by public transport by themselves. There's no way I'd feel safe doing that in any other city in the world I've lived in or visited. On your other comment, that's actually how many Asian cities have evolved. In Mumbai and Chennai where I've lived before, there will be an area you go to buy electronics (still true for components), another area with marble shops, yet another for flowers etc etc
arugulum 6y ago
I'm struggling to understand on what basis you're saying "almost nothing is oriented toward children". For instance, how many schools did you visit during your two weeks there? Or what are you considering to be "oriented toward children"?
paleogizmo 6y ago
When I travel in to Singapore to visit relatives, seeing WARNING DEATH PENALTY FOR DRUG TRAFFICKERS in big red letters on the customs card always gives me a warm feeling of nostalgia every time I see it, knowing I'll soon be landing in Changi airport. This is actually part of the cleverness of Singapore. With so many migrant workers from many different cultures with different social mores, the ominous warning signs everywhere make it pretty hard to inadvertently get in trouble with the law. The weird zoning AFAIK is an artifact of the city being planned in the 70s-80s when the idea of mixed-use development wasn't a thing. One particular issue is the lack of high-end apartments within or adjacent to the financial district.
hatenberg 6y ago
"Paranoia" Living here after living in the US its hard to read this with a straight face and not bursting into manical laughter. No ghettos, no fear of being mistreated or killed by the police, no no-go zones, no fear of covidiots and karens putting their convenience over everyone's health after the first one or two Karens making a fuzz about masks got deported or remanded to get the mental care they needed.
- ValentineC 6y ago
  > no fear of covidiots and karens putting their convenience over everyone's health after the first one or two Karens making a fuzz about masks got deported or remanded to get the mental care they needed As someone else who is in Singapore right now: the situation is better than in most other countries — there is a $300 fine for flagrant disregard of the mask-wearing law, and larger businesses are required to have someone stand at the entrance to check if people are wearing masks, and to make them sign into the SafeEntry contract tracing system. But mask-abhorring covidiots still exist. Their excuses tend to be that they're either eating/drinking while on the go, exercising, or smoking cigarettes.
gliboc 6y ago
What paranoia are you talking about ? Weird to hear that because it's the safest city I've been to...

by Mizza 6y ago

noobermin 6y ago

>almost nothing in the country is oriented around children. Spoken truly like someone who never left the airport.

Mizza 6y ago
I was there for nearly two weeks and explored as much as I could. That was my impression. I just checked, and Singapore actually does have the lowest fertility rate in the world, by a large margin: 0.83. The notorious infertile Japan is at 1.41. I think makes a difference to the culture.
- noobermin 6y ago
  You actually need to see where people live, hdbs to see schools, playgrounds and such. The low fertility rate is common amongst developed countries. On the other hand, the government has explicit policies to encourage marrying, like not offering hdbs to single people under 35. You certainly won't see families if you don't leave the downtown area. I'm implying two weeks isn't representative of the city as a whole. The article did a better job of it.
  - schoen 6y ago
    I stayed in a friend's apartment in an HDB and saw schools, playgrounds, and parks, which were all in use—though I'd say children were still less visible overall than in San Francisco, which is also known for having fewer children than most of the U.S.
  - serf 6y ago
    >The low fertility rate is common amongst developed countries. The point of the parent comment is that Singapore's fertility rate is markedly lower than other developed countries.[0] It's beyond the common average. In any other data set, the extreme outliers would be considered abnormal -- a fertility rate that low is not common among developed countries. [0]: https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/fields/356rank.html https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/...
    - tuatoru 6y ago
      The gap in reproduction rate, number of daughters per woman, is probably even larger, now that sex selection is routine in Asian countries.

RyJones 6y ago

Agreed on the observation about nothing for kids. I saw some, but even compared to Tokyo or Osaka, it was sparse.

blatant 6y ago
Are Tokyo and Osaka notably sparse compared to American cities?
- RyJones 6y ago
  In some ways, yes; in others, no. Maybe I was in the wrong parts of Tokyo/Osaka, but I do try to walk all over the place when I travel; there weren't a lot of families going out to eat, or at the malls/shopping areas, or whatever. However, you'll see train cars full of young kids going to and from school, unsupervised as far as I could tell. There are parks with play equipment all over, and I would run into kids during the day at combinis or 7/11s or whatever being kids. Probably more like what I remember growing up in the 70s was like in the US. I can't imagine a couple dozen third-fourth-fifth graders jumping on a train unsupervised in the US. A lot more children out riding bikes unsupervised, as well. I was in Tokyo for the golden week last year; there were lots of kids and parents running around. It might be that Tokyo is an internal tourist destination for that week that skewed my perception, though.
  - yomly 6y ago
    I love how in Japan children are free to go wherever unsupervised and there is essentially an unwritten rule that adults all just keep an eye on them. And as a result children as young as 6/7 can take public transport to get to school on their own. A real mark of how safe a place is...
  - kalleboo 6y ago
    > It might be that Tokyo is an internal tourist destination for that week that skewed my perception, though. It's rather the opposite - families leave Tokyo to visit the grandparents still living in more rural areas. But when schools are out you'll always see more kids.

schoen 6y ago

> a card in multiple languages The version that I remember is this one https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/92/Death_for_Drug_Traffickers_Under_Singapore_Law.jpg/640px-Death_for_Drug_Traffickers_Under_Singapore_Law.jpg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/92/De... but I'm sure there are other versions sending the same message! > everything is concentrated to a district I've also noticed this in São Paulo, Brazil, which reportedly has about 60 streets with particular kinds of specialized retail. https://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruas_de_com%C3%A9rcio_especializado_da_cidade_de_S%C3%A3o_Paulo https://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruas_de_com%C3%A9rcio_especial... (I remember visiting the commercial kitchen supply street because I wanted to bake some cupcakes, and cupcake tins were considered a specialist item. I also feel like I once wandered into a street that specialized in plastic flowers—I guess probably R. Cantareira, which also seems to do a lot of other plastic stuff, or part of the nearby R. 25 de Março?) > food was great though The best I've ever eaten anywhere in the world, I think!

trustmeimdrunk 6y ago
SP is mostly mixed used all around. Land-use and zoning pretty much doesn't exist throughout most of it sprawling and winding bairros. And it is: absolutely sprawling. crappy transport means youll find rendunancy between neighbhorhoods for most things, but each neighbhorhood does it differently. There are indeed specialized districts in the centro for specialized products, a neighborhood for motorcyles, a neighborhood for tech, a neighborhood for oriental stuff, a neighborhood for perfume manufacturing, a neighborhood for packaging, a neighborhood for professional restaurant gear, a building for cheap wholesale counterfeiting, a neighborhood for smoking crack with thousands of othrr users, k sections of various kneighborhoods for kgetting transvestite kprostitutes, etc. K Overall most of sao paulo is a web of somewhat self-contained microcosms. And what you find in each neighborhood is determined by the mixture and manner of demographics that frequent the place. The overlaps of these demographics makes for infinite novelty. I spent 10 years in the city and it blew by me faster than I wish it had. It is beyond a mere cyberpunk aesthetic. The vibe is unnamed. Ive walked, biked, skated, and used public transportation through about 60-80% of the city and surrounding metropolitan area. I left a few months ago to pursue a quiet life of naturalist adventures along the coast, but Sao Paulo was the absolute best choice for a person like me to have spent his 20s.

rashkov 6y ago

I wonder, would there be an opportunity to flush any substances down the toilet, at that point? Sounds like a potentially terrifying situation, considering the number of stories I’ve heard from friends and family about accidentally flying with marijuana that they were unaware of was left over in a backpack or whatnot.

Mizza 6y ago
You would have to use the airplane toilet. Immediately after stepping off the plane, you are scanned by some kind of scanning IR(?) camera, which I assumed was looking for drugs. I actually had some vitamins in a baggie which I was shitting bricks about, but the actually immigration point was very polite and chill, much moreso than, say, JFK.
- schoen 6y ago
  I think the IR camera was more likely to have been looking for fever than drugs. I don't mean to say that Changi doesn't have drug-detection mechanisms, but the commonest use of IR cameras at international airport gates is to try to find passengers who are showing signs of infectious disease.
- mnky9800n 6y ago
  I travel internationally a lot for work, well I used to anyways, lol. Going to America is always the worst experience. It's longer from point a to b, there's more security theater, and I always get some snide remark from the border crossing person about being an American not living in America.
dehrmann 6y ago
I know someone who accidentally brought a joint into Singapore but wasn't caught. The thresholds seem high enough that there aren't random tourists getting hung over it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Misuse_of_Drugs_Act_(Singapore)#Thresholds https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Misuse_of_Drugs_Act_(Singapore... I also wonder what would happen if you declare the drugs. Would they assume good intent (because you declared the drugs), and let you surrender them without penalty?

api 6y ago

Singapore is in my opinion the world's scariest dystopia. There are many dystopias, but few of them are anything but. Nobody moves to North Korea, and the dystopian aspects of other less thoroughly awful places are things everyone complains about and few want to copy. Singapore is scary because it's a dystopia with many desirable characteristics. It's a dystopia with curb appeal, one that could be sold to people. The thing about a deal with the devil is that it works. The devil pays out. It only costs you your soul. As for the absurdly low fertility rate: many creatures refuse to reproduce in zoos. Singapore is a zoo for homo sapiens, a safe environment optimized for every textbook metric of health and built on totalitarianism "with a velvet glove." As William Gibson summed the place up: "smile or die."

serf 6y ago
>Singapore is scary because it's a dystopia with many desirable characteristics. It's a dystopia with curb appeal, one that could be sold to people. that's exactly my impression, too. My friends tell me how great the food is, and how clean the area is; meanwhile i'm thinking about caning laws and drug executions -- this tells me that Singapore has enough appeal that some folks can sort of breeze past the really grim stuff. That's a scary trait.
- api 6y ago
  There are a lot of people from SF on here. I think that's part of what powers HN's wing of totalitarian utopians. SF is itself a dystopia, an open air psychiatric hospital that is simultaneously unaffordable and smells like piss. People need to realize though that SF is a bubble and that its problems are as strange as its virtues. SF is not only dysfunctional but peculiarly so, and its disease is not common elsewhere. I call it "the world's only six figure slum." I find utopias scary in general. Not only do they always have a mass grave or a gas chamber hidden away somewhere, but even without considering the underbelly they sort of by definition represent a local maximum. Studying evolution and AI/ML made me fear the local maximum as an existential danger. It's one of my Fermi paradox speculations. Maybe it's easier to create a utopia than to build a starship. Find a local maximum, get stuck, and wait for a black swan. A utopia is a luxury lounge waiting room for extinction. I can't see a society like Singapore settling Mars or sending the first probe to Proxima Centauri. I'll take my junkies, batshit crazy politics, and litter on the streets. Just give me good music and spaceships plz. God (and who knows what else... Cthulhu f'tagn!) bless the USA. I wonder if the local maximum evolutionary dynamics of a utopia isn't the reason they always have a mass grave or two. Evolution has natural mechanisms to escape local maxima (search phrase: evolution of evolvability). The local maximum must therefore be enforced. Life has to be actively held there. "Smile or die."

pjc50 6y ago

"Disneyland with the Death Penalty" (1993): https://www.wired.com/1993/04/gibson-2/ https://www.wired.com/1993/04/gibson-2/ Thinking about the area, haven't the majority of Far East countries since independence been effectively one-party states? Some have been "democratic", but with the same party winning the elections every time. Singapore and South Korea could be seen as examples of successful "planned economies", but from a rightwing-authoritarian point of view with a Western-orientated politics. (The lack of visible children is likely a result of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_planning_in_Singapore#Stop-at-Two https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_planning_in_Singapo... )

Barrin92 6y ago
it's also quite funny how Singapore generally avoids language such as "planned" or "state owned", and rather refers to its many state owned businesses as "government-linked", it reminds me a little bit of Palantir's "forward deployed engineers". It's no wonder that Gibson has come up a lot in this thread because that kind of Blue Ant-esque language is all over Singapore and this strange fusion of government and private power that you see in places like Singapore.
hatenberg 6y ago
Nothing shows the ignorance of most mof the western world about modern Asia most than falling back to 27 year old articles at every time a place is mentioned. I guess we all need to reference Reagan's Star Wars program whenever we talk about the US to get an equivalent feel. As someone living here (queue US coworkers 'why would you move to China?'), that article has not aged well. Children are so so much better supported here than the US its not even funny. Public libraries, lavish playgrounds, sports activities, public transport (yes your 8 year old can take the metro to school, safely), science programs, free museums, ...
- ValentineC 6y ago
  Singaporean here. If anything, one reason I'd say that Singapore isn't like Disneyland now is because its "management" has lost touch with the ground, and things aren't as well-maintained as Disneyland. My estate (a ruling-party-managed one, too) is showing its age, with plenty of rats and cockroaches running about at night.

Melting_Harps 6y ago

> Other than the omnipresent paranoia, the thing that struck me as the most bizarre is that almost nothing in the country is oriented around children. The fertility rate is basically the lowest in the world, as the way of maintaining the population seems to be simply skimming the top few percent of qualified workers from India, China, and other southeast Asian countries, people who will essentially live at the office until they have made enough money to return home, or simply retire and die alone in the country. I've been revisiting Brave New World after watching the series on something called 'Peacock,' which honestly bares little resemblance to the plot of the book (John the Savage is less a cautionary tale of these types of Societys and more Revolutionary apparently) and the ideas of acceptable Dystopias by Huxley in his presentations at Berkely were brought up. One woman asking why only Tyrannical Governments would use these methods, and could they not also be used by so-called 'democratic' institutions for the same end. Huxley scoffs the idea as greater 'pessimism' than he holds. The idea of being encumbered by replacement rates with fertility seems blase if you can simply import a perpetual underclass for what you cannot outsource to serve your affluent Citizen class seems like the long-term goals of any despot/regime. That would probably ensure long-standing dynasties, and political stability more than anything imaginable, as dark as that is it aptly reflects the current Human Condition. In a way I think this was the US' goal in the 21st Century as we've seen the shortage of STEM really be a Cooperate driven regression in wages (and probably working conditions) for its domestic population. With that said, you can see what the opposite can create as Hong Kong has descended in to the most typical (accurate?) representation of a Cyberpunk Dystopia. Its entirely tragic to see, but Human resilience against all odds against a tyrannical juggernaut (China/CCP) is still something to take solace in and an archetype for a Heroism in all cultures. Even as it dissects everything unique and of value in that city-state its worth paying attention to serve as the cautionary tale of how primitive Humans still are. For even more context (masochistic watching), consider 10 years [1] on Netflix, who recently refused to take down that and Joshua Wong's Documentary [2] on the events in Hong Kong. 1: https://www.netflix.com/title/81012294 https://www.netflix.com/title/81012294 2: https://www.netflix.com/title/80169348 https://www.netflix.com/title/80169348

JimDabell 6y ago

> Other than the omnipresent paranoia, the thing that struck me as the most bizarre is that almost nothing in the country is oriented around children. I’ve been living in Singapore for a year and don’t really understand what you are talking about with either of these things. Singapore is one of the safest places in the world – people go running alone at night without a second thought, you see young kids wandering around unaccompanied, violent crime is low, etc. Just last night I saw three kids who weren’t even teenagers cycling past me from the beach with fishing gear after dark. I don’t see any "omnipresent paranoia", if anything it’s the complete opposite. What paranoia did you see? As far as being oriented around children, there’s playground equipment in all the parks and condos, kids pools in the condos, there’s a bunch of family-friendly things all over the country to see and do, the government has all kinds of incentives for people to start families, etc. What do you think is missing?

sfifs 6y ago

> that almost nothing in the country is oriented around children As I'm actually living in Singapore for several years with a small child, i find this comment quite strange. I've lived in and visited many cities in the world and would be hard pressed to find any place more child friendly or with a variety of experiences oriented for Children - lots of it for free. Walks and Trails, Parks, Arts and crafts, Libraries, free concerts and performances almost every other day, beaches. Every residential locality as several parks and playgrounds, even the commercial districts has play areas for kids (often free) if you research a bit.... Kids ride free till age 7 on public transport and i see 10 year old kids go to school by public transport by themselves. There's no way I'd feel safe doing that in any other city in the world I've lived in or visited. On your other comment, that's actually how many Asian cities have evolved. In Mumbai and Chennai where I've lived before, there will be an area you go to buy electronics (still true for components), another area with marble shops, yet another for flowers etc etc

arugulum 6y ago

I'm struggling to understand on what basis you're saying "almost nothing is oriented toward children". For instance, how many schools did you visit during your two weeks there? Or what are you considering to be "oriented toward children"?

paleogizmo 6y ago

When I travel in to Singapore to visit relatives, seeing WARNING DEATH PENALTY FOR DRUG TRAFFICKERS in big red letters on the customs card always gives me a warm feeling of nostalgia every time I see it, knowing I'll soon be landing in Changi airport. This is actually part of the cleverness of Singapore. With so many migrant workers from many different cultures with different social mores, the ominous warning signs everywhere make it pretty hard to inadvertently get in trouble with the law. The weird zoning AFAIK is an artifact of the city being planned in the 70s-80s when the idea of mixed-use development wasn't a thing. One particular issue is the lack of high-end apartments within or adjacent to the financial district.

hatenberg 6y ago

"Paranoia" Living here after living in the US its hard to read this with a straight face and not bursting into manical laughter. No ghettos, no fear of being mistreated or killed by the police, no no-go zones, no fear of covidiots and karens putting their convenience over everyone's health after the first one or two Karens making a fuzz about masks got deported or remanded to get the mental care they needed.

ValentineC 6y ago
> no fear of covidiots and karens putting their convenience over everyone's health after the first one or two Karens making a fuzz about masks got deported or remanded to get the mental care they needed As someone else who is in Singapore right now: the situation is better than in most other countries — there is a $300 fine for flagrant disregard of the mask-wearing law, and larger businesses are required to have someone stand at the entrance to check if people are wearing masks, and to make them sign into the SafeEntry contract tracing system. But mask-abhorring covidiots still exist. Their excuses tend to be that they're either eating/drinking while on the go, exercising, or smoking cigarettes.

gliboc 6y ago

What paranoia are you talking about ? Weird to hear that because it's the safest city I've been to...