Well, well, well... I suppose it is time to do a little bit of writing here again.
We are now in the so-called ``phase two'' of the ``circuit breaker'', a lock-down/shelter-in-place in all but name. In Phase Two, the supposed restrictions that were put in place to keep people from leaving their domicile for anything but the most pressing of essential needs have been loosened a little, allowing a very restricted amount of socialising (up to five people in a group, all respecting ``social distancing'' rules of course) despite making it clear that there shouldn't be any [unnecessary] socialising.
Do I have any comments about this? Sure, but they are mostly along the lines of ``just because it can be done doesn't mean it ought to be done''. And so with that in mind, I am personally still going to stay at home for as much as it is possible until things are more under control.
The magic thing I am looking out for is the so-called ``community case count'' for the week after Jul 10---that is roughly two weeks after the transition into phase two, and a week of monitoring the trend will also take into account the increased number of potential exposures from the students who are supposed to be returning to school from yesterday onwards.
Only if these numbers are on the low side that I will be more comfortable restarting my social activities, and even then, it will be at a very low gear for some necessary meet ups that need to occur. It will happen when it will happen, and I am not really fretting about the inability to plan for them---this whole year is absolute garbage in terms of planning anyways, so another month of waiting and non-planning isn't going to affect things more than it already has.
Oh, and there's apparently a General Election being held, with the Nomination Day concluding today, having all 93 seats of parliament being contested, and the actual voting day itself on Jul 10.
Do I have any comments on that? Not really, other than it being important to pay attention to what the party members who are contesting in one's ward or GRC saying and claiming to say, and to make one's own damn mind about whom they think can best represent their interests in parliament. While the party as a whole may provide the type of over-arching narrative/policy that is of national interest, it is still the individual members of parliament that are supposed to represent us---we live in a republic, and we vote for our own representatives to stand for us as members of parliament to fight for our interests. Singapore is small enough that there is often little impedence mismatch between what we citizens want and what is good for the country's development, and so, whoever is going to vote should just make up their own mind.
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I have been thinking over the past couple of months about life in general, the Scripture, and my own perspective on how things work. Ding told me to go read Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari, which I completed recently (am currently embarking on the sequel of sorts, Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow). I can see the allure of the historic-anthropological perspective in which Harari uses to write his exposition, but don't see it as being contradictory to what Scripture is saying. What I mean is, sure, maybe the bible is indeed a myth created and written by humankind during the time when they didn't know any better, and maybe humankind was a by-product of four billion years of evolutionary processes that we can only explain in a sort of statistical sort of way; the real question is, do these really explain away the existence of God Himself? Who's to say that the setting up of four billion years of evolutionary processes was not the work of God? God is, by definition, unknowable by us, so what seems to be impossible by us through proof (hello computational theory and oracles!) may mean only that we are limited in our imagination.
Why do we need to assume that God needed to take the most direct and simple route to get something (like having His Word written down) done? Occam's Razor is just a heuristic to aid us combat the curse of dimensionality that comes with complexity---because it is important that whatever hypothesis we come up with can be communicated to a third person and then convince that said person, in time that doesn't last longer than our mortal life span. But faith and belief is very individual---you can choose to believe, or you can choose not to. Whether you are objectively right or wrong is a non-question.
God's relationship with humankind, through Jesus, is of a personal kind, and with that, a lot of it is therefore bound by one's experience and perception. Is it the scientific way then? Of course not---because experience and perception are not things that are falsifiable and replicable, the cornerstones for the scientific method. While it is important to go round spreading the good news [that one is saved through Jesus's sacrifice and resurrection], it is also important to remember that like all relationships, it can only be entered willingly, and not be forced. So it's okay if someone doesn't want to believe that Jesus died for their sins, it's also okay if someone believes that they don't have sin. They are still humans, just not God's children, that's all.
``But MT, there are so many different schools of thoughts/religions out there, why do you think that God is and the bible is the authoritative Word of God?'' There will never be a satisfactory answer to that question, because God's relationship with humankind, through Jesus, is of a personal kind. It is right and true for me, but is it right and true for you is something that only you can answer.
And that's about as much theology I am willing to indulge. I'm pretty sure that it is possible to poke holes in my arguments here, but I won't even bother providing responses to those if they come---I'm merely thinking and doing something that I personally believe in, with zero intention of attempting to convince someone, therefore ``it doesn't harm anyone and it works for me'' principles hold.
Till the next update, perhaps.
Tuesday, June 30, 2020
Sunday, June 14, 2020
Talking Past Each Other
I had wanted to write a post earlier, but didn't really have any material to do so.
Then I hung out on the 'net for a bit more, and I remembered what it was that I wanted to write about---the violent attempt at selectively changing/erasing history to force it to match the current trends of what is considered socio-politically acceptable.
On the one hand, I can understand why people can get very angry at the historical monuments that were built in the past to commemorate the events/people that had oppressed them. They have every right to get angry, especially when the supposed improvements in relations between the formerly oppressed and former oppressors seemed to have regressed in recent times.
On the other hand, I do not think that tearing down such monuments in a violent way is going to do anything to help right the wrongs, neither is it productive to vandalise such monuments. To me, the act of the oppressed tearing down the historical monuments of their oppressors is no different in consequence as the oppressors tearing down any form of rememberance of the oppressed---in either case, history is effectively erased. This means that whatever lesson it was that was supposed to have learnt gets lost, which is arguably a worse effect. The oppressed should not want to be forgotten of the past where they were oppressed; the oppressors needed to remember that there was a time where they had done the oppressing, and had since learnt how not to be like that.
It's about the revenge cycle. If there is no attempt by either side to forgive the past, then the revenge cycle will just keep perpetuating, and no one will be the wiser from it. Wars that were meant to end all wars will return, and the philosophies that were demonstrated as being inherently evil/wrong will have the opportunity to return under the disguise of ``righting the destruction of history''.
When people are talking/shouting past each other, can any resolution ever be reached? I think not. But to get both sides to talk to each other requires a certain level of calmness that is really hard to come by in this time and age of ``fake news'', egotistical ``leaders'' who have no care about the nation, and the age of ``managing the right optics''.
I suppose all thoughts that humanity has matured after fighting two world wars is just a pipe dream.
I don't have an answer, just the lamentation.
Till the next update.
Then I hung out on the 'net for a bit more, and I remembered what it was that I wanted to write about---the violent attempt at selectively changing/erasing history to force it to match the current trends of what is considered socio-politically acceptable.
On the one hand, I can understand why people can get very angry at the historical monuments that were built in the past to commemorate the events/people that had oppressed them. They have every right to get angry, especially when the supposed improvements in relations between the formerly oppressed and former oppressors seemed to have regressed in recent times.
On the other hand, I do not think that tearing down such monuments in a violent way is going to do anything to help right the wrongs, neither is it productive to vandalise such monuments. To me, the act of the oppressed tearing down the historical monuments of their oppressors is no different in consequence as the oppressors tearing down any form of rememberance of the oppressed---in either case, history is effectively erased. This means that whatever lesson it was that was supposed to have learnt gets lost, which is arguably a worse effect. The oppressed should not want to be forgotten of the past where they were oppressed; the oppressors needed to remember that there was a time where they had done the oppressing, and had since learnt how not to be like that.
It's about the revenge cycle. If there is no attempt by either side to forgive the past, then the revenge cycle will just keep perpetuating, and no one will be the wiser from it. Wars that were meant to end all wars will return, and the philosophies that were demonstrated as being inherently evil/wrong will have the opportunity to return under the disguise of ``righting the destruction of history''.
When people are talking/shouting past each other, can any resolution ever be reached? I think not. But to get both sides to talk to each other requires a certain level of calmness that is really hard to come by in this time and age of ``fake news'', egotistical ``leaders'' who have no care about the nation, and the age of ``managing the right optics''.
I suppose all thoughts that humanity has matured after fighting two world wars is just a pipe dream.
I don't have an answer, just the lamentation.
Till the next update.
Saturday, June 06, 2020
I Tire of The World
I tire of the world.
I think it has been an emotion that has been seething within me for the past decade or so. Before I launch into my rant on why I tire of the world, let me preface it with this comment first:
The key problem in the world today is two-fold:
That humanity as a whole is sectarian should not be a surprise to anyone who is used to looking at human history. There were only three main situations where such overt discrimination were set aside among individual groups of people:
I claim that humanity has gotten more sectarian now because those three situations are getting quickly ignored by people as being applicable. There are few ``enemies of the world/humanity'' than in the past, making people feel safer to be isolated with their in-groups instead of continuously engaging with their out-groups to maintain their existence; many developed countries have been developed for so long that they have forgotten the long supply chains that bind them to the development of the rest of the world, believing that if they had gone into isolationism (or nativism, to use the trending term now), they would come out ahead; many developed or nearly-developed countries are also benefitting from the world-scale ease of sharing of knowledge through the Internet that they start believing that any previously thought of hegemonic superiority of some other group's technological/economical power is no longer at play now, and with that, start embarking on a journey of overtly challenging the former hegemon.
Are those three observations that many people make correct? Personally, I don't think so. While Heinlein might say that only insects specialise, the fact is that our modern societies have an over reliance of technology-based goods and services that was woven tightly together for over two hundred years. And by ``technology-based goods'', I'm not even talking about computer/information technology, but am referring to things as fundamental as agriculture, and tool manufacturing. Every piece of technology has a supply chain of related technologies behind them, and there are many of these just to support the modern human. Even in the case of developing countries where these things don't seem relevant, they will need basic food, power, shelter, and information infrastructures just so that they can advance into larger and larger groups.
And yes, that is my criteria for advancement of humanity. That the better we are at cooperating, the higher the level of progress. Because it is within the concept of massive cooperation that we can build upon each other's work to achieve higher levels of effectiveness in improving our lives. And life improvement means to do more ``work'' with less ``effort'' so that we can really start living our lives beyond that of mere work.
But back to the point. I think that we are at a very dangerous crossroads for humanity in general, with these errorneous judgements on our supposed individual [group's] strengths and the apparent lack of weaknesses. And it is not being helped by the second big factor, which is the reinforcement of global-scale echo chambers via hyperconnectedness.
To claim that hyperconnectedness creates and maintains global-scale echo chambers isn't wholly correct. There are three parts of this story:
Part one is something to do with human nature and not the actual communication/information network topology. It takes a certain type of nature to be willing to explore outside of one's comfort zone---this is true even in circumstances like these where there is no need to physically put oneself in danger. One can be quite anonymous on the 'net; usually there is no need to be ``registered'' just to read what others have to say, and it used to be the case where interactions could be relatively pseudonymous, before the concept of the ``social media'' came into play. With the rise of ``social media'', it takes even less effort to head out into the wild ``digital unknown'' to look around.
The unfortunate thing that has been demonstrated over the past decade is that even with a lot of things out there in the Internet, people are still more comfortable with things that they know. For example, maybe I discovered something cool about arbology, but in the end, I am more likely to spend time interacting/reading stuff on computer science than that. Now replace these neutral ``knowledge'' materials with something more socio-political, and we'll start to get the start of the echo chambers that we are seeing now.
Multiply that by the ``platform providers'' who discreetly set up algorithms that show more of the same to people who use their platform and rely on it to provide the ``latest news from things they are interested in'', we get the echo chamber of today.
That's bad because it is a regression from the tolerance that had formed in the Age of Exploration. Then we have irresponsible ``leaders'' who use these echo chambers to further their own agenda through all the echoing and make tolerance itself a bad word.
And then we get the increase in the sectarian nature of humanity all over again.
If you think I'm just talking about the US now, you're not quite right. It is not just the US right now. It is almost impossible these days to do anything without triggering off the self-righteous ``my-way-or-the-highway'' types. There is 2×2 comic of two people and a donkey, and a whole bunch of third party criticisms on whatever the people were doing with the donkey (it can be easily found with the terms I give).
If I write a novel, someone will say ``this is a cis-male written piece of novel---it is too anthro-centric and does not explore the non-binary nature of gender issues''. If I write a piece of music for the flute, someone can say ``this is cultural misappropriation---as a Chinese ethnic person, he should not be misappropriating European culture as it is disrespectful''. If I write a social commentary with evidence backing it up, someone will add ``his points cannot be taken to be valid because he is not intersectional with the group he is talking about---he needs to check his majority privilege as only those who are in the in-group are allowed to provide commentary''.
The previous paragraph is hypothetical for me personally---I'm not high profile nor controversial enough to be a target of such things. But seeing post after post, day after day of people saying things of that nature is draining on my so-called ``faith in humanity''.
``But MT,'' you might say, ``that ain't the whole world.'' And you'd be right, that ain't the whole world. However, perception can be reality some times, and that's what's getting me down.
And that, my friends, is why I turned to scripture and to God. This world isn't good enough for me any more---not that it was to begin with. And I've been shown a different way.
I think it has been an emotion that has been seething within me for the past decade or so. Before I launch into my rant on why I tire of the world, let me preface it with this comment first:
I know that some of the struggles that I am going to mention here are real to the people who are involved, I acknowledge that your struggle exists. But me talking about my own struggles does not invalidate your struggles---if you cannot see that and have a strong weird sense of a ``if you are not with me you are therefore against me' mentality, then I recommend you go away and read something else somewhere and leave me alone.With that out of the way, here we go.
The key problem in the world today is two-fold:
- Humanity has gotten more sectarian in nature; and
- Hyperconnectedness has caused massive ``echo chambers'' that limit horizons, further contributing to the vicious cycle.
That humanity as a whole is sectarian should not be a surprise to anyone who is used to looking at human history. There were only three main situations where such overt discrimination were set aside among individual groups of people:
- Existential threat from a third group of people who could be stopped/annihilated only through an alliance of the two (or more) groups of people who were formally discriminative of each other;
- Commerce in the form of trade with excess resources a group has for resources that the group needs;
- Hegemonic superiority of the other group either through sheer numbers or the use of technological/economical power.
I claim that humanity has gotten more sectarian now because those three situations are getting quickly ignored by people as being applicable. There are few ``enemies of the world/humanity'' than in the past, making people feel safer to be isolated with their in-groups instead of continuously engaging with their out-groups to maintain their existence; many developed countries have been developed for so long that they have forgotten the long supply chains that bind them to the development of the rest of the world, believing that if they had gone into isolationism (or nativism, to use the trending term now), they would come out ahead; many developed or nearly-developed countries are also benefitting from the world-scale ease of sharing of knowledge through the Internet that they start believing that any previously thought of hegemonic superiority of some other group's technological/economical power is no longer at play now, and with that, start embarking on a journey of overtly challenging the former hegemon.
Are those three observations that many people make correct? Personally, I don't think so. While Heinlein might say that only insects specialise, the fact is that our modern societies have an over reliance of technology-based goods and services that was woven tightly together for over two hundred years. And by ``technology-based goods'', I'm not even talking about computer/information technology, but am referring to things as fundamental as agriculture, and tool manufacturing. Every piece of technology has a supply chain of related technologies behind them, and there are many of these just to support the modern human. Even in the case of developing countries where these things don't seem relevant, they will need basic food, power, shelter, and information infrastructures just so that they can advance into larger and larger groups.
And yes, that is my criteria for advancement of humanity. That the better we are at cooperating, the higher the level of progress. Because it is within the concept of massive cooperation that we can build upon each other's work to achieve higher levels of effectiveness in improving our lives. And life improvement means to do more ``work'' with less ``effort'' so that we can really start living our lives beyond that of mere work.
But back to the point. I think that we are at a very dangerous crossroads for humanity in general, with these errorneous judgements on our supposed individual [group's] strengths and the apparent lack of weaknesses. And it is not being helped by the second big factor, which is the reinforcement of global-scale echo chambers via hyperconnectedness.
To claim that hyperconnectedness creates and maintains global-scale echo chambers isn't wholly correct. There are three parts of this story:
- Hyperconnectedness increases fatigue and dilution of interest;
- To combat such fatigue and interest dilution, people drift more towards what they know instead of exploring;
- Companies that provide such hyperconnectedness further encourage people to gather into fewer ``niched'' groups to maintain minimal [high] levels of activity to stay relevant [and improve potential revenue through advertising].
Part one is something to do with human nature and not the actual communication/information network topology. It takes a certain type of nature to be willing to explore outside of one's comfort zone---this is true even in circumstances like these where there is no need to physically put oneself in danger. One can be quite anonymous on the 'net; usually there is no need to be ``registered'' just to read what others have to say, and it used to be the case where interactions could be relatively pseudonymous, before the concept of the ``social media'' came into play. With the rise of ``social media'', it takes even less effort to head out into the wild ``digital unknown'' to look around.
The unfortunate thing that has been demonstrated over the past decade is that even with a lot of things out there in the Internet, people are still more comfortable with things that they know. For example, maybe I discovered something cool about arbology, but in the end, I am more likely to spend time interacting/reading stuff on computer science than that. Now replace these neutral ``knowledge'' materials with something more socio-political, and we'll start to get the start of the echo chambers that we are seeing now.
Multiply that by the ``platform providers'' who discreetly set up algorithms that show more of the same to people who use their platform and rely on it to provide the ``latest news from things they are interested in'', we get the echo chamber of today.
That's bad because it is a regression from the tolerance that had formed in the Age of Exploration. Then we have irresponsible ``leaders'' who use these echo chambers to further their own agenda through all the echoing and make tolerance itself a bad word.
And then we get the increase in the sectarian nature of humanity all over again.
If you think I'm just talking about the US now, you're not quite right. It is not just the US right now. It is almost impossible these days to do anything without triggering off the self-righteous ``my-way-or-the-highway'' types. There is 2×2 comic of two people and a donkey, and a whole bunch of third party criticisms on whatever the people were doing with the donkey (it can be easily found with the terms I give).
If I write a novel, someone will say ``this is a cis-male written piece of novel---it is too anthro-centric and does not explore the non-binary nature of gender issues''. If I write a piece of music for the flute, someone can say ``this is cultural misappropriation---as a Chinese ethnic person, he should not be misappropriating European culture as it is disrespectful''. If I write a social commentary with evidence backing it up, someone will add ``his points cannot be taken to be valid because he is not intersectional with the group he is talking about---he needs to check his majority privilege as only those who are in the in-group are allowed to provide commentary''.
The previous paragraph is hypothetical for me personally---I'm not high profile nor controversial enough to be a target of such things. But seeing post after post, day after day of people saying things of that nature is draining on my so-called ``faith in humanity''.
``But MT,'' you might say, ``that ain't the whole world.'' And you'd be right, that ain't the whole world. However, perception can be reality some times, and that's what's getting me down.
And that, my friends, is why I turned to scripture and to God. This world isn't good enough for me any more---not that it was to begin with. And I've been shown a different way.
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