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Pakistan cuts off phone and internet services on election day

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Re: Pakistan cuts off phone and internet services on election day

#181

Post by philwelch »

ken47 wrote: post #162
choilive wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Korea has a long history (along with China) on using tests to determine your place in society. Korea's version of the civil service examinations (known as the gwageo) have been around for like a milleniun, and it was pretty much your only way into the middle and upper class of society. The university entrance exams is just the modern cultural continuation of it.

Which is why Korea has historically spent an inordinate proportion of its intellectual capital trying to pass an exam rather than innovating. Modern Korea is much better than that, but there is still room for improvement.

Sometimes it seems like half the stuff I own is from Korea. I’d say they’re innovating just fine.

Re: Pakistan cuts off phone and internet services on election day

#182

Post by numpad0 »

ken47 wrote: post #163
numpad0 wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't SAT tests in US exactly the same as the Korean system?

The Korean test is significantly more difficult, if for no other reason, it takes significantly more time than the SAT to complete. Also, the maximum question difficulty is said to be much harder.

I don't see why there won't be a test taking arms race with SAT tests, that happened in all of CJK countries - the test has to have a dynamic range, and it's going to be golden tickets for upper middle classes, so it's going to be heavily gamed, and so the difficulty must monotonically grow to match.

That you can take SAT tests multiple times as pointed out in sibling comment, that could change the dynamic but doesn't seem like a fundamental change, I think there is still the path for "the test" to become such.

Re: Pakistan cuts off phone and internet services on election day

#183

Post by philwelch »

The_Colonel wrote: post #67
bluefirebrand wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The West" is a very murky sort of definition. Arguably the colloquial "Cultural West" is what is on the Western side of what used to be called the Iron Curtain. Poland was definitely on the Eastern side of that.

Iron Curtain was a political, not cultural border. Western civilization usually includes all European catholic countries, i. e. also Poland. (Huntington is a notorious example)

One of the classic dividing lines between East and West, the Hajnal line, goes straight through modern Poland. It’s closer to the historic border between Poland and Germany though.

Re: Pakistan cuts off phone and internet services on election day

#184

Post by fakedang »

chihuahua wrote: post #148
user3939382 wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

If the U.S. was the real ruler in Pakistan, I think Pakistan would not have supported the Taliban in Afghanistan the entire time U.S. troops were in Afghanistan. And they would not have been sheltering Osama bin Laden in Abbotabad, less than 1 mile from the Pakistan Military Academy.

Why not play both sides of the same coin? Every country does that. Eg: US during Iran-contra affair.

Re: Pakistan cuts off phone and internet services on election day

#185

Post by philwelch »

FirmwareBurner wrote: post #114
The_Colonel wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Iron Curtain was a political, not cultural border. Western civilization usually includes all European catholic countries, i. e. also Poland. (Huntington is a notorious example)

>Western civilization usually includes all European catholic countries, i. e. also Poland. (Huntington is a notorious example) What about European Orthodox countries? Does civilization only tie to catholic religion?

It’s no coincidence that the term “Eastern Orthodox” is widely used for that communion of churches; while the Orthodox world is still traditionally considered part of Christendom, it is still distinguished from the “West”.

Re: Pakistan cuts off phone and internet services on election day

#186

Post by havercosine »

standardUser wrote: post #99
devoutsalsa wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was curious, so I googled… - “The government grounds aircraft or reroutes flights to keep students from getting distracted during the biggest test of their lives.” - “ On the streets Thursday morning, you could hear more sirens than usual, because anyone running late to the competitive exam can call for a free police escort to rush them straight to the test site.” - “Success is defined narrowly. Get a high score on…

Any test that is so big that it requires shutting down large sections of society is way, way too big. And I mean, WAY too big, like grotesquely so. Just imagining that level of stress stresses me out.

Most countries in South, South East Asia have made exams as a make and break deal for every student. In India, there are so many kids staying away from home in cities which are just exam preparation centres, with routine news of suicides.

Looking back on my life I think we asians have definitely stretched this way too far. Unfortunately, in high & young population countries like ours these exams are perceived as the only non corrupt way of moving out of low income trap. So this will go on :-(

Re: Pakistan cuts off phone and internet services on election day

#187

Post by petre »

klassik wrote: post #139
petre wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Drug abuse is rare and severely punished. You go to prison if you're Korean, you did drugs recently and got caught in Korea. It doesn't matter if you've smoked pot overseas, flew back to Korea, got tested and the drug test came out positive. They'll still throw you in prison.

When do they test you?

Random tests at the airport for instance, or more recently when you enroll for military service, as all males are required to.

The "resourceful youth" have to deal with a competitive environment, highschool bullying, exams, so they have a lot to do.

Prison sentence for drug use is up to 5 years.

Re: Pakistan cuts off phone and internet services on election day

#188

Post by numpad0 »

standardUser wrote: post #143
petre wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Drug abuse is rare and severely punished. You go to prison if you're Korean, you did drugs recently and got caught in Korea. It doesn't matter if you've smoked pot overseas, flew back to Korea, got tested and the drug test came out positive. They'll still throw you in prison.

I highly doubt the resourceful youth of Korea have not discovered several ways to find and abuse stimulants to help them study. Just curious, what is the average prison sentence in Korea for a 16-year old found guilty of buying Adderall online?

Six months of time and >$1.5m gone from lifetime earnings? Definitely needs clarification from Korean guys, though.

Re: Pakistan cuts off phone and internet services on election day

#189

Post by [deleted] »

avgcorrection wrote: post #76
hiAndrewQuinn wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait, do Polish people not consider themselves part of the West? Genuine question. I've met and worked with quite a few Poles since moving to the EU and my current takeaway is that it's in a really interesting fusion time between West, East, and some more mysterious third thing.

On the other hand an American (migrant) doing an about face about a group of people based on preconceived notions is completely expected.

[deleted]

Re: Pakistan cuts off phone and internet services on election day

#190

Post by philwelch »

omajid wrote: post #10
nonrandomstring wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an idea, media moratoriums immediately prior to elections seems fairly sensible. AI and disinformation attacks are likely to be 'last minute'. Maybe the entire phone and Internet system is going a bit far. Also, obtaining broad consensus for just muting the main social media channels doesn't seem that unreasonable. My thought is, unless gunmen are showing up at polling stations, what exactly is so urgent to discus…

I think looking at actions around elections in Pakistan through a western lens can lead to false conclusions easily. Let me try and explain through an analogy. Suppose a US political party (A) decided it wanted to win the US elections no matter what. And it had enough clout, "campaign contributions", among the various government agencies (courts, police, FBI) to make it happen. But it just didn't have the votes to ma…

Sadly, it isn’t that hard to imagine these kinds of tactics being used in a western democracy. I don’t want to weigh in on the specific controversies but you’ve basically described small extrapolations from various tactics both US parties have variously been accused of trying.
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