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Eight Out Of China’s Top Nine Government Officials Are Scientists

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Re: Eight Out Of China’s Top Nine Government Officials Are Scientists

#111

Post by jacques_chester »

lionhearted wrote: post #18
pyre wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's maybe a trade-off? Sure we have bozos for politicians in the US, but in the US government corruption usually doesn't lead to people 'disappearing.' Though we're definitely making great strides in that direction.

The United States still has, overall, a much better set of governance, courts, regulation, etc. than China. But the USA is trending gradually downwards and China is trending quickly upwards. Now it's interesting, countries can catch up a lot faster than they can lead. If a country is a bit backwards, with the right set of leadership, they can very quickly modernize, becoming extremely important economically and geopo…

Back in the 1990s economists found that the major cause of improvements for the "Asian tigers" was due to increases in inputs -- that is, people and material were actually used for the first time. But productivity per person or unit of capital is actually quite poor and in the long run, this places a limit on that rapid growth.

We're already seeing work being outsourced from China to even cheaper countries as China's supply of labour becomes fully engaged.

Re: Eight Out Of China’s Top Nine Government Officials Are Scientists

#112

Post by jacques_chester »

stcredzero wrote: post #40
lionhearted wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The United States still has, overall, a much better set of governance, courts, regulation, etc. than China. But the USA is trending gradually downwards and China is trending quickly upwards. Now it's interesting, countries can catch up a lot faster than they can lead. If a country is a bit backwards, with the right set of leadership, they can very quickly modernize, becoming extremely important economically and geopo…

If a country is a bit backwards, with the right set of leadership, they can very quickly modernize, becoming extremely important economically and geopolitically in ~30 years when starting almost from scratch. It's not only leadership. If there is a long track record of commerce and admiration of scholarship, a culture can enable rapid modernization. I think this is why Japan, Korea, and China have done very well for…

Cultural antecedents are not a necessary pre-condition for modernisation. The USSR modernised very rapidly and it started off with mass illiteracy.

Re: Eight Out Of China’s Top Nine Government Officials Are Scientists

#114

Post by cabalamat »

varjag wrote: post #81
cabalamat wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the results so far haven't been uplifting 10% growth every year for a quarter of a century? I regard that as very impressive. > I don't think that a comparison of the US system vs. China is going to produce a clear "winner" It's likely that one of these two countries is going to end up dominating the world. Of course, it's not so much about countries as social systems: both have their strengths and weaknesses. > An…

> 10% growth every year for a quarter of a century? I regard that as very impressive. They are catching up to status quo. Mostly because they squandered the previous decades scientifically hunting down sparrows and enemies of the state.

> They are catching up to status quo

Yes they are catching up. Three quarters of the countries in the world are catching up -- or trying to -- the most advanced countries, and that's been roughly the situation since the industrial revolution. The difference is that China has been more successful than anyone else at catching up; to the best of my knowledge no other country has ever managed as good a performance (except for poor countries that discover oil, which doesn't really count).

Re: Eight Out Of China’s Top Nine Government Officials Are Scientists

#115

Post by mahrain »

Eliezer wrote: post #65

Eight Out Of Nine American Bloggers Cannot Distinguish Between The Concept of A "Scientist" (As In Someone Who Devises Reproducible Experiments To Test Ideas To Determine Whether They Are Right Or Wrong, And Rejects The Wrong Ones) And Anyone In A Technical Profession.

...and did you know that 78% of all statistics are made up on the spot?

Re: Eight Out Of China’s Top Nine Government Officials Are Scientists

#116

Post by varjag »

nopassrecover wrote: post #106
varjag wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 10% growth every year for a quarter of a century? I regard that as very impressive. They are catching up to status quo. Mostly because they squandered the previous decades scientifically hunting down sparrows and enemies of the state.

Which is so different from the War on Terror and the Patriot Act.

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,863327,00.h...

Re: Eight Out Of China’s Top Nine Government Officials Are Scientists

#117

Post by sudhirc »

They may be because when they were growing up studying science was their ticket to wealth,respect, and power. Arguments, disagreements, and self correction are pillars of scientific minds. Autocratic society in which a small disagreement can result is you vanishing, cannot possible nurture scientific minds.

Re: Eight Out Of China’s Top Nine Government Officials Are Scientists

#118

Post by danssig »

ramanujan wrote: post #96
lotusleaf1987 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chomsky has a great quote about this: In the U.S. there is basically one party - The Business Party. It has two factions, called Democrats and Republicans, which are somewhat different but carry out variations of the same policies. By and large, I am opposed to those policies, as is most of the population. I'm not against business, but it shouldn't be our singular goal as a society.

Chomsky denied the Cambodian Holocaust while it was occurring and has never apologized or really publicly reckoned with this. He also keeps his fortune in tax shelters while inveighing against others who do the same. I would thus take his comments about the manifold evils of business with a wee grain of salt; the regimes he has unapologetically flacked for have killed many more people than Google has.

>He also keeps his fortune in tax shelters

His "fortune"? You know he's a college professor right?

Re: Eight Out Of China’s Top Nine Government Officials Are Scientists

#119

Post by danssig »

maxklein wrote: post #39
run4yourlives wrote: post #25

While this is no doubt going to be unpopular here on HackerNews, I'm going to posit the following: This is almost as bad as have 8 of 9 people being Creationists. Better than 90% of a council making decisions for the whole country being of the same persuasion is prone to severe group think. Scientists (or rather, engineers, if you RTFA) aren't immune to this any more than any of us are. If you look at the best run bu…

The one child policy was not created by this cadre of leadership. The male/female imbalance also happens in India, which does not have such a policy.

Doesn't India have a policy of the parents of the daughter needing to pay for all wedding arrangements, making daughters less desirable?

Re: Eight Out Of China’s Top Nine Government Officials Are Scientists

#120

Post by aranazo »

lionhearted wrote: post #32
kentrado wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>As for Chomsky - well, he's completely discredited to me after comparing his writings about Southeast Asia to spending significant amounts of time in SE Asia. Also the ex-Communist countries. He's a relic from a dead age. Ad Hominem circumstantial. >Guaranteed perspective-changer. If I was a BP CEO I would have a different perspective on the oil spill, and If I was a Goldman&Sachs CEO I would have a different perspe…

> Ad Hominem circumstantial. Hey, welcome to Hacker News. This is your second comment, your first was, "Meanwhile, red necks scream in anger, teir took uor jobs!!" So, let me clue you in to the vibe here. First, we aim for a really high level of civility here. Second, standard throwing out of cliche is frowned upon - yeah, we get it. Nobody liked the bailouts and the BP oil spill was bad. But most importantly - here,…

Ad Hominem? not quite. However you did trot out 3 of the 4 top straw-man attacks on Chomsky, namely he's hard left, supported the Khmer Rouge, and is rabidly Anti-American. You forgot to accuse him of anti-antisemitism.
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