Stick to your own species (a short review of "Her")

Given the sudden surge of interest in how close we may be to creating a true Artificial General Intelligence, I thought I would finally get around to watching the well reviewed 2013 science fiction movie "Her".   

I don't think it's giving anything away to explain that the plot is all about a lonely, just divorced guy falling in love with the AGI personality that is his computer's new operating system.  But to continue the review, I will get well and truly into SPOILER territory.

 

The relationship is purely verbal - there's no downloading of the intelligence into any type of robotic physical form, as I thought might be on the cards.   There is sex though - of the masturbatory kind (oddly, on both sides - which I find an odd concept for a non physical entity.)   

Being set in the future, it's not as if the fact of a man having a "relationship" with his software is even played as anything unusual - he confesses to his old college (physical, female) friend that the person he's been seeing is his operating system, and she shrugs it off, and confirms she knows other people dating their AI too.   The AI girlfriend also goes on a group date with two of his (physical) buddies - the three of them listen to the AI on wireless earphones, and converse with her.

The end result is - a remarkably inert story in which watching a man having conversations with a disembodied intelligence takes up about 90% of the movie, and very little else happens.

The relationship ends with his AI evolving past a relationship with a mere human mind, and running off with a more sophisticated AI created by another group - one based on the quasi Buddhist philosopher Alan Watts!   They both run away together into some sort of higher level of reality - a kind of running away to be with a better lover in the Noosphere. 

I thought that this was a credible, slightly amusing, idea for a science fiction story: but if you ask me, it's really only got enough meat on it for something like a 30 minute Twilight Zone episode, rather than a movie running over 2 hours.

For this reason, I can't recommend it.   Too little content drawn out too painfully slowly, if you ask me.

 

About Barry

I had forgotten, really, how big Barry Humphries had been for a time in America, but his (quite long and detailed) obituaries in the Washington Post  and New York Times correct that. 

His trajectory through life was interesting and a little peculiar: making entry into comedy by satirising the comfortable middle class from which he came (a very Lefty of thing to do, and the crudity of his Barry McKenzie period - which leaves me cold - was typical of the taste of the artsy Left crowd of the time), to giving the impression of being somewhat coddled by and absorbed into the world of (especially) the British establishment because his "roasting" of them gave sufficient amusement, much like a court jester of old (or at least, how we imagine court jesters operated).   I suppose it was a bit similar to Clive James, except he genuinely came from a poor background and climbed out if it with a more high brow self education (although still playing the clown when it suited.)   Maybe he still counted as a "champagne socialist" for some of his life, although when someone starts writing in The Spectator (and having one of your last conversations with Rowan Dean - groan) the absorption into the Right seems total.   

Still, there is no doubt at all that people admired him (me too, I would always watch his TV specials from the late 80's onwards) because of the incredible speed, and absurdity, of his wit.   I mean, what sort of mind does it take to come up with the idea of a housewife making a career for herself while her frail husband is on a prostate support machine in his nursing home?    Still, I was never sure I would enjoy one of his stage shows with their trademark harassment of (at least one, I think) audience member.   I always worried I would find myself sympathising too much with the victim, so I never took the opportunity to see him.  

I think it is also true to say that Dame Edna herself was genuinely an apolitical character, given that the key to so much of the humour was her gormless self absorption, and this is something that can afflict people on all parts of the political spectrum.   

People on Twitter have dug up and re-publicised Hannah Gadsby's 5 year old attack on Humphries, and many in the transgender Twitter crowd have confirmed that his name was verbotten because he was not - to put it mildly - on their side.  Given my disdain of most modern stand up comedy,  I think the true lesson Gadsby and her ilk should take from him is how successful you can be when your material is not autobiographical and about working out and publicising your  private problems on stage. 

Saffron, noted

Over the years, I have often commented how a recipe I was trying was supposed to use saffron, but I never have it on hand (in fact, had never bought it.)

That changed on the weekend - at the West End markets, a spice selling stall had it, with one gram (from Iran) going for $8.    The stall holder told me it was much cheaper than at the supermarket, and he was right - I see this morning that Coles sells .25 g for $14.90.   But then again - did I really get a full gram in the small container I bought?  I didn't weigh it, but if this is .25 gram:

...it looks suspiciously like the same amount I got.   Anyway, even if I got only that amount, it was still substantially cheaper.

So, I finally got to put a pinch full in a bit of hot water, watch it go golden, and smell it.  I thought it reminded me strongly of tobacco, which I doubt is the intention.   But then again, I just found this on someone's website (my bold):

Many authorities describe the smell of saffron as sweet. I would say it reminds me of paella – a distinctive smell that is not entirely sweet. Rather, I find it both sweet and husky. It is no surprise that saffron brings paella to mind. That dish include saffron in the rice and the addition of the spice gives paella an unforgettable aroma. For examples of how to use saffron in paella rice, check out this seafood paella or this chicken, mushroom and shrimp paella, both from José Andres. One saffron producer describes the aroma of real saffron as “a blend of earth, tobacco, vanilla, honey, salty sweet.”

So I guess there is no reason to doubt it is real saffron.

In any case, I was using it in chicken chermoula tagine, and while it did help the colour, I doubt that in such a strong combination of flavour that it made much difference.  I will try a paella with it, though, or maybe just a simple saffron rice, and see how much sense of flavour I can get from it.

 

A bad review of note

Yes, I had seen the trailer for this Apple TV movie Ghosted a few weeks ago, and thought it looked really, remarkably, bad in a "streaming service does boring formulaic crap we've seen 20 times before but hopes we won't notice because of the big star" kind of way.   

And this review of it in The Guardian confirms my impression was accurate:

Ghosted is content dictated by algorithm at its absolute, industry-shaming worst, so carelessly and lifelessly cobbled together that we’re inclined to believe it’s the first film created entirely by AI. It’s almost avant-garde in its all-consuming awfulness, made with sheer contempt for the usual base staples one expects from a movie, head-shakingly shambolic on all fronts. It’s smug elevator pitch over plot – a guy gets ghosted by a woman who ends up being a secret agent – and while the early inevitable trailer scenes that take us to the end of this logline are bad enough they’re nowhere near as bad as what follows....

...The death of the movie star has been greatly overstated but the pairing of Evans and Armas (previously seen in Knives Out and The Gray Man) is so disastrously misjudged, it does make one seriously question what the industry now thinks a star is and what we as an audience are expected to accept from them. Like last year’s similarly wretched Red Notice, which saw Ryan Reynolds, the Rock and Gal Gadot all compete to see who could be the least charismatic actor on screen, it’s as actively uncomfortable for us as it appears to be for them (a scene of the pair kissing on a beach is so glumly reticent that it seems as though it was performed at gunpoint). It’s not as if the ChatGPT-level script gives them much of anything to work with (“You thought you met a hottie, not a Mata Hari!” is an almost impressively heinous attempt at a zinger) but well-paid stars of this calibre should be able to bring more of an uplift; they’re stilted when they should be sleek.

Amusingly, the headline for the Indie Wire review reads:

‘Ghosted’ Review: At Least It’s Shorter Than ‘The Gray Man’

Yes:  I had to give up on The Gray Man - it was awful in what sounds like pretty much exactly the same way.

Castration in the news

In the red hot trans culture wars, the (what?) anti trans/trans sceptic/TERF-y side has recently been talking about this:

Now, “eunuch” has become a gender identity, according to the World Professional Association of Transgender Health (WPATH), which released revised standards of care last month. The standards say a eunuch isn’t just a castrated male but now also includes men who “wish to eliminate masculine physical features, masculine genitals, or genital functioning.” This would include men who have not been castrated but want to be one day. The association says eunuchs are part of a “gender diverse umbrella” that includes being transgender and nonbinary....

To discourage men from pursuing risky back-alley castrations, WPATH now recommends licensed medical professionals perform orchiectomies (surgical removal of testicles) and oversee any hormone treatments.

Facilities and surgeons who offer transgender treatment usually do not offer services for men wishing to become eunuchs. But some already do, including a plastic surgeon in California who performs “gender nullification” procedures as part of a male-to-eunuch operation.

Most self-identified eunuchs suffer from what academics call body integrity identity disorder—a desire to cut off parts of one’s body—or body dysmorphic disorder, an obsession over the flaws in one’s body. While these professionals concur that eunuchs have particular healthcare needs, there is disagreement about how best to treat them.

The matter of underground castration is also in the news because of a case in London:

Two men have admitted removing body parts of a man who is accused of carrying out castrations and broadcasting the footage on his “eunuch maker” website.

Nathan Arnold, 48, a nurse from South Kensington, west London, admitted the partial removal of Marius Gustavson’s nipple in the summer of 2019.

Damien Byrnes, 35, from Tottenham, north London, admitted removing Gustavson’s penis on 18 February 2017.

Gustavson, who is originally from Norway, is said to have been the ringleader in a conspiracy involving up to 29 offences of extreme body modifications, the removal of body parts, the trade in body parts and the uploading of videos.

Readers may recall that I have posted before about a similar case that happened in Brisbane recently.

I do think that a group of surgeons and psychologists/psychiatrists who make a living out of providing transgender services using language to normalise men desiring castration as "just another gender identity" should give pause to all reasonable people to at least question their reasoning in all transgender matters.  

The particular problem facing India

First story:

India is set to overtake China to become the most populous country in the world by the middle of this year, data released by the United Nations shows.

India's population is expected to reach 1.4286 billion - 2.9 million more than its neighbour on 1.4257 billion.

The Asian nations have accounted for more than a third of the global population for over 70 years.

Second story:

 Heatwave: Is India ready to deal with extreme temperatures?

 Earlier this week, 12 people died from heatstroke and many others were admitted to hospital after attending a government-sponsored event in an open ground under a blazing sun in Navi Mumbai in India's Maharashtra state....

The weather office has predicted above-average temperatures and heatwaves until the end of May. Average temperatures in India have risen by around 0.7% between 1901 and 2018, partly due to climate change.

Heatwaves killed more than 22,000 people between 1992 and 2015, according to official figures. Experts reckon the actual toll would be much higher. Yet, the country really "hasn't understood the importance of heat and how heat can kill", says Dileep Mavalankar, director of the Gujarat-based Indian Institute of Public Health. "This is partly because we don't compile our mortality data properly."

 

When doing science was a such a slog

I didn't know much about Alfred Russel Wallace, the contemporary and ally of Charles Darwin who independently realised that natural selection was a thing. But a book review of a new biography of him at the Wall Street Journal fills in some gaps.  (I found this via Arts and Letters Daily, and I'm not sure if this link will get you there.)  

I didn't know that he into socialism, and spiritualism; but he certainly put the hard work in when it came to studying the natural world.   Some extracts:

 In 1844, a 21-year-old Wallace met Henry Walter Bates, a young man from a similar background, at the mechanics’ institute in Leicester. Bates had accumulated a sizable collection of beetles, and Wallace joined him in the field and in spirited scientific debates, notably over transmutation, the controversial idea that species changed over time. Transmutation clashed with prevailing notions of a micromanaging creator who designed each organism to fit a specific niche and instead suggested a hands-off deity or perhaps none at all. Beetles could help answer these questions, Wallace thought, if he studied them thoroughly enough.

Wallace and Bates hatched an ambitious plan to travel to South America. They would send beetles back to museums and private collections to fund their travels. The two young men were utterly determined, Mr. Costa writes, “to contribute to the grand scientific issues of the day,” particularly that mystery of mysteries, the origin of species.

In Brazil, Wallace accidently shot himself in the hand and suffered multiple bouts of malaria, yet he collected assiduously and kept moving even in the worst of conditions. During his second year there, after he and Bates had gone their separate ways, and Wallace’s younger brother Edward had joined him, Wallace began his Amazon investigations in earnest. As he lurched his way into Brazil’s interior, he became as studied in palms and birds as in plants and beetles. He sketched the fish he ate for lunch, and surveyed and mapped almost compulsively.

It was during Wallace’s rare moments of downtime, usually forced by injury or illness, that the theorizing and synthesizing occurred. He began to note patterns—why blue macaws are abundant along one part of a river but not another, for example—that seeded his later ideas about speciation and geography. His four years in Brazil ended in double tragedy: the death of Edward from yellow fever and the loss of his collections and notebooks when his departing ship caught fire. Wallace survived in a lifeboat for 10 days before a passing cargo ship rescued him. He was well aware that his scientific future in England, which had been all but guaranteed after such a productive voyage, was now precarious.

He then headed off to Asia for many more years of observation and collecting specimens.

As for his more esoteric ideas:

Wallace’s early devotion to the utopian Robert Owen, Mr. Costa thinks, predisposed him to a “Rousseauian well of discontent with the state of so-called civilized society,” leading him to view indigenous models of living more favorably than most of his European contemporaries. The same tendencies also predisposed Wallace, Mr. Costa posits, to anti-establishment attitudes when it came to science: Why should one person’s observations count more than another’s? This set him up for trouble upon his return to England.

After a total of 12 years in South America and Asia, Wallace was “admitted to the full and admiring embrace of London’s scientific scene,” Mr. Costa writes. Darwin became his champion and colleague, and Wallace generously promoted all things Darwin and Darwinism. But his embrace of some incongruous positions strained the relationship. Wallace had from a young age rejected a conventional Christian worldview and any attempt to reconcile the Bible with scientific facts. But he couldn’t resist the desire to communicate with a parallel world of spirits. Moreover, he came to argue that the human brain was simply too extraordinary an organ to have been shaped by forces of natural selection, making it a sort of exception. All this was anathema to Darwin.

Mr. Costa points out that spiritualism was wildly popular in the 19th century and that Wallace, like many of his contemporaries, had lost beloved siblings young to disease. In the author’s view, Wallace’s spiritualism was not such a departure from his long-held ideas and principles. The ethical teachings of spiritualism, Mr. Costa contends, fit alongside his ideals of equality and social justice.

Sounds like this book could be a good read.

Jumping over to Wikipedia, it would seem that many of his social views were very progressive, and surprisingly sensible, for his time:

Wallace opposed eugenics, an idea supported by other prominent 19th-century evolutionary thinkers, on the grounds that contemporary society was too corrupt and unjust to allow any reasonable determination of who was fit or unfit.^[72] In his 1890 article "Human Selection" he wrote, "Those who succeed in the race for wealth are by no means the best or the most intelligent ..."^[73] He said, "The world does not want the eugenicist to set it straight," "Give the people good conditions, improve their environment, and all will tend towards the highest type. Eugenics is simply the meddlesome interference of an arrogant, scientific priestcraft."^[74]

In 1898, Wallace wrote a paper advocating a pure paper money system, not backed by silver or gold, which impressed the economist Irving Fisher so much that he dedicated his 1920 book Stabilizing the Dollar to Wallace.^[75]

Wallace wrote on other social and political topics, including in support of women's suffrage and repeatedly on the dangers and wastefulness of militarism.^[76][77] In an 1899 essay, he called for popular opinion to be rallied against warfare by showing people "that all modern wars are dynastic; that they are caused by the ambition, the interests, the jealousies, and the insatiable greed of power of their rulers, or of the great mercantile and financial classes which have power and influence over their rulers; and that the results of war are never good for the people, who yet bear all its burthens (burdens)".^[78] In a letter published by the Daily Mail in 1909, with aviation in its infancy, he advocated an international treaty to ban the military use of aircraft, arguing against the idea "that this new horror is 'inevitable', and that all we can do is to be sure and be in the front rank of the aerial assassins—for surely no other term can so fitly describe the dropping of, say, ten thousand bombs at midnight into an enemy's capital from an invisible flight of airships."^[79]

On the other hand, he was an early vaccination sceptic, and wrote a pamphlet against it. 

Still, a more interesting character than I knew...

Temperature records being broken in April is not a good sign

 

 I didn't know this, though (from a Washington Post article about the current Asian heatwave):

April and May are typically Thailand’s hottest months, but the heat fueled the country’s all-time hottest temperature late last week.

But it has more on records being broken in China:

Meanwhile, hundreds of weather stations across China have seen their warmest April temperatures on record. Climate specialist Jim Yang tweeted that 109 weather stations across 12 provinces broke their record for high temperature for April on Monday. An additional nine stations tied their April record for high temperature.

In another tweet, Yang noted that Monday’s high of 101 degrees (38.2 Celsius) in Yunhe was the highest April temperature on record in the Zhejiang province, beating the previous record by 1.6 Celsius, while Hangzhou reached 95 degrees (35 Celsius) for the first time ever in April. All that was after the temperature climbed past 95 degrees in 10 Chinese provinces on Sunday, according to Yang.

Yes, sort of disappointing, but cowardice and hypocrisy proved

In a Washington Post piece about the Dominion settlement of its claim against Fox News, this is the part that is most shameful:

Perhaps as much as anything, the case reflected the control Trump has over the conservative movement, given the fear Fox demonstrated of what Trump could do to it — a fear that echoes the broader Republican Party’s posture toward Trump.

As has been clear for a long time, a majority of Republicans in government know that Trump is a narcissistic idiot, but refuse to say the truth because his "base" don't want to hear that their cult leader has no clothes.   He's their useful idiot, and three or four decades of letting conservative commentators ramp up the demagoguery of Democrats means they've willingly created a populist monster they can't control - and won't even try to control. 

They prefer power over principle, as does Rupert and his God awful minions, who also have greed as their motivation.

And even though Fox might lose another billion or so dollars...: 

Fox still has to contend with a similar lawsuit from another voting technology company, Smartmatic. The company was often lumped in with Dominion while the false claims were made on Fox, and in some cases the claims against Smartmatic arguably went further.

...the company can, unfortunately, afford it:

Fox, which owns the nation’s leading cable news outlet, had $4 billion in cash in its last financial filing, meaning it would seem to be able to cover such a large payout. But it’s a huge blow to the bottom line.

You can bet that this action will not make any difference to the on air conduct of the network's key "stars", and democracy in America will continue to be under threat from their poisonous tide of commentary.

Update:   Ed Morrissey at Hot Air admits that Fox must have anticipated a big loss, but what a mealy mouth conclusion about "stop the steal":

The amount of this settlement really does look like an admission that Fox new it was going to lose and lose big at trial. This is almost half of what Dominion sought from the lawsuit, after all. Fox clearly calculated their risk as higher than the settlement amount.

With that in mind, what does this say about the “stop the steal” argument? It certainly makes it look false, at a minimum. That may well have some impact on the GOP nomination fight going forward.

 Still can't bring himself to say it is a flat out conspiracy?  Coward.

The opposite of helpful

Ok, I get that Fox might find this message useful if negotiating fees with cable providers for carrying their network (a process which I read recently is in the pipeline)

But to run it when you're about to start defending a huge defamation case about telling what has already been shown to be a huge lie?  Crazy.

Yes, indeed.

Why wouldn't the Dominion lawyer be waving this around in the court when the question of damages arises - "Your Honour, they lie and, by their own advertisement, admit that their audience believes the lies far more than the audience of other networks." 

Pizza and movies

The weekend was notable for two things:

*   Finally, after being told by other family members that it was really good, I went with them to eat at Julius pizza and pasta at Fish Lane in West End.   And yes, it really was excellent wood fired pizza.   It's ridiculously popular, and routinely has a line up to get a table.  But all the food going past our table looked great.   Can strongly recommend.

*   Remember my recommendation for the French action film Lost Bullet?   I re-watched it recently, and still consider it a very pleasing  action film with a script that is just incredibly efficient.   (It only runs for 90 minutes,  but the way in which it feels like there's not a word or scene out of place, and everything just keeps propelling the story forward, it feels unusually satisfying for a short-ish film film.)   Oh look - here's a short review at the New York Times which says exactly what I'm trying to say.

Anyway, at the end of the re-watch, I discovered that there's now Lost Bullet 2 on Netflix, and it has practically all of the same qualities of the first film.   This director/screenwriter really, really, ought to be picked up by Hollywood, for a broader audience.

One quibble:  I think in the first film it never looked like CGI was used, but I would say it must be briefly used in this new one.   Nonetheless, most of the car action still looks very real, and if anything, the chases are on a bigger scale, and more pleasingly shot, than in the first.

So yeah, still terrifically entertaining, and there's going to be a third movie to close out the story.

This reminds me:  late last year it was said that Steven Spielberg was going to direct a movie based on the Bullit character from the Steve McQueen movie.   Spielberg directing a movie centred on car action could be good, I think, but he has since said he's not sure what he's going to direct next.  I get the feeling from this article that he wants to put his feet up a bit more...

Yet more "so, the Voice isn't really necessary" content, at the Conversation

An article at The Conversation about the Kimberley region is entitled:

People in the Kimberley have spent decades asking for basics like water and homes. Will the Voice make their calls more compelling? 

and includes these paragraphs:

In recent decades, the problem has not been that Indigenous people don’t have the opportunity to “advise” governments. Rather, it is that the mechanics of actually delivering solutions on the ground in remote Indigenous Australia have been far from straightforward.

There are no incentives for multitudinous agencies – across local, state and government jurisdictions – to identify program duplication or to invest thought or resources in minimising the burden their demands for consultation place upon remote communities.

Meanwhile, remote communities, certainly in the Kimberley, are falling through the gaps in terms of service delivery. Many people are suffering ongoing issues with basic needs such as housing, water and electricity.

This is clearly a failure of delivery rather than consultation, given it should be obvious to everyone that communities want safe and functional homes to live in.

 

 

Tweets of note

I know I could block them, but it's still irritating that Musk has altered the algorithm so that Twitter now pretends it doesn't know my political leanings from who I follow, and I now receive tweets from the top figures in the MAGA Right.  

Such as:

I also got the original tweet cited within this one:

As for the next Tweet, yes, can you imagine the idiotic MAGA meltdown if (and it seems increasingly likely) that Trump is charged with espionage related crimes?

And look, stupid son is trying to blame DeSantis for a climate change related deluge:

Finally, I reckon this ended up on my feed only because it's what Elon has been looking at and the algorithm pushes that onto the rest of us:

Twitter is awful, but an obvious replacement is still not around...

Marcia Langton explains why the Voice hardly seems necessary

This article at The Conversation quotes Marcia Langton explaining things about the Voice, but it seems to me she is inadvertently explaining why it is being set up to be full of internal conflict, and isn't really necessary:

A key question being asked is how people will be selected to represent their communities. Langton says: “We have to accommodate an already existing Indigenous governance landscape. So across the country we have an enormous number of existing bodies, none of which have any assured way of advising governments. None of them are provided with a formal way to advise governments. I’ll give you two examples.

"One is the Torres Strait Regional Authority. And the other is the ACT Indigenous elected assembly. Now, indeed, both of them can give advice to the state governments, and that’s a good thing. But they don’t sit in an integrated framework. […] We developed a set of principles for the creation of such bodies as the Indigenous voice arrangements.

"Those principles are:

• Empowerment
• inclusive participation
• cultural leadership
• community-led design
• non-duplication and links with existing bodies
• respecting long-term partnerships
• transparency and accountability
• capability driven data
• evidence based decision making.

 "Those are the principles, and it was our preference that those principles be legislated so that each body that is created, should we be successful, complies with those principles.”

Those bullet points indicate a bureaucratic rubberiness that is ripe for conflict inside the aboriginal community.

And if current organisations keep their eye on issues affecting them, then even if they aren't invited to contribute their opinion (which I suspect they would usually be), they are still free to write to the relevant minister or local MP directly about it.

Under the Voice, they will have their opinion filtered through a Canberra representative body, which will no doubt be forced to pick and chose which policy to officially endorse.  

Langton said at her press conference that the trouble with past cases of aboriginal representative bodies (like ATSIC) was that governments turned on them for political reasons, and dissolved them, and claimed that there was no evidence that the organisations had failed.    

I'm no expert on the history of those past attempts at centralised advice bodies, but I very much doubt that they were complete victims of Canberra politics.    

The other thing talked about in the article is an example of local aboriginal input into an issue having good results:

A major point for debate around The Voice is whether it will deliver practical outcomes. Langton illustrates by example.

“As for the kinds of problems that the Voice would be able to tackle much more effectively than governments, I give you the case of the COVID-19 pandemic. The first people to respond effectively, long before governments did so, were the Indigenous health organisations […] The Indigenous community-controlled health sector leaders had dealt with two epidemics in recent history and one in particular had a very high mortality rate. So in response to that, the Indigenous health sector wrote an epidemic plan, and that was about ten years old, but it was easily revised to become the pandemic plan. So they went straight into action when we began to hear the news from overseas about COVID-19.”

“So who was first to close their borders? Not the states and territories. It was the Aboriginal landowners on advice from the Indigenous health sector that closed their borders to stop travel in and out of Aboriginal lands to keep their populations safe.

"Because the most vulnerable populations to COVID-19 were the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander populations with pre-existing health burdens such as chronic diseases, diabetes, kidney disease and so on.

Um, can't that example be used to show that adding an additional layer of bureaucracy onto the present system may slow down government action, and not be necessary at all??

Singapore and "benevolent autocracy"

Interesting opinion piece in the New York Times with the title:

The World Admires Singapore’s Benevolent Autocracy. Should It?

Well, of course, the answer to me seems "yes".   It's fine, as long as you aren't a wannabe politician in the country being subject to terrible politically motivated lawfare. 

Some extracts:

Consider that in 1960, Singapore and Jamaica had roughly the same G.D.P. per capita — about $425, according to World Bank data. By 2021, Singapore’s G.D.P. had risen to $72,794, while Jamaica’s was just $5,181. It’s no wonder that Lee Kuan Yew has become a folk hero. It’s not hard to find people from South Africa, Lebanon and Sri Lanka praying for their own Lee Kuan Yew....

....Lee Kuan Yew contended that people don’t pine for democracy. First and foremost, he said, “they want homes, medicine, jobs, schools,” according to the 1998 book “Lee Kuan Yew: The Man and His Ideas.” He provided those things by pairing business-friendly policies from the West (predictable courts, low taxes, zero tolerance for corruption and an embrace of meritocracy) with socialist-leaning policies from autocracies (heavy government involvement in economic planning and little tolerance for dissent). He created a vast system of public housing, where about 80 percent of Singaporeans currently live. People buy and resell long-term leases to government-built apartments with money the government essentially forced them to save. Singapore holds elections, but the ruling party, which controls much of the media and a host of lucrative jobs, has remained in power since independence.

Anyone who has visited the city-state of nearly six million people has seen how much cleaner and safer and more orderly it feels than the United States. Its airport doubles as a high-end mall. Public gardens bloom free of the litter, pickpockets or homeless encampments that have become familiar sights in U.S. cities. Robberies are so rare — and surveillance so pervasive — that some high-end bars don’t even lock their doors at night. Ferraris and Lamborghinis are everywhere, as if the slogan “a chicken in every pot” had turned into “a sports car in every parking space.”

Actually, I don't notice the high end cars there - but I don't notice cars much anyway.   The country has deliberately made car ownership very expensive, but instead built what's probably the best urban metro system in the world.   

Not entirely sure how money fixes this (cultural?) problem

Here's another recent story of a small, remote aboriginal community (this time in WA) suffering from the types of problems we are seeing in a fairly wide range of Australian towns:  

Late last week, representatives from Halls Creek District High School held a meeting with parents, community members and service providers to brainstorm strategies to address youth offending.

The meeting was called after ongoing break-ins, car thefts and rock attacks that some fear could drive much-needed teachers away from the town.

Teachers are working to turn around chronically low school attendance rates.

The secondary attendance rate at Halls Creek District High School fell from 38 per cent in 2021 to 26 per cent last year, compared to 80 per cent across Western Australia's public schools.

Youth crime rates remain persistently high, and homes occupied by government workers have been a regular target.

The earlier article it links to notes this:

At what point these children will return home is unclear. Many stay out until dawn and don’t attend school the next day. 

Some will replace a good night’s sleep with a nocturnal concoction of adrenaline-spiking car thefts, break-ins, police chases and rock attacks.

Their relentless offending puts them on a path to the sort of intergenerational poverty that is rife in Halls Creek, a town where most of the 1,500 people who live there are Indigenous. 

They face a world marred by high rates of domestic violence and foetal alcohol spectrum disorder. 

As adults, many will struggle to read and write and hold down a job at a time when employment is so readily available that seasonal workers from Pacific countries are filling hospitality positions.

 Now, of course the articles talk about all the usual stuff (drug and alcohol problems, generational disadvantage, inadequate housing, etc etc),  and yeah, it's not as if those aren't real factors.

But I keep thinking:  to get things started in terms of improving living conditions, isn't it a fundamental thing that you have to respect private property rights, and personal safety?   It makes particular sense to respect the private property and physical safety of the people who are re-locate to your area to try  to help you.

And while we can have sympathy for property crime if its genuinely needed to survive (after all, modern Australia was originally built on the back of street thieves sent out on boats) - stoning a teacher's, or doctor's, or trademen's car or residence has nothing at all to do with survival.   It has everything to do with a problematic view of the world that is not going to help anyone - and it's at least close to be able to be called a "cultural problem."   

I know that Right wingers have argued for years that the way forward in terms of aboriginal housing is to move into private ownership, and do away with housing provided by the local community on a kind of rental basis.   I doubt that is a necessary or useful step when its locations in which the remoteness means there is no real "market" with substantial values, and people with inadequate income from government with which to pay off the longest mortgages.   

And there must be systems of communal ownership around the world that do work adequately.

But you have to start with the right attitude towards respecting property rights, whether it be private or communal.   If you can't start there, pouring more money into the town is only going to be wasted money.  

 

  

 

The future of the Liberals

This article by Alan Kohler on the weekend about how the problems in the Liberal Party evolved, and what it can possibly do to resolve them, is very good.

He notes that the merger of the party with the Nationals in Queensland is a large part of the problem, given, as we know, how hot weather scrambles political brains and makes them more prone to nutty versions of conservatism.  (See the American South, and Northern Australia.)   Maybe Russia disproves that - but it's a weird place going back centuries.  Damn, Singapore probably disproves the case too - as although the politics are socially pretty conservative, you couldn't ask for a more science positive place that believes in expertise....

Impressions of Vietnam (Part 2)

We took a day trip from Hanoi to Ninh Binh, the river area with the spectacular limestone hillocks that, as the tour guides say, is "Ha Long Bay on land".  A couple of photos make the comparison clear:

 That's the enclosed bay you get to via Luan cave, in Ha Long Bay.   The next one is Ninh Binh:

I now know that this is called karst geology, and I think it's pretty remarkable that it all starts with an ancient build up of limestone up to 3 kilometres deep (!).  

The rest of the geological history is explained here:

The recipe for this scenic splendor calls for just three simple ingredients: abundant limestone, vigorous recent tectonic activity, and a tropical climate. The first ingredient, a blanket of limestone up to 3 kilometers thick, accumulated during an extended, 130-million-year span from the Mid-Devonian through the Early Triassic, when the South China crustal block, to which Northern Vietnam belongs, was submerged beneath the ocean. The rest of Southeast Asia was appended to the South China block in a complex series of collisions with microcontinents during the Indosinian Orogeny, 250 million to 240 million years ago. The second ingredient — vigorous recent tectonic activity — began to roil the region about 40 million years ago, when Northern Vietnam again rumbled to tectonic life with the intrusion of granites and the onset of major faulting. The 1,000-kilometer-long Red River Fault is Northern Vietnam’s dominant tectonic feature. The Red River, which follows an exceptionally straight course through the country, passing through Hanoi en route, lent its name to the fault, which has been moving with right-lateral motion for the last 5 million years.....

..... movement along the Red River and companion faults has jumbled the surrounding blocks of marine limestone, tilting and folding them in complex ways and ultimately making them more susceptible to dissolution.

When bathed in groundwater, limestone easily dissolves, creating distinctive karst topography. Because this dissolution is speedy in Vietnam’s warm, tropical climate — the third and final ingredient needed to create Northern Vietnam’s legendary scenery — the area’s once-continuous blanket of limestone became riddled with caves until the subterranean texture resembled something like Swiss cheese. The cave roofs eventually collapsed, creating sinkholes, and ultimately, the bedrock left undissolved and still standing comprised landscapes of limestone spires. Northern Vietnam and southeastern China constitute the world’s largest (and, many would argue, the most spectacular) karst region, which visitors can easily access at several stunning locations.

As any survey of travel vlogs on Youtube will show, both Ninh Binh and Ha Long Bay are incredibly popular, with local and international tourists.  There seem to be at least two different places where you can start on a 2 hour or so rowboat trip on the river around Ninh Binh, and I don't even know the name of the place where we started, but it had a new looking, very large tourist building:

The scenery on the river is, of course, spectacular, and there are parts with some type of temple on them which it seemed some people got to visit, but not us.  (I suspect they are modern, and part of the intense development of the area into a prime tourist spot.)   There are long caves you go through (on boat), too.

 

There's also a famous lookout in the area, but I didn't go up it due to my wife's current hip problem.  We rode some bicycles instead.   The fields were currently a bit rice bare, but I can imagine this ride looking good when the rice is fully grown:

And unfortunately, when I see ducks in this setting, my mind does wander to the question of whether they are breeding the next dangerous bout of avian flu:

Being a bit science nerdy, the main thing I would have liked to have added somewhere on the tour is an explanation of the geology of the area.

But yeah, like Ha Long Bay, it's an area you just have to visit if in Hanoi and the weather is up to it.

Back to work now...

Religion videos recommended - again

I've posted some of his videos before, but man, I do love the quality of the content and the presentation style of Andrew Henry at his Religion for Breakfast Youtube channel.

For example, his recent video summarising Tibetan Buddhism covered all the key stuff in his usual succinct and clear style, and made a point I guess I hadn't clearly "got" before:

 

And for Easter, I watched his summary of the debate over the likely site of the tomb of Jesus:

  

I've noticed on his Channel that the view numbers of his videos seems to swing wildly from modest to high. I mean, I don't watch all of them either, but overall, he deserves a wider viewership...

Impressions of Vietnam (Part 1)

I've been meaning to do a holiday summary post, from my recent short trip to Hanoi (and some surrounding areas in late February.  Let's go.

My overall summary of Hanoi, and the bit of Vietnam around it:   there's a lot going on.   If you look at Youtube travel videos, no one ever says a bad word about the place, and is usually overwhelmed by Hanoi's Old Quarter, with its narrow, crowded, somewhat frenetic streets, French design influence, and overall liveliness.  It's hard to imagine how badly the Covid must have hurt the place.   Yet, despite the obvious importance of tourism, the Old Quarter is still a part of the city used by locals - I mean, this is the (very nice) hotel we stayed at:

..and metres down that road there were sidewalk shops selling un-refrigerated meat and lots of fruit and vegetables. 

Oddly, despite the huge number of scooters, I never noticed exhaust fumes, and it's true:  to cross the street, you just have to be brave and walk in straight lines and at a steady pace, so they can (more or less) flow around you.   The biggest worry was watching my wife looking at Google maps too closely and losing situational awareness, so to speak.

I did see one accident, but it was on the day trip to Ninh Binh, when an old guy on a scooter ran into a guy in my group, knocking him over from behind, in a temple area and on a wide thoroughfare that I wouldn't even call a normal street.   You can see for yourself:

 

The old guy wanted compensation for some broken pots, but the tour guide and some local official defended the young-ish Malaysian tourist (in fact, the guide told him not to offer compensation).   It had the feeling of a possible scam, although the driver was pretty old (I would guess his 70's?) and I am inclined to put it down to his feeble driving skills, as I doubt he was into deliberately taking a fall off his scooter.

Funnily enough, when I took street photos in Hanoi, they never really seemed to convey adequately the actual busy-ness of the roads:

 

 

OK, I guess the last pic looks a bit busy - but it's worse in real life.  (Too many tourists walk around doing selfie videos, and I didn't want to join that set.) 

As for general liveliness:  there was some good quality music played on the street near the hotel on Friday, Saturday and Sunday night:

And we could hear it pretty clearly from our room:

but it ended at 10pm sharp each night, so it was fine.

We were near Hoan Kiem lake:

 

 

 

 

 

 

and the wide road to the side of it was closed to traffic on weekends, and flooded with families.   

These kids carts were very popular, and even the tiniest child can go for a ride, as they can be remote controlled by the parent!:

The Monkey King is popular, too, as are balloon vendors:

 

 

 

 

 

One thing that's hard to understand about the place:  how do dogs learn to just calmly watch traffic and people and not end up having very short lives at the wheels of scooters?

Anyhow, as for the general vibe, it feels a little odd to be in an ostensibly communist country that seems so intensely capitalistic.   I kept thinking that it's "Marx meets Ayn Rand", and wondered if it would cause some sort of ideological crisis for Sinclair Davidson if he visited.   It's a little bit scam/tout prone - some apparent taxis are not to be trusted, although even then, the "triple the normal price" is still likely to be substantially cheaper than what you would pay in Australia.  

The touts are not too persistent.  A simple "no thanks" is enough.  My favourite scammer was the guy on the footpath outside the entry to Ho Chi Minh's mausoleum who assured me I needed to buy a face mask off him or I would not be allowed entry.  (I could see plainly by turning my head that this was not true.)  I was a little surprised to find that there were so many touts for "massage" if I was out walking by myself - including men, or in one case, a woman, who would pull up beside me on their scooter, flash a pic of a scantily clad woman on their phone while offering to take me there.  It felt a bit more like Thailand in that respect than I expected.

Of course, the food is cheap and (usually) very good.  We just had one egg coffee (where the coffee is topped by heavily whipped whole egg - sounds dubious but it's very nice, as a sort of sweetish treat), but I wish we had more.

The best single higher class restaurant we ate at was one my wife found on Facebook, of all places.  It's called Sente, and has a menu based on emphasising everything lotus.   Every course was great, and it was a quiet and pleasant setting.  The total cost for everything (several courses, a few beers and coffee) was still around $60 AUD.

One final thing about the country:   I know that all warmer Asian countries have a way of conducting their commerce on the street.   But I kept feeling while in Hanoi that the Vietnamese really do seem to conduct their entire life (outside of the bedroom) in public, so to speak.   Even when not selling their wares on the footpath, or washing dishes there, or repairing or making stuff right in the doorway to their little shop, the Vietnam seem particularly keen on socialising and eating together, in the open.   Maybe coffee culture accounts for part of it, too?  For an Australian, it looks like a kind of social connectedness to be somewhat admired, although I guess that could come with its own stresses, too.

Anyway, it's a ridiculously photogenic country in terms of landscapes, and I'll make a separate post about the trips to Ha Long Bay and Ninh Binh.