Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and ideas of Li Shizhen (1518-1593) whose compendium of natural medicines is celebrated in China as the most complete survey of natural remedies of its time. He trained as a doctor and worked at the Ming court before spending almost 30 years travelling in China, inspecting local plants and animals for their properties, trying them out on himself and then describing his findings in his Compendium of Materia Medica or Bencao Gangmu, in 53 volumes. He's been called the uncrowned king of Chinese naturalists, and became a scientific hero in the 20th century after the revolution.
5 December 2019
Prospect Podcast: Imperialism and the East India Company, with William Dalrymple
What really was the East India Company, and how does its legacy affect Britain today? Historian William Dalrymple joins the Prospect podcast this week to talk about Britain’s imperial legacy and how the company grew from being a silks and spices trader to an engine of colonialism.
Crooked Timber: Seeing Like a Finite State Machine
The theory behind this is one of strength reinforcing strength – the strengths of ubiquitous data gathering and analysis reinforcing the strengths of authoritarian repression to create an unstoppable juggernaut of nearly perfectly efficient oppression. Yet there is another story to be told – of weakness reinforcing weakness. Authoritarian states were always particularly prone to the deficiencies identified in James Scott’s Seeing Like a State – the desire to make citizens and their doings legible to the state, by standardizing and categorizing them, and reorganizing collective life in simplified ways, for example by remaking cities so that they were not organic structures that emerged from the doings of their citizens, but instead grand chessboards with ordered squares and boulevards, reducing all complexities to a square of planed wood. The grand state bureaucracies that were built to carry out these operations were responsible for multitudes of horrors, but also for the crumbling of the Stalinist state into a Brezhnevian desuetude, where everyone pretended to be carrying on as normal because everyone else was carrying on too. The deficiencies of state action, and its need to reduce the world into something simpler that it could comprehend and act upon created a kind of feedback loop, in which imperfections of vision and action repeatedly reinforced each other.
So what might a similar analysis say about the marriage of authoritarianism and machine learning? Something like the following, I think. There are two notable problems with machine learning. One – that while it can do many extraordinary things, it is not nearly as universally effective as the mythology suggests. The other is that it can serve as a magnifier for already existing biases in the data. The patterns that it identifies may be the product of the problematic data that goes in, which is (to the extent that it is accurate) often the product of biased social processes. When this data is then used to make decisions that may plausibly reinforce those processes (by singling e.g. particular groups that are regarded as problematic out for particular police attention, leading them to be more liable to be arrested and so on), the bias may feed upon itself. [...]
In short, there is a very plausible set of mechanisms under which machine learning and related techniques may turn out to be a disaster for authoritarianism, reinforcing its weaknesses rather than its strengths, by increasing its tendency to bad decision making, and reducing further the possibility of negative feedback that could help correct against errors. This disaster would unfold in two ways. The first will involve enormous human costs: self-reinforcing bias will likely increase discrimination against out-groups, of the sort that we are seeing against the Uighur today. The second will involve more ordinary self-ramifying errors, that may lead to widespread planning disasters, which will differ from those described in Scott’s account of High Modernism in that they are not as immediately visible, but that may also be more pernicious, and more damaging to the political health and viability of the regime for just that reason
Aeon: The profound solitude of a winter spent alone on an island caring for an empty hotel
‘It’s the great waiting of winter … hulking there and biding its time until life comes back.’
A meditation on the appeals and challenges of solitude, Winter’s Watch accompanies Alexandra de Steiguer who for 19 winters has been the ‘caretaker’ of the Oceanic Hotel on Star Island in New Hampshire while it is closed during New England’s coldest months. Tasked with tending to the island’s 43 acres by herself, de Steiguer finds peace and meaning in being alone with her thoughts, and creative inspiration for her photography, though at times her mind has turned to ghosts and intruders. With breathtaking cinematography from the US filmmaker Brian Bolster, Winter’s Watch was a film festival favourite in 2017, appearing at AFI Docs, Camden International Film Festival, DOC
The Calvert Journal: Central Asia's unique Soviet architecture in all its brutal glory
The photographs in this book highlight the distinctive architecture created in the towns and cities of Central Asia during the final decades of the Soviet regime, featuring buildings that embody the ideas of modernity that were arriving from far-distant Moscow. Soviet residential buildings tend to have two distinct characteristics: first, although varied in style, they are standardised and mass-produced; second, they are decorated with motifs intended to reflect local culture and the national folklore of the various republics. The standardised nature of these buildings conforms to the Soviet political project: to create the same living conditions in every city, from the Baltic states to the Pacific, from the shores of the northern seas to the border with Afghanistan.
The mass construction of large blocks of flats began only during the last 30 years of the Soviet Union and Soviet ‘modernity’ was therefore largely confined to city centres and industrial areas. For the city-dwellers of Central Asia, the prospect of living in immense standardised residential buildings held little appeal. Large families, used to homes where three generations lived together in neighbourhoods with close community bonds, could not adapt to the small apartments of the new Soviet housing blocks. As a result, areas with different characteristics coexisted in many cities and a considerable proportion of the population, although involved in Soviet public life, remained attached to their old family homes.
The capitals of the five Central Asian Republics had particularly large areas that conformed to Soviet planning directives. Ashgabat, the capital of Turkmenistan, was badly damaged by an earthquake in 1948 and was rebuilt in Soviet style. Tashkent, the capital of Uzbekistan, suffered an earthquake in 1966 that destroyed many of its older quarters, providing an opportunity for widespread reconstruction using mass-produced buildings. Cities such as Navoiy in Uzbekistan and various smaller towns in Kazakhstan, that had been completely rebuilt or were newly constructed to meet the needs of those employed in mining or in fertiliser production for cotton cultivation, closely followed the Soviet model.
openDemocracy: LGBTQI+ asylum claimants face extreme social isolation in Germany
The German Lesbian and Gay Association (Lesben und Schwulen Verband Deutschland) estimates that out of the nearly 1.6 million refugees that have been registered in Germany between 2015 and 2018, approximately 60,000 are LGBTQI+ individuals from countries in the Middle East, Africa, South Asia and the Caribbean. Like many other people who are currently waiting for their asylum interview or asylum decision, they are predominantly housed in rural areas in Germany in former hotels, community centres, and even barracks. “They sent me to the mountain”, one transgender claimant from Iraq said. [...]
LGBTQI+ claimants said over and over again that they feel compelled to hide their sexual orientation within the accommodation centres, which can be extremely difficult when sharing a room with several other people. They also shared many experiences of sexism, racism, ableism, homophobia and transphobia in the villages in which the accommodation centres are located. “If you are in a small village and everyone knows that you are gay or lesbian or intersex or trans, that is, that's really terrible, believe me”, one claimant said. The social isolation by LGBTQI+ claimants is exacerbated by the fact that they often avoid contact with non-LGBTQI+ claimants out of fear of their possible negative reaction. This increases the risk of mental health-related issues, which, in turn, can affect their asylum proceedings. [...]
Our research findings stress how important it is for decision makers to understand the complexities of LGBTQI+ claimants’ experiences and why it is often difficult for them to express themselves freely. We urge the German government to support the establishment of safe housing for LGBTQI+ claimants and accommodate them in urban areas where they can socialise with other LGBTQI+ people, access support, and integrate in society. As such, we also support the campaign by the organisation Rainbow Refugees Munich/SUB, which is currently lobbying the city of Munich to provide safe accommodations for LGBTQI+ people seeking asylum.
The Guardian: Turkey denies blackmailing Nato over Baltics defence plan
Erdoğan has blocked a defence plan for Poland and the Baltic states until Nato recognises that the Syrian Kurdish YPG are a terrorist threat that must be addressed. Ahead of his departure from Ankara, Erdoğan reiterated the Turkish position, telling reporters: “If our friends at Nato do not recognise as terrorist organisations those we consider terrorist organisations ... we will stand against any step that will be taken there.” [...]
Macron is angry both at the Turkish decision to invade Syria, and the manner in which the decision was taken in consultation with only one Nato ally, the US. Macron warned it will create a humanitarian disaster, undermine the YPG’s leading role in suppressing Isis and complicate efforts to secure a peace settlement across Syria. [...]
On Monday US Defence Secretary Mark Esper urged Turkey to stop holding up support for the military plan. Esper warned Ankara that “not everybody sees the threats that they see” and added he would not support labelling the YPG as terrorists to break the impasse. “The message to Turkey ... is we need to move forward on these response plans and it can’t be held up by their own particular concerns,” he said as he flew to London.
The Guardian: German summer holiday row exposes north-south divide
Currently the states of Bavaria and Baden-Württemberg are permanently hogging what most believe to be the best school holiday summer slots – between the end of July and the start of September. The other states are locked into a strict rotation system running from June to September.
The system was introduced decades ago to ensure that the country’s infrastructure did not grind to a halt as it might if everyone decided to hit the autobahns, railways and airports at once. The rotation system is also meant to ensure a spread of holidaymakers across the season at hotels and holiday resorts, so that the economic benefit of the Sommerferien-Korridor – or summer holiday corridor – is maximised. [...]
Hamburg has accused the states of egotism and said it will lead the way in deciding in future on its own summer break dates. It is urging other states to follow. Lower Saxony, North Rhine-Westphalia and Berlin have said they are prepared to do the same.
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