Sunday, February 23, 2014

Week 2/16

 On Friday, the class were unanimous on the concept that scientific research or technological innovation are highly dependent on financial resource. Then, a question, "can government regulation or legislation speed up research and innovation?" was proposed. In my perspective, regulations are not able to speed up research in certain field. At least, I cannot imagine how would such regulation work. Also, the class were unable to give an example of such regulation. With respect to such lack of regulation in speeding up certain research field, I find two possible explanation: first, such regulation seems unreasonable. It is not feasible to force money and scientists devote into certain area. Only dictatorship sets up such regulation. Second, politician are highly correlated with "money sources" -- politicians need a lot of investment to win their campaign. Thus, during their terms, they vote for policies and regulations in favor of those who support politicians' campaign, and it is very likely that regulations, which will force money goes to less lucrative fields, are rejected.

Then, is there any method to speed up research in certain field? I think there definitely is. For example, government can made incentive and sort of bait money to certain field, and incentives are completely different from regulation. In China now, there is many incentives leading money to solar projects. Companies invest in solar projects receives reduced tax rates. They are qualified to buy land from the nation in a lower price (in China, land is owned by the government, and individual can purchase land but rent it for a period of 70 years). Above policies are extraordinarily effective. BYD (a solar automobile company) is developing very well in technologies related to solar automobiles.

Aside from discussion in class, I think difficulty is a significant cause that certain fields are developing very slowly. I define this cause as "intelligence barrier." Last summer, I joined a computer science conference in China. At the end of that conference, there was a Q&A section. A student randomly asked a question for fun.He said,"Prof. Yang, have you ever met any difficulties during your academic life?" The professor stared at him for a moment and teased, "I did, when I was studying quantum mechanics, but not after I changed my field to computer science." It was a joke, but a reasonable one. Obviously, CS is a much easier topic compare to quantum physics. In the last century, CS developed much faster than quantum physics because more people are able to understand and contribute to CS.          

In conclusion, I do not think regulation can speed up certain technological innovation, but government can set up incentive to achieve this. Besides financial resources, difficulty is another main reason that certain fields are developing slower.                                      

Monday, February 10, 2014

Week 2/2

                                                                   Unfairness
To properly address unfairness, one needs to define fairness first. Some people think fairness means equality; some people think fairness is similar to communism. To me, fairness is a complicated concept that cannot be simply defined by one word, and fairness varies according to different situation. Generally, fairness is a condition in which everyone (here everyone can be broaden to the entire human beings) lives on the same basis or the same standard. Also, I have seen a interesting cartoon (as shown in Figure 1) which distinctly defines "Equality" and "Justice," and fairness can fall into either category depends on the issue that is being considered.
Figure 1
As covered in chapter 4 of the book, for resources, infrastructures, clean water and other stuffs related to basis living requirements, fairness is equality because human beings are the same no matter where one comes from or what one's race is. For example, the textbook mentions problems related to clean water resource in India. People get sick and die there. Indians deserve to have the same quality of clean water as civilians from developed countries. However, Indians do not need higher quality of water to sanitize; thus, fairness about water resource, to Indians, should fall into the category of equality.

There are other situation where fairness is justice as indicated in the cartoon. For example, as the class discussed on Tuesday, college is a place where justice is needed. For those students that have concentration difficulties or learning difficulties, they have longer time to take an exam. For our STSH class, as stated in the syllabus, ESL students can negotiate with the grading criteria. This is probably because colleges want a relative equal education result, in which case, a normal distribution of GPA probably. 

Also, there is a situation where fairness is in between equality and justice. Such as college admission, college sets up different standards to students who have different backgrounds. I heard that there is a thing called "quota." Colleges set up different ratio when they admit student from different countries, states or races, so international students are competing against other international students. In state students are competing against other in state students. A specific college may want 20% African Americans out of all students, so African Americans are competing with African Americans, rather than Caucasians or Asians. Overall, in this example, justice is applied over the entire student population, whereas equality is applied in different groups of students, which I personally think is very reasonable. Even though I am an international student, I do not like such quota ( I hate it actually), I have to admit that such quota is well founded and acceptable.


Monday, February 3, 2014

Week 1/26

                                                    Robot War
On Tuesday's meeting, the class talked about robots from different countries fighting against each other. It was actually an interesting topic. One student pointed out that it would be meaningless to just let "machines" fighting each other because "machines" do not mean anything. However, I barely agree with such opinion. Rather than nothing, robots actually represent military force or power, just the same as soldiers on a traditional battle field. The intrinsic concept of war is the same no matter how the forms have changed. War is the last resort to settle down a disagreement between sides. Let's say: in the future, due to all kinds of ethical reason, people decide not to use human soldiers anymore. Instead, robots are sent to the battle field, and probably robot will not kill civilians but only enemy robots. At the end, one side/country runs out robots, which means that this country has no more military forces to keep up the war. Then, they have to surrender and yield to the winning side, making compromise to the disagreement which the war is all about. Things end up like traditional war ending. Loser signs contract, pays money, loses certain rights and privileges.  

In conclusion, "robots fighting against robots" is not meaningless. It is actually a new form of warfare, which, nevertheless, is still used to solve disagreement under the situation that negotiation is ineffective.



                                                     Serendipity 
On Friday, the lecture started with the concept of unexpected result of scientific research. In the textbook and from my daily reading, I have seen countless examples of unintended results of scientific research or industrial design. Some of them are "positive," and some are "negative" -- the textbook use this two words to classify unintended results. In my opinion, such attitude is only valid if one consider unintended results from a rather superficial point of view -- "Is the result, obviously deviated, helpful or harmful?" However, I think not just those "positive results," but those " negative ones" are also beneficial because human beings do learn from the mistakes that have been made. For example, people once used Freon as the cooling reactant for air conditioning or refrigeration. Freon was a viewed as a gift from God because of its outstanding thermal properties, and it was considered to be environmental friendly. Later on, scientist discovered that after Freon volatilizes into the atmosphere, it actually proceeds a chain reaction with the ozone layer. Under the catalyst effect of ultraviolet radiation, Freon reacts with ozone, and the products, after a series of reaction, turns back into Freon, thus, this chain reaction will never stop theoretically. How terrible it is! Such a devastating damage to the ozone was never expected or tested during the development of Freon. Although Freon's damage to ozone is negative, it is progressive if seen from another point of view. Sooner after Freon's negative effect was discovered, industry set up more restrict regulation about the leakage and disposal of Freon. Meanwhile, scientists started to develop alternative cooling cycle and substitute. Not just Freon, government became more restrict about the regulation of other chemicals -- although many chemicals are non-guilty after many tests, there are unknown/unconsidered situation. In a word, Freon had a strong social impact. Scientist, civilian, governments are more conscious, concerned and careful about developing, using , regulating chemicals.

In conclusion, unintended results, at least to me, are considered to be progressive and beneficial, regardless of positive or negative. As long as unintended results are properly to judged and treated. If it is negative, it becomes a warning/caution for the future generation; if it is positive, everyone is happy anyway.

Plus, isn't the world more beautiful or worth living for only if nobody knows what's gonna happen tomorrow?