I’m sorry we argue with downvotes here rather than words? Very rational.
Mason Spangler
Karma: −13
Seeing as there’s not really any discussion taking place for me to worry about derailing… I did try, but the content and questions you posted seem indelibly coloured by the “America vs. China” framing.
While the post might be full of meaningful implications to an impassioned American, you’re actually saying very little in the way of cold-hard facts, further explanation of the article linked, or even what *specifically* America should be doing differently. The only message I can take away is “China’s doing good in some ways, America’s doing bad in some ways, America should do better in those ways”.
Every time you say “our” or “we” to make your point, you lose me, as a non-American. I shouldn’t be getting down-voted for that, sure it’s a nitpick, but it’s a perfectly valid point: not everyone on the internet is an American, and if you take a step outside of that bubble, comments made inside the bubble can come across alarmist, overly broad and flat-out silly.
“How are we going to catch up?” Uhh, catch up with what? Who is we? Do you really think America is one of the places in the world who need to worry about “falling behind”? LMFAO, try West Africa.
“China’s success challenges our implicit ideology and deep-seated assumptions about governance”. Does it? Do all or most Americans agree uniformly on the way your government runs? Is the Chinese government *so* fundamentally different?
“We may find important truths needed to bring about American revitalization.” Can’t you see how, to a non-American, a comment like this is about as meaningful as “WE MUST RESTORE THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE!” ?No one cares what label we use, no one the world over cares about “Making America Great Again”, we care about making THE WORLD great.
If China is truly doing certain things better, they deserve to succeed in those ways and everyone will be better off for it. If America can copy those methods and create even more prosperity, fantastic.
As a non-American westerner, just like to point out that “America vs. China” isn’t necessarily a battle the entire world is invested in.
So I don’t understand language in this post like “China’s success scares me” or “as bad as it seems”—why are Americans ‘the goodies’ and Chinese ‘the baddies’? Both governments are insanely powerful and engaged in immoral practices on the daily.
Tribalism, I thought, was out of vogue. All that should matter is the future of humanity, right?
Cool list! Some of these are new to me, will have to explore further.
Here’s some more:
Wolfram|Alpha - https://www.wolframalpha.com/
Internet Archive - https://archive.org/
WWW Virtual Library - http://vlib.org/
Scholarpedia - http://www.scholarpedia.org/article/Main_Page
Library Genesis - https://libgen.unblocked.ltda/
And some databases...
WordNet (English) - https://wordnet.princeton.edu/
BabelNet (Multilingual) - https://babelnet.org/
Dimensioned drawings/standard measurements—https://www.dimensions.guide/
Aaand some maths stuff...
MathPages—https://www.mathpages.com/
MetaMath (Proofs from scratch) - http://us.metamath.org/index.html
The On-Line Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences—https://oeis.org/
I’m similarly open to criticisms, haven’t explored all of these thoroughly but they’ve all caught my eye over the years for one reason or another.
“Seems to me that you and the author share a common belief, that successful Chinese policies or frameworks should bring about reflection and positive changes for American government (or any government, it just so happens that this post was framed by an American). ”
Yeah that was literally the point of my last paragraph. Was trying to demonstrate that I don’t disagree with the obvious (and basic) sentiment underpinning the original post, I only disagree with the way it was presented—cagey, but ultimately nationalistic rhetoric about ‘feelings’ in place of meaningful information about the specific differences in China and America’s policies.
Harry Fankfurt’s On Bullshit 101… seriously...
Clearly this site’s just full of Americans who don’t read very closely and thought I was being racist *shrug* No skin off my teeth.