Attack of the ball-snatchers in 1950s China!

The event

The following is translated from 1950年代：谣言席卷千万国人 by 李若建 in 《先锋国家历史》2008年2月刊. That is, The 1950s: Rumors swept through millions of Chinese, by Li Ruojian, published in Pioneer National History, 2008 February, issue 10.

Notes on Falun Gong

What is Falun Gong, and why do they believe "Trump was sent by heaven to destroy the communist party."?

This post collects a list of facts about Falun Gong, a new religious movement from 1992, China. Since 1999, the Chinese government has heavily suppressed it, and it has since then engaged in a fierce propaganda war with the Chinese government.

The Chinese government calls it an evil cult that caused many deaths of its members, and the Falun Gong (FG) members claim the government, as well as the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is evil and will be destroyed in a coming apocalypse (more on the theology of FG later).

Disclaimer: This would read a lot like anti-Falun Gong propaganda that the Chinese government spins. That's a bit unfortunate, but I only quote from primary sources, academic secondary sources, and a few reputable news journals, like The Guardian and The New York Times. This post also overlaps with the RationalWiki's page on Falun Gong, which is more entertaining to read, but I think my post is better, because I keep my sources authoritative.

My attitude is that the nice, boring bits of Falun Gong (truth, kindness, tolerance) are good, the Chinese suppression is bad, and the religious doctrines and propaganda tactics of Falun Gong are bad. This post is purely on its bad religious doctrines and propaganda tactics.

China Uncensored - Disillusioned

Recently I had a great disillusionment with China Uncensored, a YouTube Channel that gives consistent criticism of the Chinese government. Since February 2020, it had started talking about some coronavirus conspiracy theories (Coronavirus Began in Chinese Lab? US Investigates), in a way that strongly suggests they are true without actually claiming they are true. It is a very devious technique, the one-sided reporting of third-party sources without directly supporting it.

More troublingly, it calls the coronavirus the "CCP Virus",

because it's the CCP's coverup that is what allowed it to spread back in December and January.

That is utter nonsense. Even if the Chinese government was fully transparent about the virus, it would still spread throughout the world, because of how infectious it is. A much more reasonable argument could be made, that the coverup delayed in understanding the virus's infectiousness by about 2 weeks, which contributed to slower responses by some foreign governments. However, America also has itself to blame, considering how its institutions managed to do precious little throughout February, despite being fully warned about this global health emergency by the WHO on January 31.

Suicide notes of Yutaka Taniyama and his fiancée

Yutaka Taniyama (1927--1958) is a Japanese mathematician who proposed the Taniyama–Shimura conjecture, which was an important step in the solution of Fermat's Last Theorem. He committed suicide at the age of 31. His suicide note is as follows, taken from the Japanese Wikipedia:

昨日まで、自殺しようという明確な意思があったわけではない。 ただ、最近僕がかなり疲れて居、 また神経もかなり参っていることに気付いていた人は少なくないと思う。 自殺の原因について、明確なことは自分でもよくわからないが、 何かある特定の事件乃至事柄の結果ではない。 ただ気分的に云えることは、将来に対する自信を失ったということ。 僕の自殺が、或る程度の迷惑あるいは打撃となるような人も居るかもしれない。 このことが、その将来に暗いかげを落とすことにならないようにと、心から願うほかない。 いずれにせよ、これが一種の背信行為であることは否定できないが、 今までわがままを通してきたついでに、最後のわがままとして許してほしい。

Until yesterday I had no definite intention of killing myself. But more than a few must have noticed that lately I have been tired both physically and mentally. As to the cause of my suicide, I don't quite understand it myself, but it is not the result of a particular incident, nor of a specific matter. Merely may I say, I am in the frame of mind that I lost confidence in my future. There may be someone to whom my suicide will be troubling or a blow to a certain degree. I sincerely hope that this incident will cast no dark shadow over the future of that person. At any rate, I cannot deny that this is a kind of betrayal, but please excuse it as my last act in my own way, as I have been doing my own way all my life.

Suicide notes of Akutagawa Ryūnosuke

The suicide note of Akutagawa Ryūnosuke, "A Note to a Certain Old Friend", is just one of several notes he wrote before suicide. I translated them by referring to a Chinese translation, a Japanese transcription, and an extremely detailed study of the manuscripts, which contains way too much information.

Overview of the documents

From 芥川龍之介から妻・芥川文子宛ての遺書 Suicide note from Ryunosuke Akutagawa to Fumiko Akutagawa (2010)

芥川龍之介は1927（昭和2）年7月24日日曜日早朝に自殺した。つぎのとおり複数の「遺書」を残している。 

Ryunosuke Akutagawa committed suicide early in the morning on Sunday, July 24, 1927. I have left several "wills" as follows.

　　　a. 妻・芥川文子 宛て（原稿用紙2枚）
　　　b. 妻・芥川文子宛て断片1（同1枚）
　　　c. 妻・芥川文子宛て断片2（同1枚）
　　　d. 「わが子等に」 比呂志・多加志・也寸志 の息子3人がいた（同3枚）
　　　e. 友人・菊池寛 宛て（同2枚）
　　　f. 友人・小穴隆一 宛て（同5枚） そして
　　　g. 「或旧友へ送る手記」（友人・久米正雄 宛てだとされる）

a. To wife, Akutagawa Fumiko (2 Japanese manuscript sheets)
b. Fragment 1, addressed to wife Akutagawa Fumiko (1 sheet)
c. Fragment 2, addressed to wife and Fumiko Akutagawa (1 sheet)
d. "For my children", addressed to his three sons, Hiroshi, Takashi, and Yasushi (3 sheets)
e. To friend, Hiroshi Kikuchi (2 sheets)
f. To friend, Oana Ryuichi (5 sheets)
g. "A Note to a Certain Old Friend" (Likely addressed to a friend, Masao Kume)

Emotivism: The argument from self-consistency

I like thought which preserves a whiff of flesh and blood, and I prefer a thousand times an idea rising from sexual tension or nervous depression to an empty abstraction. Haven't people learned yet that the time of superficial intellectual games is over, that agony is infinitely more important than syllogism, that a cry of despair is more revealing than the most subtle thought, and that tears always have deeper roots than smiles?

The problem with some nihilisms, especially epistemological nihilism, is a kind of inconsistency. This kind of inconsistency is not logical inconsistency, but a kind of "personal inconsistency".

Let's see one example: epistemological nihilism.

Epistemological nihilism states that there is no way to know truths. There are various kinds of epistemological nihilism:

• Ontological: truths don't exist;
• Skeptical: there are no methods for us to know the truth;
• Meta skeptical: there are, but we can't know which methods actually work;

The common rejection is this: If you believe in epistemological nihilism, then you believe in something, but that's not justifiable, by epistemological nihilism.

Let's make more self-driving mini-vehicles

I think there should be not only self-driving cars, but also self-driving segways, unicycles, bicycles, and more, to solve the last-mile problem.

The last-mile problem is this: when people take public transport, they can't get to exactly where they want to go, and must walk the last mile. This sometimes deters people from using public transport. There has been many solutions:

• Just walk.
• Ride-sharing bicycle/scooter/unicycles.
• Carry the bicycle along on the public transport.
• Give up and drive a car.

Why?

The main problem with ride-sharing are two:

1. Once they go out, it's hard to get them back to their stations. People like to just toss them anywhere.
2. Even if people park them nicely, it's still hard to maintain a balance of vehicles at the stations. Some stations lose bikes on average, while others gain.

The first problem is essentially the last-half-mile problem, and can be solved by adding many small stations, but that exacerbates the second problem, since each station has so few vehicles that a small fluctuation in supply and demand would completely fill or drain a station.