cyberfish

Oh and the discussion actually started with abachler's quite childish statement -
Such an ignorant statement from someone who (quite obviously) knows so little about the topic.

I speak Chinese fluently, and I can assure people who thought otherwise, that it is nothing "primitive". Like people have pointed out, only the few lowest level components of Chinese characters are pictographic. Other characters are combination of those fundamental "components", with meanings (each character has several meanings) related to the constituents in some way (combination, cause and effect, connotations), and are usually phonetically similar to one of the constituents. They also usually have different pronounciations depending on context.

And then they are put together to form words. With a lot of experience and understanding of the culture, when you see a Chinese word, you can usually guess the meaning from the meaning of the characters. Without such knowledge, though, it's very difficult since many words have many meanings, some a lot more subtle. In most cases there are many words with just about the same meaning. Except they are used in different contexts. Some are more polite, some are more suggestive, some carry different connotations, etc.

It would be nice if they can develop a "functional" subset of Chinese to make it easier for foreigners to learn the language. Theoretically, that is totally doable. There is arguably a lot of "redundancy" and bloat in Chinese. Mostly for backward compatibility. And then Chinese people like to use some rarer words with more specific meanings as a form of artistic expression (just like people do in English), which doesn't really help. For people who speak the language fluently, that's nice. But I can see how it can be frustrating for people who are learning the language. And then there are MANY exceptions to grammatical rules that really follow no logic, just convention.

IMHO, English is a more practical and functionality-oriented language, while Chinese is more artistic partly due to the complexity, and the dependency on culture.

It is EXTREMELY rare for a non-native speaker to master Chinese to a level that is indistinguishable to a local. They can learn enough of it so that they can understand Chinese people and can also be understood, but people will always be able to tell that they are not a native speaker from their slightly unconventional/awkward way of constructing sentences and choice of words, even if they are grammatically correct. It's much easier and much more common for non-native speakers to master English.

Bubba

That statement is equally as ignorant since you really do not know what the individual knows and does not know about the topic and/or that you assume you know more. I'm not taking sides here but there have been quite a few ignorant statements made across many different posts.

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If you aim at everything you will hit something but you won't know what it is.

cyberfish

Of course, it's entirely possible that he knows more about the Chinese language than I do.

mike_g

And what exactly do you know? Nothing it seems, until you back up your accusations with some kind of facts instead of just stating:
Abachler knows f* all, c'mon, he can't even post a linked list w/o bugs in it, let alone understand pinyin, or even...

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jinhao

Every language has its own history and culture, even that was lost or is going to be lost.
Chinese character is very interesting, e.g, 水(water) it's hieroglyphic, this chararcter looks like water waves.
And some characters are semasiography, e.g, 好(good), it is formed by 女(daughter) and 子(son), Chinese people believe that a family gets both a daughter and a son is a good thing.

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Mario F.

Because he doesn't have to. It's pretty much an unspoken agreement on a discussion of this nature that a link serves only as a starting point for debate. Anyone wishing to follow on the debate should do their own research too if they find the links unsatisfactory or feel they need to learn more or better support their claims.

But moving on... what bothers me more about your comment is this:

On this thread alone twice, coming from two different people I have heard the argument that the end justifies the means. Twice!

And you are not alone. Lately I've seen this (or maybe it has been happening for sometime but only recently I have been paying attention) happening a little all over the news, politicians, commentators, opinion makers.

It's a revolting thought. Throw up material, even. It's an attack on everything we believe or should believe to be basic human rights. The idea that personal freedoms should be withhold in the name of a "common good" which has no way of being validated is only possible if it comes from the mind of someone who doesn't truly appreciate the gift given to them by 200 years of a struggle for freedom. Someone who takes it for granted and doesn't even made an effort to study the causes and effects of modern tyrannies.

Meanwhile, what you conveniently didn't mention in your post was the most grave reasons behind the criticism of the One Child Policy like forced abortions, sterilization, social ostracism, or economical segregation. All well documented by several Humans Rights Organizations. And that's precisely the tyranny tactics: To hide the harsher reality to justify oppression. All in the name of a certain common good of arguable validity.

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Originally Posted by brewbuck:
Reimplementing a large system in another language to get a 25% performance boost is nonsense. It would be cheaper to just get a computer which is 25% faster.

mike_g

You know, I don't really care about those things when theres millions of people making dumb babies. In short: preventing babies is better than killing people. The world has limited resources and it can't support unbounded growth. Sterilization is a good thing, everyone should get it. Clever people could then be licensed to produce babies. The way I see it, the gene pool is going a bit far in exploration mode, and not producing enough useful results. Where I am you can make a lot of money in benefits out of sitting on your ass making as many babies as possible. Anyway, I see humans are pollution making parasites that need to be controlled somehow. do you have any idea how much destruction we are causing? Do you think it will be sustainable for an exponentially increasing population? Maybe you don't realise it yet, but people in China probably do. Why would the 1 baby policy be so popular over there? I'd guess its because they can directly see the effects of over population. Animals go through the boom and die cycles, but with conscious action we should not have to. It would be nothing but unnecessary suffering.

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Mario F.

So you basically think you are a parasite and you'd be better of not being born.

So, why am I not talking to a corpse yet?

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Originally Posted by brewbuck:
Reimplementing a large system in another language to get a 25% performance boost is nonsense. It would be cheaper to just get a computer which is 25% faster.

cyberfish

A purely hypothetical question:

If you are the government of a country of 11 people, 1 rich 10 starving. If you don't do anything, the 10 starving people will die.

Or you can kill the rich person and distribute the wealth to the 10 people (so they won't die). Is that ethical?

Is killing by doing nothing killing, too?

mike_g

Hey dude Sorry, I missed your last post. I'd guess thats like yin and yang or something right?
I'm fine as I am. I have a well paid job so will leech for the time being. If I get bored or reach 50 then maybe I'll die.
Surely it would be better to distribute the wealth 11 ways?

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cyberfish

haha, what if the rich guy defends his wealth with his life, and to take it away, you have to kill him?

Or, for whatever other reason, you only have those 2 options?

mike_g

Well, if i was starving and had to I guess I'd kill him I guess I would. But I don't like to have to make those kind of decisions in general

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cyberfish

Me neither. I feel there is something fundamentally wrong about how we classify things as ethical and unethical, but I'm not sure what. Any philosopher here?

zacs7

Probably means, your daughter will look after someone else and your son will get someone else's daughter to look after you in old age.

What's funny is the large countries (India, China, etc) seem to miss the big point of becoming a world power. Look after your own people. "Oh but China has an enormous Army", yes but I think we've all seen the quality of Chinese firearms - has me lol'ing to the lolly-shop.

That sounds like Communism to me .

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whiteflags

Work for the rich dude, problem solved.

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