Honestly, I don’t have the appetite for non-fiction at this time of the quarter. But if I do come across one, it’ll make its way here. pip is reading “Men Who Hate Women”, which seems awfully interesting, so I am looking forward to that.
Second book in the Stormlight Archives series. This may be the first series by Sanderson that I might actually like. The length of the book lets Sanderson get into the kind of detail and world-building he seems to excel at. But, as Yogarshi noted in a Goodreads comment, for it’s length and heft, there isn’t much that sticks with you or stays memorable. Which feels true, especially when you contrast it with GRRM’s books. I feel Siri, or any Sanderson fan, might disagree with me on this.
Pick it up if you want escapist high fantasy series with lots of action. Don’t expect lore-like writing.
We had Prof. Margaret Roberts at the CSS workshop this week, presenting a pre-print of some very interesting work trying to measure the effect of the pandemic on information consumption in China. It’s an interesting paper which does everything it can to accurately measure its stated phenomenon. I do have questions about it, so I’m curious to see what the final version looks like.
My big question, of course, didn’t have anything to do with the paper. I paste it here:
“…I have a question that I can only ask a scholar like you, at the intersection of political theory and censorship in centralized, authoritarian States. James Scott, in Seeing Like a State, quite convincingly makes the argument that highly centralized (and authoritarian) States are doomed to fail or falter eventually in their quest for control because there is a lack of true information flow from the masses to the decision-makers; the absence of such a flow is a fundamental shortcoming in the latter’s quest for perfect knowledge and legibility. This argument has come under a bit of flak in the age of digital surveillance. As a scholar of China and the information seeking habits of its populace, I wonder what’s your take on this argument, that the insular nature of these decision-making processes creates challenges to State control. Or is China just a uniquely different case, perfectly equipped at the right time in history, that this critique fails?”
Part of our literature review for the Persuasion project in the NLP course, this paper showcases a niche in the field where you try to estimate the weakness in argumentation using NLProc techniques. I hope to come back to it later, but it’s kinda funny how I’m working on a project about debate, given my history.
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