upvote
I grew up in the former capital of a country that was colonized by the British and one thing that stood out to me while I was studying the history of my city was how much the colonial structure survived in terms of vested interest and avenues of power exercised, including corruption. I learned how the most of the agents of the crown that came to my town were largely Scottish and Irish in ethnicity, taking a post here just to earn enough money to go back and live a lavish lifestyle, hence heavily indulged in corruption, and that working culture still survives. The reason why it wasn't reformed was not only governance apathy but also the same vested interests greasing the hands that held power at any given time to protect their cash cow. And if that doesn't work using inflammatory accusation to rile up a popular protest by scaring the populace using their insecurities.

I am not a fan of "authoritarianism" but I do recognize that Singapore had a lot of the same issues and Lee Kuan Yew effectively used authoritarianism to drive it out. But one thing to keep in mind is that Singapore got very lucky in getting Lee Kuan Yew as their leader, someone who was very idealistic in his goals and had the pragmatism to execute it. Such a person is very rare and even rarer is for someone like that to rise to a position of power.

reply
> Such a person is very rare and even rarer is for someone like that to rise to a position of power.

Even more dangerously, I think they're even rarer than people who can convincingly pretend to be one. So even if you go looking for such a person you're heading into the danger zone.

reply
Lee Kuan Yew is heavily praised in Korea especially and the rest of Asia so I do not know how you came to generating your reply that he is a Western academic orientalist object comes from, that is certainly far from reality.
reply
Rather, Korean academia and Korean media are generally more critical of Lee Kuan Yew compared to other countries, precisely because of the issue of dictatorship. The reason is simple: we experienced Park Chung-hee. Park Chung-hee receives overwhelming support in some parts of Korea. But fundamentally, academia does not glorify Park Chung-hee. This is because Korean political history emphasizes the flow of democracy. Korean conservatives tend to favor Park Chung-hee, while Korean progressives favor Kim Dae-jung. And since the debates between Kim Dae-jung and Lee Kuan Yew are often brought up, this leads to a more critical view of Lee Kuan Yew compared to other countries.

[1]https://news.kbs.co.kr/news/pc/view/view.do?ncd=5590151

[2]https://www.khan.co.kr/article/201503251135171

reply
[dead]
reply
In Korea, Lee Kuan Yew is actually more often cited as a target of criticism. Of course, a small number of people praise him, but he is usually mentioned in the context of nostalgia for dictatorship (like Park Chung-hee in Korea), and more often than not, he is talked about as a kind of idealized image of dictatorship created by the West.

[1] https://www.ytn.co.kr/_ln/0104_201503231558059503

reply
Right and you are quoting left leaning media outlets as basis for your claims.
reply
Even on the largest wiki in Korea, the negative descriptions are fundamentally longer. It is also taught negatively in textbooks [1] https://namu.wiki/w/%EB%A6%AC%EC%BD%B4%EC%9C%A0/%ED%8F%89%EA...
reply
> And since Singaporeans reportedly have high life satisfaction

They do not; in fact, they're the least happy country in SE Asia.

https://www.hcamag.com/asia/specialisation/employee-engageme...

reply
The link you cited has nothing to do with "life satisfaction", but rather "job satisfaction", which is a completely different measurement. Singapore has the highest life satisfaction of any Asian country other than Taiwan[1]. Being unhappy with your job obviously does not necessarily translate to being unhappy with your life.

[1]https://ourworldindata.org/happiness-and-life-satisfaction

reply
Please modify your AI writing prompt to avoid semicolons, and the EM dash.
reply
I'm curious: why are people told not to use the em dash and the semicolon? I honestly don't know.

When I learned English writing, I was taught to use an em dash after words like 'by the way' or 'to add to that' — as a kind of aside. For hyphens, I was taught to use them in compound words. And for semicolons, I learned to use them when moving on to the next sentence within the same clause.

Actually, this is formal writing — techniques I learned in graduate school. Is this 'AI writing'?

It's hard because I'm not a native speaker.

reply
It's entirely because it's one of the more obvious tells of AI writing. Most keyboards don't have an easy way to enter an em-dash, so they haven't been part of casual conversation for... decades I guess. AI has no such restrictions, and is trained on formal writing, so it uses them commonly. Similar but less strongly for semicolons. Most people just don't know how to use them.

Regardless of whether you're using AI (please don't btw) or coming by your em-dashes honestly, people who fixate on trivial obvious cues will notice your em-dashes and assume you're using it.

reply
Maybe it would be better to use an AI translator. Because GPT has AI memory features, right? So when it translates, it often doesn't include hyphens or em dashes. But if you use a Korean translator, it has a function to attach hyphens to the language (kind of like Google Translate).

In Korea, it's not that difficult to input an em dash because you can type it using 'ㄱ + chinese characterbutton' (both based on the Korean keyboard). But I guess it's hard for people outside Korea.

Actually, since Korean doesn't have em dashes or hyphens, you could simply not use them at all. However, in 'formal' writing, I was taught that you should use them. just like you should use 'could' instead of informal alternatives.

This is really tough. When I use Hacker News, I keep a machine translator and DeepL open next to it. When I translate that way, em dashes sometimes appear, and that's what I'm worried about.

I thought this was obvious, but it seems like writing in Korean and then using an AI translator would be much better. The problem is that on this site, I'm not really allowed to use an AI translator either, so I'm almost being forced to write everything manually. The goal is to get overseas freelance work.

I had no idea that typing an em dash is difficult overseas. For me, it's just two buttons I never imagined that would be an issue. Thank you.

reply
> I had no idea that typing an em dash is difficult overseas.

It’s not. On Apple platforms, you can type two hyphens in a row and let the default text replacement convert it; or you can hold down the hyphen and pick from hyphen, en dash, or em dash; or you can press Option-Shift-Hyphen. I think it’s about as easy on other platforms as well.

Don’t listen to them. The em dash is not some obscure punctuation nobody but AI uses.

reply
He's not a native English speaker so I suspect he is heavily using AI to generate his comments and seems oblivious to how em dash is viewed in the anglosphere post-chatgpt
reply
I've been shadowbanned before because of AI translation, so I'm doing manual translation. However, I didn't know that em dashes were perceived that badly
reply
[dead]
reply