TR EMERITUS

Singapore became self governing in 1959. The government need to change social behavior. They introduced laws that are mandatory and imposed heavy fines for non-compliance. Singapore became a "fine" country. More than 60 years have passed. The government still maintained the old mindset. They often passed laws and regulations that are mandatory and imposed big penalties for non-compliance. There are many instances of where behaviors can be changed through voluntary means. Some examples are: a) Return of trays at food centers b) Wearing of mask on public transport (as the covid virus is now mild c) Crossing roads at controlled crossings. Sadly, our ministers still think of the mandatory approach. They cannot understand that the voluntary approach can work better on a more educated population. They are not aware that the people today are more educated and better informed. A mandatory approach may cause inconvenience and hardship under certain circumstances, and are not really necessary. For example, it may be difficult for seniors to clear their trays at the food centers. Customers who have many bags to carry may also find it difficult to clear the trays. Some customers are not aware of the location of the return tray stations. It is unnecessary to wear a mask on buses and trains that are not crowded. It can be inconvenient, when the commuter has to carry several bags. Where the behavior is not risky, it is better to allow people to use their discretion, rather than to impose mandatory rules. It is time for a change in our approach. We can adopt voluntary measures first, and implement mandatory measures if they are really necessary.   Tan Kin Lian      Read More →

Watched the entire series of Delhi Crime over the weekend. This is a wonderfully grim TV series in that it was as far away as possible from the usual to come out of Bollywood in as much as it was dark, nasty and did not have a song and dance number to it. The series was based around the Nirbhaya case, which is better known as the “2012 Delhi Bus Gang Rape.” A lot has been said about the case and the series focused on one of the least discussed matters – the surprisingly efficient and effective police work of the Delhi Police, who managed to apprehend the culprits in seven days. The extent of the rape was horrific. This was more than a few guys trying force themselves on an into a girl. It was about destroying her beyond recognition. One of the points made in the series was that she had her intestines hanging out of her vagina and anus. At the time, the angst in the reporting was that this incident was part of the growing wealth gap in India, where the rich got richer, and the poor got poorer. The criminals were all from the lower classes (bus driver and conductor etc), whilst the victims were from professional middle class backgrounds (the guy who survived in now a software engineer, the girl who died is was studying physiotherapy). Whilst you can say there was an element of struggle between the haves and have nots, there was a key line in the series which summed things up. One of the policemen made the point that as part of the growing wealth gap, society was finding “providing sex education expensive but people have free access to porn,” thereby giving angry young men an objectified view of women and their sexual wants and needs. Whilst the show was based around an event in India, the issue spoken by that line is universal. Equipping children with the ability to deal with the world has become very expensive (which is not necessarily in the monetary sense) while getting all sorts of doggy information is free and easy. The most obvious example is sex education. In most developed countries, whenever “sex education” comes up, there will be a hue and cry about polluting young minds. There will inevitably be the crowd that argues that teaching guys how to put a condom or getting girls to take the pill will turn children into wild perverts. This is even though study after study has shown that groups of kids who undergo “abstinence-only” education inevitably have larger numbers of unwanted pregnancies and sexually transmitted diseases than the groups that are taught “abstinence plus” or “best not to do it but if you do, there are condoms and pills.” I remember that I needed to sign a consent form when the Evil Young Woman was at school so that they could provide sex education. Making access of sex education and equipping young people with knowledge of how to take care of themselves is a challenge and at times, ignorance about crucial issues has become confused with virtue. My first wife worked on that principle when we fought over her going for the abortion. She took the view that she never had sex before me and so how could anyone expect her to know that she would get pregnant through regular sex. She was 28 when we met and a graduate who had been through the Singapore education system (where biology is taught). This is incidentally a position that a prostitute from a less developed country will not make for the simple reason that getting infected HIV kills business. While providing education on sex and how to handle it is challenging, getting hold of porn is getting easier. Back in the 1990s, Singapore banned magazines like Playboy and Penthouse, which had a naked lady or two in gynecologically interesting poses. Since it was banned in Singapore, there were Singaporeans who thought it was thrilling to smuggle magazines into Singapore. When I lived in the UK, the mildest porn magazines were placed on the top shelf (harder for kids to reach and browse) whilst the more explicit ones were wrapped up and even then, you had to pay for the magazine, hence even the most interested user would have to think before buying. These days, getting hold of porn, including the very explicit stuff is easy. Here is a list of seemingly accessible porn sites that I get to in a country that bans the sale of magazines with naked ladies. These sites give you the stuff that is a lot more than just naked ladies posing suggestively. Now, I am past the age where I drool over everything in a skirt and my technical skills are limited. If I can get hold of such sites, imagine what one of today’s tech savvy kids with raging hormones can get hold of. Sex education is only the most glaring example of how we are ruining our kids by making their education very expensive in an age where they can get hold of all sorts of information. The “information age,” is called that for a reason. Information is in abundance. I no longer need to go to a library for a day to get hold of some statistics. I merely “Google” it. Education has move away from getting information but being able to discern what is valuable and good information rather than what is junk. Unfortunately, critical thinking is not considered a skill in an increasing number of places. Take the efforts to ban books in certain American states. Think of the opponents of “Critical Race” theory like that brave combat veteran against sex abuse accusations “Mat Gaetz” who argue that teaching it and reading about “Critical Race Theory” will make White children feel unnecessarily bad about being white. However, while people are arguing about teaching things like “Critical Race Theory,” one can get hold of say the manifesto of groups like the “Proud Boys” with a dedicated enough search. Then again, why go that far when you can turn on the TV and get Tucker Carlson who has made a fortune telling you that white supremacy is not a thing. Let us look at Covid facts. The USA had spent years neglecting the teaching of basic science (top science graduates in top US scientific universities inevitably coming from elsewhere) because it was “too expensive” (why be a researcher on a couple hundred thousand a year when you can study finance and make millions on Wall Street). Then, when Covid struck and the scientist and doctors said one thing, the crowds took to the likes of Carlson, Hannity and Ingram who were telling them that they were screwed by the people who knew what was going on. The world’s most powerful and prominent scientific nation ended up leading the world in Covid infections and fatalities, leaving places like India and the African continent in the dust. Things in Singapore are officially not that bad. However, critical thinking skills are considered a left over from Western Imperialism. When Yale-NUS College, which was supposed to teach liberal arts, got shut down, you had the likes of Mr. Calvin Cheng celebrating the end of Western Imperialism in the educational system. Mr. Cheng has a point, its expensive to teach liberal arts of anything that does not qualify you for anything directly but does train your mind to ask questions and think critically. Its expensive to teach Singaporeans to think critically. Nobody pointed out that if you think teaching people to think is expensive, just wait till the bill for a group of educated but unemployable people comes in. Education might cost but in this day and age where information of all sorts is so readily available, the bill for not educating people for the purpose of what education was meant to do will be worse.   Tang Li *Although I’ve been based mainly in Singapore for nearly two decades, I’ve had the privilege of being able meet people who have crossed borders and cultures. I’ve befriended ministers and ambassadors and worked on projects involving a former head of state. Yet, at the same time, I’ve had the privilege of befriending migrant labourers and former convicts. All of them have a story to tell. All of them add to the fabric of life. I hope to express the stories that inspire us to create life as it should be.      Read More →

Most people don't understand statistics and how the Law of Large Number works but yet, they start to give nonsensical comments. Whenever people give their observations, they will quickly brush it aside as "not scientific" or "just your observations" or "isolated small observations" etc. Even when people commented that they have seen a significant change in observations for a PROLONGED period of time, they started to question about the validity of linking it to anything, definitely not the V! The famous excuse used is "correlation doesn't mean causation" but they just tell you half of the story, "correlation may mean strong signals of causation" which indicate that we need to be very careful and study further whether it may really be the case, especially when there are logical and sound hypothesis made. When such phenomenon or observations lasted for months or half a year or more, it means that this is not just an one off event or "outlier" observation but may be an indication of a fundamental change in situation and we must find out why. Especially so, when aggregated raw big data has started to show a disturbing trend of prolonged period of consistency of deviation from past data, it actually means SOMETHING IS REALLY WRONG! I do not need to know whether each and every patients ferried by the ambulance I heard or seen are carrying V or UnV people to come to that conclusion that something is very wrong. I don't even need to know whether they have died or not because I see more funerals around my neighborhood already! In fact, when the big data coincides with my observations, it just means that my individual experience isn't just "outlier" but it is happening all over Singapore and thus, result in showing in these big data. Data science may be a complex subject with a powerful inferences but it is built on fundamental principles of statistics which isn't that difficult to understand. Only people with a bias mind would try to deny everything when all the signals given by the data is pointing towards their inconvenient Truth. A hypothesis based on scientific theory has long been made and prediction was made a year ago about the situation we are seeing happening right now. Yes, I only believe in data and that doesn't mean I don't take individual's observations into account. In fact, big data will be the summation of all happenings. If your observations coincide with what the big data trend is saying, you are not outlier but in the midst of the effect of these happening.   Goh Meng Seng      Read More →