Paul Huang, the real situation in Taiwan: politics, military, China — Manifold #40

 

Paul Huang is a journalist and research fellow with the Taiwanese Public Opinion Foundation. He is currently based in Taipei, Taiwan. 

Sample articles: 

Taiwan’s Military Has Flashy American Weapons but No Ammo (in Foreign Policy): https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/08/20/taiwan-military-flashy-american-weapons-no-ammo/ 

Taiwan’s  Military Is a Hollow Shell (Foreign Policy): 

https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/02/15/china-threat-invasion-conscription-taiwans-military-is-a-hollow-shell/ 

Audio-only and transcript:

https://www.manifold1.com/episodes/paul-huang-the-real-situation-in-taiwan-politics-military-china-40

Steve and Paul discuss: 

0:00 Introduction 

1:44 Paul’s background; the Green Party (DPP) and Blue Party (KMT) in Taiwan 

4:40 How the Taiwanese people view themselves vs mainland Chinese 

15:02 Taiwan taboos: politics and military preparedness 

15:27 Effect of Ukraine conflict on Taiwanese opinion 

29:56 Lack of realistic military planning 

37:20 Is there a political solution to reunification with China? What influence does the U.S. have? 

51:34 The likelihood of peaceful reunification of Taiwan and China 

56:45 Honest views on Taiwanese and U.S. military readiness for a conflict with China

Richard Hanania & Rob Henderson: The Rise of Wokeness and the Influence of Civil Rights Law — Manifold #39

 

Richard Hanania, Rob Henderson, and I were scheduled for a June 2023 panel as part of the University of Austin (UATX) Forbidden Courses series. I missed the panel due to travel issues, but we gathered on this podcast to recreate the fun! 

Topics: 

0:00 Introduction 

1:20 The University of Austin and forbidden courses 

17:37 Will woke campus culture change anytime soon? 

29:57 Common people vs elites on affirmative action 

35:42 Why it’s uncomfortable to disagree about affirmative action 

41:22 Fraud and misrepresentation in higher ed 

44:20 The adversity carveout in the Supreme Court affirmative action ruling 

50:10 Standardized testing and elite university admissions 

1:06:18 Divergent views among racial and ethnic groups on affirmative action; radicalized Asian American males 

1:10:00 Differences between East and South Asians in the West 

1:23:03 Class-based preferences and standardized tests 

1:31:57 Rob Henderson’s next move 

Audio version with transcript.

LINKS 

Richard Hanania’s new book: 

The Origins of Woke: Civil Rights Law, Corporate America, and the Triumph of Identity Politics 

https://www.harpercollins.com/products/the-origins-of-woke-richard-hanania?variant=41004650528802 

Richard Hanania’s newsletter: 

https://www.richardhanania.com/ 

The Center for the Study of Partisanship and Ideology: 

https://www.cspicenter.com/ 

Rob Henderson’s newsletter: https://www.robkhenderson.com/ 

Rob Henderson’s new book: 

Troubled: A Memoir of Foster Care, Family, and Social Class 

https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Troubled/Rob-Henderson/9781982168537 

UATX: https://www.uaustin.org/forbidden-courses

Quantum Hair in Electrodynamics and Gravity (Eur. Phys. J. Plus)

This is the published version of the arxiv preprint previously discussed here.

We found it interesting that quantum hair can already be found using the familiar Euler-Heisenberg effective action, which results from integrating out the electron in QED. 

The paper also contains a general argument for why solutions to the semiclassical field equations resulting from the effective action (both in gravity and QED) carry more information about the state of the source than in classical physics. 

From the Conclusions: 

The quantum effective actions for both electrodynamics and gravity lead to field equations which couple a compact source (charge current or energy-momentum tensor) to external fields (electromagnetic or graviton field) in a manner which, generically, leads to quantum memory and quantum hair effects. External solutions of the field equations deviate, due to quantum corrections, from the familiar classical forms that satisfy the Gauss law. As a specific consequence, more information about the interior source configuration is encoded in the external field than in the classical theory. 

As specific applications, we considered semiclassical sources (large black hole, macroscopic charge distribution), which allowed us to solve the quantum corrected field equations by expanding around a classical solution. However, fully quantum statements regarding quantum hair are also possible, which do not, for example, require a semiclassical source. In [1–3] it was shown that the quantum state of a compact source (e.g., in an energy eigenstate or superposition thereof) determines certain aspects of the quantum state of its external field. In principle, measurements of the external fields can fully determine the interior state of a black hole.