Category: Fiction

Categories
Politics & government Sci-fi

[2098] Of one data point

I am unsure if I am recalling this accurately but at back in my mind, amid cobwebs of vague memories, I somehow remember reading an Asimov’s short story in a stuffy old library at the Malay College in Kuala Kangsar. You will forgive me if it is not even Asimov’s writing. It may well be a work of some other science fiction author. What I do have vivid recollection is the subplot of the story, however. Through the retelling of it, I hope that it may cause others to refrain from committing hasty generalization.

The story is set some time in the far future, maybe on Earth, maybe on Trantor or at some other place, I do not know. What is important is that the realm of human knowledge has expanded greatly. This includes in the field of statistics and in particular, sampling methods used to ascertain public opinion.

Sampling methods used today in real life suffer from certain errors arising from randomness and uncertainty. Notice how each time a respectable polling agency in reports result of a survey, it includes the margins of error of the findings, or more accurately, the standard errors, along with the averages. In the science fiction, statisticians of the future have developed a way to eliminate, fully, the errors associated with sampling.

In fact, the field of statistics in that fiction has reached a stage so advanced that the opinion of the public can be gauged accurately by simply sampling a person, who is a member of the public. In other words, all that is required to make general inference about the society is just one data point.

A sample size of one and that is it.

One.

Only one.

1Malaysia!

Oh my, I do not know how that gets in there.

Anyway, unfortunately in real life, reliability of a sample and therefore, the ability to generalize its statistics for inferential purposes decrease as the sample size decreases, more so at some range closer to zero. We are still finding ourselves a long way from living a statistician’s wet dream.

Yet, all too often in Malaysia today, individuals are quick to generalize the result of a by-election to describe national mood. It is perhaps acceptable to make an inference out of a series of by-elections held within a certain timeframe but it is dangerous to make a claim that a by-election signals a countrywide trend. It is dangerous because it is misleading.

A by-election only gauges the opinion of a certain type of individuals and these individuals are certainly not representative of the whole country. The voters in Bagan Pinang, from instance, are quite different from voters of Manei Urai, Datok Keramat, Damansara Utama or Likas. Although the national issues that they care about may coincide, their attitude toward the same issues is not the same due to their worldviews. And then, there are local issues. It is definitely safe to say that local issues that they face are different enough that one-size-fits-all approach is doomed to failure.

These voters, taken as whole, may provide some concrete statistics on the direction of national politics but individually in isolation, they are not so helpful.

With respect to Bagan Pinang, there are many other differentiating factors that further make result of its by-election unique to itself. As an example, not many areas have an army camp resides within its boundary. Another is its status as resort town, or rather, a resort town full of abandoned projects. Suffice to say, Bagan Pinang is not Malaysia.

Therefore, I have to disagree to sweeping statements made by multiple persons after the election. In The Star, Isa Samad was quoted as saying “The people of all races have spoken and this is an endorsement of the Prime Minister’s 1Malaysia concept.”[1] Deputy UMNO President Muhyiddin Yassin meanwhile said, “This is a significant victory and more importantly the people’s endorsement of the Prime Minister’s policies.”[2]

Perhaps, the people they are referring to are restricted to the voters of Bagan Pinang only. If it refers to Malaysians as a whole, then these two politicians and others who share similar tendency to generalize in so grandly a manner will have a hard time rationalizing trends in other areas.

This is not to say information from Bagan Pinang is worthless. It is not to say information that Bagan Pinang provides with national politics in mind is worthless. Rather, information from this by-election should be contextualized by taking into account several past and future by-elections held at different places if it is to make national sense. Without such contextualization, the one data point of Bagan Pinang might as well be a noise, or an outlier.

In the meantime, save a national election itself, the best barometers of national mood are countrywide surveys done properly. Unless, of course, we are living in a world created by that science fiction.

Mohd Hafiz Noor Shams. Some rights reserved Mohd Hafiz Noor Shams. Some rights reserved Mohd Hafiz Noor Shams. Some rights reserved

[1] — Isa thanked the people of Bagan Pinang for the victory, saying it was a win for Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak’s 1Malaysia concept.

“The people of all races have spoken and this is an endorsement of the Prime Minister’s 1Malaysia concept,” he told reporters.

Isa also thanked the Barisan machinery for working tirelessly during the by-election.

“I’m also happy that the Malays, Chinese and Indians are now with Barisan. I hope this will have a domino effect for Barisan in the future,” he said. [Polling Day Live Coverage: Isa wins with thumping majority. Sarban Singh. Zulkifli Abd Rahman. The Star. October 11 2009]

[2] — A beaming Deputy Prime Minister Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin, who was present when the official results were announced just after 8pm, said the people had endorsed Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak’s 1Malaysia concept.

“This is a significant victory and more importantly the people’s endorsement of the Prime Minister’s policies. I congratulate the people of Bagan Pinang, including the Indians and Chinese, who came out in full support of Barisan,” he said at the tallying centre at the Port Dickson Muncipal Council hall. [Thumping win for Isa. Wong Sai Wan Sarban Singh. Zulkifli Abd Rahman. A. Lechutmanan. The Star. October 12 2009]

Mohd Hafiz Noor Shams. Some rights reserved Mohd Hafiz Noor Shams. Some rights reserved Mohd Hafiz Noor Shams. Some rights reserved

First published in The Malaysian Insider on October 12 2009.

Categories
Pop culture Sci-fi

[1863] Of 2001: A Space Odyssey

Some rights reserved. By Mohd Hafiz Noor Shams

They do not make good films like this one anymore.

Categories
Books & printed materials Fiction Liberty Society

[1898] Of Republic of Heaven

I had never read a book after watching its film adaptation. I am usually dismissive of those who do that. I admit, I am arrogant about this kind of stuff. It is a feeling of those listening to alternative less-than-mainstream music have against those that listen to commercialized songs like Britney Spears’ or Backstreet Boys’. When Lord of the Rings came out in 2001, I spent excessive time deriding those who fell in love with Tolkien’s works because of the movie, instead of the book. I am like a book puritan, like those religious conservatives watching liberals as if the latter suffer from grave moral erosion deserving in the lowest level of hell. Worse, watching the movie before reading the book ruins imagination.

Well, I finally lost my moral authority to assume that holier-than-thou attitude because of Philip Pullman’s His Dark Material.

To my defense, I read it not because I fell in love with the film. Well, I did fall in love with it but that is not the reason why I started reading it.

The reason is this: it was the controversy the film invited when it, The Golden Compass, hit the cinema. Christian conservatives in the US wanted for the movie to be boycotted. On the other side, the director Chris Weitz was criticized for self-censorship when he diluted reference to Christianity in order not to offend the religious rights.

That and a desire to entertain a friend convinced me to watch the movie. I like the movie but I wanted to do a comparison between the movie and the book, just to discover by myself about the heretic nature of the trilogy with respect to religion.

I did not manage to do my comparison until I got myself a free copy of the whole trilogy at the KL Alternative Book Fest some time ago.

Finishing the first installment of the trilogy failed to prove the alleged hostility that Pullman’s work has against the idea of religion. The idea presented in the first book was mild though creative and I could not really understand the brouhaha surrounding it. And so, my interest in reading the trilogy waned as I picked up other wonkish books to read.

I did continue reading the trilogy after renewing my commitment to finish reading all of my books that I have ever bought. As I did that, I was hooked by the second book and it was until the end of the third book did I finally comprehend why the book is not at all innocent. It was about killing god, or rather, killing an angel who pretended to be God. It was about dismantling the Kingdom of Heaven to create a Republic of Heaven.

In Pullman’s universe, the first ever angel made others believed that he was the creator of the universe, a god. The angel later retired from life as he grew older and appointed an angel named Metatron as a regent. Metatron assumed full godly authority and tightened the Kingdom of Heaven’s grip over the world. Metatron later became more powerful than God, or the Authority as named in the book, and supplanted his position, effectively becoming God himself.

The Church, ignorant of the truth, meanwhile, being the agent of so-called God, tried to restrict free inquiry. Parts of the Church secretly worked to turn human kinds into, effectively, obedient zombies incapable of running their life freely, incapable of questioning. It was this effort along with the discover of dusk, started the ball rolling. The Church strongly denied the existence of dusk though they themselves were aware of its existence.

Metatron himself was formerly a human called Enoch. As you can see, there are references to actual characters in the Abrahamic tradition. You will realize that assertion alone is heretical beyond scale. There are frequent reference made against religion throughout the trilogy but it only become more memorable towards the end.

There were rebellions, among men and angels against god in the name of free will. Part of the rebellion was fueled to undo the lies told by God.

In any case, Metatron in the end, was killed by humans, thus freeing human kinds from tyranny, allowing free will to flourish without having the smoldering Church lurking somewhere. God himself die somewhere in the book.

I am slightly disappointed with the ending. As usually, reading a good book causes one to become involved in the universe created by the author. I saw the two main characters of the trilogy, Will and Lyra, walking along the beach with their daemons from afar, falling in love. There was a feeling that you want them to be together. But they could not be together. They had to part ways because of, ehem, the structural integrity of the whole universe depended on them staying apart. I found myself protesting when I they found out their feeling was futile, that something larger was against it, something larger than god. It was morality and responsibility to others. It was about the Republic of Heaven.

That disappointment however does nothing to diminish the brilliance of Pullman.

Categories
Humor Pop culture Sci-fi

[1713] Of watch me frakking naked

Naked cylon!

Categories
Books & printed materials Sci-fi

[1593] Of space elevator and Arthur C. Clarke

The one book that brought me to the path of environmentalism was Red Mars. The science fiction, along with Green Mars and Blue Mars as its sequels affected my worldview so profoundly. The Martian Trilogy as the three books are collectively known is more than an entertaining science fiction. It touches on various issues, ranging from the environment to technology, liberty to ethics, economics to politics, war to love. But I do not plan to write about the Martian Trilogy. Instead, I write to remember the great Arthur C. Clarke.

Is it not odd to remember Clarke through somebody else’s — Kim Stanley Robinson — work?

Not so.

I cannot recall where exactly it occurs in the trilogy but the space elevator played a central role in developing the plot of the Martian Trilogy. The facility was a symbol of colonization of Mars by humanity but it was hugely despised by some fraction of naturalized humans. These humans whom played pivotal role in making the colonization possible were the new environmentalists called the Reds. They would like to preserve Mars as it is while the Greens sought to terraform Mars into another Earth. Notice the word play. Great struggle immediately ensued with friends became foes and down came the space elevator.

There are many ideas that piqued my interest in the book and one of them is the space elevator. The idea of a vehicle transporting people and goods alike to and fro a planet and outer space sounds astoundingly amazing to me; it connects a geosynchronous spaceport to another surface-based port on a planet that acts as an anchor. In the Martian Trilogy, the spaceport was the Martian moon Phobos and the planet was Mars. Later, Earth itself had an elevator and that initiated greater space exploration and Solar System-wide colonization.

A space elevator is present in Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri but the superstructure does not have any real role in the turn-based game.

One book which the space elevator took the center stage was Arthur C. Clarke’s The Fountains of Paradise. While the idea of a space elevator first appeared in late 19th century, it was Clarke through this novel whom popularized the concept of space elevator.

The atmosphere of the novel is set in Sri Lanka though in the book, Clarke called it Taprobane. In any case, Taprobane is the ancient Greek name for Sri Lanka.

The storyline switches back and forth between Vannevar Morgan and Kalidasa; the former is the mastermind of the space elevator in the 22nd century while the latter is a prince of Taprobane seeking to construct a tower in ancient times. What ties the two characters together is ambition; building a monument in the face of opposition.

I will not speak so much of the elevator since I have done so just over 6 years ago. And I think, the best way to give respect to a great author is to encourage others to read his works rather than unfairly paraphrasing it. So, I recommend The Fountains of Paradise for your leisurely reading.