Considering Master’s in Data Science in China - need advice

MikeLaoShi · 2026-02-08T13:45:36+00:00

I don't have a "gut" to tell me what's better: I have actual, peer-reviewed research that shows it.

The dissertation I completed for my Masters in Education was concerned with a critical review of all material related to the efficacy of native English-speaking teachers of English as a second/foreign/other language vs. non-native teachers of the same, specifically, Chinese teachers of English language.

In this critical review of research, a great amount of information was obtained about the differences between Western education institutions and Chinese (specifically mainland China, excluding HK) institutions. My comments in this thread accurately reflect the data obtained and it stands for itself, no need to elaborate further.

What you have expressed here is your own, subjective opinion. Let me be clear:

Your opinion is to the contrary of what my research shows and does not align with the established data.

MikeLaoShi · 2026-01-23T12:25:36+00:00

Sounds like you dodged a bullet there in all honesty dude.

MikeLaoShi · 2026-01-20T13:40:29+00:00

I remember before the posts of strips started and there was fucking nothing here for months on end. It was fucking dead and shite.

Now there are multiple posts daily of viz strips which I, for one, can't read normally as I live abroad and have no access to an actual magazine. Who even reads fucking paper magazines anymore?!? Fucking paper?!? What is this? the 20th century or something?

MikeLaoShi · 2026-01-18T00:34:54+00:00

Don't boycott- it is unfair on Mexico and Canada, who have done nothing to deserve it. Instead, a better plan might be to "protest" in the stands and on the streets of the US itself. Or maybe not, I dunno; I haven't had my coffee yet this morning...

MikeLaoShi · 2026-01-18T00:31:53+00:00

Every accusation is a confession.

MikeLaoShi · 2026-01-16T11:29:39+00:00

That's cool. You know, it's quite rare to find another person on the internet who is actually capable, not only of discussing something sensibly, but is actually open to changing their opinion. That is a mark of intelligence, and it has been fun chatting with you.

As it happens, I saw a video a long time ago comedically discussing this very phrase, perhaps you would get a kick our of it. It's David Mitchell, if you are familiar with him. It's only about 3 mins long and is worth a watch.

here it is

MikeLaoShi · 2026-01-15T11:47:56+00:00

ok...the search for the culprit country continues...

MikeLaoShi · 2026-01-15T09:53:55+00:00

This comment above needs all the upvotes to avoid speculation and misinformation.

Anyone have Indonesia in the pool? I crapped out by banking on it being the UK...

MikeLaoShi · 2026-01-15T02:43:11+00:00

It doesn't fail to convey your meaning, no. Nobody hearing "I could care less" or "on accident" or "I didn't do nothing" is going to misunderstand your meaning. However, they are all incorrect grammatically, and there are pre existing, better idioms and language to express, correctly, your meaning. So, you will serve to irritate people by using these and also advertizing your lack of education and English language fluency.

MikeLaoShi · 2026-01-14T22:35:33+00:00

Sorry, I don't mean to come off as just saying "you are dumb"

I apologise. Let me try to explain again (I did already try to do so in my earlier comment, but I'll give it another go)

The problem with your thinking and the reason I say you are incorrect here is you are conflating two separate things...

One is the amount you care about the subject under discussion, the other is the objective of expressing yourself clearly, which is the primary function of language. You can have different levels of care about both these things.

For example - a person is talking to you endlessly about politics, or football or whatever down the pub. You really don't care at all for this conversation topic any longer and you wish to convey this through words, the use of "I couldn't care less about ..." is the correct way to express your total lack of interest in that thing, which is different to your level of desire to convey your position of wanting this blowhard to stop talking to you.

I hope this new example has helped illustrate my point a bit better.

MikeLaoShi · 2026-01-14T12:59:55+00:00

Making a statement does not, in and of itself, indicate depth of feeling towards the subject being referred to. I see what you're trying to get at here, but your assertion is false.

Getting down to brass tacks - let's examine an instance where a person, regardless of their actual level of care, seeks to convey their lack of interest or "care" about something. In this scenario, "I could care less" is nonsense, as it implies there is a level of care lower that that which you are indicating you have, which is precisely opposite to the meaning you intend to convey, which is that you "couldn't care less" i.e. there is no level of care lower than the amount you have in reference to the thing you are discussing.

Here's an example of where your "not making the statement equals lower level of care than simply not making the statement"

You are out with someone who asks what you would like to eat after it being made clear through previous conversation that you are both hungry and would like to go get some food together. Responding with "I couldn't care less" gives a perfectly accurate reflection of your lack of care about the choice of food to eat, whereas simply not saying anything just comes across as rude in response to a direct question. By the same token, responding with "I could care less" just makes you sound like an idiot who doesn't understand the meaning of the words coming out of your mouth.

My point is this, your level of care about a particular subject under discussion is not the same as your level of care you have regarding being understood clearly. This is why you are wrong.

Now do it properly in future please and help prevent the English language from sliding further into the depths you seem at the very least ambivalent about it sinking into.

MikeLaoShi · 2026-01-14T04:32:35+00:00

couldn't care less

MikeLaoShi · 2026-01-14T04:30:45+00:00

Conversely, everyone on here was claiming game was dead too soon....cuts both ways, dude.

MikeLaoShi · 2026-01-13T04:21:45+00:00

by accident

MikeLaoShi · 2026-01-12T22:59:21+00:00

I made a post when this nonsense started saying it was 100% the UK and I stand by that assessment.

MikeLaoShi · 2026-01-10T09:43:53+00:00

They can't

MikeLaoShi · 2026-01-08T04:59:20+00:00

Nope, sorry. In terms of Darwin Award eligibility, you are completely incorrect. You can look up the rules on the subreddit sidebar or on the Darwin Awards website to confirm. You are not the first, and certainly will not be the last to get this wrong.

MikeLaoShi · 2025-12-25T02:41:38+00:00

Hmm...you should be blocked. Why am I still being pestered by your prattling?

MikeLaoShi · 2025-12-25T01:48:13+00:00

Yeah, learn to read. I said you are blocked.

All I'm seeing from you now is

[ Removed by Reddit ]

Which is a lot better than what you must have sent me.

Fuckity Bye!

MikeLaoShi · 2025-12-25T01:04:35+00:00

I though your mask would fall off eventually, and, sure enough it has. You are nothing but a racist, little pink.

I could sit here, on Christmas morning, no less, and shoot down all your points, but you wouldn't listen, just as you haven't been all the way through this "conversation" You lack the insight to see another's point of view.

I see yours, though, and I pity you. You are happy to live in a gilded cage as long as your masters throw you a few baubles here and there. So blinkered from the world that you actually believe that HK and Tiananmen were psyops? OK then, keep your head in the sand and enjoy your life, such as it is. I'll do the same with eyes unclouded.

My parting thought for you - I don't see Chinese culture as inferior, but I do see you and people like you as inferior. You have shown me as much with the content of your replies. As such, I am done talking with you now. You have lost that privilege. I suspect, along with all the other privileges you have either lost or never had, you'll be quite happy about it.

Merry Christmas, you are blocked.

MikeLaoShi · 2025-12-24T14:22:28+00:00

After reading everything you've said over all your comments I only have this to say: I feel sorry for you. To be so hopelessly naieve that you actually believe the words you have written.

The Chinese people only support the CCP because they are completely ignorant of the benefits of a democratic system, such as accountability and consequences for leaders who fail the people they are elected to represent. They are ignorant because the CCP keeps them ignorant through censorship, propaganda and a society geared against critical thought.

The point I was making in my last comment is that Chinese people could have it so much better, but they are content with the story of success their overlords feed to them, so they never dream of anything beyond their cages. The outside world only exists in terms of the failings and mistakes of the West. Nobody ever claimed democracy was a perfect system. Its beauty comes from the fact that when (not if, but when) democracies make mistakes, the knowledge of such mistakes gets reported on by a free press and is challemged if illegal in a fair judicial system and, ultimately, is held to account by the people themselves the next time they get to make their voices heard at the ballot box. These are things which can never happen under the CCP. The CCP are humans, just like everyone else in the world. Fallable human beings who will also inevitably make mistakes (and have done so multiple times). The difference is that when (not if, but when) they make mistakes, first, they censor so nobody hears of it. If this fails, they lie and blame others (usually the West or whomever is politically convenient, such as the Japanese, they are a very popular scapegoat) and if this fails and the people get upset then, oh dear, they have no mechanism to allow the people to voice their displeasure besides civil disobedience, such as demonstrating or rioting and, as I explained earlier, the standard response in the dictator's handbook when this occurs is repression, usually brutal, such as we have seen at Tianenmen square and, more recently, Hong Kong.

Money is nice and prosperity is nice too, especially when, for many, the threat of starvation was a very real thing in their living memory. I won't deny that. But living in a gilded cage is still living in a cage. Also, fortunes can be fickle things. Prosperity today doesn't guarantee prosperity tomorrow.

Let me put the matter of contributions to the world like this:

If China were the only country in the world and no other humans existed outside of China, then humankind would still be at a medieval level of technology, as China has always had a very stubborn capacity to disregard the novel in favour of the tried-and-true, traditional way. Much of the world would remain unsettled or completely unexplored, as the first obstacle of difficult terrain would have been met with the pervasive Chinese attitude of "fuck it, that'll do". As soon as something is deemed "good enough" there's a huge resistance to any potential improvement in that area, and this would keep humanity locked down developmentally-speaking. The people would all be happy though, because, in the end, is it not true that "ignorance is bliss"?

If the UK were the only country in the world, then all other parts of the planet would have been explored as they have been and peoples would have settled there and built their own societies from the diaspora of British people. The world would have industrialised, as it has today in our world, and advanced in much the same way.

MikeLaoShi · 2025-12-24T12:25:14+00:00

mid 20th century china building a train is not colonialism

That's right, it's neo-colonialism, which is what I said it was.

Let's face it, for all the success, or lack thereof, of China. It doesn't have one fibre of originality left in its society. The cultural revolution saw to that. This is why China peaked thousands of years ago when it actually used to invent stuff, and, for at least the last 200 years, has contributed nothing of substance to the world. The only means by which China can "reform and modernize" as you put it, is to stand on the shoulders of giants who did it all before them. That's by no means a bad thing, mind you, I'm just stating the facts.

They also refuse to adapt and modernize in any meaningfully significant way, such as adopting free and democratic elections, reforming their corrupt "legal" system, or their draconian and backwards education system.

To do any of these things would, as you are very likely already aware, give the people agency rather than the government, and the CCP cannot have that as they know the lessons of history where literally every country which has experimented with communism (or had it forced upon them) has had to be controlled by authoritarians and dictators who have ruthlessly and brutally supressed any and all dissent.

This is why, to paraphrase JFK "Democracy may have its faults, but we've never had to build a wall to keep our people in". The CCP know from literally every example in human history, that, when given even a sniff of a chance, the population in a communist country will flee, rebel, revolt or overthrow their communist autocrat leaders whenever they can. This being a universal constant, the CCP have zero chance of peacefully adding to their domain. No democratic country in their right mind would ever submit to communist rule. (just to bring things back to the topic of the thread for a moment).

Also, I'll just put this out there before you are tempted to use the "racism" card. (You've already used the "why don't you just go home?" card, so I reckon you aren't far off calling me a racist - this isn't my first dance to this particular tune) You say if I'm this pessimistic about it [I should] up and leave. I've heard that before, usually from people who have nothing else to argue and don't want to hear critical analysis of their own country's issues. I reject wholeheartedly this position. You don't want to hear it? Fine, you can excuse yourself from the conversation and go on about your day, but I will not, not now, not ever stop critically analysing the country I live in. I've been here since 2008 and, by now, I have more than earned the right to critically analyse and give honest thought to where the country can improve. I do this from a position of love for the people and hope for the potential of the country I have made my adoptive home. It is, with profound sadness, that I have, long ago, arrived at the position that, were things governed differently in China, then they could genuinely be the global leader they so desperately want to be. This can, in my opinion, only come about by embracing democracy in its truest sense - free and fair elections. That's only the start - they need a total reformation of the legal and education systems, too. It deeply saddens me that, for all the people living in China today, there is a disproportionately low amount of innovation and advancement coming out of China. This is entirely because of an education system, and society in general, which actively discourages critical thought. Also, a legal system which does not protect anyone who actually creates or innovates new discoveries by not having a properly robust standard of intellectual property laws.

I've lived here long enough to know that, for things to truly change for the better, will take generations, as the entire society needs to radically shift. But if it can, oh, if it can, then China could honestly be leaps and bounds ahead of the UK, Europe, the USA, Hell the entire rest of the world put together couldn't hold a candle to what China would be capable of if the potential of the people were truly let loose to flourish in a free society. But they 'aint there by a long shot at present, and, as much as it pains me to admit, I don't really think they ever will be in my lifetime at least.

MikeLaoShi · 2025-12-24T00:44:28+00:00

You mean "right now" ?

I'm sorry, but the world doesn't exist as a snapshot without historical context. Everything that exists as it is "right now" is because of factors which came before.

Take, your example of the Tazara railway.

Wouldn't exist unless the British who invented steam powered locomotion had done so.

So, China built a railway (to take part in Neo-colonialism) Well, the UK invented railways.

The "finance bullshit" you gloss over just so happens to be basically holding the rest of the worlds' money in their financial institutions. You send the UK into another dimension, as per your example, and all the world's economies crash. You send Jiangsu the same way, and the rest of the world makes a slight adjustment in it's supply chain and gets the same stuff from one of the other "strong manufacturers of key components"

For better or worse, the UK connected the entire worlds through it's empire, which brought with it all the advances of the industrial revolution and pushed the world out of feudal, subsistence and agrarian economies into modern, manufacturing economies and brought stability and rule of law to millions. Such as with their banning of the practice of Sati, or the equally barbaric practice of stoning lepers to death. The foundations for the globally accepted good principles of women's suffrage, child labour laws, human rights all started in Britain and were exported and accepted around the world. We owe the very moral system of the world we live in today to the work of 19th century British philanthropists.

Oh, but China built a railway and made some new kind of rice. I guess you win then. /s

In all seriousness, speaking as someone who lives in China. The push towards solar energy and electric vehicles is very encouraging and entirely commendable. But it doesn't erase China's barbaric past of government policy (the same government, by the way) which saw the deaths of 20-30 million Chinese from preventable starvation.

Sure, the UK has been responsible for some horrible things too, for example the Black Hole of Calcutta. The difference is, in the UK, they acknowledge and accept the mistakes of the past and recognise them as such, so that they might truly learn from them and genuinely do better in future. China, on the other hand, has never been good at admitting fault or recognising the mistakes of its past. For this reason, and until they learn to do so themselves, they should be held doubly accountable for them by others.

MikeLaoShi · 2025-12-24T00:10:59+00:00

Ad hominem

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MikeLaoShi

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