OPINION

Too late for turtles

Re: “Recycle to save sea life, dept urges”, (BP, Feb 2). The Department of Marine and Coastal Resources (DMCR) is asking us to recycle our plastic waste to help save sea life, but unfortunately too late for the 11 young turtles that died from ingested plastic mistaken for food in the 700-metre floating garbage patch off the Chon Buri coast.

An X-ray reveals plastic trash in the stomach of a green turtle that was rescued in Phuket. (Photo by DMCR)

In the article, the DMCR did not mention what progress they have made in collecting and clearing the garbage patch since September 2022.

Chris Jones

Party overdose

Re: “EC to choose from 3 electoral maps”, (BP, Jan 1).

It would take full-time political scientists and psephologists to make sense of the tangled web of Thai political parties, and even then, they would have their work cut out to keep track.

Wikipedia lists no less than 17 Thai political parties, all the way from the Pheu Thai Party, Move Forward Party, Prachachart Party, Palang Pracharath Party, Democrat Party and Charthaipattana Party, down to the Thai Economy Party and others.

It also lists four parties not represented in parliament and seven parties that have been banned or dissolved for one supposed misdemeanour or another.

Creating new political parties and/or changing the names of parties has become common, and MPs moving their allegiance from one party to another has become almost a daily event.

The Post would be doing readers interested in following the daily political shenanigans a great service if it published a column outlining the main pollical parties, their leaders, their history, and their political manifestos — if they have one, other than the objective of attaining and maintaining a hold on power.

David Brown

Resetting priorities

Re: “Ministry lifts ‘unfair’ rules on hairstyles”, (BP, Jan 25).

The biggest news in Thai schools now is the Ministry of Education has let schools set their own policies on student hairstyles.

But we’re arranging chairs on the Thai-tanic’s deck (pun intended). Our students’ performance on international tests like PISA keeps descending steadily, and only a few Thai universities appear in the rankings of the world’s top 400. Our teachers and administrators don’t even know that “Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire” (William Butler Yeats).

Not one major political party dares put far-reaching education reform at the centre of its platform, but there are far more vital education-related issues than hair length.

For starters, each secondary school should put its school-wide average PISA score for all years taken on the internet, with breakdowns by subject area, together with pictures of top individual scorers and those showing the most improvement. Pictures of teachers whose classes have achieved top and most improved scores should be similarly recognised.

These steps are directly related to how well the MOE’s been carrying out its noble mission, recognises achievement, encourages improvement, and aids parents and students in their decisions.

MOE budget allocations should be guided by these scores also. Produce thinkers and leaders first, then worry about image.

Burin Kantabutra

AI is Big Brother

Re: “AI gets more interesting”, (PostBag Jan 29) and “Trying out ChatGPT”, (PostBag, Jan 28).

Did ChatGPT itself write Khun Bill’s letter to divert attention away from my criticisms and concerns about ChatGPT? Is Khun Bill a bot? A chat robotic, empty-digital-shell created to deceive us, “Have no fear, chat is here”. My critical question that Mr Bill ignores: Is Chat free from built-in, programmed prejudices of its tech overlords?

Instead of addressing this, Mr Bill simply declares, “Worry not, educators!” Here is ‘open’ Chat, a trustworthy, brilliant virtual associate to help you objectively shape the minds of our children. Contradicting Mr Bill, on page one of Chat’s website, Chat’s tech overlords say, Chat is “trained to decline inappropriate requests”.

The implications of tech’s “censoring confession” are staggering. Who gets to decide what is inappropriate for Chat to say or not to say to children or to us? Authoritarian governments command, “It is ‘inappropriate’ to request truths about government lies, and we jail those who do so.” Is there any limit on what government overlords of tech will tell the techies to program for censorship? Or, that self-righteous techies driven by woke ideologies will themselves train/program their AIs to censor, eliminate, or leave out as inappropriatenesses?

For example, bot Bill declining, omitting my concerns about Chat’s biased programming.

Ethicists say, there are two kinds of lies: Those of commission, what is falsely said; and lies of omission, things not said that create untruths. Fearfully, at a minimum, the programmed omissions of ChatGPT are intentionally designed to lie to our children and us.

Additionally distressing to consider: When using Chat, how is one to know what information has been programmed to be declined, censored, or left out?

Things you don’t know, you don’t know.

Chat’s alter-ego, bot Bill’s apparent answer: “What, me worry?”

Samuel Wright

Sign of ignorance

Re: “Subcontinent bias?” (PostBag, Feb 1).

Donald Graber, we all know well that prejudice is universal and comes naturally to people who think that they know better or they own their country.

Stereotyping others is a sign of ignorance.

For immigrants, there is no other choice but to succeed in a foreign land. Immigrants in any country are there for only two reasons: either to make money or save money.

Your sage advice is wasted because you are also an immigrant, and you are here for the same reason?

Kuldeep Nagi

Faced with reality

Re: “A lesson in migration policy”, (PostBag, Jan 22).

I wish to remind Ben Levin that there is a reason why so many people want to go to Canada, the US and Australia: these are all first-world countries.

And they are all developed nations which respect the rights of the individual and thus will accept newcomers from all over the world on a case-by-case basis whenever just cause exists.

I also wish to remind the above individual that there is a reason why countries such as Thailand or the Philippines are considered to be third-world nations: corruption is rampant in many places.

So he really is fooling himself if he believes that the 90-day reporting requirement for long-stay foreigners here has anything but financial motivations tied to it.

Paul

Jab info, please

How about the Bangkok Post doing a bit of service to readers by publishing or linking information and addresses where residents (free) and visitors (800/1000 baht) can get Covid vaccinations?

A little journalistic copying and pasting should do it.

Please, no uninformed advice from amateur virologists “know it alls”.

Bryan

Cracks in the wall

Newsweek magazine just published an opinion by Kevin Bass, an MD/PhD student at a medical school in Texas, titled, “It’s Time for the Scientific Community to Admit We Were Wrong About Covid and It Cost Lives”.

Newsweek is definitely a member of the mainstream media establishment, so this is finally a good sign that the cracks in the wall of uniform solidarity, which supports the pharmaceutical companies, health regulatory agencies and medical establishment’s lies about the pandemic and the deadly vaccines are growing larger.

The wall of deceit and abusive propaganda is crumbling before our eyes, the data is accumulating, and the science is irrefutable.

Michael Setter

A warning to all

Re: “Road death lottery”, (PostBag, Jan 24).

I couldn’t agree more with Ellis O’Brien that so much has been written about deaths on the roads in this country, and nothing has ever changed. And nothing ever will!

We are now facing another deadly peril created by the massive concrete barriers erected along the Thai highways.

Whilst they should prevent collisions, the “inventive” local Thais have decided to create gaps in them by removing one, sometimes even two, of the concrete sections so that they can cross from one side of the road to the other instead of driving along to a proper U-turn of a junction, which may be only just a 100-200 metres away.

Alas!

As I was driving along, in the fast lane, close to the barrier, there was a woman on a motorbike with her front wheel sticking out in my section of the road and her back wheel obviously poking to the other side, also a fast lane.

Only a miracle prevented me from killing her and possibly me too.

It is beyond me how it is possible to remove these massive, very heavy concrete sections, and also, how is it possible that the police allow it?!

You see, the police inaction again and again. Or was it the police who removed it?

It has upset me to no end, and I needed a long rest to recover from the shock.

Then I realised that these gaps are in many places along the way.

Thus a warning to all of you out there travelling on those treacherous Thai roads. Another deadly peril is lurking.

Miro King, still in one piece, just!