Different from the above three kinds of people, although they are enough to make a living, they are not only there, but also look forward to some kind of existence beyond people. The author reveals his spirit between the lines, as if expecting intellectuals to lead the times like heroes and sages, and as if he wanted to be a wise man and settle down in the world. The word "intellectual" was not invented by the author in the wild, but was given a new meaning by his/her peers in the wild. He/she has to pursue outstanding technology like a geek, create heroes like generate, shape his/her character like a saint, and have keen insight like a wise man, and he/she has never been satisfied with one or two of them.
Then no matter what their subjective will is, human groups will always produce new propositions-on the one hand, seeking survival, on the other hand, seeking development.
We know that the environment has changed in history, and the transition from a hunting society to an agricultural society may soon change again: we also know that a rich culture is not necessarily better than a poor culture-Jiuli, who grows rice for a living in the south, lost to the Yanhuang tribe who grows millet in the north.
There may be some objective laws, but people are the most important role, and the figure of intellectuals is particularly important. Maybe this kind of imagination is not appropriate, maybe you will want to be an intellectual after reading this book, or maybe you will do nothing, because you already have a goal and a road in your heart.
In any case, the theory and thinking provided by this book are quite interesting, and from a practical point of view, it can also help you not to be fooled by the frog in the well when facing the information society. It comes from the author's experience of reading books containing cutting-edge ideas in various disciplines in his spare time, and then writing articles and sorting them into books. These ideas are not obtained by anyone who slaps his head, but by real research, so they are quite reliable, and some authors' personal views are not necessarily mature. Their attitude towards ideas should be as described in the book-try it.
Most of the articles have been published in the author's blog and are worth reading again. I took notes for each article.
The trend of modern society is complexity, artificial intelligence and class stratification. Faced with these three trends, there are two choices: to be a fox or a hedgehog. Intellectuals should master hedgehog thinking: how long it takes to have different insights and learn different cognitive styles, so as to make better decisions, that is, to predict the future more accurately.
Most social sciences are unreliable, but they may be on the eve of great development because of two factors:
There are several concepts in psychology called Witt effect-imitator effect, such as imitating crime and suicide. These imitations are not for their own reasons, but for imitation, so that people who have nothing to do with the incident can join in the development of the situation. Because everyone's sensitivity to an event has a different threshold, if you happen to meet someone with a low threshold at the beginning, it may attract more and more people to join the development of the event and produce an explosive avalanche effect, so it is very accidental. For example, school shootings in the United States.
Economics may be complicated, but economic thinking is very useful and can be called wisdom. The five wisdom of economics mentioned in this article are:
Democracy may not be effective, because voters are usually in an ignorant and irresponsible rationality. This is when ordinary people think they lack influence and are unwilling to know more about policies and economy. This intuition is more about understanding political behavior with a series of "short stories", so politicians are good at telling stories. Voters have expectations of the government, and these expectations are often contradictory, and voters' expectations are also contrary to their actual behavior.
No research has proved that becoming a virtuous person is related to worldly success. Those successful people-rich people and entrepreneurs-are very moral, personable and good at cooperating with others, but research shows that such people are actually very selfish and greedy. In other words, success is related to spontaneous motivation and desire. However, morality is not without benefits. Of course, the so-called morality is not a cultural rule, but a spontaneous morality that is not affected by external conditions or even by one's own emotions (such as compassion). Its real meaning is active and principled thinking. Such people are truly proud and free in their hearts, and not catering to others is the way to success.
There are two kinds of discrimination, one is hostile discrimination, the other is economic discrimination, and the latter is becoming more and more common. The reason is that this is an act of self-interest. In the absence of a specific understanding of individuals, it is preconceived to replace individual impressions with group impressions, which is usually beneficial to oneself in economic behavior. For example, car salesmen introduce cars with different prices to black and white people-it's easier to make a deal, so as not to waste saliva and time.
Morality is an intuitive response, and people's moral differences are related to genes to some extent, just as an outline is to an article. Jonathan heit put forward six basic moral modules:
It's a bit like "benevolence, righteousness, courtesy, wisdom and faith" put forward by Confucianism. Everyone has different priority and sensitivity to these six modules, and different political ideologies are also related to these six modules, which means that political ideology may be doomed at birth. For example, liberals have high recognition of the modules of care, freedom and fairness, but others are average; Conservatives' recognition of the six modules is relatively balanced; There is also a kind of liberals who seem to be extreme: except for the high recognition of free modules, others are very low.
Just observing whether its system is democratic or dictatorial cannot explain many political phenomena. There is a simple model that can be used to judge the political structure of a country or an organization: first, there are leaders, who are divided into three circles from outside to inside: the outermost are nominal voters who have the right to vote and stand for election in name, but in fact power is entrusted and they have no influence as individuals; The sandwich layer is the actual voters, and those who really have influence on who to lead will weaken their influence during the leadership period; The center of the core layer is surrounded by victory alliance, which is the person that leaders must rely on to maintain the operation of power and the key figure in the power structure. The political pattern mainly depends on the relationship between the leaders and the victorious alliance: they support each other and oppose each other. The leader essentially serves the winning alliance, but he has a natural impulse to reduce the number of alliance members to maximize his own interests and strengthen the ability to replace alliance members. The Victory Alliance also wants to expand the number of members to consolidate their respective interests, power and sense of security. The long-term political ecology depends on the relationship between nominal voters and actual voters and between leaders and their alliances. The impetus of economic development to democratization may be the running-in and evolution of people in the process of market exchange. More and more people want more and more power-they want to join the alliance.
One of the core functions of education is to classify people, instead of caring whether they are free to choose and compete fairly, and whether they are cultivating students into excellent people. Because the operation mode of modern society is that most jobs have thresholds, disorderly competition will not be allowed (whoever is willing to take low wages will do it). It needs stability, professional skills and a little morale. Therefore, the more high-end jobs are scarce, the scarcity will be transmitted to education, just like a military competition. However, jobs will not expand because of fierce competition, and the economy will not develop because of educational competition. In fact, it is precisely because of economic development that education can develop, because economic development has created many new employment opportunities, further widened the work gap (division of labor), further led to scarcity, that is, further increased competition. The difference in occupation and scarcity is one of the main reasons for the gap between the rich and the poor, so it doesn't matter much if a smart student has a good family and more opportunities. He can be less bound by exam-oriented education and cultivate his diversified ability. But for low-income families, perhaps his only chance in life is to change his fate in a prestigious school, so he is more bound by exam-oriented education and has a single ability, so family conditions largely determine the income level of the next generation.
Ivy League schools in the United States seem to be much more advanced than famous schools in China. Their students and required students have rich interests, social practice and honors, as well as other abilities, whether for career or physical and mental development. But in fact, elite education in China and the United States is half a catty, because the core of modern education mentioned above is to classify people. Those who are good at this are called exquisite egoists in China and excellent sheep in the United States. Everyone is running around, brushing test scores in China and brushing experience values in the United States. The reason why Ivy League schools are such an educational model is that American elites are solidifying the class in the past. The purpose of running an Ivy League school is to cultivate children's quality and make friends with each other. Of course, they will gradually absorb some other blood. Their original purpose was to cultivate aristocrats. All the quality education it requires, such as playing the violin and fencing, is geared to the upper class. As private schools, American elite schools have found a good business model, focusing on ranking (such as paying attention to admission rate), scientific research (focusing on applied science that can produce direct economic benefits), admission (focusing on high-paying occupations such as finance and lawyers) and alumni donation. Compared with the past, it pays less attention to education itself.
From a social point of view, I am afraid that it is impossible to get rid of poverty only by helping children get employment and financial assistance and helping them receive a better education. Need a multi-pronged approach. Poverty is often integrated with culture, affecting people's way of thinking and behavior habits. Even if a person wants to get ahead, his life circle will have a subtle negative impact on him, especially on his family. Actually, this is the biggest problem. There is an education in the United States called KIPP, which randomly selects some children from poor families to enter school and implements a semi-control and semi-incentive education method, which can be summarized as "one center and two basic points". The center refers to two basic points: one is to study hard and the other is to be a good person. Specifically, it includes allowing students to spend more time in school than ordinary schools, more extracurricular tasks and an all-round reward system. It also includes quality education that ordinary schools do not attach importance to. These qualities include perseverance, self-control, enthusiasm, sociability, gratitude, optimism and curiosity. These qualities are not directly related to the college entrance examination, but can help students to be more conscious, integrate into society and form long-term good habits. Easier said than done, the key lies in strict and meticulous implementation, so strict that the whole class stops to help them correct a small gesture in class, so detailed that they have a set of social etiquette when talking to teachers and classmates on different occasions. This kind of education is actually a kind of intensive training, which weakens students' bad cultural influence from the family and living environment and establishes good physical and mental habits. This kind of education is very successful, and its students' college entrance rate is 80%, while the average American poor is only 8%.
China people talk about the way of sages, while Americans talk about holy character. The two have the same effect. In essence, it is an elite quality (which can also be said to be an ideal) recognized from the long human history. With character, we can do great things better, whether it is ideological guidance or specific public affairs, and people with character can do better. Sages do not seek personal gain for themselves, and even give up the opportunity to become famous. These are also manifestations of character. There is a "Qumu tradition" in western thought, which teaches people how to cultivate their self-cultivation, much like China's "golden mean" thought: first, recognize their own shortcomings and remain modest; Restrain the impulse, then don't be a little evil, don't be a little good, and form it in practice bit by bit; Doing things is not a simple bowl of water, but a keen attention to all parties' information, different demands and conflicts, finding a balance point (that is, finding the greatest common denominator) and making temporary arrangements at any time according to the current situation. Since the sage's heart can be trusted and his ability is flexible and balanced, there is naturally no obstacle to doing things. At present, the mainstream culture in the United States is: ego, which means that a person does things according to his inner interests and needs, and realizes himself. This is a typical Steve Jobs, but the Qumu way is not like this. It means the sacrifice of the ego. He was called in by a certain profession. Compared with the past, the respect for character in modern society is weakened. One reason is that material is extremely rich. In the past, ordinary people also paid attention to character education, because in an era of unusual materials, misconduct has to pay a price, and modern society has much higher tolerance for people. This article does not discuss why to cultivate character, or what kind of experience it is to be a saint. Ordinary people don't learn character to do great things, at least they are not easily fooled by public figures.
Big data prediction is biased prediction, and prejudice is the confidence that history will repeat itself. If everything a person does meets the big data prediction, then he will be replaced by robots. Unfortunately, most people have it, but some people can't predict it with statistical models. Such people can be called heroes. The system of modern society is the model of industrial assembly line. From the perspective of hierarchy, the lower the hierarchy, the more standardization is needed, and the higher the hierarchy, the more flexibility and freedom are emphasized. Or take education as an example, it is divided into three levels, corresponding to three types of families: poor families correspond to training tools, and education aims at finding a job; Middle-class families cultivate handicrafts in order to improve their own value; Upper-class families should cultivate masters with the aim of choosing and changing the world. The lower education follows the mechanical process, and does not need to understand or even do it right, but it needs to master the process skillfully. Gradually, there are some methods and skills to the upper level, and then it is to pay attention to originality, flexibility and the highest level of education to cultivate decision-making ability, that is, to decide what to do and what not to do, to analyze why to do it and the consequences of practice. This educational structure makes it difficult for most people to surpass the class of the previous generation, not to mention the genetic and environmental restrictions on him. Back to heroes, heroes are different. He can ask the source, even if his background is worse than that of ordinary people (a large number of historical celebrities have been investigated), and he has greater physical and mental defects. But it was because the difficulties did not defeat him that he successfully changed himself and became stronger. The reason is that such people have a high-level internal motivation-a sense of mission. Why are heroes so dazzling? Because society needs innovation, innovation needs information, and information is an accident. If an accident has positive feedback, it can promote progress. Progress is essentially replacing old demands with new ones. But innovation is risky, and all heroes need courage, perseverance, wisdom and character.
Most people in this society like certainty, that is, they like predictable returns, the government strives for stability, the entertainment circle likes to play old stories, and the composition questions of the college entrance examination are the same year after year: because of this, those students who work hard are more likely to be selected. What kind of events are easy to predict? It is a simple system, which is unlikely to produce a chain reaction, but most aspects of modern society are complex systems. In this system, the emphasis on vulnerability is easily damaged by the Black Swan incident, and of course some people benefit from this vulnerability.
Baidu college entrance examination composition topic prediction accuracy is very high, what is its principle? It uses a topic model technique called LDA (Hidden Dirichlet Distribution). The idea of this technology is to regard an article as a collection of words, a topic as a collection of related keywords, and the topic and its keywords are artificially set. Then, it uses an algorithm to analyze the frequency of keywords in different topics in an article and calculate the probability that the article is each topic. Through the analysis of a large number of articles, we can know which common topics are used, and then we can predict the hot information this year. This technology can also be used in picture classification, song recommendation, news, script, game analysis and so on. Data analysis can make good things more popular and disappear faster, because people are chasing the trend and like to be unconventional.
Thinking about the same object from different time and space scales often leads to different conclusions. Small-scale phenomena cannot explain large-scale problems, but they can generally be simplified or ignored when studying large-scale problems. There are several key factors in the study of large-scale problems-hard conditions, which refer to those factors that remain unchanged or change slowly for a long time. For example, climate and rainfall were the hard conditions for China people and foreigners to struggle in China two thousand years ago, genes were the hard conditions for primitive race struggle one million years ago, and the domesticated animal and plant species 654.38+ 10,000 years ago were the hard conditions for human beings to develop at different speeds in various continents. There are two hard conditions for people to be human, one is innovation and the other is division of labor, and these two hard conditions depend on many other hard conditions. For example, the key to innovation is language, which makes people know what they are thinking more clearly, leads to conscious innovation and is easier to express, and people's life expectancy is much longer than their childbearing age, and knowledge is better passed on. Women are not in estrus physically, which is convenient for cooperation. Evolution is full of surprises.
Although history is full of accidents, there are always laws to follow, which can predict high probability events and can be called the general trend. Technology has a certain general trend, and to a great extent, the general trend of technology also determines the general trend of the world, because technology has several remarkable functions:
The development of technology is not controlled by any one person or a small group, and its development is just like biological evolution. The latest research shows that the evolution of organisms is not completely random, but there is some self-organization mechanism, which makes genetic variation have several specific directions, such as several specific permutation and combination patterns, such as wings, eyes and even basic DNA structures in different species, which have the best performance in the environment. If the patterns appear randomly, the probability will be as small as that of monkeys writing novels, and this self-organization may be positive feedback leading to accelerated evolution. The same is true of technology. For example, all civilizations developed independently, with stone tools, fire and knives. Even some technologies appear regularly. In the 20th century, there were many examples that a technology was discovered by different researchers almost at the same time. Therefore, to a certain extent, technology and social trends can be predicted. For example, researcher RobertJervis found that offensive weapon technology and defensive weapon technology appeared alternately in history, and the acquisition of many offensive weapons would make wars frequent. So he judged that the Internet is an offensive weapon, because it makes terrorist attacks much cheaper than counter-terrorism, and natural terrorist attacks will become more and more frequent.
This paper is based on the author's own experience in learning English. Strive to make a breakthrough in English learning in a short time. Recite the words first, and recite 300-600 words for a few hours every day. Review the new words according to the forgetting curve. At the same time, find a college English textbook and read an article intensively every day (with notes and explanations) to experience grammar and words. These are the basic skills. After practicing the basic skills, find excellent English books that have just been published to read. It's better to be interesting, and listen to audio books in the listening part. The purpose of this is to establish tacit knowledge, that is, to weave the original fragmented knowledge into a web and deepen it into the real situation. It will be much faster to learn another foreign language after learning it.
The basic skill of information geeks is to use search skills. The first effort: reading academic papers; The second effort: reading the original data; The third effort: actively collect and analyze data. Information geeks use these methods to acquire knowledge, talk about resources, think and solve problems, and also regard it as a pastime.
The debate analyzed in this paper refers to the method of overwhelming the other side in momentum and making people speechless in speech, rather than clarifying the facts to solve the problem or trying to convince the other side.
The significance of believing or not believing this belief lies in providing basis for one's own decision. Intellectuals should have a complex and dynamically adjusted belief system. To scientifically judge whether a belief is reliable, we can use Bayes theorem, which is a formula: P(A|B)=P(B|A) P(A)/P(B), where P(B) =P(B|A) P(A)+P(B|A? )*P(A？ )，A？ Does it mean a?
Example:
P(A): the confidence of the high score obtained by burning incense, assuming15%;
P(B|A): The probability that a classmate gets a high score by burning incense is 80%;
P(B|A？ ): The probability that a student gets a high score without burning incense is 50%.
Then calculate the adjusted trust P(A|B)=22%.
If another student B comes to burn incense, substitute the original P(A|B) into P(A), and then estimate P(A) and P(B|A) to get a new P(A|B).
And so on.
Evolutionary psychology studies human animality, generally taking human instinct as the research object, comparing with animals, and looking for * * * to explain human behavior. Evolutionary psychology will also study people's seemingly cultural behavior, study some unexpected facts, simplify complex problems, but more can't be explained. This is the influence of society, environment and culture on people, and many phenomena are anti-evolutionary psychology. Therefore, the author believes that educating people should transcend evolutionary psychology and overcome instinct with reason.
From mathematics to physics, to chemistry and electrical machinery, to biology and medicine, to economy, politics and psychology, the reliability of knowledge is gradually decreasing, because the experimental parameters are increasing and the system is complicated. However, unreliable knowledge may be more useful in daily life because it is close to life. So don't believe in absolute truth, and try all theories.
Seal cutting is a psychological and social phenomenon, which means self-flattering, self-pleasing and self-moving. Take a brief history of time as an example. The first edition of this book was published in 1988, and its contents are out of date. It is still on the best-selling list of major online bookstores, which makes people talk about it. However, it is difficult to understand the contents of the book according to people's conversations, because most people don't understand and even read more than 6.6% of the contents in the book. The author mentioned the gap between his real state as an ordinary physicist and the physical research he imagined before entering the business. This does not mean that experts should not popularize knowledge like laymen, and laymen should not talk about expert knowledge, but should adopt a correct attitude. Engraving is a bad attitude. The correct attitude is to think more, and the purpose of reading is to gain wisdom and insight.
Why was manned space flight in full swing in the 1960s and 1970s? After 50 years, how do you feel that you are retreating instead of advancing? The reason is that manned space flight consumes a lot of state funds. Through calculation, both direct and indirect economic benefits are far less than the input, and most scientific experiments carried out in space do not need to be carried out in space. So loading into space flight is actually an image project. In addition to enhancing national happiness, showing off national strength to other countries is of little use. The fundamental reason for the slow development of space is that there are no resources in outer space that can greatly benefit mankind, but if there are, the mode of human exploration of outer space will change from Zheng He's voyage to great navigation.
With the advent of the digital age, more and more companies begin to use big data technology to collect data from people for analysis and prediction, covering all aspects of people's daily necessities, such as your personalized recommendation on video websites, recommendation lists of online bookstores, and personalized advertisements on search pages. It traces back to your home. When you find a job delivering consumer goods advertisements for you, it traces back to restaurants you have never been to, delivers your favorite beer directly, and so on. It looks good, but you can also know that you don't care about spending more money on something. For example, this book "Intellectuals" is more expensive in paper and thickness than its predecessor "Never Imagine" 10 yuan, and it was booked on Amazon before it was released. In the digital age, if you want to be a slave to numbers, you must learn to play with numbers.
Technological progress will usually solve old problems, transform industries and create new jobs, which will also lead to a considerable number of people losing their jobs. This trend is more extreme under the impact of IT technology. The production efficiency is improved, and the elimination of people is unprecedented. Companies like FaceBook and WhatsApp have dozens or hundreds of people in charge of hundreds of millions of people's businesses. It means wisdom. It not only eliminates low-end occupations, but also eliminates high-end occupations, which are probably beyond people's imagination, such as active driving, intelligent translation, intelligent lawyers, intelligent doctors and so on. In this gradual competition with machines, only a few people are winners, especially those who create high technology, superstars and capitalists with high charm. Winners take all, wealth is concentrated in fewer people, and the total wages in the world cannot afford it.
It is worthless to have knowledge and know how to discover it, and I am afraid that knowledge will not be used soon, because these machines are replaceable. Look at the recent news: Tencent has written news automatically by computer, and IBM's intelligent system "Watson" has given people advice. These may be alarmist, but let's think about what is left of this trend. Perhaps only innovation, even this ability machine can be partially replaced, combined, evolved and exhausted, which is very common in industry and medicine, and no one can do it. Ask others what else? People have judgment ability, and people have emotional ability. As long as the machine is still serving people, people may judge more accurately than it, and people may prefer people to machines.
Dealing with intelligent machines is not to put an end to them, nor to let them replace their own work as much as possible, but to compete with machines, make use of their advantages, be good at making up for their shortcomings, give play to people's strengths, and use them to train themselves and train them to see more thoroughly and further. In 2005, a freestyle chess competition was held on the website of Playchess.com. Two amateurs beat the strongest chess player and the strongest computer with three ordinary computers to become champions.
Terrorism, P2P, Wikipedia, etc. It conforms to an organizational form called decentralization, just like the recovery of starfish digging holes and cutting corners. This form of organization is very primitive, long before the country came into being. It is difficult to completely eliminate such an organization, and it is also difficult to make big money and do great things with it. So there are three strategies to kill starfish:
The significance of organization is to reduce transaction costs, but the organization needs to increase management costs for its own stability, and the expansion of the organization will increase transaction costs. This is a paradox. There are many attempts to solve this paradox, and Holacracy is one of them that looks promising. Its idea comes from the concept of "cooperative structure" in biology, and its core is purpose-oriented, with trading function as the main function, nested at different levels, decentralized and cooperative. Specifically: gather a group of people with a specific purpose to form a circle and work together to achieve this goal. The circle chain is long, and it is decided to pull people and kick people. The personnel rights are complete, and other rights are the same as those of the circle members. A circle can be a sub-circle, and the function of the sub-circle is the decomposition of the circle function, which is produced by the supervision meeting of the parent circle. The control meeting is attended by all members of the circle and representatives of the sub-circle to discuss and decide on work affairs. The structure of the sub-circle is the same as the mother circle, and the sub-circle can also have sub-circles ... nested layer by layer as needed. The circle was dissolved after its function was completed. Everyone can play different roles in different circles. The advantages of cooperative farming system are flexibility, variability, decentralization, rule of law, initiative, transparency and efficiency. The actual case is Zappos in Xie Tianhua. Holacracy.org is a website specializing in cooperative marketing.
What is the best? It's not necessarily designed by people. In the unknown complex system, existence is the best and the product of evolution. Some scientists have developed genetic algorithms based on the principle of evolution. Genetic algorithm can be used to design products, but the design process is not controlled by people. Mitchell has an example of studying genetic algorithm: a machine with limited vision tries its best to find randomly scattered cans in a pile of houses and pick them up within a specified time. The main principle is to randomly generate a variety of strategies, and then test them in various simulation environments, and select the random pairing with high adaptability to generate the next generation (which is also randomly modified into genetic variation), and then put it into the simulation environment. After many generations, the ideal results are obtained, and the results are very intelligent, and even the sub-strategies (genes) can cooperate with each other. Genetic algorithm has been widely used in many practical fields, for example, engineers use it to design antennas, which are very strange and good in shape, but they can't explain why. Market economy can be said to know the way of evolution. Companies are randomly generated, mutated, mated, innovated and eliminated.
This paper advocates a spirit of consumerism. The relationship between investment and economic growth is nonlinear. Automation leads to the improvement of production capacity, the increase of output, the saturation of market, the decrease of labor force, the decrease of wages, the increase of investment, the unreasonable surplus profits, bubbles and financial crisis. This is an era of extremely rich materials. Machines and wealth have given ordinary people more freedom. Production and consumption should not be for appreciation, but for use value, that is, consumption is to expand consumption, redistribute wealth and socialize investment (pursue use value). What are the benefits of it? More material and spiritual life, more democracy and freedom have promoted the development of science, culture and art, behind which is the progress of people and society. It seems ideal, but how to redistribute wealth reasonably? How to invest in social interaction effectively? It is a big problem, and consumerism may not promote human progress.
What professors are there in Northeastern University?
The teachers in Northeastern University are all very good. Because it is an int