Original link: https://ljf.com/2023/05/09/1248/
Chapter 1 The Laws of Society
There are three important trends in the world at this moment that challenge us intellectually.
The first trend is that the world is becoming more and more complex.
Knowledge is actually decentralized and distributed among the crowd. It is the market that organizes people to work together.
The second trend is a clear change in the way people work.
The third trend is that while the material life of all people is improving, the overall social class stratification is expanding.
Research on the gap between the rich and the poor in recent years has emphasized a point of view: the most important difference between the poor and the rich does not lie in the amount of money, or even in the number of opportunities they get, but in culture and concepts. Poverty is not just an economic state but also a mindset.
Someone has conducted an in-depth investigation into the social customs of the Italian immigrant working-class community in the Boston area of the United States [illustration], and found that for these people, family members, relatives, and acquaintances who have played since childhood are far more trustworthy than any outsiders. They think everything outside is mysterious or even hostile.
Canadian psychologist Keith Stanovich has a book called “Beyond IQ: Why Smart People Do Stupid Things”, which uses a large number of research results to illustrate a problem: IQ and rationality are two different things, and the two are almost irrelevant. Rational abilities—the ability to fully understand the current situation and make the best decisions—have to be learned separately.
Science and engineering thinking may be the most important modern thinking, which pays attention to tradeoff, quantification and scientific methods.
The best way to treat science and engineering experts is to take their opinions as a reference for decision-making. You can provide me with the best arguments and data within your professional scope, but I have to listen to other people’s arguments and data on how to make a decision.
The key to solving problems often does not lie in whether you have a lofty idea, but in “degree” and in numbers.
Professors advocating the free market believe that all economic problems should be solved by the market. Columnists advocating freedom and democracy turn the shortcomings of American politics into sensational material. History lovers who love Confucian culture see that everything is good in the Song Dynasty. Chinese thinkers who claim to be conservatives may not even be able to compare with the British and Americans today in their admiration for the international treaty system after World War I. They spent half their lives casting their own “hammer” and treating everything as a “nail”.
Generally speaking, the prediction results of experts are better than random selection by tossing a coin.
There are many reasons for modernization, but this is the most critical: don’t be hijacked by the “big idea” in your heart.
Tetlock used the method of statistical questionnaires to discover the various characteristics of fox thinking compared to hedgehog thinking, which deserves to be listed as virtues and even as a motto: foxes are willing to receive new information; foxes have far less confidence in their decisions than hedgehogs; even if they do After making a decision, the fox still wants to rethink from a different perspective; the fox always likes to constantly revise his predictions; the fox may not be as expert in a specific field as the hedgehog, but his knowledge is much wider and he understands a lot things; foxes are skeptical about many things; when considering conflicts, foxes can see what might be right for both sides; foxes like to deal with people with different opinions; foxes don’t pursue clear rules and order in their work; foxes like Questions with multiple answers, they often find multiple options when solving the problem…
The original intention of free arts is actually very practical. The purpose of this is not to fall in love and find a partner, but to learn how to make decisions.
Serious literature can make people learn to understand the feelings of others and understand the lives of different types of people in the real world. Logic allows one to learn to reason and debate. Grammatical rhetoric can teach people how to use language to win the support of others. History can teach people to learn from the experience of their predecessors. Mathematics can make people learn trade-offs. Astronomy can make people feel awe of the natural laws of the world. These learnings are not “upbringing” for dressing yourself up and being appreciated by others. These are practical skills for great people to do great things.
Freedom of Art does not tell us any truth that is universally applicable, but provides some fables, celebrity allusions and thinking routines. The more routines you master, the more ideas you can choose from when doing things. As for which routine should be used to solve any problem, there is no procedural fixed method. It is an art and can only be chosen by oneself.
Simple beats complexity. Only complex people can beat complexity.
Simple Problems, Dilemmas and “Tricky” Problems
Divide the various problems faced in life into three categories: simple problems, dilemma problems and difficult problems.
A simple question is a question that has a clear direction, a reassuring answer, and a victory can be declared when it is solved.
One of the greatest dangers in this world is that some people think that all problems are simple problems.
Dilemma
For example, if you have a little savings and want to buy a house, you have two options. The house closer to the workplace is more expensive and smaller. It is not comfortable to live in but saves time and may appreciate in value in the future; the house farther away is larger and will be convenient for children in the future, but it is tiring to commute to and from get off work. So which one do you buy? Or rent a house first and wait until later? This is the adult world. We can call this kind of problem “dilemma”. There is no single correct direction for this problem. This is a dilemma, and you have to make a choice between two directions.
The real problems in life are, at least, dilemmas.
What is a difficult problem? Ritter and Weber proposed that a problem is difficult if it has several of the following ten characteristics: 1. The problem does not have a clear definition. It does not write down various conditions for you like the math questions in the college entrance examination. 2. It has no ultimate answer. You can never get rid of it completely, it will always be there. 3. Your solutions are neither right nor wrong, only good and bad. And what is good and what is bad, only you can judge for yourself. 4. No matter what countermeasure you take, you will not see the result immediately. You may not know whether what you do is useful or not, and there may be unexpected results. 5. There is no special place for you to do trial and error exercises, every movement of yours will have an impact, and you will practice it as soon as you come up. 6. I don’t even know what options are available. 7. There is no precedent to follow. Previous experience won’t help you much. 8. The problem is most likely just a symptom of a deeper problem. But there is more than one problem behind it, the whole situation is so intertwined that there may be no fundamental root cause at all. 9. There are many stakeholders who have their own views on this issue, and the directions they want to solve are different. If you get started, no matter what the outcome will be in the future, you will be responsible.
So how to solve difficult problems? First of all, you should not expect to solve difficult problems, you can only deal with them at most-you have to be prepared to live with it for a long time. This is like the treatment of cancer in modern medicine: it is impossible to kill all cancer cells, but medical means can control the disease to a certain extent and prevent it from expanding. You can pursue management of this problem.
Professor John C. Camillus, once put forward several suggestions for dealing with difficult problems.
One suggestion is for all interested parties to fully understand each other. It is best for everyone to sit down and talk about their views and requirements openly and honestly – not to reach a consensus, but to understand each other. In this way, we can at least eliminate some prejudices, don’t just look out for ourselves, and listen to what others want, and maybe we can take some basic actions.
Another suggestion is to take action. You can cross the river by feeling the stones, every decision is a small action, try it out slowly, see the effect before deciding on the next step, but you can’t stay still. If you move, you are coping; if you don’t move, you are an ostrich.
How can difficult problems be solved? Can’t solve it. A difficult problem ceases to be a problem, usually not because it has been solved, but because the situation has changed and it has been replaced by another, possibly more difficult problem.
Don’t use “common sense” to understand the complex world
Experts are no better at forecasting than a straight coin flip. Even more ironically, these experts’ prediction scores for their own areas of expertise were actually worse than those for areas outside their area of expertise.
The “key man” theory fits perfectly with common sense people’s thinking. We always emphasize the promotion of history by great men, the destruction of social order by a “small group” of bad elements, and the leading of fashion trends by stars. The problem is, this theory is not supported by large-scale statistical experiments.
By analyzing 74 million information links of 1.6 million users within two months of 2009, the researchers found that 98% of the information was not promoted at all. Among the tens of millions of messages, only a few dozen were forwarded more than a thousand times, and only one or two were forwarded more than ten thousand times! The messages we usually see being reposted are actually special cases among special cases. It can be seen that trying to become famous by posting one or two popular microblogs is as difficult as winning the first prize in a lottery.
What is the influence of celebrities? Watts et al. used an ingenious approach. They used a statistical model to single out those “key players” who had a large number of fans and successfully triggered a Twitter waterfall based on the data in the first month, and then looked at their performance in the second month. The results were quite unexpected: the chances of these people triggering the waterfall again in the second month were quite random. On average, “celebrities” are indeed more likely than ordinary people to cause a piece of news to be widely spread, but the actual effect of this ability fluctuates greatly, and it is not reliable at all. Perhaps the best way to market is not to pay big bucks for a handful of celebrities, but to hire people with average influence in bulk.
If something suddenly becomes popular, our common sense thinking always thinks that there must be something special about this thing, or there must be a driving force behind it. But research on Twitter suggests that the so-called behind-the-scenes actors aren’t all that powerful. So why do certain books sell well, certain movies do well, and certain music charts? Is it simply because they are exceptional? Another study that Watts participated in suggests that success is likely to be largely down to… luck.
We are always used to attribute the success or failure of things to the quality of people, leaders, and even conspiracy theories, as if everything is destined, but the fact is that many things are just accidental.
A more practical view of history is to abandon the idea of ”everything is destined”, to regard historical events as one of many possibilities, to regard the future as a probability distribution, and then use statistical methods as much as possible to calculate through historical data Probability of future events.
“Bitterness” has no value
What is “bitterness”? We can define it as the sense of compulsion and psychological pressure you experience when you are in an unpleasant experience or doing something that is not pleasant in itself. “Bitterness” is just a by-product of something, and “bitterness” itself has no value.
Yes, we see that many people can indeed maintain a positive spirit through suffering, but that is not the effect of suffering. They did not grow because of (because of) suffering, but despite (in spite of) suffering, they still grew.
Suffering is inevitable, but there is enough suffering in normal life that we don’t need to ask for it.
The choice of adults will not be so bitter, because adults understand the truth; but children are really bitter.
But it is a last resort, there is no way, there is no way – you should not say that this is good for the child’s growth, because it is not good.
high efficiency
The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey. One of the most critical ideas in the book, which is also the second habit of “highly effective people”, is to do things with a focus on principles.
For example, you have an appointment with your wife to go to a show in the evening, and the boss suddenly calls and asks you to go back to the company to work overtime. Those who focus on work will choose to work overtime, and those who focus on family will choose to continue to accompany their wives. On the other hand, people who focus on principles will consider everything and will not be affected by any impulse. No matter what choice they make, it is an active decision based on a sense of mission—or obligation. A work-focused person who decides to go back to work overtime may be for his own promotion or to compare himself to his colleagues’ competitors, while a principle-focused person who decides to go back to work overtime is really thinking about the company. He might make a decision like this: If this overtime work is indeed very important to the company, I will go back to work overtime; if this overtime work is actually not that meaningful to the company, I will spend time with my wife.
In a paper published in 2012, psychologist Paul K. Piff and collaborators conducted a total of seven studies. These studies all show that the moral standards of the rich and the so-called upper class are not only not higher than ordinary people, but also lower than ordinary people.
Researchers have acknowledged the fact that people of high socioeconomic status tend to be more selfish than the average person.
A person who is unreliable in cheating and abducting all day is certainly impossible to succeed. But a person who only knows selfless dedication may not be able to mix well. In the end, those who are more likely to succeed may be those who appear to be very cooperative, but are actually very selfish and even occasionally deceitful.
We think the world is fair. But this is precisely the wrong worldview. In fact, psychologists even have a term for this error, calling it the “just-world hypothesis” (or just-world fallacy).
The world is not fair. Fairness is just an illusion given to us by novels and movies. The endings of those plots are fair just because we like to see fair endings.
In the book “Power: Why Only Some People Have It”, the author proposes that believing in the fair world assumption will do you three harms:
1. You can’t learn from someone else’s success.
2. You think you can just do your own thing, and you underestimate the bad things that happen in the world.
3. What’s more, you will think that those who achieve success must have their strengths, and those who fail must have something to hate. And this is completely wrong!
His book cites a wealth of empirical research. In the first chapter of the book, Pfeiffer lists the research he did in the United States. The results of the research tell us two things. First, whether a person can gain power or get promoted, his work performance is an unimportant factor. Second, the most important factor in determining your promotion is your relationship with your superiors.
It feels good to be a good person, but being a good person is a common human way of thinking. In fact, from an economic point of view, you should be a “rational person”-this means that you should do things from the perspective of self-interest, not “good people”.
Why do you want to be a moral person? Because I am not a slave to anyone, anything, or any emotion, I want to be a master.
According to Kant’s theory, it is right if it is not beneficial, and it is not self-willed if it is beneficial.
External Factors, Internal Factors and “Building Factors”
What is the most important factor in determining whether a romantic relationship is good or bad?
“Happiness” is actually a general word. The researchers decomposed the evaluation of the relationship into two dimensions, one is “satisfaction” and the other is “loyalty”. People who are very satisfied with their marriage are not necessarily loyal, and people who are very loyal to their marriage are not necessarily satisfied.
The results of this study show that the factor that has the greatest impact on satisfaction is the “responsiveness” of your spouse, that is to say, if you call him, he will respond immediately, and you will be very satisfied with the relationship; if you call him, he will always ignore you You, you are very dissatisfied. The factor that has the greatest impact on loyalty is intimacy: the closer the relationship between two people, the less need to develop relationships with others. The fact that responsiveness has a huge impact on satisfaction and not so much on loyalty may also be worth pondering for some…
Your own personal quality has 19% strength. This result tells us that relationship is a subjective judgment.
The top ten personal qualities that determine whether a relationship is good or bad are: 1. Satisfaction with life 2. Depression and helplessness 3. Negative emotional factors, whether it is easy to get angry or feel pain 4. Whether you worry too much about the relationship, For example, always evaluating whether the relationship is good or not 5. Are you unwilling to be with each other all the time?
The predictive strength of relational factors was as high as 45%. The top ten most important relationship factors are: 1. Feeling, the other’s loyalty 2. Intimacy 3. Gratitude, i.e. feeling lucky to be with the other person 4. Love 5. Sexual satisfaction 6. Feeling Yes, the other party’s satisfaction 7. Conflict 8. Perceived, the other party’s responsiveness 9. Trust 10. Investment
“New York Times” columnist David Brooks has a saying called “romantic system”, saying that a happy marriage is neither the result of careful selection nor the arrangement of fate, but a “contract system”. Marriage is not a matter of you and your significant other, but a matter of you, your significant other, and your relationship.
You should also put the relationship before two people: the relationship comes first, the other person’s needs come second, and your own needs can only come third.
If we call your own quality “self-factors” and the environment you are in as “external factors”, then the truth is that external factors are not as important as your own factors, and the most important thing is that you are in this environment. What can be built is the “build” factor.
You don’t just adapt to the environment, your actions can change the environment. The quality of a thing is not determined by the initial setting, but more determined by your daily efforts, which is constructed by combining your own factors with external factors and working with others.
People’s misunderstanding is that they always think that “choosing the right one” is the most important thing, but they don’t know that construction is more important.
“Zero-order truth” about stars
I heard that when the mathematician Euler was alive, two-thirds of the world’s mathematics papers were written by him. So countries that are not strong in mathematics really don’t have to blame themselves too much, you just don’t have Euler. The star effect is not limited to sports. Wherever it depends on people’s high-level performance, it must rely on stars.
One study found that a star employee at a high-tech company increased the productivity of other employees within 25 feet (7.6 meters) of his office by 15%. People will be infected when they work next to celebrities, and they will meet Xian Siqi.
The book “The Law of Barabasi Success” (2019) mentioned a study that said that if a university can hire a super academic star, it can increase the scientific research output of its entire department by 54%! However, this achievement is not all made by the academic star himself. On average, he himself only provided a quarter of the total increase, and the rest is his driving effect.
Reed Hastings (Reed Hastings), CEO of Netflix (Netflix), wrote an article specifically about this matter. He said this: I used to think that given a project and a fixed salary budget, I would rather Hire 10-25 ordinary engineers, rather hire a star. After all these years, I realize that I was wrong. The value of the best programmers is not 10 times, but 100 times.
What would have happened if Apple hadn’t had Jobs? What would happen if Tesla didn’t have Musk? The so-called “the most expensive thing in the 21st century is talent”, in fact, to a large extent, it means “the most expensive thing is a star”.
If you compete with a star, he will suppress you; but if you compete with a star, he will drive you.
A math teacher when I was in college met Yang Zhenning when he visited abroad in his early years, and Yang Zhenning even drove him off in person. Seeing the rare opportunity, my teacher hurriedly asked Chenning Yang if he had any tips for doing research. Yang Zhenning didn’t say that you need to read more papers, work hard, etc. He only said one thing – you just keep an eye on the best people in the field, see what they are doing, and just follow suit.
China needs stars. The problem facing all walks of life in China now is how to change from shiitake mushrooms and green vegetables to sea cucumbers with green onions. At this time, what you should be most concerned about is not how to manage shiitake mushrooms, green vegetables and green onions, but where to find sea cucumbers.
Signals and Scores
A ranking algorithm that makes SEO ineffective is a good algorithm. A good test is a test that makes brushing the questions invalid.
Campbell’s Law states that –
The more useful an indicator is, the more valued it is; but the more valued it is, the less useful it is.
Five Wisdoms of Simple Economics
“Equality” is a very modern concept. In fact, it is unequal for adults to serve children for free, and it is also unequal for young people to be filial to their elders. People accept this inequality in their families out of love and care, which doesn’t apply to strangers. Between strangers, the two parties have no more obligations and feelings other than being honest and trustworthy and not aggressing each other, so they are equal. Therefore, the family should focus on feelings, and the country should focus on interests and efficiency.
People say that Americans are indifferent to family affection. In fact, American parents give their underage children whatever they want, but they do not give everything to their adult children like most Chinese people do.
My son loves watching cartoons and playing games very much. He holds the screen in his hand all day long, and sometimes he can’t hear him talking, which is very difficult to discipline. Once at a parent-teacher meeting, his kindergarten teacher told us a way: All screen time must be earned—doing homework, eating well, doing housework, etc., rewarding 15 minutes of screen time for each such thing , Playing games and watching TV can do anything, but if you don’t make money, you don’t have anything. We really implemented this policy, and later changed the 15 minutes to 5 minutes, and used the mobile phone to strictly time the time, and the effect is good, and it has been up to now. Sometimes I look at my son like “a profiteer looks at a corrupt official”, and I say in my heart that I am not afraid of you being disobedient, but that you are not interested.
The guts of Bayes’ theorem
The real meaning of “believe it or not” is to provide a basis for our own decision-making. If I believe that going to the Lama Temple to pray for blessings on the first day of the Lunar New Year will bring good luck, then first, I will try my best to go; second, whether people believe it or not has nothing to do with me. It is more convenient to go. In this way, “believe it or not” is a very subjective judgment, and we can completely tolerate other people’s judgments being different from our own.
If a disease is rare, then you should not place too much confidence in a positive diagnosis. Because “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence”.
Opinion changes with facts, with courage and insight, this is the great principle of Bayes’ theorem.
Where do people’s thoughts of justice come from?
Human rationality is nothing more than serving one’s own feelings. It is to find the answer first and then find ways to find evidence.
Chapter 2 The Secret of Education
The most fundamental purpose of high school is not to impart knowledge and cultivate people, but to classify people. After graduating from high school, some students will enter famous universities, and they will have a great chance to get a high-paying and decent job in the future. Some students can only enter ordinary universities, while others cannot go to universities. We are picked on by society all the time, but high school may be the most important one this time. High school is a machine that classifies people.
Even if it is a job that “anyone can do it”, the company does not want to “let everyone do it”, but hopes that employees will have a certain degree of loyalty and cohesion, and are willing to pay a higher salary for this.
In common sense, we believe that strong education can make a country strong, so “no matter how poor you are, you can’t have poor education”, but this may be a misunderstanding.
In fact, if you look at the historical records, the level of education in a country or region actually rose only after the country or region’s economy took off. In 1960, the literacy rate in Taiwan was lower than that of the Philippines, and the per capita income was only half of that of the Philippines. If education determines economic growth, then the Philippines should have more growth potential than Taiwan. However, the fact is that the per capita income in Taiwan is now 10 times that of the Philippines.
According to this study, it doesn’t matter to bright students whether they get into a prestigious school or not. You can succeed in this way, and you can succeed in other ways. This may be because society is complex enough and markets efficient enough that it doesn’t matter if you’re not selected once. So if you are capable enough, failing to go to Fudan University and going to Central South University will not affect your future income.
The scientific conclusion of the early childhood arms race
Early education can really make you win the starting line, but you really can’t lead for long.
The early advantages brought by early education will be washed away within 1 to 3 years, and then may be reversed.
When it comes to improving academic performance, early childhood education is useless at best and harmful in many cases. Early education is counterproductive.
The causal relationship between cram schools, exams, and class
The so-called tutoring classes for children, private lessons, etc., are a bit like upgrading a set of writing equipment for writers.
There is little use for cram schools—if there are, they are much smaller than the public thinks.
In 2013, a doctoral dissertation [illustration] of Columbia University did a lot of research on cram schools in South Korea. The basic conclusions can be summarized in three points: 1. Extracurricular tutoring is most effective for poor students; 2. Mathematics and English It is relatively effective, but has little effect on Chinese; 3. The effect of supplementary tutoring mainly occurs in the junior high school stage. After high school, extracurricular tutoring is only in mathematics and only has a certain effect on poor students.
The correct interpretation of these data is that, in a statistical sense: 1. Students’ grades reflect their IQs; 2. Students’ IQs are inherited from their parents’ IQs; 3. Parents’ wealth and education reflect their parents’ IQs; 4. That’s why students’ grades are related to their parents’ wealth and education.
If going to cram school is useful, what kind of donations and bribes are there for the rich?
Many people now say that in the past, many candidates from rural areas in China were able to enter Peking University and Tsinghua University, but now Peking University and Tsinghua University admit most of them are children from urban middle-class families. Isn’t this a solidification of class? I don’t think so. In the past, China was not a market economy, and talents could not freely display their talents. Many high-quality families did not have high incomes—but now it is a market economy, and high-quality families can easily obtain better living conditions. It is very likely that the so-called “children from poor families” who were admitted to Tsinghua University in the past are not really children from “poor families”.
The more scientific conclusion is that test scores reflect who parents and students are, not how much they spend.
Native family, natural IQ, lifelong learning: how useful are they all?
Family, IQ and lifelong learning determine the level to which a person belongs.
Sandra Scarr, a psychologist at Yale University, said: As long as parents avoid violence, abuse, and don’t be indifferent, nothing else parents do will have a significant impact.
Gregory Clark, an economics professor at the University of California, Davis, conducted a statistical study of more than 400,000 British people from 1750 to 2020 and found that only two generations of a family can leave the next generation. Things: one is genetics, the other is wealth. Other things, such as education, social relations, cultural heritage, financial management skills… are basically useless.
What does it take to go from good to great? Based on the results of my research, I think there are two main points.
First, you have to have inner drive.
Second, you need to be able to understand and deal with complex problems.
Pedagogy that can turn the poor into normal people
In recent years, several economists have conducted experiments and found that if bonuses are given to students based on their academic performance and usual performance—direct money in real money—it can indeed improve grades and graduation rates to a certain extent, which seems to be quite useful. . However, this approach is very controversial and is far from being widely promoted.
KIPP has done a lot of experiments to discover and summarize which rewards work well and which ones don’t. One of the key findings is that rewards, like punishments, must be given quickly! This is obviously in full compliance with the spirit of “deliberate practice”, and there must be immediate feedback: praise should be praised immediately, criticism should be criticized immediately…
Psychologists finally prepared seven target qualities for KIPP: perseverance, self-control, enthusiasm, sociability, gratitude, optimism and curiosity.
Self-control is an anti-human behavior. It asks us to do what we “should do”, not what we “want to do”.
A person with self-control can live a poor life. Self-control is a more basic and effective personal quality than imagination, and it is a key step in getting rid of poverty. China’s education foundation is better than that of the United States, which may be due to the emphasis on self-control in Chinese culture since childhood.
refined egoists and ivy sheep
Why does Joe participate in so many extracurricular activities? Because these activities are an important part of the American student evaluation system, as important as test scores. Just like Xiaoming’s GPA (grade point average), Joe’s extracurricular activities experience is just to complete various assessment indicators.
The essence of the Ivy League is the place where the children of the upper class in the United States go to college.
Prestigious universities in the United States usually have a tuition fee reduction policy for children from low-income families. For example, Harvard University stipulates that students with a family annual income of less than 60,000 US dollars are free of tuition, and students with a family income of less than 180,000 US dollars only need to pay up to 10% of their annual family income. This is a very generous policy, knowing that if your family income is $180,000, you are already richer than 94% of American families. But only 40% of Harvard students can use this deduction policy-most Harvard parents earn more than $180,000.
At Stanford University, nearly half of the student families have an annual income of more than $300,000 (equivalent to the top 1.5% of family income in the United States), and only 15% of the student family has an annual income of less than $60,000 (equivalent to the top 1.5% in the United States). 56 percent of households, or more than half of households with incomes below that figure)—meaning that children from former families are about 124 times more likely to get into Stanford.
Yale University also has a third admission channel – the children of those who make huge donations will definitely be admitted.
The famous private schools in the United States have never served all citizens, but institutions serving the upper class. The reason why prestigious schools often make some “fair” efforts, such as reducing tuition fees and giving priority to admitting minorities (excluding Asians), is only for two reasons: first, to replenish fresh blood for the elite, so that the system Only in this way can we maintain stability; secondly, only when we are fair can we maintain our tax-exempt status as a non-profit organization.
If elite schools don’t care about education, what do they care about? It’s prestige, and more precisely, money.
In modern universities, the most important task of professors is to engage in scientific research rather than teaching, because good research results can not only enhance the prestige of the school, but also bring more research funding.
We said earlier that most of Harvard’s students go to Wall Street and consulting firms, in fact, this is exactly what the university wants you to do.
Steve Schwarzman of the Blackstone Group donated 150 million US dollars to Yale University, and Harvard University regretted it very much, because this gentleman had applied for Harvard University but was not admitted – so someone published an article in the “New York Times” [illustration] saying that Harvard University We should use big data thinking to analyze more scientifically which high school students may become billionaires in the future, so don’t make such mistakes again.
All in all, elite American schools have found a good business model. The most important things in this model are rankings, research, admissions, and alumni donations, not teaching at all.
The way of the sages said by the Americans
Brooks said that everyone’s nature actually has two sides, representing two different pursuits. Just as Daniel Kahneman divided human thinking into System I and System II in “Thinking, Fast and Slow”, Brooks divided these two pursuits into Adam I and Adam II. Adam I’s pursuit of success: what positions he holds, what achievements he has made, what major discoveries he has made, these items that can be written in the resume, which are related to wealth and status. Adam II is about the high: morality, character, service, asking about the meaning of life—those items that aren’t on your résumé but will go into your eulogy at your funeral.
Only when you admit that you are flawed and adopt a humble attitude will you be able to fight your weaknesses and improve your character.
If bad emotional impulses are not curbed and prevented from developing in the bud, it may form a positive feedback, which will become bigger and bigger, and even lead to disaster.
They don’t ask me what I want to do, they ask what the world needs of me. They do not use the method of doing things to satisfy their hearts. In order to accomplish this, they constantly polish their hearts.
Moderation means that you must realize that there are bound to be conflicts between different ideas, different emotional appeals, and different moral standards. None of these ideas is perfect, and no one can convince anyone, and no one can eliminate anyone, and contradictions will always exist. It is manifested in politics, that is, factions and groups from all walks of life are always fighting each other.
So the art of leadership is like sailing a sailboat in a storm: go too far left and go right, and go too right and go left. Balance is always dynamic. You will always tune and tune like this, this is the golden mean.
In modern society, this road is not prepared for ordinary people at all.普通人的上限是“精致的利己主义者”——你只要根据社会给你的设定，把自己分内的工作做好，对社会给你的各种经济学刺激做出合理反应就可以了。你左右不了世界，世界也不担心被你搞坏。
说英雄，谁是英雄
阶层比分数重要，因为各阶层的教学方法和培养目标完全不同。
普通工人阶层的学校强调遵守规章流程。整个教学充满死记硬背的机械式程序，学生几乎没有做选择和做决定的机会。
一般中产阶层的学校强调把事做“对”。有点像中国的应试教育，以学习材料为核心，要求学生必须理解这些材料——你可以用自己的方法解题，只要你能得到正确答案。
专业人士阶层的学校强调创造性和独立性。
到底什么叫“内卷”？
这就是内卷——向“内”演化，越来越精细，越来越复杂，其实都是几个固定模式的重复，没有能跳出模式的创造力。戈登威泽说，哥特式建筑艺术其实也是内卷。
美国社会的主要矛盾
现在美国社会的两个大趋势已经变成了：第一，各阶层越来越不平等。第二，人们在心理上，仍然认为各阶层就应该是平等的。这两个趋势的矛盾，就是当前美国社会的主要矛盾。特朗普能被选上台，美国非得跟中国打贸易战，拜登想让制造业回美国，要搞基建，要发福利，都是为了这个矛盾。
突破辉格史观
巴特菲尔德认为辉格史观是作为胜利者的、现代的、我们的，执念。
辉格史把一切历史都写成当代史，是被今天的人“打扮的小姑娘”，是胜利者书写的历史。巴特菲尔德反感这种写法，他主张历史学家要学会用历史上的人的视角看历史。你说辉格党的自由主义是进步，放在当时可真不一定，保守有保守的道理。你要想理解岳飞，就得把自己想象成当年那个真正的岳飞。
害怕时候的勇敢才是真的勇敢。
如果想法挖掘越来越贵……
咱们中国人对未来最乐观。我们习惯了经济不断增长，我们习惯了每一代人的生活都比上一代人好，我们习惯了为未来投资都是值得的，我们习惯了科技改变生活，我们习惯了只要付出努力就能有相应的回报。但是你想过没有，世界没有义务是这样的。
人类因为技术进步而获得经济高速增长也就是最近这200年的事情，历史上的常态是，所有人辛辛苦苦地劳动也只能换来非常有限的财富。中国经济高速增长也是最近这40年的事情，而中国是个发展中国家——发达国家的常态是每年能涨个2%就已经谢天谢地了。
长期看来，经济增长的真正驱动力，只有技术进步。
这四位经济学家估计，育种方面的研究生产率大约每年下降5%，而农业整体的研究生产率每年下降3.7%。
医学研究的生产率，平均每年下降高达8%到10%。
美国制药业有个著名的“Eroom定律”——这个词是把摩尔定律的“Moore”反过来写，所以叫“反向摩尔定律”：从1950年以来，研发一种新药的成本，每九年翻一倍
要想打破边际效应递减的魔咒，唯一的办法就是开拓全新的领地。经济学家认为创新存在“S曲线”，公司发展到一定程度必须寻找新产品的“蓝海”，说的是同样的道理。
美国大学学费越来越贵，上4年大学花掉的贷款得一直还到40岁，转头一看名校毕业生一年收入不到10万美元，而没上大学的那个高中同学当卡车司机一年也有7万美元，这样的大学还值得上吗？上大学值不值，其实也是可以讨论一下的。
排位稀缺：富足时代什么最贵？
一位供职于社会资本(Social Capital)公司的科技博客博主，Alex，最近提出一个有意思的概念[插图]，叫作“排位稀缺”。
排位稀缺可以分为三种。我们称之为“优越感”(Prestige)、“进入权”(Access)和“引导力”(Curation)。
优越感，代表能让你彰显比别人更高的“地位”的东西。比如满大街都是汽车，你要想突出出来，可能需要一辆高档的汽车。奢侈品的价值不在于使用，而在于发出正确的信号：我有钱，我不是一般人。所以奢侈品必须通过“限量”来保证自己的稀缺地位，有时候卖包的商家不是有钱就卖给你。
进入权，则是能在熙熙攘攘的人群之中给你某种特权的东西。比如你因为拿着头等舱的机票，或者因为是金卡会员，可以在普通乘客之前优先登机，这就是“特权”。
引导力，是给别人推荐什么东西，别人心悦诚服地接受的能力。中国新近流行的“网红带货”就是引导力的代表。
优越感+进入权=圈子(Proximity)
引导力+优越感=正统(Legitimacy)
引导力+进入权=勒索(Extortion)
平价的奢侈品
2012年，出版了一本书叫《巨富：全球超级新贵的崛起和其他人的没落》，作者是加拿大的一位政治记者，她有个中文名叫方慧兰(Chrystia Freeland)。方慧兰说，在当今这个时代要想成为巨富，有三个途径。
一个是你把控一个关键的位置或者资源，搞权力寻租。一个是像互联网新贵那样，抓住革命性的商业机会。这两个途径都不是你想走就能走的，前者需要你有背景，后者需要你正好赶上革命性的商业机会。第三个途径也很难，但是我看也许可以是普通人努力的方向，那就是成为“超级明星”。
管理得好的品牌会非常有节制地释放势能换取动能，最根本的办法就是限产。明明有很多钻石，但是要一点一点地投入市场，确保不降价；明明铂金包供不应求，也要限价，不让暴发户随便买。为什么这样呢？因为他们知道势能是很不容易建立的。
哈佛大学的名望是势能，哈佛商学院的营销是动能。方程式赛车是势能，民用跑车是动能。张艺谋策划奥运开幕式是势能，在各地搞《印象××》演出是动能。
物质极大丰富的时代
投资带来增长这个理论的背后其实有一个隐含的假设：市场是无限大的。只有多数投资生产出来的产品都能卖出去，不断投资才有意义。如果市场已经饱和，又没有新产品被发明出来，还投什么资？从物理学的角度看，“投资刺激增长”显然是一个简单线性理论，在非线性条件下并不成立。
本文转自： https://ljf.com/2023/05/09/1248/
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