September 2025 Thought Notes: Self-Knowledge, Ideas and History, Cities

A scary thought: AI is developing so fast — can this generation keep up

A scary thought: AI is developing so fast, can this generation keep up with AI’s speed?

From the steam engine, electricity and the internet to today’s AI, technology keeps expanding human capability and extending the boundaries of the senses and action.

But the development of human nature is like a slow stream; our emotional patterns, desires, fears and biases aren’t much different from thousands of years ago.

Look at what AI can do — write poetry, generate video. Do humans really have enough vision to steer AI, to steer technology?

Is human nature ready? When will it be ready?

The Sorrow of War

It’s not a song of victory but the sorrow of war.

Part of it is PTSD, a mental health disorder that occurs after an individual experiences, witnesses or learns of a traumatic event involving actual death, threat of death and violence; the key is that it keeps the brain’s stress system in a constant state of high alert, making it impossible for the patient to live normally.

The brain’s protective mechanism avoids any memory that might cause harm.

And it easily produces a persistent negative view of the world, with the body long stuck in a tense state.

For Kien, a North Vietnamese soldier, the enemies he faced included many South Vietnamese “compatriots”. This war was both “resisting America to save the country” and a civil war.

The psychological trauma of a whole generation (PTSD).

The reason North Vietnam could “win” isn’t that all Vietnamese believed in communism, but that it successfully bound together the two banners of “communist revolution” and “national liberation”.

And it also successfully portrayed itself as the only legitimate representative of Vietnamese national independence and unification.

Look at the protagonist: Kien’s future is “looking backward”: his life has stalled at the moment the war ended. His spiritual task isn’t to move toward the future but to keep going back to the past, to sort out those ghosts, to write down that pain.

Phuong’s future is “whatever”: she holds no illusions about the future anymore. Her behavior shows she lives in a recklessly given-up present; the future is empty and meaningless to her.

When a person’s past — the memory bank that should be the foundation of emotion — is thoroughly poisoned, it loses its function as a “foundation”. It no longer provides nourishment; instead it keeps seeping venom, corroding everything in the present. Any emotional edifice built on such ground is doomed to collapse.

Understanding Ho Chi Minh

The Green Lotus Bud is a household name in Vietnam.

A great man’s character and sense of mission aren’t innate; they grew out of an ordinary child’s heart, jointly watered by a society full of suffering and humiliation and by a heart full of feeling for home and country.

The lotus is Vietnam’s national flower, symbolizing purity and resilience; it “rises from the mud unstained”.

Frequency illusion

A phenomenon term in psychology.

When a number or word enters your awareness, the brain starts catching such things — for example, after you buy a car you notice the same model everywhere on the street.

So it’s a cognitive bias: you more easily remember the moments the number reappears and ignore the majority of cases where it doesn’t.

The brain is good at finding patterns in clutter.

So it’s not a very special thing, just a change in your inner attention and way of perceiving.

The astrology system

Astrology is essentially a cultural narrative mode that helps people explain the world and themselves; it’s not scientifically verifiable.

The underlying logic isn’t causality but synchronicity: the universe’s macro pattern and your own micro life pattern were synchronized at the moment of birth, mirroring each other; the celestial bodies perform a grand drama, and my life is a personal-level version of that drama.

Now for the astrology system, a few roles:

Planets: the actors in the script, the source of energy, representing different psychological functions or life drives; each planet has its own job.

Signs: the costume and performance style the actor wears, dyeing the planet’s energy with different colors and styles.

The twelve houses: the stage where the drama plays. The houses are the 12 “life domains” divided on the chart; they tell us in which specific life scene the planet’s energy mainly performs. They answer the question “where?”

How do you integrate it?

Formula: planet (actor) + sign (role/style) + house (stage/domain) = a complete story.

An older friend asked me for help and I was very resistant

We can talk about third-party matters and I can give some advice.

He probably sees me as a think tank, but family problems, especially conflicts in intimate relationships, don’t feel like something logic can solve; they usually involve emotion, position and even subconscious causation. In the end it’s his own issue, and getting involved means getting pulled into a whirlpool.

I deeply believe I can’t change anything, especially someone else’s issue; I truly have no ability to take part, let alone influence or change it.

If it’s just talking about third-party social phenomena or news stories, even analyzing it wrong has no consequences.

But family problems are different: one sentence could change how he sees his family and affect his decisions. I think that’s his karma/causation, and he needs to bear it himself, not shift the responsibility onto me.

I constantly remind myself not to misplace my role: I’m always just a friend, I’m not a life coach or a psychological counselor, and he even counts as an elder of mine; avoid getting pulled into his sensitive issues.

Freud - the unconscious

The traditional “I think therefore I am”: whatever we’re conscious of, that’s our mental world. Freud said no, this is only the tip of the iceberg.

Below the water, the huge part making up most of the volume is the unconscious — the real stage of Freud’s theory. What does the unconscious hold? Not things you forgot, but things you’re forbidden to think about. What are those? Repressed desires, primal impulses, thoughts society doesn’t accept, childhood trauma and fears you can’t face.

Though locked up the whole time, they’re not docile at all; they hold powerful energy and are constantly trying to break out of the cage, affecting our lives in all kinds of disguised forms.

Your inexplicable slips of the tongue (“Freudian slips”), lingering anxiety, groundless fears, recurring strange dreams, even your mate-selection criteria, career choices and artistic taste — in Freud’s view, all of these are the unconscious pulling the strings from behind.

Our personality essentially has a few actors:

Id: the most primal, most ambitious infant. The id is entirely made of the unconscious and follows the Pleasure Principle. Its only goal: right now! immediately! satisfy all my desires! It doesn’t care about morality, reality or logic; it only wants instant pleasure and satisfaction. Hungry — eat. Angry — hit. Want love — must get it now. It’s the source of our life energy (libido) and aggression, a wild horse full of strength but running blind.

Ego: the “you” squeezed in the middle, running itself ragged. The ego is mostly conscious; it lives in the real world and follows the Reality Principle. Its job is like a rational rider trying to master the wild horse of the id. When the id shouts “I want that!”, the ego coolly assesses: “Can I have it now? How can I get it without problems? Should I wait?” It’s responsible for finding a balance between the id’s primal desires and the limits of the outside world, so we can satisfy desires without failing to survive.

Superego: the strict judge or moral police in your mind. The superego represents social norms, moral standards and the ideals we internalized from our parents. It follows the Morality Principle. It has two parts: one is the “conscience”, telling us what not to do and producing guilt when we do it; the other is the “ideal self”, telling us what kind of person we should become and producing pride when we achieve it. The superego pursues perfection, is often disgusted by the id’s impulses, and often criticizes the ego for not trying hard enough or being moral enough.

So our mental life every day is a game of “id”, “ego” and “superego”.

Id: I want

Superego: Not allowed

Ego: Don’t rush, let’s find a way that works for both.

We’re all playing and balancing these three personalities.

An interesting 60-year-old uncle

A rich life experience, speaks the languages of a dozen countries, and doesn’t look that old; he often likes to flirt, and tonight he went out on a date with a Mexican girl again…

On the side of not caring about face: this person values genuine exchange and human connection, and doesn’t really need to “put on airs” to prove himself.

After living in the US for a long time he learned the social habit of actively expressing himself and approaching strangers; he can chat people up easily.

When people get older, many just think “whatever, this is how I am”.

On the side of caring about face: Chinese communities still have a cultural habit of fearing others’ judgment, like worrying others will think you’re abrupt or lacking in tact; plus there’s the pressure of a dual identity — in the US, being both an ethnic minority and wanting to fit in, worrying others will judge you through a biased lens.

A balance in the sandwich layer of Chinese diaspora culture.

Behaviorally more and more Americanized: proactive and open.

Deep down there’s still the pull of this face culture.

Wanting freedom, but afraid of being criticized.

But believing time will bring some change, hahaha.

Interesting.

Freud’s Interpretation of Dreams

I’ve always kept a skeptical attitude; dreams seem to have too little scientific basis, and dreams are too complex — different forms of dreams may reflect different states.

Freud held that people have many self-protective mechanisms. For instance repression, the most basic: pretending painful, unacceptable thoughts and memories don’t exist — abused as a child and remembering nothing about it as an adult. And denial, like a patient diagnosed with a terminal illness insisting the doctor is wrong. And projection: projecting hostility toward others and your inner dark side outward, thinking others are at fault so you feel clean. And displacement of emotion, like the kick-the-cat effect. And possible sublimation, like turning impulses into socially useful and valuable activity.

He believed dreams aren’t meaningless nonsense but “wish fulfillment”. During sleep, the ego’s defenses relax, and desires repressed in the unconscious disguise themselves as various symbolic images and slip quietly into the dream.

Manifest content: the dream story plot you remember.

Latent content: the true meaning hidden behind the dream, that repressed wish. The analyst’s job is to work like a detective, using the dream’s symbols, displacement, condensation and other techniques to decode the “latent dream” from the “manifest dream”, revealing the client’s unconscious secrets.

On a physiological basis it feels like dreaming itself is a byproduct of nighttime organization: consolidating memory and reorganizing neural connections.

From a psychological angle, dreams are part of the unconscious or collective unconscious, symbolizing universal psychological archetypes; modern cognitive psychology holds that dreams are actually the replaying and processing of daily experience, helping us digest emotions and solve problems.

Philosophically it may also be an attempt at self-narration, with people seeking the meaning of lived experience.

Freud’s dissection of the unconscious

A person’s unconscious behavior often reveals their true appearance.

This is also the place closest to life, usually revolving around everyday behavior and slips of the tongue.

This is what’s called the psychopathology of everyday life.

Usually when we say the wrong thing, forget something, lose something, we blame fatigue, distraction or chance. But Freud would wag his finger and say: no, my friend, there are no accidental mistakes in this world, only repressed intentions that found an outlet.

Often our mouths, our hands, our memory are more honest than the brain, always inadvertently exposing our unconscious.

A slip of the tongue, a very obvious unconscious act, is often not a language error but your unconscious desire; similar are slips of the pen and mishearing. Someone full of guilt hearing a friend say “the weather is terrible” might hear “you’re terrible” — that’s a projection.

And always forgetting things, like forgetting to reply, is actually a mapping from the unconscious — “I’m not interested”. It’s silent.

It seems every unconscious behavior, once analyzed, turns out to be interesting.

Reading these unconscious acts requires looking for patterns and connecting context; they may not be isolated events, and often there’s a deep motive hidden behind them.

A slip of the tongue is to some degree the conflict between what you want to do/say (conscious level) and what you really want to do/say (unconscious level).

This is part of our deep self-insight, and in life you can learn, explore and observe it everywhere.

Dissecting linguistic signs

The interpretation of language is always limited. At the level of exchange, all communication is partly about the relationship of the communication, partly about its content.

From the angle of linguistic signs, the father of modern linguistics, Ferdinand de Saussure, held that any linguistic sign has two parts.

One is the signifier, one the signified; the signifier is the sound or image form, the signified is the corresponding mental concept.

A Freudian slip is the unconscious breaking through this arbitrary convention, forcibly hijacking a signifier and forcing it to bond with another signified that truly wanted expression (a repressed thought).

And meaning isn’t fixed in a one-to-one “signifier -> signified” relation, but arises on a constantly sliding “chain of signifiers”: a word A makes you think of another word B, then C, and meaning keeps surfacing in the sliding of this chain. A slip of the tongue is the unconscious jolting this chain.

Condensation creates a brand-new linguistic sign: for example admiration and fear come out as a blend like “admirfear”.

This is a hybrid conceptual body created on the spot; it’s not a subversion, more a creation hahaha.

So language is fragile, isn’t it? A slip of the tongue isn’t just a psychological lapse but a profound linguistic event, showing language’s fragility.

Man is a god who will die

To a certain degree, the divine is my essence, the mind itself is a spark of divinity

Being mortal is our vehicle; we are just a divine soul temporarily living in this body here in the human world. Your social identity, the wealth and status you possess, all scatter to the wind when life ends. This outer garment is temporary, limited, and bound to decay

So in a way Hermes redefined the death of each individual person, and the meaning behind it, and also redefined life

Japan’s face culture

Japan places enormous importance on politeness, and a lot of it is performing “harmony” — the heart may not actually agree

Verbally they say “no problem,” but inside they may think it’s not okay; they show a smiling face while resisting internally

Everyone appears humble on the surface, but the resentment underneath may be huge

Tatemae: what you say on the surface, politeness, expressions that meet social expectations

Like “no problem at all,” “whatever works for you,” “as long as everyone’s happy”

Safe, but fake

Honne: the real thoughts and feelings inside, rarely shown directly, especially toward outsiders — rarely shown directly, especially toward outsiders

Japanese people are very afraid of opening up one-sidedly; they need to first offer some of their own truth — the key is that it needs to be real

This is different from Korea. My sense is that breaking through face in Korea requires a certain emotionality — crying together and going wild together

Freud’s thinking on the unconscious

It’s neither rational nor what we normally understand as emotion or intuition; it’s more like a primal, chaotic, untamed instinctual force

Spatial psychology

Some of the hotels I’ve stayed at recently I really liked, but I couldn’t say why — it was a psychological feeling

Spatial psychology isn’t that famous, but its influence is everywhere, silently shaping our emotions, behavior and way of thinking

Space itself keeps talking to us in a silent language, issuing instructions, affecting how we feel. I thought about this before at the Hue Imperial City — that sense of decay, partly an energy field, and to a degree also spatial psychology. So there’s a concept in psychology called environmental cues — the environment silently cues people on how to feel and act

It’s also very prominent in touch and details. Beyond that, air quality and scent control (light woody notes, fresh notes) also affect how people judge a space

Two spaces that hit me deeply: one is Starbucks’s third place — there’s a “third place” beyond your own home (first place) and the office (second place), with warm lighting and background music at just the right volume, encouraging you to stay longer

And the other is the sense of community in an Apple retail store — the bright, open space

Revealing yourself appropriately

Revealing yourself has several layers

Surface information: some personal hobbies, experiences, background and so on

The emotionally vulnerable part: worries, failures, fears, inner confusion

The values-and-beliefs part: your outlook on life, your worldview, your code of conduct

Revealing different layers produces a different sense of trust in the other person

Social exchange theory: people are more inclined to trust those willing to share, because exposing yourself is seen as an investment

The self-disclosure principle

Moderate and gradual helps build intimacy and trust

Too much or too fast creates pressure

The other person more easily trusts those similar to them, or those willing to respond to self-disclosure. That is, the rhythm of “you share first, then I share”

Disclosure has strategy. Generally, going by layer, first reveal some simple information about yourself — hobbies, experiences and so on — and only when the other person responds do you reveal more private emotions or vulnerabilities

And if you reveal too fast — say you expose your values or beliefs and they conflict with the other person’s — that lowers trust

The core of disclosure is letting the other person see your authenticity, while respecting the rhythm of the relationship

Continuing on social exchange theory

If self-disclosure is also a small psychological method within exchange theory

Social theory is like using an economics model to explain emotional relationships

We subconsciously calculate the benefits of a relationship and seek to do it at the lowest cost

Rewards: everything you consider valuable and welcome. For example a partner’s care, interesting conversation, emotional support, physical intimacy, the other person’s talent or sense of humor, a rise in social status, and so on.

Costs: everything you dislike. For example the other person’s bad habits, the energy drain from conflict and arguments, the compromises and sacrifices you have to make for the relationship, the insecurity or anxiety the other person brings

Outcome = Rewards - Costs

Everyone also has their own comparison level (CL): this is the level you think you should have, drawn from past experience, movies and novels you’ve seen, and so on. It’s the ruler for measuring your satisfaction, compared against the outcome to complete the comparison with your expectations

Comparison Level for Alternatives (CLalt): this is the best outcome you think you could get after leaving the current relationship. This includes both “swap partners” and “just stay single.” CLalt is the ruler for measuring your dependence (that is, stability)

Outcome > CLalt: you stay. Because what you currently have is better than the best alternative you could find. Even if you’re unsatisfied (Outcome < CL), with no better way out, you’ll choose to keep the status quo

Outcome < CLalt: you leave. Because you believe that leaving here, you have a better option (whether another person or the free single life)

So it all explains clearly: why are some people unhappy in “a relationship that looks great to outsiders”? Why do some people in “a tormented relationship” still not leave for the longest time?

The art of communication in intimate relationships

What you say matters far less than how you say it. Facial expressions, eye contact, body posture, tone and pace of speech — these all transmit a large amount of emotional information. When language and non-language conflict, we tend to believe the non-verbal information; for example someone whose mouth says “I’m fine” but whose expression is tense

The power of non-verbal communication: what you’ve said matters far less than how you say it

Some fatal ways of communicating: criticism, contempt, defensiveness, stonewalling

Some conscientious ways: this is the golden sentence for defusing conflict. “When you [X behavior] in [Y situation], I feel [Z emotion]”

Active listening is very important — paraphrasing the other person’s words and testing your intuitions, so the other person is sure they’ve been understood

Sternberg proposed that love consists of three components

Intimacy: the emotional connection, including warmth, understanding, support and sharing.

Passion: the drive at the motivational level, including sexual desire and intense emotion.

Commitment: the decision at the cognitive level — the decision to love someone and maintain the relationship

Intimacy only = liking love (like a good friend)

Passion only = infatuated love (love at first sight)

Commitment only = empty love (a marriage maintained for the kids / out of duty)

Intimacy + Passion = romantic love (early in a relationship)

Intimacy + Commitment = companionate love (deep friendship, the norm in long marriages)

Passion + Commitment = fatuous love (a whirlwind marriage)

Intimacy + Passion + Commitment = Consummate Love: this is the ideal state we all long for, but it’s hard to maintain long-term. Passion naturally fades with time, while intimacy and commitment can keep growing

An intimate relationship is a mirror — what you see is not the other person, but your true self

In an intimate relationship, the happiness is brought by the other person, and the pain and troubles are also caused by the other person

The reason you have a huge emotional reaction (anger, sadness, fear) to something your partner says or does is not rooted in the words or action itself, but in how precisely it pokes at a wound deep inside you that already existed and was never healed. Your partner is like a trigger, pulling on a gun that was already loaded inside you

So this is also the reason everyone should first work on themselves as their own task

The purpose of a relationship is not to find a “perfect” person who will make you happy forever, but through a “suitable” person to help you complete your own healing and growth. Your partner is your most important “soul companion,” here to walk the path with you and help you reach wholeness

But often too, because the mirror at the start magnifies your inner projections too much: if you long to be unconditionally accepted, you’ll see “tolerance” in the other person; if you long for freedom, you’ll feel the other person is “free and unconstrained.” You project these finest qualities onto the other person, and at the same time you show your own best side. What you each see is a beautified, imagined “ideal lover” — and this is destined to be brief and beautiful, and not real or lasting

In the second stage you see the other person’s real, imperfect side: he/she will be lazy, will be stubborn, will have habits you can’t stand. This is when the power struggle comes — you must be responsible for my emotions, and change to satisfy my needs

In the third stage, you look inward: “Why did I react this strongly? What exactly did this touch in me?” Then congratulations, you’ve already taken the first step toward healing.

Notice your emotional triggers

Embrace your inner child

Communicate your true feelings rather than accusing

Finally there’s growing together — no longer opponents trying to remodel each other, but “soul companions” who support each other and grow together. You no longer need to depend on anyone to feel happy, because the source of happiness is in your own heart. And the love you give your partner then is truly pure, without demands or conditions

The book Intimate Relationships offers a revolutionary perspective: stop trying to fix your partner, start healing yourself

Trying to change the other person

In psychology and intimate relationships, two forces pull against each other:

Acceptance: everyone has their own unique personality, habits and values. Always wanting to change the other person tends to bring conflict; accepting the other person as they are is what brings a sense of security and intimacy

Influence: not change, but influence fits the real way things work very well. If some habits or behaviors affect the health of the relationship (like communication style, emotional management, lifestyle), guiding and influencing moderately is natural and necessary

Change is definitely not the goal, but a natural result

Pulling the trigger

Extending the innate knowing, searching for yourself

On the road, constantly exploring

Catch the thought: the moment a signal appears, remember to pull the trigger and go act immediately. How do you close the huge gap between knowing and doing in this process?

Catch: recognize the thought of what should be done. Don’t evaluate or analyze these thoughts; just first mark this behavioral signal in your brain

Simplify: many things leave you hesitating because the thing is too big, the pressure you feel is too much, so the brain’s protective mechanism ignores or blocks out the event

Trigger: just start, don’t think, execute the thing

How to understand conflict

Some people think conflict is good, some people think conflict is bad

In traditional thinking, a “good” relationship should be harmonious, sweet, with few arguments. Conflict and arguments mean “we’re not right for each other” — a crack in the relationship, a “fire” that needs to be put out as quickly as possible

Some people also hate a calm life — too flat a life

The subversion of the mirror principle: conflict is precious “navigation,” a “treasure map” leading to self-growth. Every conflict that makes you lose emotional control is like a high-precision GPS positioning signal, accurately marking the terrain inside you that most needs healing and growth

If you have a big fight with your partner over money, then behind that anger may hide a deep fear of scarcity

Observing a phenomenon — a friend said many relationships now are guiding-partner relationships

Some around me probably count as that, but I think what’s more common in society now is still controlling-partner relationships

Restricting the other person’s spending and social life, limiting who they can befriend, dictating lifestyle — this actually stems from insecurity and a lack of trust

Pretty much everyone is still learning how to handle anxiety and attachment needs in intimate relationships

How the unconscious shapes us

The operating rules of the unconscious, two primal drives, the most fundamental drives

The life instinct makes us “go outward”: create, connect, be active

The death instinct makes us “draw inward”: destroy, dissolve, return

They are not purely opposed, but like yin and yang

Without the death instinct, the impulses of life would expand without limit and lose their boundaries (like cancer cells);

Without the life instinct, the death tendency would turn directly into destruction.

The unconscious is like a stage, two forces constantly interweaving, competing, compromising

The pleasure principle: pursue pleasure immediately, avoid pain immediately. The unconscious lives entirely in the present; it cannot tolerate any “tension” (Unpleasure) built up from desire. Once a desire arises (whether sexual or aggressive), it demands immediate, unconditional satisfaction, thereby releasing tension and obtaining “pleasure”

The unconscious’s way of thinking is called Primary Process Thinking. As we mentioned before, it completely ignores logic, reality and time. It tries to satisfy itself by manufacturing hallucinations and dreams. For example, a hungry baby who can’t get milk may fantasize about suckling, and thereby get temporary satisfaction. This is why dreams are so bizarre — because the unconscious is staging a grand drama of desire satisfaction using all kinds of symbolic imagery

The birth of conflict: this “tyrant” who only knows pleasure (unconscious + pleasure principle) soon hits a wall — the real world. Reality does not let us do whatever we want. So the higher part of the personality — the Ego — develops. The Ego follows the Reality Principle; it understands “waiting” and “working around things.” It tells the id: “I know you want that cake right now, but we have to pay for it first, and eating too much isn’t good for you. How about we buy a small piece first and eat it at home?”

So the operating mechanism of the unconscious is: driven by the two great drives, following the pleasure principle, seeking satisfaction regardless of everything. And the development of our entire mind is the process of the Ego (reality principle) trying to tame and manage this inner tyrant

Anxiety is the master template of all emotions; it’s the distress signal the Ego sends when it feels it’s about to be overwhelmed. When the unconscious desires (the id) are about to break through the dam like a flood, or the moral police (the superego) is scolding too harshly, the Ego experiences anxiety

Prejudice and preconception

Prejudice is making a negatively charged evaluation of a person or thing without sufficient understanding

A preconception is a pre-formed view — treating past experience and impressions as universal law. A preconception doesn’t necessarily carry negative emotion, but it limits new understanding and cognition

Preconceptions are more like fixed frameworks that block us from keeping an open mind. So it does feel like life really is full of preconceptions everywhere — the preconceptions in people’s hearts really are a great mountain

Experience can still be somewhat useful, because it does carry the imprint of real situations. But a preconception — the product of experience rigidified and ossified — is no longer a flexible tool, but a preset framework. For example, we subconsciously assume math is hard to learn; that’s a cognitive obstacle. “People who live in big cities must be better off” is also a fixed framework

How preconceptions arise and how they operate

Our brain doesn’t passively receive information; it constantly predicts the outside world using “priors,” mapping new perceptions onto existing models. Priors are useful — they let us react quickly. But when priors become fixed, momentary experience is forced into “universal truth,” and that’s how preconceptions are born

To save cognitive resources, the brain slices the complex world into categories (labeling). This easily erases individual differences and forms “stereotypes” or generalized conclusions, which over time become preconceptions

Likewise, people are naturally more inclined to believe or support information that fits their existing views, while ignoring or weakening counter-evidence. This “selective acceptance of information” solidifies ambiguous or incidental experience into preconceptions. Classic experiments (like the research on death penalty materials) show this clearly

Family and media also package partial experience into public cognition; group identity, repeated authority and incentive mechanisms institutionalize these cognitions into preconceptions at the organizational and societal level

How to avoid and reduce preconceptions

1. Slow down → switch to “System 2 thinking”: deliberately slow down before important judgments and ask yourself “do I have other explanations?”

2. Write down counter-evidence (consider the opposite): force yourself to list at least three pieces of evidence or situations that could overturn your current view (experimentally shown to reduce bias).

3. Do a “premortem”: before deciding, imagine the reasons the plan fails completely, list all possible flaws and patch them (a bias-prevention tool often used by top teams).

4. Set a “recall threshold” and time window: give major conclusions a retrospective, revocable deadline (for example, within 30 days you must list counter-evidence or accept revision).

5. Write conclusions down and mark confidence: mark a % confidence level and review it later to calibrate (training you to be someone who “updates better”). Tetlock’s research shows this greatly improves decision quality.

6. Seek reverse samples / counterexample training: actively expose yourself to cases, books or people contrary to your preconceptions, expanding your information sources.

7. Use a “dialogue script” to lower self-defense: in discussions with others, first say “I might be wrong, what evidence would change my mind?” This turns the discussion from proving to truth-seeking.

8. Bring in a third-party “devil’s advocate” or red team: have one person specifically raise opposing views (note the form should be constructive, avoiding performative opposition).

9. Do regular “belief audits”: each month review one or two key beliefs and ask yourself whether they’re still supported by evidence.

10. Cultivate metacognition (self-awareness): practice noticing when you’re using “habitual quick judgment” rather than rigorous reasoning

How to handle prejudice

Keep a continuous calibration record and review it regularly

Break problems down, split them into testable low-probability propositions

Systematic prevention and counterfactual training: for different propositions, assign probabilities and independently verify them

Deliberately practice changing positions — which is also the adversarial thinking in philosophy, ACH

Be humble and seek verification

Use data as a baseline, validate against it

Turn cognition into a tool — make thinking into something that can be reviewed, and output it in exchange with the outside (people or AI)

The death penalty materials experiment

The researchers found two kinds of people: some strongly supported the death penalty, some strongly opposed it

People who supported the death penalty criticized the research “against the death penalty” more seriously and carefully, finding it full of holes; yet they highly accepted research “supporting the death penalty”

People who opposed the death penalty were exactly the opposite

Buddhism talks about “abstaining from killing” — the core is not a rigid precept but breaking attachment. The thing you’re fixated on may be filtered or distorted by your consciousness. If your heart is attached to “punishment is the only way to solve problems” or “life must be absolutely inviolable,” then any external evidence is just brought in to “defend your own view,” not truly observed

Behind the real “abstention from killing” is a state of mind: let go of preconceptions and see the complexity of life and causes and conditions

Preconception = ego attachment: believing some view is “truth,” beyond question.

Abstaining from killing = compassion: when you see the suffering of beings and the flow of cause and effect, you no longer cling to the simple logic of “stopping killing with killing”

Knowing yourself

Know yourself — this is a starting point, the starting point of everything

Socrates spent his whole life questioning this

The smartest thing about Socrates was that he knew he didn’t know; beyond that, all cognition is only doubled

Know the boundaries of your knowledge: what you think you know, what you think you don’t know, and what you think you know but don’t

Know your soul: what kind of person are you, what are you pursuing, what’s the motive behind it? Is your soul healthy, or polluted by material things?

Knowing yourself is an enduring process, practiced your whole life

Thinking back to a rich older guy I met in Hanoi

The first time I saw someone so generous

He treated us to coffee, and the way he pulled a big stack of Vietnamese dong out of his pocket — roughly 50,000 RMB converted — and took one bill off the top to pay

The guy said that in his youth he’d spent a few years working, which happened to be the few years when the economy was good

Then he worked his ass off, staying up late, for eight years, and has been running his own business for the last three. His current state is to spend whatever he earns, enjoy life, enjoy the moment

What I want to think about is what kind of life we actually want. Many people use only one standard to measure the results of their effort — how much they earn

Earning money can serve as a short-term means

Survival is the foundation. Making money can run in parallel with growth, but don’t fall into the comfort zone; keep an exploring mindset

Money is a tool, not a goal. First use earning to sustain survival and freedom, then use freedom to pursue what you truly want to do

Collision and concealment

I thought back to a bar where a new sound engineer asked whether I liked his music. In Western culture, there may be more emphasis on direct inner expression and collision — emotions, thoughts, views are all encouraged to be presented directly, and even if conflict arises, it’s seen as a way to grow

In Eastern culture there’s more of a tendency toward reserved and indirect expression, and a lot of aesthetics came out of that process — landscape painting, etiquette, small objects and so on. It’s a social strategy for maintaining harmony and avoiding head-on conflict, and it also reflects a collectivist sensitivity to relationships

But at bottom the whole world’s collective forms are just optimization strategies for human survival and cooperation in different environments. Conflict styles and emotional expression are both products of adapting to environment

On the other hand, though: while being sincere, how do you avoid conflicting with the environment and the other person’s state? So in essence it’s about being someone who finds the optimal balance between information flow efficiency and relationship stability

The essence of swearing

When do people swear? At bottom, under strong emotion (anger, surprise, pain, excitement) people seek high-impact language

It’s absolutely not a product of logic, but an outlet for emotional energy, a person’s immediate psychological state

Moderate swearing lowers pain and stress levels

Some people express themselves through swearing — the real, rough, unpolished side

So observing swearing is more about observing the sense of connection swearing creates in a relationship, and the information being conveyed behind it

The social class phenomenon — low-income and grassroots people face heavy life pressure

The social class phenomenon: lower-income and grassroots groups face heavy life pressure and tight resources, and more easily see the other as a direct competitor. Discrimination is at bottom the insecurity over survival resources and psychological projection

For the middle class with some income but already anxious about resources, it’s easy to mix in rational calculation; at the same time social news and public opinion easily magnify emotion

For high-income people and elites, social status is stable; it’s more about cultural identity differences and more rational. Discrimination is more a means of maintaining identity

The moment you’re hijacked by emotion

The moment you get “fired up,” what actually happens in your brain is an “amygdala hijack.” The circuits of your rational brain (the prefrontal cortex) are temporarily “cut off,” and the primal amygdala, in charge of fight or flight, takes control. In that moment you’re not thinking, you’re just reacting

All you need is a brief pause — realizing that you’re conscious — and then take back the initiative

Interrupt the amygdala’s out-of-control loop, force the body and brain to calm down. Make sure your breathing is normal; breathing normally, the brain sends the signal that everything is safe

Add mindfulness practice of attention, pulling back to the physical reality of here and now

Then objectively describe your emotions, without judging, without evaluating, just recording objectively — recording what it was like. This is a very good way to analyze and dissect yourself

The impact of the moment when memory can be reshaped

What kind of process is each act of recall?

Every time you actively retrieve an old memory, it isn’t “re-read” unchanged. Instead, it goes from a stable “long-term storage” state into a brief, unstable, “editable” state. This fragile window is called reconsolidation

During this window (usually lasting hours), the memory is like clay just taken out of a mold, not yet fully set. You can add new information, new feelings, or weaken its original emotional coloring. After the “edit” is done, it gets “solidified” again, stored back into long-term memory — but what goes back is already an updated version

The whole drama of this “handover of power” happens inside this crucial “editable” window. Whoever dominates the “editing” work in this window determines what this memory will look like in the future

There are two parties that can dominate

The amygdala: the impulsive “frontline commander.” Its traits are extremely fast reactions, black-and-white thinking, highly emotional. Its primary task is ensuring survival, and it believes in “better to kill a thousand by mistake than let one slip”

The prefrontal cortex (PFC): the deliberate “supreme commander.” It handles logical analysis, long-term planning, weighing pros and cons, and emotional regulation. It’s slow, but sees more comprehensively and more rationally

Technology and me

The tech circle around you can even serve as an environment

Technology also incubates us in return

Including the social apps and platforms I normally use

These apps we use daily are like a dojo, constantly giving us feedback, training

Technology is an environment/coach that shapes our attention and habits, our judgment and sense of identity, so we should reverse-engineer our technology dojo

Use technology to shape the world, and technology is shaping you too

Your urge to express, your urge to share, your emotional connections, your online identity and so on

The unity of heaven and humanity

It holds that heaven (the universe, nature) and humanity (ourselves) are not isolated, but one indivisible whole. Our every action and every thought influence and resonate with the operating laws of the universe

Yin and yang: the two-sidedness of all things: metaphysics uses yin and yang to analyze the balance and change of things. When things feel off, it may be that yin and yang are out of balance. Through adjustment, balance can be restored.

The five elements: five basic energies

Generating: wood generates fire, fire generates earth, earth generates metal, metal generates water, water generates wood (each promotes the other).

Overcoming: wood overcomes earth, earth overcomes water, water overcomes fire, fire overcomes metal, metal overcomes wood (each restrains the other).

BaZi destiny analysis VS personality assessment: both try to provide a framework for “self-knowledge.” They don’t define you, they let you see your own “manual,” so you can better understand your behavioral patterns and inner drives.

Both believe that the environment you’re in is an extension of you. A chaotic, oppressive space makes you uncomfortable; a comfortable, harmonious environment relaxes you and makes you positive.

Theories like Jungian psychology hold that deep inside us there is a collective unconscious and symbolic archetypes. Dream analysis and association tests both try to reveal the true thoughts in our unconscious

Metaphysics’ ultimate purpose: live in the present, know your fate but don’t submit to it. Understanding your “fate” and “fortune” isn’t to be bound by them, but to make smarter choices, avoid risks, seize opportunities. Not passively waiting, but actively feeling and using the energy of the environment, like a surfer riding the waves of life. When you understand that humans and nature are one whole, a lot of anxiety and fear naturally dissolve

Women are not non-men; women are simply women

The most core contribution of women’s psychology is that it threw away the scissors

This core shift means we no longer ask “why don’t women think like men?”, but start asking: “what does it mean to live in this world as a woman?”

If a woman “envies” men, it’s absolutely not because of some organ, but envy of the privilege, freedom and opportunity men have in society. Conversely, she pioneered the concept of “Womb Envy” — because men cannot experience the profound process of pregnancy and creating life, deep inside they may have a sense of inadequacy, and this anxiety drives them toward the external world, to compensate and prove their worth by building careers and achievements. This view instantly flipped the perspective, extremely subversive.

She holds that so-called “femininity” (like gentleness, dependence, emotionality) is not innate, but the product of long-term shaping by patriarchal social culture. Girls are taught from childhood to be likable, to serve others, to suppress their own aggression and ambition. These “shoulds” (The Tyranny of the Shoulds) become internalized as women’s self-demands, ultimately shaping their character and fate.

Women’s psychological problems are often not individual pathology, but the manifestation of social and cultural pathology

A little boy being naughty might be praised as “lively”; a little girl being naughty is easily labeled “wild.” Girls are placed from childhood in a fine network of socialization, encouraged to develop “relational” skills — empathy, cooperation, caring about others’ feelings. This is of course a strength, but the price is that their aggression, anger and personal assertiveness are often suppressed. They learn to read the room, but may forget to listen to their own inner voice

Women’s sense of self-identity is largely established through “relationships” — they are daughters, wives, mothers, friends… and find their place and value in these relationships. This gives them powerful interpersonal networks and emotional support, but also brings risk — sacrificing the self excessively for relationships, and once a relationship breaks (like a breakup or divorce), it can trigger a serious identity crisis

Women’s rates of depression and anxiety are far higher than men’s. Society doesn’t encourage women to express anger; they tend to turn negative emotion inward, attacking themselves, which leads to depression. Men are more likely to “externalize” emotion, expressed as aggressive behavior or substance abuse.

Women express it differently. They use direct physical aggression less, and “relational aggression” more — spreading rumors, isolating and excluding, talking behind someone’s back. This form is hidden but hugely damaging; it’s the distorted expression of aggression under the “good girl” script. Understanding this is what lets you see the complex dynamics within female groups

Compared with men, where testosterone dominates sexual desire, directly triggering sensitivity to visual stimuli and quickly forming physical interest, men are highly sensitive to young, healthy, symmetrical appearance — a genetic signal of good selection. Women’s estrogen and oxytocin affect preference; because the costs of pregnancy and nursing are high, when choosing a partner they emphasize quality over quantity, so they pay more attention to indirect indicators like safety, resources and stability. Women depend more on security, emotion and social status, not just appearance, so to a degree they take things more slowly

The shift from subject to object

It’s been shown in a lot of films too

When asked a question, she looks you straight in the eye and answers clearly: “I know!” or “I don’t like that!” Her world is internally driven, her criteria come from herself. She is a complete, self-consistent “Subject”

Now imagine the same girl at 15. When you ask her the same question again, her eyes may wander, her voice gets smaller, and the answer becomes: “I don’t know…” “Maybe?” “What do you think?”

It marks a girl handing the power to judge herself and define herself from the inside out to the outside. She no longer trusts her own feelings and judgment, but starts frantically seeking answers and approval from the outside. She has gone from an acting “Subject” to a watched, judged “Object”

The “loss of voice” of adolescent girls is a profound existential tragedy. It’s not simply “growing pains,” but a systematic stripping away of the self. To fit into a world that doesn’t fully welcome their true appearance, girls learn to be like chameleons, hiding their most vivid, most unique colors

What lies behind “I don’t know”

A person who has long been in a weaker position in relationships, adopting the most efficient and safest defensive strategy in order to survive

It’s at bottom a question of power and a question of relationships

Many people put themselves in the position of an intern, so they always raise their carefully crafted shield, blocking off criticism, conflict, isolation, and the risk of being considered not good enough

A sense of security is traded for a sense of existence, but using this tool long-term produces a kind of self-doubt: I’m always invisible, so do I really exist?

This is how the people-pleasing personality slowly forms; it’s also the hotbed of the people-pleasing personality

Over a long period of repetition, this person’s inner voice seems suppressed, cut off. That road leading to the self, long abandoned and unused, has rusted

Activation: to cope with threats from the outside world (judgment, conflict), the girl begins strategically using “I don’t know.”

Reinforcement: this strategy brings short-term benefits (safety, acceptance), so it keeps getting reinforced

Internalization: frequent use makes her trust and listen to her own inner voice less and less

Rupture: the connection to the inner self gradually weakens, even breaks

Reality: in the end, “I don’t know” turns from a defensive lie into a painful truth describing her internal state

But some people really do prefer options over open-ended questions

Because the cognitive cost of options is lower, and for the people-pleasing personality it avoids excessive performance

And it can be simplified into: making a personal-preference choice among a limited, safe set of options

Then also, some people don’t need to apologize — correcting a phenomenon, recalibrating that overly sensitive internal alarm of “it’s all my fault”

So when someone apologizes meaninglessly, correct their apology as objectively as possible

The law of all things — same frequency resonance

Your thoughts and feelings are an energetic vibration frequency; whatever frequency you consistently emit, you attract people, events and things of the same frequency into your life

Some of the same language, including energy-field attraction, intention creating reality

It seems the same as metaphysics: as above, so below; all things resonate

The way to operate it:

Ask: make a wish, specific to a specific wish completed at a specific time. The universe can’t make decisions for you

Believe: you need to believe you will definitely have it. For example, if the project will blow up, then believe it will definitely be a hit, fake it until it’s true. The believing state will make you emit the frequency of already having it — this is the key to same-frequency resonance

Receive: when you feel joy, love, gratitude, excitement, your vibration frequency is at its highest, and you become a giant magnet that can effortlessly receive good things. Believe the outcome will be good and complete; just focus on yourself, then feel the universe’s signals — inspiration, intuition, coincidence and so on — and then take action

Likewise, you need some powerful tools to help yourself keep believing and receiving at a high frequency

A deeper understanding of the unity of knowledge and action

We always say, we always can’t stand hearing it — we feel like we’ve seen a lot of truths, we know a lot of principles, but why can’t we do it well?

I don’t quite understand it; between knowing and doing lies a deep gulf, so Wang Yangming told us to extend the innate knowing

Not knowing yourself well, and not understanding human nature, is one side; not having true knowing, not knowing yourself, is another. On top of that, emotion, selfish desire and habit block you from knowing — selfish desire screens off the innate knowing

Act immediately. Everyone wants to become the best person, but they often don’t start from the present and repeatedly practice. The clearer the knowing, the more solid the doing

The difference between the volume of information and change in the AI era

With the increase in information volume, it seems we haven’t changed. The amount of information we acquire has increased, but the quality of the information we acquire hasn’t been systematically improved. What we need to optimize is this sound system: the cognitive model, the cognitive system, the way we decide, the pathway for converting information

These are the symptoms of a new generation’s information-anxiety era

True knowledge will drive action; action is the natural manifestation of knowing

The law of attraction is really just constantly confirming and repeating your goals

Psychology itself has selective attention; the brain does keep filtering outside information and amplifying goal-related information, raising the chance of catching opportunities

Thinking about goals with positive emotion and firm belief, rather than mechanically repeating — emotion shapes action and aura

This part is somewhat similar to Wang Yangming’s extending the innate knowing in the unity of knowledge and action. A vague wish brings a vague result; keep wiping the mirror of your heart, keep thinking deeply about what you actually want

By constantly confirming and reinforcing the goal → adjusting attention → driving action → creating results

Of course, setting aside the psychological explanations, energy resonance is also possible, but science currently can’t verify it — it’s more like a subjective experience. When a person believes wholeheartedly and has positive emotion, their behavior changes, and others are influenced by that energy too; this external effect looks like “resonance”

From psychological oxygen to social operating system

Feeling that you’re important can be compared to psychological oxygen for humans

Everyone needs it, some traits, everyone needs it

Praise and flattery

Chinese culture generally emphasizes modesty and the golden mean, like “fullness brings loss, humility brings benefit,” or “a mind as open as a valley”

Against this cultural backdrop, praising yourself is easily seen as arrogance or showing off

So many people, when receiving praise, subconsciously deny it or play down their own strengths, to fit social expectations

People often choose to avoid directly accepting it, even using self-deprecation or humble wording to “balance face”

Flattery is selfish and can be seen through at a glance; sincere praise comes from the heart and is selfless

“Praise” and “flattery”: the difference lies in the motive. Praise sincerely expresses your appreciation of another’s strengths — it’s altruistic; flattery is about extracting something from the other person — it’s self-serving. People have a natural radar for insincere “sugar-coated bullets”

The “Good Girl Behavior Guide” under social discipline

The core of this guide is: you should “be” what, not what you “want”

Girls have a rather strong social attribute

Influenced by a series of factors

Relationship-priority principle: avoid conflict, be understanding, become an emotional stabilizer

The objectification rule of beauty and body: pursue looks, slenderness, fitting current beauty standards, rather than being used to act on and feel the world. Some influencers really have self-objectified for this, sacrificing a lot

Modesty and support principle: girls should be modest, not showy, and happy to play a supporting role

The human brain’s attention mechanism

A limited cognitive resource, possibly the basis for understanding everything: attention is not unlimited, like phone battery. Our lack of understanding of the attention mechanism determines what we can perceive, think about and ignore

Limited resources: you can’t pay attention to everything at once. When you focus on one task, perception of other things weakens; multitasking leads to lower efficiency and higher error rates

Selectivity: the core of attention is selection, like a CPU, filtering out from massive information (external senses, internal thoughts) the parts most important to you right now

Purposefulness: it depends on serving your goals. What you want to find, you easily see — for example, if you’re going to buy a red car, all you see on the street are red cars

How attention works

Top-down: controlled by you actively, consciously, serving your inner goals and intentions.

Bottom-up: triggered passively by external stimuli, not determined by your subjective will

In our daily lives, attention always feels like a constant tug-of-war between these two modes. You want to focus on work through “top-down” attention, but there’s always various “bottom-up” stimuli (phone notifications, a colleague’s conversation) interrupting you

The attention task manager’s functional breakdown

Focusing attention: among many stimuli, attending only to one or a few, ignoring the rest — for example reading in a noisy café, working to ignore the chatter next to you

Divided / sustained attention (Sustained Attention) / vigilance — these are relatively important. For some sensitive information, for example when driving, focus on the driving screen

Divided attention: handling two or more tasks at once, distributing attention across different tasks. Strictly speaking, the brain isn’t really processing “simultaneously” but switching extremely fast between tasks. This switching has a cost (cognitive switching cost) and lowers overall efficiency (I feel it’s like the cost of a CPU switching threads)

The neural networks of attention

Dorsal attention network: responsible for top-down active attention, the brain’s spotlight

Ventral attention network: responsible for bottom-up passive attention. When an unexpected or salient external stimulus appears, it acts like a “circuit breaker,” interrupting your current attention and reorienting you to the new stimulus

Attention really can be measured and cognized

The states we go through every day are in fact the brain’s neural networks hijacking the focus mechanism

That is, your default mode network (DMN) overrides the task-executing attention networks (DAN/VAN). Your consciousness “unhooks” from the external world and turns toward internal thoughts

A lot of “flashes of insight” happen while the mind wanders — the DMN helps you connect seemingly unrelated memories and ideas

The difference between attention and memory:

Working memory: in fact the brain’s RAM stick. Only information “selected” by attention can enter this RAM stick for processing

Long-term memory: if information is to be written from the “RAM stick” to the “hard drive” (long-term memory), it must go through sufficient, deep processing. This processing itself requires a large amount of attention resources

Attention and technology

The relationship between attention and technology

Mainly you use the brain’s bottom-up system

Red-dot notifications on social media, the rapid switching of short videos, pushes from news apps… all of these exploit our instinctive reaction to novelty and sudden stimuli (activating the ventral attention network, VAN), constantly hijacking our attention

Then there’s our switching between different apps and different screens, which is in fact training our brains in shallow processing and continuous distraction

When the brain is continuously bombarded and attention resources are exhausted, the ability to think deeply and focus weakens

How to train the attention mechanism

Meditation is a very good method — a gym for attention, strengthening the “top-down” network (DAN)

Start with 5–10 minutes a day, find a quiet place to sit, focus on the rise and fall of your breath. Wandering is normal; the key lies in the process of “noticing and bringing it back”

Then there’s meta-attention, like a kind of metacognition: noticing where your attention is, intercepting and correcting

Then there are some short units of focused work, like the Pomodoro technique — focus for a stretch, then rest, which helps cultivate the habit of focus

These two approaches — one persistent training, one constant correcting and repairing — work together

American music vs podcasts

It generally depends on the attention mechanism. Relatively speaking, during rest, a walk, or the drive to work, the attention load is lower, so people choose podcasts more

But during chores or exercise/running, the proportion listening to podcasts is very high

About 60% of American adults listen to podcasts, but average daily listening time is mostly 20–30 minutes per day

The training effects of hearing and vision

Some basic cognitive training

Knowledge acquisition and memory

Reading volume and language comprehension

Focus

Different training mechanisms and emphases

Text and reading depend on the visual cortex to decode symbols (recognizing letter shapes), then pass it to the language centers (like Broca’s area and Wernicke’s area) for grammatical and semantic analysis. This is a non-linear, actively constructed process, training information screening, structured analysis and critical thinking

Podcast type depends on the auditory cortex and language centers to parse; it’s a linear, real-time processing process. Information flows past like a river; you can’t easily “look back” at the previous sentence. This strongly trains working memory

Ranking of information absorption efficiency

Deliberate practice and doing: you gain experience, experience is precious, you build neuromuscular memory, form automatic reactions, and get an immediate, real feedback loop

Output and teaching: restructuring, simplifying and systematizing knowledge. Making tacit knowledge explicit, forming a complete cognitive loop

Dialogue and critical debate

Deep reading and research

Listening to or watching information

Modern people’s FOMO psychology

For ordinary users, setting aside the FOMO over WeChat official account content among tech founders or knowledge workers, ordinary users are more inclined to use TikTok or RedNote

Fear of missing out on some trending content

There’s always tension and balance between FOMO and rationality

Social behavior is subconsciously the most frequent way of burning time in today’s society

Using social factors to fill in a portion of user stickiness

So FOMO + social = 🃏

What a mother thinks about when teaching a child is how to restrict and control them

My mom just keeps telling the child what’s right and wrong, only caring about the result, not the process, or how to cultivate the child’s way of thinking

Effective short-term, but easily suppresses the child’s desire to explore and independent thinking

What I’m thinking about is how to build a reasonable system, how to let the system naturally correct the child rather than restrict him — to guide him

When you hit a problem, explore what the essence is, what the science and laws are, and then solve it

Rather than measuring by right and wrong

I hope the child learns to explore and correct himself, forming long-term self-drive

I hope the child sees the natural consequences of behavior, and how to correct the behavior

Let the child try within a safe range (like building blocks, growing plants, doing experiments)

A child is at bottom also a life process of growing together with yourself

Not a burden, but a partner in shared exploration

Every time I explain something to the child, it actually stimulates my own desire to explore and to seek truth — whether doing it this way is actually right, and how to do it right

How should I do it; thinking about how to raise the child also makes me think about how I myself arrived at these experiences and views, and whether they’re right

Only understandable, not conveyable in words

I’ve always felt language is limited, if you can have some essential understanding of the carrier of language

It’s constrained by culture, experience, context

Some people think that what’s truly valuable should be explicable, teachable, replicable?

I don’t think so

Everyone has opinions, but experience is precious, and the more firsthand the experience, the more precious

Experiential, intuitive or instinctive cognition is sometimes inherently hard to fully formalize in language (that is, “tacit knowledge”)

Word transmission is not as good as heart transmission — this isn’t hand-waving, but a fact of human cognition

Eastern culture has always emphasized blank space, the interval; the vagueness of language is sometimes the openness of the concept itself (allowing for multiple interpretations and practices)

We’re used to KPIs, methodologies, operation manuals; the moment we hit something “unquantifiable” we feel it’s empty. But the study of mind and nature was always meant to be slowly “realized” through experience-action-reflection

People slowly became tools, and slowly return to being people~

Why I try more to focus on myself and my relationship with the other person

Why I try more to focus on myself and my relationship with the other person, rather than the other person

Why I don’t much like being around people-pleasing personalities

On one hand it comes from my mom having an extreme people-pleasing personality, and I really dislike that kind of fawning

On the other hand, being around a people-pleasing personality is just too tiring

The psychological state behind her over-pleasing you

Means that in the process of being with them you also have to constantly sense or worry about what the other person is feeling

So at bottom it’s often not about their “goodness,” but the psychological pressure behind that goodness

One is the opacity of emotion — you feel you need to read the other person and play along

On the surface they’re accommodating, but in fact it may make you feel pushed into the “leader” position, giving you a sense of being held hostage

What I probably long for more is sincere communication, an equal relationship

Where you can feel more at ease being yourself, without constantly worrying “have I hurt the other person”

Poorly socialized people

Some causes of this:

Early family overprotection, neglect of emotional exchange with the child, parents themselves with weak social skills, avoidant personality — the child easily copies the pattern

Naturally more introverted, or sensitive to outside stimuli, leading to avoidance of too much social contact

Fear of rejection, a lack of good peer groups, and also influenced by cultural and environmental differences

Some phenomena:

In interacting with people, not knowing how to start or maintain a conversation, so often awkward and uncomfortable

Hard to understand or apply social etiquette

Not sensitive to group atmosphere, or appearing out of place in a collective

Thinking about avoidant personality

I used to, or my mom also has, avoidant personality traits

Not liking to express, and really hating being asked to express

Once a conflict appears, won’t argue and can’t get themselves to solve it in the moment, only goes silent or directly disappears, hoping the other person proves love and stability through being pushed away over and over

Longing to build relationships, but afraid of building relationships

To some degree, am I also afraid of running into difficulty

This also seems to be a manifestation of avoidant personality

Facing uncertainty or potential trouble, the psychological pressure gets amplified, so the instinctive reaction is to shrink back

Today she felt taking the metro was such a hassle, and even said she didn’t want to see her younger brother

But I thought we could try — what if we made it? The transfer route was really cumbersome: transferring from Guangzhou South Station to the intercity line, with only twenty minutes. In the end we made it, in the last two minutes …

My mom feels like a person lacking a sense of security too

She longs for interaction with family (like seeing her uncle), yet fears the cost and discomfort of acting

Longing for social contact, always afraid of acting

Whenever I want to shrink back from a difficulty, it seems like a projection of my mom at that moment

I hope my subconscious at those times reminds me: you can try

If people were simply simple, they’d have far fewer troubles

Taking the high-speed rail today, in Guangzhou high-speed rail station, I missed it — carrying a broken-wheeled, very heavy oversized suitcase (and having to drag it to Huizhou the next day). Not only did I have to deal with the practical problem of luggage, I was also being pulled emotionally by the interaction with my mom. You’re tired, powerless, and a bit self-blaming/resigned

Thrift = virtue, waste = shameful: this is the education many people of the older generation received from childhood. By saving money and using old things, she feels she’s in control of life, avoiding “being left behind by the times”

The Stoic rule reminds us: control what you can control, let go of what you can’t, focus on what you can control

Parents loving to hoard things and carry lots of luggage may come from a state of mind of security/habit/“just in case”

My parents feel very complicated, not simple enough, not willing enough to let go

My mom isn’t simply “loves to fuss” — “using old things, saving money” is her value system and her source of security

When the other person’s task affects you

I’ve stopped trying to persuade or argue with my mom about anything

Just tell them directly what to do, or skip past some of their unreasonable, irrational ideas and execute directly

Then also stop complaining — it’s very easy to fall into habitual complaining with parents, and with the hometown dialect it’s very easy to slip into violent communication

Think of - know - do

Yesterday I had a deep discussion with a friend about these three concepts and the philosophy behind them. Some inspiration

My friend said think of -> do is a very distant gap

I said the distance between knowing and doing is very far, because a lot of the time what we lack is sufficient knowing

Thinking of comes more from inspiration; if you don’t record it or think deeply, this thought soon disappears

Knowing requires investing time, energy and brainpower. On the basis of “thinking of,” through learning, research and thinking, it’s the process of systematizing and theorizing a vague thought. You don’t just know this idea, you also understand its principles, methods, pros and cons, and execution path

Doing is the hardest

I think back to when I was a kid

My parents were like my mom is today, they loved bringing lots of things back from relatives’ houses — gifts or food — and sharing them everywhere

Because back then people’s emotional exchange and communication mainly depended on gifts between people

So I was often used as a carrier, repeatedly made to get up early to deliver things, and there was the shame of possibly being noticed by classmates, even talked about — which is the subconscious dislike of carrying things

This may be the reason I like to pursue lightweight and simple things as an adult

Some smaller gifts, light, a bit of heart, but done with care

Who mainly carries the responsibility

I feel the roles are all different; when it comes to the result a certain action produces, how do you judge which specific role should bear the responsibility

One is: whoever bears more pain should have the most say

Generally speaking, compared with the passive recipient, the one who does the choosing needs to carry greater responsibility

The person who sacrifices more should have more say than the person who sacrifices less

Actually there’s another point: whoever gives more should have a bigger voice

So from childhood on, I feel a lot of things were forced on me by my parents — they ran their own social logic through me, I was passive, and I even carried more of the pain

In any relationship, if responsibility and rights are unequal (one person chooses, another suffers), it produces long-term internal friction and hidden resentment — the same is true in intimate relationships. In attachment theory, the pattern of interaction we had with our parents as children shapes our habits in adult intimate relationships; if as a child you were often imposed upon and had your feelings ignored, you easily develop avoidant or anxious attachment

On one hand, some big life decisions depend on feeling

To a large extent reason works as the base — the screening; feeling sets the direction, determining what your heart actually wants; intuition calibrates. When the information is complex and reason and feeling conflict, intuition helps you sense the underlying signal

At critical moments it reminds you where something is off

If it’s mainly about emotion, like marriage, which relies on a tight binding of feeling and values — whether you truly like, admire and respect the other person, and whether you can grow together over the long term — that matters more than pure logic

If feeling is a fuzzy signal, can it also be part of reason

If feeling is a fuzzy signal, can it also be part of reason

Treat reason as an overall decision and thinking framework, and feeling is one link inside it, not something entirely opposed to you

Reason relies on logical inference, data, analysis

Feeling relies on emotion, intuition, the fuzzy signals sedimented from experience

But these “fuzzy signals” are themselves part of the information; if reason ignores them completely, it is instead incomplete

In complex, uncertain situations, feeling actually provides a heuristic — a shortcut for rational inference. From this angle, feeling isn’t the opposite of reason but a way within the rational framework of “handling incomplete information”

Kant held that reason should govern feeling, and feeling provides the raw material, otherwise reason has nothing to work with

Inner scorecard & outer scorecard

Is life lived for others to watch, or for yourself?

The Outer Scorecard: measuring yourself by the world’s standards. Your success depends on how others see you — your title, your wealth ranking, media coverage, likes on social networks. People living in this mode care enormously about outside evaluation, drift easily with the current, and make decisions against their own hearts in order to win approval. Their life goal is “to look successful”

The Inner Scorecard: measuring yourself by your own standards. Are you honest and upright? Do you treat the people you love well? Have you lived up to your potential? Are you proud of what you do? People living in this mode have a strong inner core; their satisfaction and happiness come from within, not from outside applause. Their life goal is “to truly become the person they want to be”

The root reason for living simply, not chasing brands, and focusing on family and work

Build and hold to your own “inner scorecard,” and use it to guide every major choice in your life

Are you honest and upright? Do you treat the people you love well? Have you lived up to your potential? Are you proud of what you do?

An unfinished sense of mission

A feeling, different from anxiety or guilt

Even when life is currently stable, even satisfying, deep down you still feel there’s something more important and more valuable that hasn’t been done yet

You feel capable — that you could do a lot of things, influence something, create something, solve something

But the things you’re doing now aren’t enough to match your ability, ideals or values

This unease is like a gentle push, constantly making you think about what to do next

Restlessness inside comfort — a sense of emptiness or mild anxiety comes over you. You feel like a ship meant for a long voyage, calmly moored in harbor

You feel you could do better, more, more meaningful things — and from your sense of your own ability, you believe you have the potential to have a bigger impact, not just maintain the present

What exactly matters more to me?

Consumer psychology: minimalists may have a higher complexity of inner motivation

Consumer psychology: minimalists may have a higher complexity of inner motivation. They aren’t passively simple but actively choosing, involving complex psychological mechanisms like emotional management and goal setting

A superficially minimal life comes from a complex inner world: having been through the emptiness that materialism brings, keeping things simple amid a complex environment requires inner wisdom and resilience

Less is more, decluttering and letting go; through a simple life, reaching inner purity and self-knowledge

Soul food

I came across it by chance: it’s actually a fusion cuisine of peoples, originally eaten by West African slaves who worked the plantations on southern farms during the Thirteen Colonies period

The word “soul” — setting aside soulmate and soul friend — can also mean soul food

Seeing exhibitions is exhausting

Or rather, passively absorbing information makes me feel exhausted. If I’m the one using a computer to collect and organize information, there’s a sense of control, and the brain releases dopamine that sustains continued investment

I think it’s an unstructured, uncontrollable information field that makes me sensitive or tired

But while using the computer, it feels like the whole computer is my own information field, my own energy

So in that process there’s a sense of control and of my own rhythm

Also, during long stretches outdoors the brain is at low information complexity and the senses are comfortable, so the whole person feels recharged

The whole person recovers energy through the process of the body moving + the natural environment

Body and mind prefer to be replenished by nature, movement and a sense of flow, rather than by city-style, symbolic input

Personal energy map

Ways to gain energy:

Hiking / climbing / natural settings: low information load + physical movement + fresh air → mental rebound.

Doing things on the computer (writing, research, programming, projects): high information density but clear structure, controllable.

Deep conversation / logical thinking: clear, focused, sparks mental vitality.

Working from a small, quiet café: a bit of ambient noise, but not much information interference, comfortable atmosphere.

Creative output (writing, photography, design): turning input into work → a sense of achievement.

Ways that drain energy:

Museums / exhibitions: high information volume, fragmented, passively received → cognitive overload.

Shopping in malls (mall dizziness): lighting + crowds + product information + noise → multi-channel sensory assault.

Noisy gatherings / pointless socializing: messy information, no sense of control, easily overdrawn.

Closed spaces lacking air movement: body and senses are suppressed, energy can’t be restored.

Learning that requires long passive reception (lectures, drawn-out meetings): information uncontrollable, no immediate feedback

Psychology: people with a high need for cognition

The cause of its formation: innate genes + acquired environment, the product of long-term, complex interaction

Part of it is genetic: your genes really do set a baseline for your innate level of need for cognition. Some people may be born with a “cognitive disposition” — their brains feel pleasure and reward more easily when processing complex information or solving hard problems (for example, a more active dopamine reward circuit). Then there’s innate temperament: some infants are naturally more interested in novel stimuli, with higher curiosity and desire to explore; others may be quieter. A child born with strong curiosity is more likely to actively explore the world — that’s the bud of high-need-for-cognition behavior

The influence of acquired environment: if the family atmosphere encourages children to ask questions, answering their “whys” patiently and in detail rather than brushing them off, the child’s exploratory behavior gets positive reinforcement; children also imitate their parents’ behavior. If the parents love reading and think diligently, and you’re around friends who are equally curious and fond of reasoning, you spur each other on, forming a “high need for cognition” micro-environment

Mindfulness

Meditation is actually a broad category, including focused meditation, dynamic meditation and mindfulness meditation

The power of now: the brain does a session of attention training and becomes the master of its thoughts

Consciously, non-judgmentally, living in this moment

I like the out-of-body feeling — separating my subjective body from my soul, and letting the soul observe everything happening to me as rationally as possible

Mindfulness’s core aim is very clear — to be lucidly aware of everything happening right now, and to accept it as it is

Meta-awareness is the core of mindfulness: being able to realize you’re not the actor on stage but an audience member

Meta-awareness is the capacity to notice “I know what I’m thinking/feeling.” Mindfulness builds on that by adding the attitude of “accepting without judgment” and stabilizing awareness in the complete state of the present

Mindfulness ≈ meta-awareness (noticing) + acceptance (a non-judgmental attitude) + focus on the present

Ways to practice

The three-minute entry: close your eyes, feel your breathing, and when your mind wanders, bring it back

Mindful walking: a walk in the park or a hike, putting your attention on your feet. Feel the contact of your soles with the ground — the full process of heel landing, sole rolling, toes pushing off

The raisin exercise: expand your observation and perception, experiencing one simple thing with all your senses

Look: color, texture

Touch: feel the texture, the weight

Listen: hold it to your ear, what can you hear

Smell: the scent

Taste it

The museum-visiting style I’ve worked out that I like

Scan quickly with your own intuition and feel, and mark things

If you like it, take a photo and explore it deeply

If you don’t, quickly rule it out

No longer expect to carefully preview everything

Pause appropriately — meditate, think, be mindful

This move was so painful

There’s just too much stuff

The house has a lot of things, a heavy burden

It’s hard to find the courage to just set off

Starting from 0 takes courage

Emptiness lets you do anything without a burden

Getting inspiration from aimless curious exploration

Getting inspiration from aimless curious exploration, and also being able to ground it in purposeful action.

This is my favorite process: one part is the thinking-of-it, one part is the doing-of-it.

So the thinking-of-it is a boundaryless process, and that’s very interesting.

But being boundaryless is itself a fragmented process, and this process is more easily incentivized through certain mechanisms — that is, relatively speaking, boundaryless learning fits human nature better.

The essence of purity

It’s a spiritually uncluttered state, and it can be a gift, or it can be cultivated.

Internally consistent, uncontrived; a “plainness” not severely distorted by desire/identity/social role; or a morally/spiritually “unstained” person.

Fairly straightforward, not tightly gripped by thoughts, desires, or concepts — not coldness, but releasing attachment to outcomes.

There’s a Daoist saying, “Do nothing, and nothing is left undone.” It’s also a kind of purposelessness, or more accurately not being carried along by external purposes: action comes from one’s own original heart.

To some degree this is part of the philosophy of mind, Yangming’s school of mind, which is also the unity of knowledge and action — only that action comes more from inner consistency than from external anxiety.

A pure person isn’t a puppet-like purposeless being, nor an emotionless saint, but someone who, in the face of desire, role, and goal, maintains a clear, undistorted inner attitude — they have no strategy of “growing horns for the sake of face,” they aren’t tangled up in obsessions, and their action comes more from alignment with inner value than from external utility. Therefore this is both a psychological clarity and an ethical practice: to remain transparent, soft, and yet powerful in the world.

Everyone has a motive; understand the motive well and relationships are easy to reach

I’ll think about what the other person needs, or what they want.

Be clear about both sides’ needs, and the conversation is half won.

Making a painting

Appreciation is simple: a good work can trigger empathy and thought.

If the essence of Darwinian evolution is survival of the fittest

then bottom-up, it naturally follows that consumers are supplied by producers.

That is, with humans at the top of the energy pyramid, it’s the food that chose humans, not humans who chose the food.

Different identities, regions and countries, because of their own unique conditions of survival, shaped the physiology and taste preferences of their cultural groups.

The military parade in Vietnam

Compared with China, the sense of public participation in Vietnam is very high.

I always assumed Vietnam’s war of independence depended heavily on China’s “resist America, aid Korea”, but that’s precisely not the case. Studying Vietnamese history and the battlefield situation, the two decisive factors are, to a large degree, the nationalism and fighting will of the Vietnamese people led by Ho Chi Minh (the participation of the broad masses — including peasants and workers — provided the manpower base for guerrilla and protracted war), and the strategy and tactics of the Viet Minh commanded by Vo Nguyen Giap.

The Vietnamese people’s will to resist was the fundamental driver of victory in the war.

So it’s not hard to understand that a parade there is more like a strong symbol of national independence and self-determination, carrying the undertone of “we are the masters of our own country”.

So on National Day, among Hanoi’s many parades and cultural performances, besides the military formations there are also student, worker and ethnic minority groups, and people’s sense of participation is very strong.

Young people also feel that this day is the country’s birthday.

Parades in China are more about display to the outside and unity within, writing a “rise of a great power” narrative, so most people’s sense of participation is very low; it feels “solemn, dignified, grand”, and combined with some negative feedback about marches in history, more people are “looking up, watching” rather than “being part of the celebration themselves”.

How to understand narrative

My feeling about narrative has always been that it’s storytelling.

But it’s more than storytelling, it also involves meaning hahaha.

Humans are always looking for their own meaning; that’s our human narrative. Down to every culture, every country, every collective, even every individual, we’re all asking, all searching.

Who are we

Why are we here

Where are we heading

Narrative is a meaning framework. Without narrative, facts are just isolated information; with narrative, facts become a story with direction.

But people need understanding; if it’s only facts, the burden is too heavy.

Facts → narrative → belief → action, that’s the common path of human psychology.

I’m doing a startup; the narrative is that I’m exploring the world, seeking personal value, then seeking my own beliefs, outlook on life and values, and then feeding that back into action.

People’s life narratives differ: some understand their life as a struggle to survive.

Some understand their life as an interesting exploration.

Some understand life as a sense of mission. Because narratives differ, the experience they bring is utterly different.

This is also how you can understand why Vietnam’s National Day atmosphere is so strong: from the narrative angle, facts → narrative → belief → action, the common path of human psychology.

China’s National Day narrative angle is a top-down national narrative emphasizing the “rise of a great power”, so it focuses more on international image and deterrence; its core tasks are displaying national power, demonstrating national order, and consolidating governing legitimacy. The narrative is naturally lofty, which naturally creates distance from ordinary people.

What does the continuation of power after death look like

In Confucian culture, mourning rites are the ultimate expression of filial piety, and filial piety is the core of family and state order.

When a ruler requires officials to observe mourning, it’s actually using private ethics to bind public order.

Family mourning, setting aside your own wishes, is actually the individual’s loyalty to parents.

Also, human sacrifice in the histories of China and Egypt is actually the extreme of hierarchical power, where the individual’s life is completely subordinated to the ruler.

Beauty rises from culture and is then used by social institutions

Different civilizations assign different symbols to beauty: China’s beauty of restraint, a grand aesthetic; Japan’s mono no aware, the beauty of detail; the West’s light and proportion.

Human perception of meaning and narrative.

Beauty is often defined by power; the beauty the rich can afford gets defined as the standard.

Fatness represented resources in times of famine; white skin represented not having to labor in agrarian society.

Society uses unified aesthetic standards to make people accept hierarchical order (court dress, religious architecture).

When the collective endorses a certain beauty, the individual feels it’s correct.

Think of foot binding — an extreme example of “body modification” as a tool of social control.

Women were bound to the home, unable to move freely → reinforcing patriarchy and family order; in fact it was a male society using aesthetics to cover the logic of power.

The similarities between metaphysics and Daoist thought

If the Dao gives birth to all things, that’s also to some degree a kind of narrative metaphysics.

Because a great deal of human thinking really does fall outside the scope of human science.

Like the sense of meaning: where do we come from, what are we, where are we going.

Western metaphysics also studies three questions to some degree: existence, essence, the Dao.

This is also a symbolic framework for understanding the world that science can’t supplement.

Metaphysics, to some degree, gives people reflection on the relationship between humans and the universe.

This is a human way of analyzing that goes beyond scientific rationality.

Part of metaphysics also comes from Daoism; Daoism can be called metaphysics’ mother, and Wei-Jin xuanxue was the systematization and philosophization of Daoism.

As for why it flourished in the Wei-Jin period: the scholar-officials had lost the security of Confucian ritual order, there was too much war, and they were both cynical about the world and longing to escape it.

Laozi’s non-being as the origin of the world, Zhuangzi’s free wandering as a method of self-cultivation.

I always used to feel metaphysics was too empty; now it seems I just lacked an understanding of it.

Metaphysics isn’t nihilistic; it teaches us to think about the meaning of existence, the direction of life, the relationship between people and the world.

The core of philosophical reasoning feels like it’s here too: metaphysics gets people used to thinking about the essence behind appearances.

Poetry also builds meaning through expression and emotion; metaphysics is like this too — the Dao following nature teaches people to adapt and let go.

Feynman’s life, as he described it himself

I have no answers, I only have questions.

Letting go of answers, embracing the unknown.

In the world, not of the world.

Doing worldly things with an unworldly heart, enjoying more the creative happiness that the research process itself brings.

With play as the core drive: the only reason to study physics is that it’s fun, out of fundamental curiosity, getting excited over an interesting question, losing sleep over an unsolved problem, treating work as play.

Life is a testing ground, the knowledge you learn gets used in life.

Synchronicity thinking

After Buddhism’s causality, the synchronicity mode of thinking — Buddhist karma and conditions.

All dharmas arise from causes and conditions; all phenomena are determined by causes and conditions; there’s no effect without a cause.

So Buddhism holds that karma spans three lives (past, present, future) — “the karma of three lives cycles without loss”.

Metaphysics leans more toward synchronicity — Jung’s idea that events aren’t necessarily causally linked, but have correspondence in meaning.

You cast a hexagram and get a certain image: it isn’t the necessity of a causal chain, but the “resonance of the timing of heaven and your mind” at this very moment.

As above, so below

The operating laws of the higher realm correspond to the lower, and humanity and the universe mirror each other.

“As above” → celestial bodies, the universe, the sacred

“So below” → humanity, society, individual life

The world is a whole, and there’s an echo between macro and micro.

By observing the small you can infer the large (for example the body as a metaphor for the state; social structure as a metaphor for cosmic order).

It’s very close to Daoism’s unity of heaven and humanity.

So at all times the individual isn’t isolated but connected to the whole.

Start from small everyday things to mirror and change the macro shape of your life.

The collective unconscious

Jung

Of all defense mechanisms, Freud most admired sublimation

Of all defense mechanisms, Freud most admired “sublimation”. It doesn’t simply block or distort impulses but “transforms” them. It’s the only mechanism that can turn the id’s primal energy (sex and aggression) into creative, socially valuable outcomes. It’s not a double-edged sword but an “alchemist’s blade” that turns stone into gold.

It’s roughly the process from passive defense, to actively recognizing and understanding, to finally actively creating value.

The perennial philosophy phenomenon

They all come from the common truth that humans touch when they explore the universe and their own existence at the deepest level — the ineffable Dao, and the unnameable supreme god

What the two have in common is that both also invent something that transcends every definition

The world is cyclical, the universe is cyclical (the seasons, the movement of the stars)

The world is cyclical, the universe is cyclical (the seasons, the movement of the stars), and people too have birth, aging, sickness, death, and the cycle of rising and falling emotions — this is a kind of correspondence theory

The phenomena of the outer world (the people you meet, the things that happen), often mirror our inner psychological state

So the outer world is a projection of the inner unconscious; the world you see reflects your own inner state

The way of heaven, natural law, principles — they’re all the same. The small and the large, the local and the whole, are not separate but mirror images of each other

Only when outer order and inner order are in harmony do you get harmony

Italian traits

I’ve met some Italians and noticed some traits they have

Southern and northern Italy differ

Northern Italians: lighter skin, features closer to European, often light-colored eyes or hair

Southern Italians: skin on the wheat or bronze side, mostly dark hair and eyes, more pronounced facial contours

Italians speaking English have a noticeable rolled R, and it really sounds like singing; Italian itself has a singing quality

They like to use gestures or facial expressions to support what they’re saying

And another part: Italians’ extreme pursuit of, and interrogation of, aesthetics is almost unbelievable, even though their salaries are far below Northern Europe’s

Jung, the mirror

Jung * the mirror

Sleep is not “inactivity” — it’s your body and brain’s lifeline

While you sleep, your brain and body are doing highly efficient maintenance, repair and reorganization work. They’re clearing out waste, consolidating memories, regulating emotions, strengthening the immune system. You could say sleep is the most effective, most free thing you can do each day for your physical and mental health. Understand this and you’ve grasped the soul of this book

The unexamined life is not worth living

Or perhaps it isn’t the goal itself; living well (living in accordance with virtue) is what counts

What is an “unexamined life” like? It’s muddling along, pushed by instinct, desire, custom and other people’s opinions. You never reflect on whether the goals you pursue (money, fame, power) really bring happiness; you never interrogate whether the values you believe in hold up. Such a life is like a ship without a helmsman, drifting with the current at sea; no matter how much wealth it holds, it’s worthless

Examining is looking back at yourself over and over, asking what kind of life you want to live, and then simply holding to our own life

Running away might mean the complete failure of his whole philosophy and life

You don’t know, but you think you know — what is a good person, what is patriotism, what is success?

What sleep actually is

Many people lack the understanding — what is the essence of sleep?

Non-REM sleep (NREM Sleep): the brain’s “deep cleaning” and “file transfer”

Memory consolidation

Brain detox

Rapid eye movement sleep (REM Sleep): the brain’s “creative workshop” and “emotional therapist”

Emotional healing

Sparking creativity

NREM deep sleep is responsible for consolidating memory and clearing brain waste; REM sleep is responsible for regulating emotion and sparking creativity. Neither can be missing; together they make up sleep’s powerful function

The cost of sleep deprivation is enormous

Cognitive ability falls off a cliff

Immune system collapse

The cardiovascular system raises the alarm

Metabolic chaos, gaining weight and losing sharpness

Loss of emotional control and mental disturbance

What steals our sleep?

Caffeine and alcohol

Blue light everywhere: the blue light from phones, computers, tablets and TV screens suppresses melatonin secretion. Melatonin is the signal telling the body it’s time to sleep

Wrong temperature: falling asleep still needs the temperature to drop

A culture that takes pride in not sleeping

How do we take back our sleep time?

Regularity — it must be regular. Go to bed and get up at the same time every day, including weekends

A dark, quiet sleep environment: good blackout curtains, earplugs or an eye mask

Power down an hour before bed; a hot bath can lower body temperature and promote sleep

Get plenty of sunlight during the day, avoid it at night

Don’t do things in bed unrelated to sleep

If you lie in bed 20–30 minutes and still can’t sleep, get up decisively

REM sleep reshapes negative emotional memories

In fact the things we experience during the day: a memory has two parts:

Factual information

Strong emotion

When you sleep at night and enter REM sleep, the brain magically reactivates and replays this painful emotion

During sleep, the brain decodes and reconstructs the memory. It reactivates and replays this painful memory, and at the same time shuts off the release of a key stress neurotransmitter — norepinephrine, the very chemical fuel that triggers intense emotions like anxiety and panic

The brain can rehearse this painful memory over and over without experiencing that heart-rending pain again. After a night of REM “rehearsal,” the brain has successfully stripped the emotional shell off the core of the memory. When you wake the next day, you still remember the event (the factual information), but it no longer makes your heart race or your palms sweat. That scorching, thorny iron ball has been cooled and polished by “alchemy” into an experiential stone you can hold and examine

This is REM sleep’s “emotional alchemy”: it doesn’t delete the memory, it precisely weakens the strong emotion attached to it, letting us learn from past experience without being wounded by it

Sleep it off and the emotion is gone

With enough sleep, REM sleep will process this memory. It replays the scene of the argument, and the problem and the emotion from the argument get separated first

This is also why, when facing a problem, we shouldn’t decide on the spot. Often after a day you can remember the matter itself objectively, setting aside the emotional angle

If one night of bad sleep, then have another night; time smooths everything out

The essence of emotional processing:

The handover of power between the amygdala and the prefrontal cortex (PFC)

“Disguised ally, true enemy”: many people mistakenly believe alcohol “helps sleep and dispels worry,” but it’s precisely one of the most potent inhibitors of “emotional alchemy.” Alcohol can help people fall asleep quickly (sedative effect), but it severely suppresses REM sleep. This means that although you slept, the brain’s most important emotional repair work was skipped. This is exactly why people often feel more anxious and emotionally unstable after waking from a hangover

The “foundational” role of NREM sleep: before REM sleep does its “emotional alchemy,” NREM (non-REM) deep sleep must first complete its work — memory consolidation. NREM sleep is responsible for transferring the day’s memories from the brain’s temporary storage area (the hippocampus) to long-term storage (the neocortex). Without this “save the file” step, REM sleep has no “file” to edit. They are one complete, sequentially linked process

Hong Kong, surviving in the cracks

To describe Hong Kong’s soul: not prosperity, not a free port, but the crack

Like Singapore, every characteristic of Hong Kong comes from its ability to survive, breathe and grow in the cracks under great forces

The crack shows up at several levels:

Geographic crack: sitting at the edge of mainland China, facing the vast South China Sea, it’s the crack between continent and ocean

Historically it’s also the product of the collision between the Qing Empire and the British Empire, colonialism interwoven with millennia of civilization

Politically it’s also the crack between socialist China and the capitalist world, giving rise to the unique system of one country, two systems

Culturally it’s the collision of East and West; Guangdong’s street-level culture and Britain’s elite institutions run in parallel here, each being the outward face of the other

Shenzhen, the relationship between technology and people

Shenzhen is currently the city with the strongest tech feeling I’ve experienced — I hadn’t expected any city I’ve visited to compare

Shenzhen went from a small fishing village to a first-tier city; the industrial structure and the tech industry played a decisive role, shaping the city’s culture — time is money

Shenzhen’s technology doesn’t exist in isolation; it depends heavily on people’s skills, passion and willingness to take risks. From the early electronics factory workers to today’s AI, chip and hardware innovation talent, people’s knowledge, experience and hands-on ability directly determine the level of technology

Digital payment, shared mobility, instant logistics, and unmanned supermarkets — after long-term exposure to an environment of rapid iteration and innovation, people’s way of thinking leans toward “experimental, quick decisions, accepting failure.” The relationship between technology and people isn’t just a tool relationship, it’s a cognitive training ground

People drive the development of technology, technology shapes the city’s culture and drives it, and the city environment in turn shapes people

Chasing the trend

There’s a big gap between trend industries and ordinary industries

There’s a saying: even a pig standing in the trend wind can fly

Understand the essence of a trend industry

Whether in terms of the quality of a career, or the flow of capital

It’s not that the person is so impressive, but that the external environment and the trend of the times gave a push

Trends aren’t something a person can control. Laozi said to go with the flow; the rise of some industries also isn’t something an individual can drive, but the joint product of society, technology and policy. So in a headwind industry you might be marking time, but with a tailwind it’s half the effort for double the result

Once a trend opens, everyone rushes in, the good and bad mixed together. It looks like anyone can take off, but in fact the ones who truly stay are the ones with real inner strength. Without inner strength, being blown up by the wind is just a brief illusion

While chasing, ask yourself more: when the wind stops, can I still stand?

The Rational Optimist

If you had to compress The Rational Optimist into one core ignition point, it’s this: the fundamental driver of human prosperity and progress is neither exceptional individual IQ nor some grand top-down design, but “ideas having sex”

Ideas having sex has two key features that set humans apart from other species

Crossing individuals: your idea combines with my idea and creates something new you couldn’t have imagined

A non-zero-sum game: it’s not that I lose something in the transfer, but that the total amount of knowledge in the world increases through the combination — 1 + 1 > 2

The book’s optimism isn’t a blind belief that “tomorrow will be better,” but rests on a solid logic: as long as we allow ideas to freely exchange, collide and mate, humanity as a “collective brain” will keep learning about itself, repairing itself, creating new ways to solve problems, and thereby keep the gears of progress turning forward. That is the foundation of all optimism

The magic of the market isn’t greed, but that it greatly promotes specialized division of labor, and the depth and breadth of that division determines the upper limit of prosperity a society can reach

A self-sufficient farmer, no matter how smart or hardworking, will never reach the living standard of a modern worker who only tightens screws. Because the latter is plugged into the global “collective brain,” while the former relies only on his own

But … what about AI?

AI is an unprecedented, ultra-high-dimensional “ideas-having-sex engine”

It drives the cost of ideas having sex down to nearly zero, and raises the speed by countless orders of magnitude. Historically only the most erudite and smartest few could achieve cross-domain integration; now AI gives that ability to everyone

Reshaping “scarcity”: AI pushes the cost of producing information, knowledge and basic ideas toward zero. So what’s the new scarce good? Human attention, distinctive personal taste, the willingness to take risky decisions, leadership that can rally people, deep emotional connection. The center of gravity of the economy will shift toward these new scarce goods

Some techniques for tracking arXiv papers

The cost of actively searching for information is still too high. Having a good subscription or push channel seems generally more in line with users’ usage habits

Every day there are a huge number of papers from top conferences on arXiv; finding the right papers matters a lot

The basic thing is arXiv’s filtering function — find the right system, like the subfields of AI, CV, NLP, ML and so on

Actually there’s also partly the recommendation logic, like following the recent and new under a certain category, setting up email subscriptions, so you don’t miss core content

When reading, it’s actually decomposing and dissecting the paper — dissecting it into core points and key parts

Hojicha

It looks a bit like mocha, different from matcha

Matcha is a top-grade green tea powder, matcha powder, containing some caffeine, but released very slowly, so the energizing effect is longer and steadier. The taste is fresh, slightly bitter, with umami and a seaweed note; a distinctive taste, rich in antioxidants. The traditional Japanese way of drinking matcha (the tea ceremony) doesn’t add sugar, but the popular “matcha latte” on the market usually adds sugar and milk

At the cultural and philosophical level, the Japanese tea ceremony pursues the “wabi-sabi” aesthetic, emphasizing simplicity, naturalness and the beauty of imperfection. Tasting matcha’s bitterness is seen as a kind of practice, cultivating inner calm and focus by tasting bitterness. This experience of “sweetness within bitterness” is believed to help people feel the present moment better; it’s a spiritual enjoyment

Matcha is usually paired with some sweets and nuts to give the palate a layered, rich experience, and Japanese cuisine emphasizes the original flavor of ingredients, so adding sugar would mask the layers and aroma; keeping matcha’s original taste is seen as respect for the tea and the tea master

Hojicha belongs to the tea category, mocha belongs to the coffee category. Hojicha is a roasted Japanese green tea; its main ingredients are green tea (leaves) and water. A hojicha latte usually adds milk. The tea leaves are roasted at high temperature, giving a distinctive roasted aroma similar to nuts and caramel, almost no bitterness, a mellow mouthfeel, and virtually no caffeine content — good for drinking in the evening

Some questions, aimed at our reading a book

How can this be done?

What mental models or angles of thinking are there to understand this?

Are there other angles as well?

Are there other details as well?

Is there anything wrong with this description?

How to dig deeper?

How to integrate it into my existing conceptual system and cognitive system?

The logic of showing off

The essence of showing off is to win in the pecuniary contest; what’s compared isn’t the amount of assets, but who can better bear a certain degree of waste. There are two ways of pecuniary display

Conspicuous leisure: showing society you’re really rich, and don’t need to take part in any kind of productive labor

Conspicuous consumption: being really rich, buying at will

How to show off?

Leisure

Display of knowledge: why learn Latin, these languages — not dragon-slaying techniques, but because learning them requires more time and money cost

Display of etiquette: elaborate table manners, complex social forms, a person’s passport, proving long-term training

Vicarious leisure: the rich merchant’s wife doing nothing to display her husband’s wealth and status

Consumption

Luxury goods — handmade, non-essential items

The essence of fashion

Vicarious consumption

And what it drives is the transmission of aesthetics: people tend to imitate the life of the person they aspire to be, even borrowing money and paying in installments

People work hard to earn money not to gain true peace and freedom, but to buy the symbols that prove their own “success”

The evolution of conspicuous consumption

Heavy assets and material display, relying on physical space: showing off your estate, mansion, servants and precious objects

Brand symbols and lifestyle display: LV bags, Rolex watches, Mercedes and so on; consumption is a complete lifestyle

Experience, knowledge and culture display: material goods and brands are easily obtainable, material display begins to depreciate, so what’s shown off is unique experience and deep cultural capital — like “I went to Iceland to see the northern lights,” “I know jazz,” “I belong to a well-traveled intellectual class”

Virtual assets and algorithmic identity display: your social media, the virtual assets you need

Mansion → Mercedes → Iceland travel photo → a JPG avatar

Faster and faster, more and more “abstract.” But the core driving all of this — that human bottom-layer code longing to gain superiority and honor by “proving I’m richer/more tasteful/more visionary” — has never changed since Veblen’s time. It’s just that the “game” version we play has been updated

Building a meaningful view of consumption

Changing your life scoreboard: one is the external scoreboard, where your value and success are defined by other people’s approval; the other is the internal scoreboard, where your value and success are defined by yourself. The sole purpose of consumption is to serve the life goals, values and genuine happiness your own heart recognizes

Let consumption vote for our life. Have clear values, and align spending with those values

Return to the essence of things, pursue “good enough” rather than “the best,” prefer “durable” over “disposable,” appreciate craft rather than the logo

“Experiential consumption” can be a new form of showing off. But if we strip away its “performance” attribute, it’s precisely a shortcut to happiness.

In the long run, experience brings us far more joy than material things. Objects get old and out of date, and the novelty they bring fades quickly (that is, “hedonic adaptation”). Experience, over time, ferments and appreciates in our memory, becoming part of our personal story. This is the “memory dividend”

The key is that the core motivation for doing these things is inner exploration and enjoyment, not collecting material for posting on social media

Conspicuous consumption — the eternal game between human nature and social mechanisms

Human nature is the engine driving this game: the desire for status, the instinct as a signaling system, the fear of uncertainty or the need for security, and the ancient echo of mimesis

Human nature drives society: our desire for status pushes us to build classes, markets and various systems of judgment.

Society shapes human nature: these social mechanisms in turn define “what counts as good status” (for example, defining it through wealth), and provide the tools to achieve it (consumption), thereby further strengthening and ossifying our primal impulses

One really interesting thing: human nature is eternal, while social mechanisms keep evolving, providing this human-nature core with more efficient, more refined, more all-pervasive ways of “expressing” it

Human nature and society? What about technology

It has always been a discussion of three levels: technology, institutions and culture

Technology as an “efficiency amplifier” — making showing off faster, broader, more precise

Everyone now has their own TV station. Your showing off can instantly reach thousands or millions of “viewers” globally, and get instant quantified feedback (likes, comments). Technology drives the transmission cost of showing off down to almost zero, while raising the potential return (being seen, being envied) to infinity

And the range of what you can show off is more colorful too: you not only own the latest iPhone, but are also fluent with all kinds of productivity apps and shortcuts, building a complex smart home system. While showing off “I have money,” you’re also showing off “I’m smart, I’m efficient, I’m ahead of my time”

So in social settings, discussing blockchain, Web3.0, artificial general intelligence (AGI) is like a 19th-century gentleman discussing Kant’s philosophy. It’s a signal displaying your intellectual superiority and informational lead

Learning and thinking itself are a signal of luxury

In today’s era of information surplus and scarce time, genuine learning and deep thinking are themselves an ultimate, and also most concealed, signal of luxury

You have non-productive time, and you have a lot of large, uninterrupted blocks of time you can dispose of freely

You have cognitive discipline

The predicament of the information age: tech giants use every means to compete for our attention. Algorithm-recommended short videos, sensational clickbait headlines, the never-ending information stream… all of this is training our brains to get used to shallow, instant stimulation, and the ability to think deeply is being severely eroded

The scarcity of focus: in this environment, being able to sit quietly and read or think for more than two consecutive hours requires strong cognitive discipline and anti-interference ability. This is an ability to fight instinct and resist environmental temptation, and it’s harder to come by than having money

And today, with information flooding everywhere, how to filter information, how to process information, and whether you have the leisure and ability to do deep information processing (that is, learning and thinking) — this entire “process” and “state” itself, replacing the “knowledge result,” has become the new status symbol

So to a degree, someone who posts long reflections on social media, even if they don’t realize it, is participating in an advanced Veblenian game. What they’re showing off isn’t that book or that view, but the luxurious, enviable “state of ease” behind being able to have all of it

If whatever you do will be misunderstood

If doing it and not doing it are both wrong

Then what we can’t choose is whether to send a signal

What we can choose to control is what kind of signal we send out

The process of accepting your own imperfection

Constructing social identity through display

Unconscious showing off, building your identity through display

Very common: a doctor’s white coat, a police officer’s uniform, a judge’s robe and gavel, a programmer’s hoodie — these are role signals

An engagement ring is a clear signal: it declares a person’s emotional state and social commitment, and redefines the boundary of how others (especially potential suitors) interact with him/her

Then there are power signals, which naturally include where you sit in a meeting room, and the symbols of cultural appraisal

Through these boundary signals, society is divided into countless interwoven, sometimes conflicting groups, and each of us is constantly confirming our belonging by emitting and interpreting signals

We keep sending these boundary signals, thereby creating meaning, creating order, building identity, maintaining the system

Security isn’t a thought, it’s a psychological state

A sense of security can’t be obtained through rational thinking alone. For someone who has long had a people-pleasing personality, their nervous system is like an extremely sensitive smoke alarm with its default threshold set extremely low

So for someone like this, what you should do isn’t lecturing, but talking directly to the alarm’s hardware — continuously feeding in the correct safety signals, thereby recalibrating. This is Stephen Porges’s Polyvagal Theory

Our nervous system has three levels, divided into three stages:

Top of the ladder: the ventral vagal system — the green safety zone. This is the state where we feel safe, connected, curious, relaxed. We can engage in effective social interaction, smile, have a melodic voice, be willing to explore and create. This is the ideal “growth mode”

The sympathetic nervous system — the yellow alert zone. When we perceive danger, the body mobilizes to prepare for action. It shows up as anxiety, vigilance, irritability, wanting to flee.

Physiological features: accelerated heartbeat, shallow breathing, tense muscles, ready at any moment to explode or run.

Bottom of the ladder: the dorsal vagal system — the red shutdown zone. It shows up as numbness, dissociation, a sense of powerlessness, feeling disconnected from the world.

Neuroception: our nervous system unconsciously and automatically scans the environment (including yourself) for danger signals and safety signals; this process is called “neuroception.” It’s much faster than our thinking. A people-pleaser’s neuroception is extremely sensitive

So generally, if the other person is in an emergency nervous-system zone, you should guide them

Consciously slow down your speech, use a soft, undulating tone, as natural as when talking to a baby or a small animal. Avoid flat, monotonous, or too-high, too-fast tones

Let a smile show on your face

Guide them through long-breath practice

Everyone wants to feel important

The deepest, most enduring desire in the human heart is “the desire to be important”

Behind many of our behaviors is the same driving force: we want to be seen, recognized, respected; we want to be, in others’ eyes, unique, valuable, important

The prerequisite for changing others is changing yourself. How to change yourself:

Don’t criticize, don’t complain, don’t condemn

Give sincere appreciation and praise; sincere praise has to come from the heart

Arouse a strong desire in the other person’s heart

It’s basically going with the natural flow of things. If you want someone to do something for you, what you need to discuss is what he wants — you can’t just talk about what you want. Discuss what he wants, and tell him how to get it

How to make people like you

From a stranger to a popular person

Be sincerely interested in others. Why do people like small animals? Kittens and puppies are very easy to like because when they see you they always unreservedly express their joy and interest

Smile — a smile from the heart

Remember people’s names. Everyone is very sensitive about their own name, and it really is a very effective method

We all crave attention, but very few are willing to listen; offer a pair of focused ears, don’t interrupt, don’t judge

Talk about what the other person is interested in. This requires doing homework in advance — for example, meeting someone who loves sailing means a completely different quality of conversation

Make the other person sincerely feel important. This is the last one, and it can be done in various ways, for example by not looking at your phone during the conversation, staying focused and immersed in the conversation

Don’t argue — how can you win someone over

There’s an essential point: what is the essence of arguing — is it about the relationship and self-esteem behind the argument, or about seeking truth? Some methods:

Respect the other person’s opinion; never say “you’re wrong”

The only way to benefit from an argument is to avoid the argument

Start in a friendly way

Get the other person saying “yes” first, and then yes again

Let the other person feel it’s their own idea

Sincerely try to see the problem from the other person’s angle — even an opponent has a reverse-thinking way of seeing things

Sympathize with the other person’s ideas and wishes

Arouse nobler motives. Everyone wants to be noble and selfless; beyond self-interest, you can appeal to his sense of honor, duty or compassion

Package your view. I’ve always found this interesting: use stories, data, vivid metaphors to package your view, making it more impactful and memorable

Instead of issuing a challenge, arouse the other person’s competitive spirit

Packaging information

Dramatizing ideas — you could say this is the most charming part of language

This is also very effective in an age of information overload and fragmentation

Turn your view from “plain information” into an “unforgettable experience”

Our brains are naturally lazy. They prioritize vivid, sensory, high-impact information, and automatically filter out the bland, abstract data that takes effort to process. Stating facts and reasoning in a flat way is like handing the other person a dry manual; they might glance at it and toss it aside

“Dramatizing,” on the other hand, screens a mini-movie inside the other person’s brain. You’re no longer the “narrator” of information, but the “director” of experience. You mobilize vision, hearing, emotion, even touch, create a scene, make your view “come alive,” and directly hit the other person’s senses and emotions. This process completes the key shift from informing to impacting

Informing: “The company’s safety incident rate needs to go down.”

Impacting: dump a pile of shattered hard hats onto the conference table, then say: “These are the tragedies that could have been avoided last year.”

See it? The former is an instruction that requires thinking; the latter is a shock you feel without needing to think. The essence of dramatization is using “Show” to replace “Tell.”

One really impressive thing about my partner is that even in a relationship

One really impressive thing about my partner is that even in a relationship, he can keep a very clear strategy — deal with the matter, not the person

For a lot of things, he tries to stand in the other person’s position and angle to understand how they feel

Then there’s a clear formula: facts + feelings + expectations

That way he doesn’t accuse the person; he describes the facts clearly, along with his own feelings and his own expectations

The core, really, is to work through your own emotions first and then explore how to communicate the problem better

Metaphysics seems to some degree to be a combination with Confucianism too

Metaphysics seems to be, to some degree, a combination with Confucianism too, because it emerged precisely when social order was corrupted — how, as an individual, do you keep your inner truth and freedom (nature) in a corrupt social order (the code of names and ethics)?

The spiritual need of chaotic times

The Han dynasty’s approach to classical studies — studying all your life until your hair turns white, nitpicking every single character — had already gone out of date, because it couldn’t solve the spiritual crisis of the moment. People needed a grander, more fundamental philosophy

So the subject matter under any culture will turn inward, paying attention to personal feeling, value and spiritual freedom

Words cannot exhaust the meaning

The highest pursuit of Eastern aesthetics!

It’s not about making the viewer marvel at how exquisitely the bamboo basket is woven, but about making the viewer feel, in their heart, that lively, jumping fish

So words cannot exhaust the meaning. Chinese landscape painting is so famous; it isn’t “painting scenery,” it’s “writing a state of mind”

The painter leaves large areas of blank space on the painting. It’s not that it’s unfinished, and not laziness. This “blank” encompasses everything; it’s cloud, fog, water, sky, and above all infinite space for imagination

The painted part is the “words” (the specific mountains, trees, people), and the blank part is that “meaning” that can’t be put into words

The evolution of the Zhouyi

Change is the breaking of the fixation on permanence

Behind the countless transformations, an unchanging law and principle

Spring, summer, autumn and winter are change (the changing), but the order of the cycle of the four seasons is unchanging (the unchanging)

Childhood defines a life

Childhood trauma, especially trauma from the family, doesn’t simply heal with time. It’s like a ghost, haunting a person’s whole life, and determining the base color of their personality

Just like Yukiho and Ryoji

So a person’s character and behavioral patterns can often be answered by their childhood experience. It makes us deeply understand why some people show coldness, paranoia or self-destructive tendencies we find hard to understand. At the same time, it warns us how profoundly the protection of and care for children affects the future of a society

Good and evil are always relative. Ryoji does every bad thing (evil), but his motive is to protect Yukiho (in his view, good). Yukiho pursues a glamorous life (seemingly good), but she relies on Ryoji’s crimes (evil)

So interpersonal relationships are often shaped by others too. In some extreme emotional relationships, two people may form a closed moral system and value system that outsiders cannot understand

Look directly at human nature, but don’t test it. Looking directly is a kind of cognition: it means acknowledging the light and darkness of human nature, bravely facing inner impulses and social reality, rather than deceiving yourself

Not testing is a kind of wisdom: it means don’t manufacture extreme situations to gamble on human nature, because most people may not hold out at the limit

Human nature is both bright and dark; we need to look at it clear-eyed, but rely on institutions, customs and personal cultivation to guide it, rather than casually probing it

The design of technology often considers the boundaries of human nature, with appropriate guidance and restraint

Detective Sasagaki’s anchor points on human nature

A genius detective’s case-solving is a breakthrough at a “point,” while Sasagaki’s pursuit is the extension of a “line.” He never expects to catch the truth in one go, but believes that as long as he keeps collecting fragments, one day he can piece together the whole picture.

What he pursues is not “Who,” but “Why”

He tries to understand from the other person’s angle — in fact, empathic understanding is the best way to analyze human nature

Trying to understand the criminal’s inner world through “empathy” is the deepest kindness an ordinary person can reach

Sasagaki has his own family, a son, and the joys and sorrows of a normal person. Precisely because he himself is an “ordinary person” rooted in normal life, he can keenly sense the “abnormality” of Ryoji and Yukiho’s world. He uses his own ordinary life as a baseline to measure the coldness and distortion of that “white night”

The Walden experiment

An experiment, a social experiment, a thinker’s challenge to modern life

Live an examined life — it means a state of living actively, awake, consciously

By extreme simplification, touching the truth of life

A kind of conceptual performance art

The value of a thing equals the amount of “life” I say it costs; you need to exchange it, long or short

If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away

“Digital Minimalism” is the 21st century’s Walden

In this era attention is easily lost, and there’s a lot of shallow, fragmented busyness. Thoreau replaced meaningless socializing with an entire afternoon of contemplation

Why I often feel I’ve read a lot of books but am still miserable

It’s that I haven’t achieved the unity of knowledge and action

It’s that I really haven’t created, or really haven’t produced output

This may also be why I want to do a to-do — because I really hope I can achieve it

Saudi Arabia

Super-huge infrastructure, and to a degree a reform-and-opening paradigm

The newly launched “Real Estate Balance Platform” (Tawazoun) allows Saudi citizens to apply for pre-planned affordable housing plots, aiming to regulate land prices and promote sustainable urban development

Saudi Arabia’s median age is about 29.6, and more than 70% of Saudi citizens are under 35

Rental yields exceed ten percent

The reason the risk is high is that loan rates are relatively low, but you need a Saudi work visa

Could the absence of a turning point itself be an epiphany

People often expect a clear dividing line in life — for example I want a “Longchang enlightenment,” to get some kind of epiphany

Maybe I expect too much for some enormously emotional touch to appear in my life, whether painful or joyful, moving or sad

A very thick sense of confusion, expecting a major life event to happen

Mind is principle, extending the innate knowing, the unity of knowledge and action

Am I not still attached to growth?

Still attached to the experiences in life?

Still attached to the pursuit of turning points in life?

Liberation: the state of being free from all suffering and bondage. Liberation is equivalent to nirvana; nirvana is a thorough spiritual peace, with no suffering, no attachment, no cycle of birth and death

It’s not a “place,” but a cessation of a state of existence — afflictions extinguished, ego-clinging dissolved

Free from samsara

Free from afflictions (Klesha)

Exhausting all karma

Rather than telling the world what kind of thing is bad

Rather than telling the world what kind of thing is bad, I’d rather tell the world why this thing is good

State your own value system and understanding

This is a direction, an inspiration

Those with insight will naturally take it in

The communication style of deep connection between people

I feel our everyday language is full of violence

There’s the jackal language, and the giraffe language

Jackal language is the way of communicating we’ve absorbed since childhood and take for granted: the world is binary, full of judgment, blame, comparison, commands and labels

The essence of this language is demands and judgment. Like a jackal, it bares its teeth — either attacking the other person, or attacking yourself inside

I feel PUA was born from this system; what you get is a short-lived obedience relationship

Giraffe language is the symbol of nonviolent communication. The giraffe has the largest heart of any land animal, representing empathy and love. The core of giraffe language is honestly expressing yourself, and listening to others with empathy

Observe, rather than comment

Feelings, rather than thoughts

Needs, rather than strategies

Requests, rather than commands

The diagnostic ability for deep understanding of information

It’s essentially a kind of micro-information capture ability, behind which lies a high level of attention distribution and strong curiosity

These people often form an “information library” — even fragmented information can be recorded and become material for later reasoning

Bayesian thinking is essentially a kind of probabilistic thinking: treat uncertain things as probabilities, and constantly update your judgment as new information comes in

There’s no absolute certainty, only different degrees of belief

The logic of memory reconstruction

Memory is not “hard-drive style storage,” but dynamic neural network patterns

Every act of recall reactivates the connections of related neurons, and in the re-presentation new information or emotion may be added, thereby modifying the memory trace (this is called reconsolidation)

Memory is more like an editable document. When we “recall” a past event, the brain doesn’t retrieve it intact from some corner, but reassembles the related fragments stored in different brain regions (like images, sounds, sensations, meanings). More crucially, once this memory is activated (that is, recalled), it enters an unstable (labile) state. In this brief window, the memory can be modified, updated, even weakened or strengthened, and only then is it re-stored (reconsolidated)

Sleep (especially the REM phase) has a strong processing effect on emotion-related memories: some strong emotional coloring gets weakened (like re-enactment in post-traumatic dreams), and some may be strengthened (like emotional attachment)

The supplementary emotional engineering in the process of memory reconstruction

In fact the process of recall depends on your current mood. If you’re very angry right now, you may write the anger in too; conversely, if you recall in calm or even pleasant state, the same event may be “beautified” into something more neutral or positive

A person’s memory pattern is also a kind of narrative. When you tell or relive a memory, the words, metaphors and frameworks you use in turn shape how you’ll feel when you recall it next time

Other people’s feedback on your recall (like agreement, doubt, comfort) also gets embedded in this memory

How to control it rationally?

Reappraisal: consciously switch to a different interpretive framework when recalling. For example, relabel a “failure” as “a turning point for learning” — over the long run this changes your future emotional coloring

Mindfulness: when recall is triggered, keep a bystander perspective, don’t get carried away by emotion. This can prevent negative emotions from continuously “writing in”

Through meditation, positive suggestion and music, influence your mood before falling asleep, and thereby influence memory processing during sleep

How do you pin down the probability of every action so objectively and rationally

So quantifying things is quite hard

And being able to calmly accept the unsatisfying result after you’ve put in the effort to predict

A kind of probability model

From a person’s age you can roughly predict the probability of the corresponding possible health problems

One use of Bayes’ formula: deriving a fourth probability from three known probabilities. Bayes’ theorem is about conditional probability of random variables and marginal probability distributions

Posterior probability = (likelihood * prior probability) / normalizing constant

Prior: our initial belief about a parameter when there is no data (it can be subjective or objective).

Data: information obtained through experiment or observation, used to revise the prior belief.

Posterior: the latest belief about the parameter after combining prior and data (closer to the true value than the prior).

Uncertainty gives this world much of its charm

Uncertainty gives this world much of its charm, and gives people a huge incentive, a huge reward

The world is enormous uncertainty

For the controllable part, make good judgments and prepare

For the uncontrollable part, treat it as fate and accept it lightly

To be more precise

For the controllable part, use logic, probability and frameworks as much as possible to help make rational judgments

The uncontrollable part has a certain randomness, the part logic can’t make up for, and there you can only rely on some philosophy of mind to help

Suddenly it clicks

Use simple Python to simulate Bayesian inference (for example the false positive rate of a disease test)

And look at Bayesian methods in statistics and machine learning

Build the habit: when you hit something uncertain in life, work out the probabilities

The most common Bayesian scenario is a doctor’s diagnosis

The most common Bayesian scenario is a doctor’s diagnosis

The mismatch between asking and vowing

Asking comes from a sense of lack, a desire or a need; it is external

At its core: I lack something, therefore I want to get something

It carries utility and dependence; the aim is to satisfy the self

Vowing arises from aspiration and commitment; it is internal

At its core: I hope to accomplish or take on something, not depending on any outside reward

It carries initiative and a sense of direction; the aim is to realize an inner ideal or benefit others

In the Buddhist system, the vow is the cornerstone, an inner power. Guanyin Bodhisattva’s great vow is “to save beings from suffering and hardship”; Ksitigarbha Bodhisattva’s great vow is “as long as hell is not empty, I vow not to become a Buddha”

“Asking” is more the mind of an ordinary being, carrying attachment and utility;

while “vowing” represents aspiration — a voluntary undertaking and direction

If a person only keeps “asking,” he is still cycling within “cause and effect”

If he turns to vowing, then he enters the level of practice

My two favorite architectural traditions

From Japan’s Heian period to the early Edo period, the aesthetic of decay was born, and Kyoto’s architectural aesthetics flourished

In Japan’s Muromachi period, Kyoto’s Kinkaku-ji and the dry landscape garden of Ryoan-ji pursued a beauty of asymmetry, simplicity and imperfection. It emphasizes finding a profound, tranquil beauty in nature and imperfection, and values the natural texture of materials and the “empty space” of a room

This includes Song dynasty aesthetics — elegant, refined, restrained, fused with nature; it shed the Tang dynasty’s grand vigor and turned toward a more inward, literati aesthetic. Building proportions are relaxed, roof curves gentle and soft, and details (bracket sets, painted decoration) exquisitely fine without being overly fussy

And of course ancient Greece — harmony, reason and perfect proportion, using the golden ratio (φ ≈ 1.618) and precise mathematical calculation to determine column height, diameter and spacing, creating a calm, elegant, impeccable sense of harmony

A peak of rational, human-centered aesthetics

What could be more story-like than human experience itself

The real is stunning, makes you think: historical events, wars, migrations, discoveries, love, betrayal… these actually happened, and they convey the weight of life more than fictional stories

The most story-like things aren’t books, aren’t films, aren’t legends — they’re the experiences that really happened in history, carved by time, especially people’s experiences

One decision, one natural disaster, one letter can change the fate of countless people

Just a record

I’m at the Nanjing Museum

An image that triggers my own emotions or feelings

Usually it’s the few artifacts I really like

They stir my feelings; I like them a lot

And so I get a bit more curious

Then I want to learn about them

Which opens a curiosity-driven, boundaryless process of divergence

The LLM summarizes and archives the story, then reconstructs the historical story

And then there are some interesting scheduling prompts recommended for deeper recommendation

Clicking a prompt can go deep, into a conversation with the historical figure

Japanese aesthetics were born from extreme involution inside the power circle

In the Heian period after so long without war, when survival was no longer the question, what was the core of life? Taste

The aristocrats, especially the mid- and lower-ranking ones, had limited room to rise politically, so they poured great energy into culture, art and social life. They had plenty of time!

Moreover, Japan stopped sending “envoys to Tang,” meaning the phase of imitating Tang styles was over and it began localizing the culture it had absorbed

Heian-kyo’s aristocratic society was a very small circle, maybe only a few thousand people. Gradually a person’s worth was measured by taste: is your waka any good? Does your calligraphy have style? Does the color scheme of your clothes match the season? Is the incense you blend elegant enough?

An extreme pursuit of beauty and involution seeped into every aspect of life, forming a complex and delicate aesthetic system

The Tale of Genji depicts aristocratic life; Japanese aesthetics and the aristocracy were deeply influenced by The Tale of Genji

Murasaki Shikibu came from an aristocratic family and later became a lady-in-waiting at court; combining her powers of observation, aesthetic sensibility and inner experience, and on her own distinctive aesthetic foundation, she used words to shape an idealized world of court aesthetics

What’s the underlying need behind activity buddies

I feel activity buddies became popular in Gen Z, especially among those born in the 2000s. One reason may be the rise of the internet for them; another may be that their growing-up environment was relatively isolated. China’s 2000s generation is the most alienated generation in the world — a drastically changed environment, cutting off from relatives, lacking naturally “sibling-like” companionship, urbanization

For most of my life, from childhood on, I’ve been away from home

The definition of a buddy is loose — it just means teaming up: a meal buddy, an exercise buddy, a travel buddy. Essentially it’s a temporary, functional interpersonal relationship

Its characteristics: a low-cost, low-commitment, strongly purpose-driven mode of socializing

The 2000s generation generally emphasizes individual independence, yet fears loneliness; they stress interests and experience rather than traditional “social obligation” relationships. Interest/activity is the bond, not “duty” or “blood”

It shows both this generation’s rationality about avoiding over-consumption and their craving for immediate experience

The Wei, Jin and Northern and Southern Dynasties

The collapse of Han dynasty classical learning: the Confucian theories of “heaven-human resonance” and “divine right of kings” lost their persuasiveness before a cruel reality

Not only the origin of Xuanxue (Neo-Daoism) — the rise of Buddhism also happened in the Wei-Jin and Northern and Southern Dynasties

With frequent wars and social turmoil, scholars took a deep interest in “the question of life and death.” Buddhism responded with “karmic retribution and liberation from the cycle of rebirth” to spiritual needs that Confucianism and Daoism hadn’t satisfied

In this period Xuanxue and Buddhism actually interacted; both can be classified as metaphysical

Xuanxue was more popular among the upper gentry at the time — almost entirely elite intellectuals

By comparison, Buddhism permeated commoners’ lives. Buddhism provided a more complete religious system, especially addressing people’s sense of the meaning of life and death

The feel of Hanoi

The National Day atmosphere is thicker here.

Hanoi people’s speech and behavior feel more like they carry a “sense of national orthodoxy”, and the expression of patriotism feels more official and intense.

Vietnam is small but has survived in the cracks between great powers and kept its independence; this “national pride” naturally reinforces a “patriotic” identity.

Booking hotels on Ctrip

For popular dates and cities you absolutely have to book early to get it cheap

For ordinary weekdays, booking in the evening of the same day is the cheapest

The app has more member-exclusive prices than the web version

A friend talked about his Vietnamese identity — applying to Singapore from southern vs northern Vietnam

A friend said that with a Vietnamese identity, applying to Singapore from southern and northern Vietnam differs in difficulty, but the criteria Singapore screens work visas on are:

Educational and professional background

Work experience and skills

Employer qualifications and job requirements

Personal identity information

Official documents do not impose a mandatory requirement on birthplace

Birthplace is mainly used as auxiliary identification, not a core review condition

The focus is passport number, nationality, and date of birth — this information alone is enough to uniquely identify an applicant in the system

Whether a Vietnamese passport lists a southern or northern birthplace generally won’t affect the probability of work visa approval

Once in a lifetime

Fate, or what?

Just so happens the last time we met, my last coffee in Vietnam was also in a Japanese matcha shop

It came like this after all, and it will leave like this after all

Feeling tiny in Shenzhen

Shenzhen has a sense of urgency

It seems to be like that for everyone

Under all that reinforced concrete and those buildings, the people and workers feel tiny

So every time it gives me a feeling of being shaken

How hiking expands sensory ability

Walking on different surfaces forces us to focus on our feet, on our center of gravity and sense of rhythm

Then changes in wind direction, temperature and humidity all show up in the body’s comfort level; a hiker needs to read these signals

Rely on the natural environment and valley positions to calibrate your sense of direction

Then there’s how to identify the plants, animals and landforms around you

Hearing and smell become more sensitive — the sound of a stream, the scent of plants and animals

And walking in outdoor environments for a long time really does force us to amplify attention to subtle anomalies. This is very helpful for cultivating focus and a sense of the present moment

Understanding Lin Xi

Mount Fuji in Japan which I’ve climbed, Hallasan in Korea, or the Annapurna Circuit in Nepal — in the end we’re all just one of the hikers coming and going. The eternal Mount Fuji seems so precious compared with our brief lives, and the people we meet in a lifetime are so rare — and yet we desperately try to hold on to people and things that are destined not to last

“You suffer not because you can’t get love, but because you want to ‘possess’ something that was never yours”

Face time directly, dissect attachment, reach reconciliation

The lyrics he wrote are full of compassion, but what’s different is that Lin Xi doesn’t hold back from showing his own pain and his most pathological attachments. He’s like an alchemist, taking the unspeakable “base metals” of his own lived experience (personal suffering) and, through countless rounds of refinement with words, purifying them into “gold” (universal resonance) that can comfort countless people

Taking an extremely small, fleeting emotional moment and magnifying it infinitely with the microscope of language, letting you see clearly the tangled texture within it, presenting psychological traits from a very microscopic angle

The grandest emotions are often hidden in the most insignificant details

Ego-clinging: below and above Mount Fuji, he nails ego-clinging in a single line — you suffer not because you can’t get love, but because you want to “possess” something that was never yours.

Impermanence: all things are changing, nothing is eternal. Accepting this is the beginning of liberation. The sorrow is real, the tears are fake… nothing can be verified

Pain is not the enemy, attachment is. See through impermanence, and you can gain inner peace, and face every once-in-a-lifetime encounter in life calmly

The feeling of flow when exhausted

I get this at work too, and it’s especially strong during hiking

Hiking in Hong Kong with Xiaomei several times, including the Mount Fuji hike, and the ACT trek in Nepal — this feeling seems to show up every time, a brief escape from bodily pain

I think it might be a matter of attention mechanism shifting under flow state

Runners seem to get this often too — a runner’s high

In fact, in flow state people focus more on the task at hand, the sense of time disappears. I hadn’t thought this could also block out bodily pain to a degree; in fact maybe the pain signals get weakened

｜ For example, when you’re fully absorbed in a movie, the soreness in your calves and the cut on your finger all feel diminished. This is the brain’s “attentional gating effect”

The sensation of pain is also often a subjective cognition, that is, still related to the distribution of attention mechanisms. When the brain is highly focused on footsteps, breathing, scenery, conversation with companions, pain signals get weakened

Thinking of the runner’s high: prolonged moderate-intensity aerobic exercise triggers the secretion of endorphins (a natural painkiller) and endocannabinoids (producing pleasure)

Admiring Boukreev

I admire Boukreev as a “mountaineer,” a mountaineering caravan guide. He saw the clients moving slowly, the turnaround time already passed, and sensed that a disaster was about to happen. He judged that if he also stayed up high with them burning through his strength, in the end there’d just be one more casualty. His only, and also best, choice was to descend quickly to Camp Four, replenish his energy, and then go back as an effective force to rescue those who might be trapped.

The fact is, relying on the physical reserves he saved by descending early, on that hellish night of wind and snow, Boukreev alone rushed out of the tent three times and pulled three climbers back from the edge of death. Without him, those three would certainly have died. He didn’t sit in the tent waiting for rescue; he put his own life in extreme danger to make up for the tragedy that was unfolding. His action was superhumanly heroic

Conflict

There are many conflicting conflicts in the world — moral conflicts, conflicts of ideas, cultural conflicts and so on

First clarify your own position. The clear purpose is to step outside your own position and objectively analyze what the essence of the conflict is, what the value ranking is, what the interests at stake are, and where the differences in perspective lie

Give yourself “buffer space” before responding, to avoid the conflict worsening

Every conflict is actually a way to gain insight into human nature. Treat conflict as information, to improve your decision-making and communication ability

What matters is determining what can be compromised, what needs to be held firm, and what systems could be optimized to better help balance the conflict

About Sherpa superstition

Westerners see the Sherpas’ beliefs and rituals around Everest as superstition. However, in an extreme environment this is a unique way of sustaining survival, handling fear and building community

The Sherpas’ belief in Everest comes from reverence for nature. They call Everest “Chomolungma” (the holy mother), believing the mountain is sacred and should not be offended by humans.

For high-altitude guides who have lived at the foot of Everest for years and make their living from climbing, death is a constant reality. They have witnessed far too many accidents and tragedies. Seeing the mountain as a living deity helps them concretize invisible, random danger into something they can revere and pray to

Before every climb they hold a Puja Ceremony, praying to the mountain god for safety and asking forgiveness for “offending” the mountain. This isn’t just formality; it’s a kind of psychological preparation and soothing — with a deity’s protection, there’s no inner fear

In fact superstition is also a kind of intuitive expression of natural law — for example, Chinese feng shui

Why you need iron rules rather than abnormal thinking

Some basic rules of how systems operate exist to compensate for a series of flaws in human decision-making systems

For example, the iron rule “you must start descending at 2 p.m.” — people will be influenced by other value systems’ ways of deciding, so the brain finds itself reasons, like “we’re a little late, but the weather’s still fine, should be okay”

Disasters often stem from “normalization bias” — because of your own common sense or habits, you assume the other person can handle it, when in fact it can be fatal

So it’s not just that many people can’t maintain rational independent thinking; in unique environments it’s even hard to hold on to independent thinking. This is when some repetitively drummed-in slogans are needed to force a descent

Irrational decisions

In special environments, under special conditions, people generate irrational emotions

Irrational emotions (summit fever, sympathy, pride) + hypoxic environment → breaking the core rule (the 2 p.m. iron rule) → collapse of the decision chain (commander out of position, information invalid, resources exhausted) → systemic collapse (team dissolves, tragedy happens)

So any organization or system, no matter how exquisitely designed, can be breached from within by fundamental human weaknesses

Those seemingly indestructible rational rules, in the face of surging irrational emotion, are sometimes so utterly fragile

Morning tea culture

Guangzhou’s is the deepest. I never had the chance to experience it on previous visits; this time I spent the morning in Guangzhou to get a feel for it

The restaurant I picked for the setting was Qiaomei · Tangliyuan Food Art Hall; the environment here is very nice

A garden-style restaurant, with a good view by the lake; the decor and layout are particular about classical and garden aesthetics

Watching the scenery while chatting — the atmosphere was great

The dim sum options include “four-color crystal shrimp dumplings,” “hundred-flavor steamed chicken feet,” “shrimp red rice rolls” and so on; the reputation is very good

Since the Qing dynasty, Guangzhou people have liked going to teahouses for “one pot two pieces” (a pot of tea with two dim sum)

Tea is generally the main character. Common teas: pu’er, tieguanyin, shoumei, chrysanthemum tea. Tea not only cuts the grease, it also carries the culture of “making friends over tea”

Dim sum is the soul: steamed, fried, pan-fried and grilled, and desserts

Good dining culture always makes people slow down their impulses

Many families habitually go to the teahouse as a whole family on weekends, so morning tea also counts as a kind of blank space

Why the obsession with mountains

Why the obsession with mountains — that magnificent, sacred object full of attraction, worth climbing and making pilgrimage to — didn’t exist since ancient times, but was “invented” and created over the last three hundred years by human imagination, science and emotion together

“Because it’s there.”

This sentence perfectly captures modern people’s irrational, pure, almost metaphysical obsession with mountains. It has nothing to do with money, nothing to do with fame, even nothing to do with scientific exploration. That peak is there, and that in itself constitutes an irresistible invitation, an ultimate test of human courage and imagination

The reason we’re “haunted by distant mountains” is that deep inside we long to escape comfort and mediocrity, long to touch the limit, long to confirm, in a grand and eternal landscape, our own small yet tenacious existence. The mountain ultimately becomes the ultimate wilderness in which we explore our own inner selves

The “cultural construction” mechanism of geographic landscapes

So a geographic landscape is never a purely physical existence, but a text repeatedly smeared over, interpreted, and given meaning by human culture

Nature provides the raw material — mountains, rivers, lakes, seas, forests and deserts processed on the basis of metal, wood, water, fire and earth — and human culture gives it meaning. For example “a great river” is the raw material, while “Mother River” is the cultural product

Specifically, how is it processed:

Naming and narrative — this is the most basic; naming itself carries a certain story and emotion

Aesthetics and art — aesthetics and art are like a frame, telling us how to appreciate beauty

Reconstruction of understanding — when we gain new understanding of a landscape’s “origin” and “principles,” the way we look at it becomes completely different. For example Japan’s Mount Fuji volcano may be hundreds of thousands of years old (actually, I find the top of Mount Fuji pretty ugly, pretty rough)

Power and economy — power relations and economic needs redivide land into “useful” and “useless,” “developable” and “to be preserved.” This division is an extremely forceful cultural construction

Memory and history — also a reconstruction of emotion, corresponding to some experience, to the history of a certain place

So we can say: for the cultural construction of any mountain, we can ask some questions

Who named it? What story is behind it?

Who taught me to find it “beautiful”?

Based on what system of knowledge is my understanding of it?

Who benefits from this land? Whose values are embodied?

Whose memories does it carry?

Impressions of Buddhist temples in Guangzhou

The Dafo Temple on Beijing Road (full name: Dafo Temple, also called “Haizhuang Temple”) is a very representative temple in Guangzhou, right near the bustling Beijing Road pedestrian street in the city center, very convenient to reach

The usual types of people:

Believers, middle-aged and elderly people, generally once a week very regularly

Ordinary worshippers: once a month, or on important days

Office workers/young people: irregular, spur-of-the-moment, maybe only when life hits a bottleneck, or when praying for success in studies/career

Tourists: basically a cultural experience

Compared with Buddhism in other cities or countries, I have a slightly different feeling

Guangzhou’s Buddhist temples feel more like part of life rather than a distant practice. Strong street-level atmosphere — visiting a temple is like having morning tea or going to the arcade buildings; it’s part of everyday Guangzhou culture

The feeling is that Buddhism is part of life, not a distant practice; engaged with the world

Relatively, Hangzhou’s temples emphasize more withdrawal from the world, more Zen, ascetic practice, quieting the mind, with an atmosphere of “famous-mountain Buddhism.” Temples are often fused with landscape and gardens, and many people are more like cultural pilgrims

Shanghai housing prices

Shanghai housing may be the benchmark for the whole country

But on the other hand, many people buying homes in Shanghai are also selling homes in other cities, so in that sense they may also have the strongest value-retention capacity in the country

First-tier cities have prices and a market; third- and fourth-tier cities are stagnant

Hong Kong property fees vs the mainland

Hong Kong property management is highly marketized; it’s purely commercial service

Most Chinese property management companies were incubated by developers, leaning toward “semi-public-welfare service.” Homeowners’ committees and owners have strong bargaining power over property fees, and “low-price winning bids” are common, even lowering property service standards

Hong Kong’s system is relatively more mature, because maintenance costs are extremely high — same with Japan. This is a question of the maturity of the property management

Hong Kong has a lot of high-rise apartments requiring continuous operation and maintenance of elevators, fire safety and security systems

But mainland cities expand fast, land is relatively abundant, and compounds are often developed at scale

Then there’s the fact that on the mainland, the many groups within a compound find it hard to reach consensus; what they can do is keep switching compounds

Shanghai relatively speaking has residents with more of a sense of being residents

Do people really prefer living in cities

In both Shenzhen and Chengdu I’ve come across fourth-generation housing, which means combining green ecological ideas with modern high-rise buildings, using sky courtyards, vertical greening and other technical means to upgrade the living environment — high-quality improved housing

Fourth-generation housing combines the advantages of Chinese traditional courtyard houses, alleys and hutongs, low-rise villas, and third-generation elevator housing, and can develop into high-rise building forms

In the traditional sense, Chinese food is healthier

Chinese cooking covers an extremely wide range of ingredients — vegetables, beans, grains, meats, fish, mushrooms, seafood, nuts, you name it

Chinese food isn’t just deep-frying; there’s also steaming, boiling, stewing, tossing and light stir-frying

Steaming, boiling and stewing in particular fit the long-term needs of a healthy diet

Dietary variety can lower the risk of chronic disease

The premise is that it’s not modern Chinese fast food, which is high in oil and salt and has given China’s elderly population more cancer and high blood pressure problems

Eat in Guangzhou: a cultural temperament the old Cantonese care about

Morning tea culture, slow-simmered soups, roast meats, congee, rice noodles and rice dishes

Old Cantonese value the slow life, and like drinking tea, chatting and playing mahjong; they place weight on family and neighborhood ties

Speaking Cantonese (Guangzhou dialect) is an important marker of “old Cantonese” identity

People rooted in Guangzhou who identify with its culture, language and way of life

Building seismic damping and dampers

They can do a lot to reduce the danger from earthquakes or typhoons

One is the base isolators under a building, and the dampers above

Many buildings have dampers; because of inertia they produce a counterforce, swinging in the direction opposite to the building’s sway

That’s what keeps the building stable

A review of Nanjing food

Nanjing feels to me a bit like Guangzhou

It has cultural depth, plenty to do, and plenty to eat

By comparison, Guangzhou probably has far richer high-end dining

Xieyuan · Jiangnan Crab Roe Noodles tastes superb too

Guangzhou has a deep Cantonese cuisine history; Lingnan food culture, the morning tea tradition and seafood culture have long formed the core of the city’s eating

Nanjing’s Jinling/Huaiyang cuisine can be traced back to official and court cooking; historic signature dishes like salted duck are highly representative of the place, with flavors that are particular, refined and full, leaning toward delicacy and sweet freshness

Capital of six dynasties, metropolis of ten — Eastern Wu, Eastern Jin, the Southern Dynasties of Song, Qi, Liang and Chen, the early Ming all made their capital here, and the food culture was deeply shaped by the court and the scholar-official class. Huaiyang cuisine’s refinement was inherited and reinterpreted in Nanjing. “Jinling salted duck,” for instance, was originally tied to court tribute and seasonal eating

Guangzhou, as a gateway, embraces everything — diverse ingredients and every kind of technique

Central Asia and Europe/Africa

Central Asia as a whole has been more influenced by Europe, and hardly at all by Africa

Central Asia is a hub of exchange between Eastern and Western civilizations, long interacting with China, Persia, India and the Mediterranean world (that is, Europe)

But Central Asian food style resembles Africa’s, and the most fundamental reason is that food chose humans — Darwinian natural selection

That is, Africa and Central Asia have somewhat similar geography and climate

Central Asia, arid and semi-arid, mostly grassland and mountains → mainly beef and mutton, wheat foods, a little vegetable, beans

Central Asian food: one-pot rice (plov), stewed meat, roast meat, dairy (mare’s milk, yogurt), flatbread

African food: one-pot porridge/rice (fufu, ugali), stewed meat, roast meat, bean paste

The natural convergence of human diets in arid/semi-arid regions: centered on storable staples + high-energy meat + one-pot cooking, producing a similar style as a result

Thoughts at the Nanjing Museum

Ancient buildings had high thresholds — for waterproofing and dust protection, wind protection and warmth, and to keep out insects and rats. Beyond that, threshold height was tied to a building’s rank: in palaces they’re high, and crossing the door requires lifting your foot. So the threshold was traditionally seen as the “seat of the door god,” and stepping directly on it was disrespectful. It produces the “lift the leg - lower the head” motion when entering and leaving, naturally drawing the body into a more restrained posture and lending a sense of ritual

Why do buildings have white holes in them? Ancient glassmaking wasn’t mature; most material was colored glaze or translucent, and when the light was harsh or unevenly transmitted it needed to be covered with cloth. White cloth can adjust the light, while the holes serve “daylighting + ventilation,” and create a kind of open-window effect — an aesthetic of light and shadow

Odd and even numbers in steps: palaces and temples use odd numbers, the yang numbers; private residences generally use even numbers

Eaves: under the eaves there are drip-spouts, which are both a drainage structure and a symbol of protecting the house and invoking blessings

Hiking is an excellent training ground

A mindfulness training ground: the motion of hiking is repetitive and rhythmic (left foot, right foot, breath, heartbeat…)

It helps your scattered thoughts gradually settle and anchors your attention in the body

Immersive sensory experience:

Hearing 👂: the rustle of wind through leaves, birdsong, footsteps on different surfaces.

Sight 👀: shifting light and shadow, the texture of plants, distant mountains.

Smell 👃: the fragrance of earth, the scent of grass after rain.

Touch ✋: the warmth of sunlight, the caress of wind, the pressure of the backpack.

The environment is simplified, pure — no need to handle complex relationships, answer emails or scroll your phone

🎧 Card 1: Sensory Channel Surfing

How to play: turn off music or podcasts for now. Try focusing on just one sensory channel for 10 minutes.

Hearing mode: listen with everything you’ve got, catching every faint sound around you.

Sight mode: just look, recording light, color and shape like a camera, without naming or analyzing them.

Touch mode: feel the wind, the sunlight, the friction of clothes on skin, the ache in your muscles.

👣 Card 2: “Live Stream” of the soles (Soles of the Feet “Live Stream”)

How to play: this is the practice you mentioned! On a flat stretch, put all your attention on your feet.

Feel every step completely: heel touches down -> sole rolls -> weight shifts to the ball of the foot -> toes push off the ground. Imagine your soles are broadcasting live to your brain.

🌬️ Card 3: Breath-Step Sync

How to play: find a rhythm that feels comfortable and link your breathing to your steps.

For example: three steps on the inhale, three steps on the exhale. This creates a powerful sense of flow, uniting body and mind.

💧 Card 4: Mindful Break

How to play: when you stop to drink or eat, try doing only that one thing.

Drinking: feel how the coolness of the water runs down your throat and moistens your body.

Eating: chew slowly, feel the real flavor and texture of the food.

Resist the urge to immediately pull out your phone; just rest, purely.

Chongqing really is huge — the biggest city in the country

But the industrial structure lacks some high-tech industry

And relatively speaking, the urban rail and railway aren’t very mature yet; Chongqing’s terrain is complex and transport construction costs are high

And why, after Chongqing became a directly administered municipality, do Sichuan people generally consider “Chongqing a different province”?

Sichuan people going to Chongqing to work is often seen as “going out to work away from home,” not like being “right at the doorstep” in Chengdu

Prepared dishes - fast food - freshly cooked dishes

Prepared dishes in China have indeed seen explosive growth in recent years, and the trend is still accelerating

For young people, buying prepared dishes has become a lifestyle

Relatively speaking, prepared dishes are actually more stable and controllable nutritionally, retain nutrients better, and are healthier

For freshly cooked dishes, nutrient retention is definitely better, and they’re healthier hahaha — but it depends on the chef’s skill and the environment

Chinese-style fast food gets the lowest marks — McDonald’s-style Chinese fast food, boxed lunches, chains like Kungfu and braised chicken rice. Chinese fast food usually deep-fries or braises its meat, protein is a bit low, quality is affected by processing, and there’s a lot of deep-frying/braising, so saturated fat runs high

So the goal is convenience and speed and high energy, but fat and salt run high and vitamins and trace elements are notably missing

Didi drivers in Shenzhen and Shanghai still have real potential, especially Shenzhen

Express rides + peak-hour surge + night shifts; hourly income may be the highest.

Shenzhen has the densest foot traffic and the lowest idle rate, so order-taking efficiency is very high, plus Didi’s various driver subsidies.

Gas prices and EV charging costs are similar to other first-tier cities, but compared with Hangzhou and Shanghai, parking and urban road congestion are slightly lower.

And the surge is the most obvious, with hourly income the highest nationwide.

The KOTO restaurant in Hanoi

This is a very famous social enterprise restaurant in Hanoi, Vietnam, dedicated to training street children in hospitality skills and helping them escape poverty and stand on their own. Nguyen Van Cường’s story is closely tied to KOTO: he was trained by KOTO and later gave back to the organization.

Born to a poor family in Hanoi, Cường was a street shoe-shine boy. His fate changed because of a foreign couple — they funded his education and arranged hospitality training. In 2001 he had the chance to serve US President Bill Clinton, and his life turned a corner.

Today he is a restaurant entrepreneur and donated 100 million Vietnamese dong to support KOTO, helping more street children. Cường proves through action that even from a poor background, love and effort can change your fate.

Chengdu’s potential

Chengdu is currently going through industrial upgrading

And it has a strong human capital advantage — dense universities, and clusters of talent. Talent is the engine of industrial upgrading and innovation

The impact of industrial upgrading is enormous, especially for high-end industrial chains; even at small scale, the extended upstream and downstream chain behind it produces a huge economic multiplier effect

High-end technologies in particular (composite materials, automatic control, AI, precision machining) can spill over into civilian industries like new energy, automobiles and electronics, pulling up the technical level of other industries

Professional Texas Hold’em players

I’ve come into contact with people like this

Some heavily committed groups — staying up late, smoking, drinking, playing cards, flying all over — in ordinary crowds these would be seen as “unhealthy” or “excessive”

To outsiders they seem abnormal; but to themselves, they’re just walking a different path

Texas Hold’em has a semi-professional and professional scene globally, touring and competing year-round. In these people’s eyes, playing cards isn’t gambling; it’s more competition + game theory + socializing

Tournaments: you pay an entry fee, everyone starts with the same chips, and you play until one champion remains. Ranking determines the prize, and only the top 10–15% get paid

High variance — you might go months without cashing

One explosion can win a lot, but the process is long

It leans more toward competition, psychological endurance and long-term strategy

One thing I find really interesting about Hold’em is that it isn’t about teaching you a few flashy bluffing tricks — it’s about having you build a complete decision system, from starting hand ranges, pot odds calculation, bet sizing, and reading opponents, to psychological management. As long as you truly internalize “positive-EV decisions” and “probabilistic thinking under incomplete information,” you can feel fully confident about any hand

The misalignment of oversight and regulation in Chile’s market economy

Trading certainty of social equity for the feasibility of economic growth

It’s quite interesting: completely giving up the state’s role as a “benevolent father” in resource distribution (that is, universal social welfare and security), and instead becoming a “referee,” letting the market’s “invisible hand” decide everything

Brutal survival of the fittest, the market got activated, foreign capital poured in, inflation was tamed, and the macroeconomic data was dazzling. Chile became Latin America’s “model student” — an image of a prosperous, orderly, modern country was built

But the contract’s hidden clause: your birth, aging, sickness, death, education, your dignity and your future all depend on your ability to pay in the market. The cake got bigger, but the knife that cuts the cake is firmly held by a minority. The enormous inequality this produced lies like a bottomless rift across Chilean society

Pension marketization: AFP companies charge high management fees regardless of investment profit or loss, eroding the principal; individuals bear all investment risk, and when a financial crisis hits, pension accounts can shrink dramatically.

Education privatization: Latin America’s most expensive education system. The education system split into three worlds: private schools with first-rate facilities and top education quality (serving the rich); semi-private schools receiving a small state subsidy (the struggling choice of the middle class); and poorly resourced, questionable-quality public schools (the fate of the poor)

Life itself priced — if you have money, you live. The healthcare system is equally split. You can choose to join the public health system (FONASA) and endure long queues and limited medical resources; or, if you have money, buy expensive private health insurance (ISAPRE) and enjoy top private hospital service. Difficult and expensive healthcare became a great mountain pressing on ordinary people’s hearts

How a good system naturally operates is naturally the matching counterpart of oversight and regulation of the free economy

Pay yourself

I used to think the essence of personal finance was chasing however much you need to earn — that your salary and returns were what mattered most. Actually it’s not like that: with a low salary you still need to manage money, and with a high salary you still need to manage money. Managing money is a cognitive ability, depending on how deeply people understand the most fundamental ability behind managing money and getting rich

Generally, the salary you get is largely paid out on other things — gatherings, expenses and so on. After paying a round of money to others, if there’s anything left at the end of the month, only then do you “save” it

Pay yourself first. With any income you receive, the first thing isn’t to pay bills, but to take out a portion and store it somewhere you won’t easily touch. This part is truly your own money. It’s a shift in mindset — truly becoming the master of wealth, not its slave

Forced saving solves the problem of the century: save first, then spend. The money that’s saved is the goose that lays golden eggs. My purpose is to keep feeding this goose, growing the wealth army, making them work for me and bring back more money

Seven rules

I think one core thing is that I deliberately avoid the trouble of managing money, deliberately avoid thinking about money matters, trying to keep a fuzzy feeling about money so as to avoid the cognitive burden and trouble of dealing with money

A few core rules for getting rich, seven rules:

Make your wallet bulge — every month you must accumulate some money for yourself

Control your expenses. I think a lot of the time I’m overspending. For example, is a new phone model really necessary for me, and is an expensive daily coffee really what I need? For most people I think it’s not, so learn budgeting and delayed gratification

Make it grow — this is where investing begins, because money depreciates, due to inflation, so you must not leave money idle. Let money make money

Guard your wealth, avoid losses. The first principle of investing is protecting the principal. Don’t invest in fields you don’t understand, and don’t invest in unrealistic things either

Have a home for managing money. People consider housing factors in old age — whether it offers a degree of stability and security. A house is actually a form of risk management, but there’s a precondition: buying a house shouldn’t put you under heavy mortgage pressure

Ensure income — have some understanding of income, make sure income is stable

Improve your ability to earn — this needs constant effort to refine: keep learning new knowledge, hone your professional skills, cultivate stronger problem-solving ability. The more valuable you are, the higher your income. The higher your income, the more the 10% you can save

These seven rules form a perfect closed loop, from saving, budgeting, investing and risk control, to property, retirement and self-improvement

Separate yourself out and pay

It means treating yourself as an object too — you are also your own creditor, and your own priority is the highest, this is your top-priority bill

Your future financial freedom is your most important, top-priority “bill”!

You’re not saving money, you’re buying your future time, using a systematic method to fight against the weaknesses of your own emotional impulses

So remind yourself at all times: you are your own debtor, and you need to pay yourself once a month

The Morgan financial empire

The basic principle: do first-class business in a first-class way

Morgan wasn’t a simple banker; he was a walking symbol of power, a complex contradiction — creator and dictator in one body

Morgan had a strong urge to control — not out of greed, but out of extreme hatred of chaos and a pathological fascination with “order”

His life’s work was to eliminate chaos and establish order

Like a cold god, he grabbed his rivals who were fighting each other to the death (railroad, steel, electric companies) and, through coercion and inducement, forced them to merge and restructure into a stable oligopoly he led, which no longer slaughtered itself internally. This is the famous “Morganization.” What he created was not new products, but new order

In his view, his act of establishing commercial order was comparable to God creating the order of the universe. He sincerely believed that accumulating wealth and power was fulfilling a responsibility bestowed by God, to maintain a stable, healthy Christian civilized society. This belief gave him powerful moral confidence, letting him feel at ease when facing outside accusations

When a system gets so complex no one understands it, it’s often dangerous

Go back to basic common sense

Don’t blindly trust experts or authoritative ratings, because they all have their own interests to serve

Financial markets aren’t driven by rational numbers, but by human greed and fear

Yemen

Mocha is also the Yemeni coffee port. By comparison

A thousand years of history, “Arabia” in the mouths of ancient Romans, a byword for wealth, spices and a flourishing civilization. But now it is the site of the world’s most severe humanitarian crisis, synonymous with war, famine and state collapse

Yemen means the drop from heaven to hell

Yemen’s territory has two parts: the western highland region, and the coastal plains and southern region. The mountains are conservative, inward-looking, martial; the coast is open, commercial, mixed. The distrust and conflict between the two runs through the whole history of Yemen

China’s north-south divide

The south’s economic growth is clearly faster, but this is due to the domestic upgrading of the northwest’s industrial structure

To a degree, central coordination has had notable effects

Between 2021 and 2025, central fiscal transfer payments exceeded 10 trillion yuan, tilting heavily toward the central-western and northern regions. The result: the poverty incidence rate dropped to zero, and the urban-rural income ratio fell from 2.6:1 to 2.3:1. These measures to a degree “avoided” social unrest, but if economic divergence continues, it may amplify cultural friction (like the northern “lying flat” culture vs the southern “involution”)

Through policy intervention, social equity has improved

Compared with Vietnam: Vietnam’s north supports China, the south is pro-American, but the whole country’s north-south integration is the highest, and identity doesn’t bring economic exploitation

Speaking of this, I think of northern and southern Italians — the fairness between northern and southern Italians really is beyond words

Unemployment is a painful experience

But without pain, where does the reshaping come from?

Deeply dissect what you have now, then combine that with the environment and the world’s future needs to find the right positioning

This is personal transformation and career reshaping

September is a very good time point — around now the domestic financing circle

September is a very good time point; around now the domestic financing circle and financing atmosphere may get a brief boost

The Fed cutting rates also promotes the flow of overseas funds to a degree

For Singapore tech startups, they may receive some capital flow

Good news for AI founders, but also more anxious

The feel of cafés below second-tier cities is much worse

Sensing the trend, in more remote cities the proportion of remote workers is very low

In first-tier cities, people encounter coffee culture starting from their student years

There’s a large number of young white-collar workers, high-income people and migrants who have the financial ability and habit to go out and buy coffee in the morning

And for some specialty themed cafés, I feel many people are looking for curiosity and satisfaction, so ordinary walk-in customers spread the word more

Then high-income groups in first-tier cities more easily treat cafés as “experiential consumption,” not fully judging by time efficiency

By comparison, in second-tier and other cities basically everyone is going for convenience, and information spread and the “check-in craze” aren’t as strong as in first-tier cities

The human-nature game of coupons

A coupon is essentially a logic of invisibly classifying users, thereby achieving differentiated pricing

And people have two subconscious reactions:

The feeling of losing out if you don’t spend

The feeling of gaining if you do spend

A FOMO psychology

People fear “losing 50” more than “gaining 50,” so a 50-yuan coupon about to expire makes people rather buy more things than let it go to waste

Merchants and consumers also play a game. For example, the bargain hunters that students love research the rules, automate, and share information on social media, causing merchants to keep designing more complex rules

The underlying human nature: greed (wanting to save money), fear (afraid of missing out), self-esteem (feeling smart)

The nature of salary

Salary = scarcity (how irreplaceable the skill/ability is) × market demand ÷ supply × industry value distribution × negotiation/bargaining power

The same job pays very differently in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen versus a third-tier city

For ordinary industries and hot industries

The same skill gets amplified in scarcity in a hot industry: the few people who master frontier technology and understand how the industry plays become directly “in demand,” and the supply-demand relationship tilts extremely

Salary isn’t only affected by skill scarcity and supply-demand, it’s also amplified by market heat, financing scale and future growth expectations — the difference can be several times or even more than ten times

So for ordinary people, choose a direction in a hot space that has core value and long-term growth, and have enough understanding and awareness of the hot industry. Try to keep skills general, usable in multiple fields, so you don’t get bound to a single industry

How tradition and legislation position pets

In traditional Chinese culture, animals are seen more from an “instrumental” angle (food, labor, medicine) rather than as subjects with a “right to life” or deserving of sympathy. This is a matter of social consensus

And then there’s the more fundamental question of legislative priority

China’s legislative priorities tend to focus on “hard needs” like economic development, social governance and public safety; animal protection is treated as a “soft value” issue and ranked further back

The people making the rules generally believe human rights, the economy and better social security matter more

So for now there is no animal protection law or anti-animal-cruelty law

Circle of competence

A friend I really admire has a very clear awareness and positioning of his own abilities

The circle of competence is the domain of knowledge or skill you understand, are familiar with, and judge accurately

Only make decisions and investments inside your circle of competence; don’t do things you don’t understand

Everyone’s knowledge and capacity for understanding is limited; admitting “I don’t understand” is safer than rushing into action

That’s another way to avoid losses

Accumulate over the long term in a field you know, building a professional edge

Stay vigilant about things outside your circle of competence, and learn to say “I don’t know”

If a country has high growth in industry and labor productivity

If a country has a relatively high level of improvement in industry and labor productivity, then the division of labor in all its trades has generally reached a relatively high level

A nation’s wealth doesn’t depend on how much gold is in the treasury, but on how strong its ability is to produce goods and services

We used to be like that too: the Song dynasty’s treasury was rich, so the Song dynasty was strong

This treats the world as a fixed cake, wealth as limited, and relations between people as a zero-sum game

So to avoid losses you export madly and restrict imports, achieving a trade deficit

The new framework is: gold is just a medium of exchange; wealth = the sum of all goods and services produced and consumed by all citizens in a year. Through cooperation, division of labor and trade, all countries can become wealthy — this thinking is a positive-sum game

Through division of labor and technological innovation, maximize production efficiency, let each country focus on producing what it does best (absolute advantage), and then trade — that way total output is highest and everyone benefits

Modern GDP follows this thinking: it measures flow, not stock

The invisible hand

It isn’t necessarily centralized or authoritarian

It can be distributed or decentralized

In the system, each person can attend to their own local part and adjust their own actions

Like a crowd, like wild geese flying south — but in fact each goose only needs to focus on the few geese around it and follow their movements, and the whole system works. This is an invisible hand

It’s like the individuals under collective culture that Kevin Kelly described walking through Asia early on — actually a bottom-up drive

Adam Smith himself never said it was omnipotent. When the market produces externalities (say factory pollution, where firms bear only production costs while society bears the cost of environmental cleanup) or public goods (like national defense, which can’t be charged to each person), the “invisible hand” fails — and that’s when the government’s “visible hand” needs to step in

This raises thoughts about institutional regulation: in the stage of free market development the government focuses on oversight; once the market has problems and market failure occurs — pollution, for instance — the government needs to manage

The Wealth of Nations on the night-watchman

It handles oversight, maintains basic order, and follows a logic of minimal intervention

It won’t burst into your home to direct and order you around; it won’t interfere with you

It’s more like a “referee” making sure the game is fair and the field is safe, not an “athlete” stepping onto the field to play

work-life balance

Work-life balance

The city doing this best right now is Chengdu

Compared with Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen, the competition and intensity aren’t as extreme; job opportunities can’t match the first-tier cities, but the room to grow is quite good

The pace of life is relatively slow, and the culture of ease runs deep (mahjong, teahouses, Sichuan food, hotpot, late-night snacks)

There are lots of outdoor activities to choose from nearby — a good leisure radius

Some high-end industries can support top-of-market salaries

This is determined by the industrial structure: with the internet and finance sectors, Chengdu can offer more jobs at salaries approaching first-tier levels

Cities with a high share of state-owned enterprises, cities with heavy industry structures

Cities with a high share of state-owned enterprises, cities with heavy industry structures — the vitality of the market economy may be greatly constrained (except for a city that is especially politically concentrated and full of life: Beijing)

The advice-taking entrepreneur

Steve Jobs had a very famous view: People don’t know what they want until you show it to them

Top entrepreneurs rely more on their own intuition and their sense of product aesthetics and user experience

They first imagine an “ideal state” product, then go create the market

They tend to “guide users” rather than simply relying on users to tell them what to build

Depending too much on users traps you in incremental iteration rather than creating a truly disruptive experience

The nature of creation

Two paths of creation: revelation (Visionary) and resonance (Resonance)

Revelation-style creation: Jobs’s “users don’t know what they want until you show it to them” is the ultimate expression of this path. It isn’t arrogance but a deep insight. The core of this path is “taste” and “intuition”. The creator is like a prophet: through a deep fusion of technology, humanities and art, he perceives a “future form” that doesn’t yet exist but is bound to arrive. He isn’t satisfying existing needs, he is defining the needs of the next era. This path is extremely risky and depends heavily on the founder’s personal gifts, but once it succeeds it is groundbreaking. It’s more like artistic creation

Resonance-style creation (The Resonance Path): taking the “plain depiction” style and advice-taking developers as examples, the core of this path is empathy and iteration. The creator is like an excellent craftsman or partner, going deep into users’ real scenarios (like the image-recognition pain points in research) and keenly catching those needs that are “small but painful.” The product itself is a medium for continuous dialogue with users. Every feature update is a “response” to user feedback. A relationship of co-evolution forms between product and users. This path is steadier and closer to the market; it’s more like a social service

These two paths aren’t fully opposed; they’re different stages in a great product’s life cycle, or different emphases in the founding team’s DNA. Early disruptive innovation often comes from “revelation,” while the process of a product maturing and reaching the masses depends on “resonance.” Which is also to say: early on you look at the founding team’s perception and intuition; later you look at data and extract the thinking

The learning paradigm shift in the AI era — from knowledge to experience

The next generation’s way of education.

Old paradigm: traditional education and learning software essentially treat a person as a “container of knowledge.” The goal is to efficiently “load” knowledge (vocabulary, formulas, historical events) into the brain. This process emphasizes memory, repetition and deliberate practice.

New paradigm (AI-enabled): the things you talked about — “a willow planted carelessly grows into shade” and “folding deliberate practice into curiosity-driven exploration” — point to a new paradigm. Here the goal of learning is no longer owning knowledge, but gaining experience

AI’s role here is no longer teacher or question bank, but a “high-fidelity world simulator” or an “intelligent playmate”

You want to learn piano: what AI gives you isn’t music theory but a dynamic music-game world. To “clear” this world you naturally pick up fingering, rhythm and chords — you don’t even realize you’re “learning.” You want to learn programming: AI lets you directly create a small tool you want through “vibe coding”; syntax and library functions are just the “magic spells” that realize your idea, and AI completes and corrects them for you

AI is freeing humans from the heavy task of “memorizing knowledge,” letting us return to a more human way of learning — learning through practice, experience and creation. The core competitiveness of the future isn’t how much you know, but how much knowledge you invoke, how many resources you integrate, how many unique “experience combinations” you create. Knowledge itself is becoming cheap (on tap like electricity), while “taste,” “judgment” and “creativity” built on knowledge are becoming invaluable

Think of it - know it - do it: further extended thinking

In the industrial age, a person’s value showed largely in the “doing” stage (physical labor). In the information age, value showed in the “knowing” stage (stock of knowledge). In the AI age, human core value will concentrate more and more on the “thinking of it” stage, and on the “final decision rights” and “aesthetic judgment” within the “knowing” and “doing” stages. The barrier to creation has dropped enormously at the execution level, while the demands at the level of creativity and taste have been raised without limit

The philosophy behind flomo’s new tag design

Some thoughts from my own flomo notes: the traditional way of categorizing doesn’t seem to work very well.

The core of the design isn’t categorizing by discipline (philosophy, AI) but by the mindset of the recording: it looks at whether at that moment I was observing the inner, investigating the outer, or catching inspiration.

Three pillars:

Observe the self: exploring inward, thinking about people, including personal growth, introspection and reflection on the inner world.

Investigate things: exploring outward, thinking about things and affairs, including analysis of the objective world — AI, software engineering, product design, business models.

Know the world: what I see while living abroad, understanding of the world, thoughts on travel, thoughts on culture.

Flash: fleeting inspiration, ideas and one-liners.

Later I could add one more tag as appropriate, like a project name.

Believing in authority

Why do people who blindly follow authority long term slide more easily into believing authority?

They seem to slowly become able only to believe, becoming slaves of authority.

Much of authority exists to reduce cognitive load, but it also requires the premise that you have some understanding of the matter itself.

For example, believing in the professionalism of the pilot, while also knowing the objective reality that planes can crash and what may happen.

When information shows up, it may be mixed with a large amount of erroneous and biased information.

Including AI’s replies, which may also be mixed with various possible errors and biases.

Weight information by the authority of its source, and at the same time cross-verify information from different sources, looking for consensus and contradictions.

flomo needs to be kept to once a month, together with remote

flomo needs to be kept to once a month, updated at the same time as the remote address.

Again I sigh that if there were an AI todolist management tool, efficiency would improve a lot.

On September 4, 2025, the American AI company Anthropi

On September 4, 2025, the American AI company Anthropic announced an update to its terms of service, prohibiting most companies controlled by Chinese entities from using its Claude AI platform

The terms of service explicitly prohibit use by companies “controlled by restricted regions (such as China)” with more than 51% ownership. This means that no matter where a company is registered, as long as Chinese capital holds more than 50%, it cannot use the Claude AI service

The aim is to prevent “authoritarian states” from using its technology for military or intelligence activities

The Chinese AI startup Zhipu AI has already launched an alternative, supporting users in migrating the Claude API to its GLM-4.5 model, and offering free tokens and developer toolkits to attract affected users

As competition between major powers over AI technology intensifies, similar restrictions may become more common. Independent R&D and building alternatives in AI technology will become more urgent for Chinese companies

Some feelings from AI reading

Sometimes if the LLM’s reply is at a very high difficulty level, my subconscious seems to lose the desire to keep reading

Actually I can clearly sense that this might be overcomplicated, or too abstract

But I lack the metacognition to recognize that in myself — the instinctive reaction isn’t to simplify, but to escape

Cognitive overload

When an LLM’s answer is very complex, abstract, or too information-dense, the brain needs extra attention and processing power to understand it. If you haven’t deliberately trained your “metacognition” to handle this kind of information, the brain instinctively chooses “energy-saving mode” — that is, escaping or pausing the reading

You get a feeling of reading fatigue

Metacognition means the ability to observe your own cognitive state

It means I know how much I know, I know where my confusion is, and how to break complex information down

The subconscious actively escapes rather than simplifies. Simplifying requires active thinking, actively modeling knowledge — it’s a high-energy activity. Escaping is a low-energy natural expression

So this is also a strong signal, reminding the person or the AI, when the brain faces high energy consumption, and how to solve it

From a purely logical reasoning angle, resonance really can’t be understood

But in reality there are some sensing phenomena that science just can’t explain

For example a mother suddenly senses her son may be in danger

The essence of sensing is resonance, like the tuning fork experiment in physics: strike a tuning fork in one room and a tuning fork in another room will also vibrate. There’s no physical contact between them; what’s transmitted is an invisible sound-wave frequency. This current physics can prove. On the other hand, physics can’t prove whether the “sound wave of consciousness” really exists

A divination act is behind an active tuning of frequency. According to the theory of “heaven-human induction,” the universe at that moment, through a “chance” event (like which side a coin lands on, or the image on a card), gives you a symbolic answer that “resonates” with your consciousness frequency.

There’s something really interesting about metaphysics: any part is tightly connected to the whole, so from the angle of any part you can learn some information about the whole — a bit like knowing the above from below

If “heaven-human induction” is the worldview, the law of physics, then “taking images and drawing analogies” is the methodology for interpreting this set of laws, the grammar and dictionary for translating the universe’s language.

It’s mainly the art of thinking from the concrete to the abstract and back to the concrete

Taking images: an image is the universe’s basic vocabulary, a highly condensed information package. Taking an image means grabbing, out of the complex world, the image that is most key and most representative of the current energy state. The greatness of divination systems is that they established in advance a huge “image” database verified over millennia (like the sixty-four hexagrams, the twelve zodiac signs, tarot images). It can encompass all phenomena — a way of including all things, everything in the universe. As in, between heaven and earth, all the myriad phenomena have their own operating laws

Drawing analogies: the grammatical rules for constructing meaning. “Drawing analogies” is the grammar that strings these words into sentences. Its core is “like attracts like, like responds to like.” It means that things of the same or similar nature are grouped into one “category,” and they can mutually explain and be compared with each other. The secret of “drawing analogies” lies in its “logical leap.” It doesn’t use the linear causal logic of A→B→C, but the associative analogical logic of A≈B≈C.

Observe what the subtle environment is like, and the relationship between the environment and yourself, the changes in energy, and feel within it

The question of information sensitivity

How to understand the question of information sensitivity

Do founders or AI developers need a certain ability for information sensitivity?

Entrepreneurship is at bottom finding opportunities in an uncertain environment and making decisions quickly

The requirement chart for LLM development

Basically the core skills lists are dominated by Python programming and machine learning frameworks; these skills appear with the highest frequency in job descriptions

The top five skills include Python, PyTorch/TensorFlow, deep learning, NLP (natural language processing) and big-data tools — these are the foundation for building and training models

Python programming basically applies to all AI tasks; AI as the core development language, NumPy and Pandas for data manipulation

Deep learning and neural networks, key knowledge of architectures like Transformer and GAN

Then natural language: tokenization, embeddings, plus some sentiment analysis and translation techniques

No thought arises, all dharmas are empty

Generally when writing letters, I also put my whole self in, not thinking about other things — focus training

The unity of knowledge and action: not just knowing how to do it, but doing it immediately

Long-termism and persistence — this perseverance is the root of his success

A behavioral and cognitive guide for ordinary people in the AI era

For many things I encounter in life, or news, I want to know what the impact on me is

It feels like there’s a lack of a good window

The LLM knows you relatively well, and can help you analyze from your own perspective

Veteran programmers are always thinking about Codex/Claude

Veteran programmers are always thinking about the value orientation that AI tools like Codex/Claude Code have for programming jobs, and the conclusion they reach is that those who can truly leverage their advantage are the people with deep business understanding and a holistic grasp of complex systems, not just young people who can write code

My thought is that from the dimension of human nature and way of thinking, young people pay more attention to “what to use to create a product,” while truly creative people always pay attention to what the value output is

In the era of AI tools, way of thinking and awareness of value output matter more than pure technical ability

flomo’s Discover new

flomo’s “Discover new values from old MEMOs” scenario

I keep wondering what kind of person would like a feature like this

flomo’s “roam” feature is essentially about discovering new value and connections in your past notes. What it does isn’t simple review — it activates old content to produce new insight

That includes automatically recommending related notes, mining hidden connections, and triggering reflection and inspiration

One kind is people with a huge amount of information who like to accumulate — they have a large number of notes and don’t easily sort through them all in daily life

The roam feature helps them “go back in time” and find points or potential connections they missed

These people believe “accumulating knowledge and experience has a compounding effect,” and like recombining old information to trigger new ideas or decisions

If industrial chains and division of labor are products of the industrial era

In the AI era, could super-individuals provide creativity better

As for options, maybe the options themselves are interactions with the LLM

As for options, maybe the options themselves are the process of interacting with an LLM

Then why shouldn’t the options themselves be dynamic?

It seems that to some degree an agent

It seems that to some degree an agent also bridges the distance between saying and doing

That is, the distance between knowing and doing

Humans mostly get and output inspiration at the “thinking of it” stage

Deliberate training: reading in English

If I look at the translated Chinese first, I feel I won’t bother reading the original (English) on my own

I think a better method is to first try to understand the English original and not rush to the Chinese; Chinese serves only as verification or supplement, not as the thing that drives comprehension

At the start you can check the Chinese once you understand 50% of an English sentence; as proficiency grows, gradually delay or reduce looking at the Chinese

It looks time-consuming, but the growth feels enormous

Lightweight recording is more like a precondition

What matters more is the process of enriching a viewpoint — how to add context, how to enrich context

This process is a process of knowing; it fills in the sense of a boundary between thinking of something and knowing it

What needs extending is the doing stage; the best form right now is still monitoring via a to-do list

In fact, some categories a prompt can play include but aren’t limited to:

Some MBTI attributes, even Enneagram types

The attributes of a specific historical figure

The attributes of a specific social role (praise-giver, doctor)

AI painting

It’s a description of your own story.

You have a certain aesthetic, and a bit of an idea that moves this thing forward.

Then you keep fine-tuning based on your own inspiration and ideas.

Heart — language/instruction — machine — result — reflect again

The origin of the story often doesn’t start from the prompt anymore; it often starts from your own personal narrative story.

A patch of light and shadow in a childhood memory.

A moment that moved you on some trip.

An emotion that language hasn’t captured.

Before you treat AI as an “infinite hand,” you have to give it boundaries and taste.

Each generated work isn’t an endpoint, but an “echo” — feed that feeling back into the next prompt.

Looking at an image directly vs. looking at the original — the difference is enormous

It’s like listening to a top symphony orchestra perform live, versus listening to an MP3 recording on your phone.

Technology really struggles to fully reproduce real visual and auditory experience.

Texture and brushwork are the most important thing, and the most impossible to replicate. On a screen, every painting gets “flattened” into a smooth plane.

But a painting is three-dimensional.

I’ve always believed one thing: with any artwork or craftwork, before learning any background knowledge, you must trust your own first feeling and intuition — look purely, don’t think, just look purely.

What’s the first impression? Do you feel calm, chaotic, joyful, sad, or oppressed?

What draws you into the image? A particular figure, a strange patch of color, or a strong contrast of light and shadow?

What does it make you associate with? A remembered scene, a piece of music, or an emotion hard to put into words?

This is how you build a connection, and only then do you think about how the painter did it.

Then you explore it deeply…

Our relationship to all things in the world is only of three kinds

What we think we understand: settling ourselves temporarily with simplified models.

What we think we don’t yet understand: that’s the part we ask questions about.

What we’re not conscious of: that’s the part waiting for us to have the chance to explore.

Zero-knowledge distribution technology

Ensuring the stability and security of IP — the principle of the technology

Zero-knowledge proofs

A very core thing — can you clearly express what you’re doing

It suddenly hit me — a very core thing: can you clearly express what you’re doing, what you want to do, what you’ve done?

A very core point: can you focus your attention on one place?!

The strengths of the people around me

I keep noticing that there are some really impressive people around me

I know they each have their own strengths, but I haven’t analyzed what the essence behind it actually is

Specifically, how they collect information, how they filter out noise, and whether that logic can be reused

Learn to treat a person as a sample, extract the useful parts from the sample, throw away the rest

Why is he able to stay steady?

Is it because he sees things clearly? Or because there’s nothing much he cares about?

Can this steadiness be replicated in my own situation?

Many times, this era seems more civilized

Many times, this era seems more civilized, but in reality people still need to burn their own time and energy to push this civilization forward

But the development of civilization hasn’t promoted the livelihood security of vulnerable groups either

In the countries where signs of civilization are everywhere, there are still many broken wooden shacks. The development of civilization hasn’t solved the rich-poor gap: the rich still take pride in their Theory of the Leisure Class, and the poor still sacrifice their time and energy to contribute to this world

On this point the East is actually doing okay

The first time I’ve met a person like this

So quietly and clearly positioned about himself

But by your understanding of your world or field, you clearly know this person really has a lot of distinctive, talented qualities

Whereas at times I might still have some beautification of myself

Antifragile — not just robust or fragile

It’s being able to accept fragility — not becoming tough either, but going with the flow and using the storm itself to make your system stronger. That is, welcoming mistakes and finding something better. A shattered piece of pottery is the beauty of decay, the beauty of imperfection

If I could work in uninterrupted deep focus every day

If every day you could work in uninterrupted deep focus, that time might really be the most golden time of all

Find the focus time that suits you best, and through constant feedback from data, get a read on your own state

Learn to spend, learn to save

One very important decision-making method is keeping accounts

Write down every single expense

Sort out which are needs and which are wants

For the wants, think a bit more — are they really necessary

Whoever hurts does the reflecting

Whoever is in pain is the one who changes

Pain - reflection - change, a chain

Pain is the first signal, telling you the current situation is wrong, or that some needs aren’t being met

Reflection is understanding, thinking about what the root cause actually is: the environment, other people, or your own perceptions and expectations

And finally change — the way to actually resolve the pain, the final action

Daily review & morning journal

Do reviews often, including on weekends and holidays; it can take the form of a morning journal

The morning journal you write when you get up each day first means sorting out, completing and adding to what you recorded the day before, then giving an overall summary of the previous day

The journal has a specific format that may map to specific steps — the concrete study items of the day, words memorized, books read, and so on

Regularly going back over old journals is a very meaningful thing — seeing what you thought and felt in the past, seeing how you’ve changed, is deeply worthwhile. Every day I start the whole day’s journey with a clear mind and high spirits

I’ve walked down an old road of my buddy’s

Thinking too much often blocks action

The essence of understanding

Li is the logic and law of things — continuity, order

Jie is to untie, decompose, take apart — opening up complex things to look for clues inside

Taken together, “li” and “jie” mean untying things within the framework of their logic

You know the logic of a thing and can explain it — for example, “understanding Newton’s laws”

This process emphasizes whether you’ve reached the depth of exploring a thing’s essence

Meituan’s current problems

The recent half-day slump

Q2 earnings saw profit fall even more year-on-year

Too many subsidies

Add the Fed’s rate cut, and the Hong Kong market was shaken to some degree

Nanjing feels like a city with deep historical weight

In eastern China, capital of Jiangsu Province, firmly seated in the core of the Yangtze River Delta

Half historical weight, half modern artsy vibe. It has both the tenderness of the Qinhuai River and the bustle of Xinjiekou

Novelty Search

To judge whether a path is viable

You don’t need to judge whether this path is good or bad

You only need to judge whether this path is new or old

New is good ~

The world is causal, otherwise science couldn’t exist

But sometimes causality fails — in things probabilistic, or emergent

So that in some phenomena thousands of fireflies suddenly flash together — no one gives the order, yet the system as a whole shows order

This kind of questioning particularly suits the option-recommendation approach

Flexible question recommendation

Options can also have a suitable recommendation method, and the questions have convergence

If I had to pick two favorite dynasties

Not the most powerful or wealthiest dynasties in my mind

But the Spring and Autumn and Warring States period of the Hundred Schools of Thought, and the turbulent Wei-Jin and Northern and Southern Dynasties era of individual awakening

A lovely term I really like: ‘Shiyi’ (gathering memories)

A lovely term I really like: Shiyi — gathering memories

What is simplicity, essentially

Inner simplicity seems easier to drive through a stable environment

Simplicity of the outer environment seems to depend more on a flexible, changing environment

Find the underlying driving force amid a constantly changing environment

Passing by a local supermarket, an old woman was about to go in, but the door was heavy

Passing by a local supermarket, an old woman was about to go in, but the door was heavy and hard to push open

She pushed for a long time, and I hurried over to help her push it open

I was thinking: Vietnam is a very young country, and this country has been through war

The elderly really get far too little attention from society

Infrastructure may have considered a lot at the design stage … but it often overlooks vulnerable groups

Thinking back on Tokyo’s city and technology

Tokyo has its own unique architectural aesthetics, a lot of futuristic buildings, futuristic architecture and neon

A deep fusion of technology and culture, many automated convenience stores, robot restaurants, especially in Shibuya

Relatively speaking I spent little time living there, so it’s hard to feel Tokyo deeply. Innovation and entrepreneurship are active; AI, robotics and electronic culture seep into daily life

Tokyo has world-class universities and research institutions; it’s relatively similar to Hangzhou, well suited to some basic AI research, whereas Shenzhen is more of a fast-iterating application-level city focused on rapid iteration and implementation

Iterating out some good methods

I suddenly realized this isn’t just growing up

It’s maturing

Something sometimes very confusing about to-dos

That is, how to cut the connection

A lot of the time, you’ve planned things out, but in practice you get so absorbed in the current thing that you forget — say you’re playing a game, reading a novel, binge-watching a show, or fixing a bug

The result is wasting a whole day on that, and the task never gets done

In fact, what you can do is put your tasks somewhere prominent, or set an attribute on the to-do so a reminder fires at the right time, or strictly follow time blocks to do certain tasks

Then there’s the possibility that awareness needs to be converted into frictionless action

The moment you become aware, lock that awareness into a concrete action — to a degree, a TODO can do this

The methods an engineer settles into

You know what can be done and what can’t

You know where your boundaries and your ceiling are

When you hit a problem you know what methods there are to solve it

You know how to go find the answer

These experiences are like: after solving for the correct problem, what you get isn’t the correct answer but the correct method for getting answers

That’s experience

Models for reading

The difference in cognition is at bottom a difference in models

Information is neutral; value is determined by the worldview/framework you already have. The person who can weave scattered facts into causation, estimate impact and design responses holds the real advantage

Build models rather than piling up information: write the 8–12 mental models you use most (game theory, value chain, network effects, marginal returns, probability estimation, inversion, etc.) into cards you can call up easily

With each “piece of news” you read, do three things: ① classify which model it goes into, ② reason out two possible consequences, ③ list the one best executable action

How to build a system of understanding

Simply create a test system; it can help you understand this

Guangzhou’s Backpack Ten Years

I’ve rarely stayed in other Chinese cities either; my impressions aren’t that deep

Abroad there are also some international trips

Guangzhou’s Backpack Ten Years does the environment really well, and the interior design style is great too

The author of Backpack Ten Years, Xiao Peng, an ordinary IT guy with no background grinding away in a big city, how he used precise planning and strong execution to break the distant dream of “traveling the world” into goals he could actually achieve one by one

His model can be simply summarized as: work - save money - quit - travel - return home - work again - save again - travel again…

So the logic in there is actually engineering logic: how to handle a distant dream by breaking it down, quantifying it and setting stage goals, turning it into an executable project

It also seems like an agile model — a short-cycle agile development model, short-cycle iterations, a minimum viable product (MVP), then continuous feedback and optimization, constant trial and error and iteration

Then there’s the value of the gap period. In traditional thinking, a “gap” on a resume is a fatal flaw. But in this model, the “gap” gets redefined as a “period of high-value experience accumulation” and “personal growth investment.” This experience made him more independent, gave him more stories, more problem-solving ability, and could actually become a plus for his next job

Don’t make long-term bets; instead run a series of low-cost, short-cycle “experiments”

Quickly put your “action version” into the real world, get real feedback, then based on the feedback decide whether the next step is “iterate and optimize,” “pivot,” or “give up”

The MVA design theory for early-stage software

The minimum viable architecture that satisfies the MVP, with a certain degree of maintainability

And not overly complex

Usable area refers to the actual indoor area you can use (bedroom, living room, kitchen

Usable area refers to the actual indoor area you can use (bedroom, living room, kitchen, bathroom, storage room, etc.), excluding public areas

Gross floor area refers to usable area + shared area (elevator shafts, stairwells, corridors, pipe shafts, exterior wall thickness, etc.)

This is when buyers feel cheated by “inflated area,” and developers may design “large shared areas” to raise the overall sale price. Similarly labeled 100㎡ can differ a lot in actual usable area across different properties and different cities

Shared-area differences are huge; to meet market demand, future residential design may reduce shared area and optimize layout to maximize usable area

Thinking about a deep introduction to Expo

Expo is an open-source development toolset and service platform built on React Native

React Native is a cross-platform framework responsible for rendering UI and bridging native functionality

Expo is React Native’s “enhancement tool,” providing a lot of out-of-the-box functionality and development convenience

The Expo SDK provides a large number of out-of-the-box APIs, usable without writing native code

And there’s the corresponding Expo CLI, the Dev Tools, which not only lets you create, launch, build and publish projects, but also lets you use Expo Go to run or debug your own project without compiling a native package

Finally there’s the Expo Managed Workflow: you work entirely in JavaScript / TypeScript, don’t need to write any native code, and Expo handles the iOS/Android native configuration and build for you

The use cases are also generally clear: small or medium-sized apps, rapid prototyping or MVPs, teams mainly in JS/TS

My mom has an extreme people-pleasing personality

Constantly caring about what others think, to the point of interfering with others

Even willing to sacrifice herself, or feeling she doesn’t matter

Because of early experiences, family patterns, the need for security, or low self-worth

But in fact this kind of sacrifice doesn’t get recognized by the other person

Engineering collaboration in America

Many major American engineering and research projects (the Manhattan Project, the Apollo moon landing, the Human Genome Project) were US-led, but they often attracted and gathered top scientists from all over the world

America emphasizes division of labor and collaboration — a large tech project gets split into hundreds of sub-projects done by different teams or companies

China finds it hard to join global cooperation networks led by the US

Nuclear weapons, spaceflight, BeiDou navigation and the like were basically state-team-led and completed independently

Chinese research often concentrates resources to accomplish big things, quickly gathering manpower and material to attack a problem

Don’t use poison to keep users

If you keep users through dopamine hits or external incentives, doesn’t that drift too far from focusing on the content itself?

Turning something that could have been interesting and creative into a job done for pay

Use external incentives cautiously and sparingly, only in the “ignition” stage where they help users get over the initial barrier

The core experience matters: when users get excited about their own work, that’s the most powerful incentive they can get

It’s like the outdoors — what draws you isn’t necessarily some beautiful view in particular, it’s more this feeling

Why must reading be deep reading?

It’s obviously very hard to do; all you need is the 0-to-1 process

Not just streamlining the product — more importantly, simplicity of the design persona

Make depth as visualizable as possible, without such a high degree of fineness, and fix breadth at a few specific points — convergence

The Huxe product

It aims to use personalized audio content to help users reduce screen time, get information more efficiently, and make daily life more interactive

Huxe generates a daily audio summary based on the user’s email, calendar, news and interests, helping them quickly grasp what matters and avoid endless scrolling

Users can listen to content matching their interests — neighborhood news, their stock portfolio or their favorite sports team — forming a 24/7 personalized audio stream

Users can interrupt the audio at any point while listening to ask for a different explanation or more technical detail, interacting with the audio content

Users can turn any topic of interest into a personalized audio explanation to go deeper into specific content

Example use cases

While commuting or exercising: get real-time information when looking at a screen isn’t convenient

While getting ready in the morning: listen to a personalized audio briefing on the day’s important items

Exploring new knowledge: turn curiosity about a topic into a detailed audio explanation

Following interests in real time: get live updates on your stock portfolio or sports team through audio

User story

Main occupation: knowledge workers/white-collar (tech, finance, internet, consulting, education, etc.)

Core scenario: commuting to and from work, followed by exercise and housework

Podcasts are naturally suited to news scenarios: news itself has an “event - background - key point” structure, which is easy to express in audio. Podcasts require hitting the key points + reinforcing memory + emotional connection, whereas text suits full, structured, skimmable content

https://www.huxe.com/

Drawing on others is usually building on predecessors’ design thinking

Drawing on others is usually building on predecessors’ design thinking — standing on the shoulders of giants to get some guides for action or thought.

Concept, theory and idea

A concept is the smallest unit of cognition, a word, an abstract label.

A theory is an explanatory framework assembled from a set of concepts, like the Dark Forest theory.

An idea is a value, an overall belief, more abstract — like individualism, pragmatism.

① A concept is the atom of thought

② A theory is the structure of concepts

③ An idea is the direction of thought

But on the other hand

Concepts can form parent-child relations, containment and network relations.

When multiple concepts have logical or causal relations between them, they can form a theory.

Hierarchical concepts can naturally transition into a theory, depending on how you define it.

How to flexibly track AI reading progress

Split the granularity by semantic units

Have an intelligent agent that combines the person’s own traits and context to recommend a matching reading style, and based on that style lay out a rough learning path

It feels pretty similar to the questionnaire-type recommendations at the start — first planning out a possible sequence of learning steps

The question I’m chewing on: the outline an LLM recommends might itself be part of a concept map, and then through the concept map you track the learning process, and each time there can be a follow-up handling logic, using the concept map to track progress

For example, at the start the LLM takes the user and the book’s characteristics and puts together a series of maps, then uses that concept map to track questions. Each click-prompt might be an expansion of the current concept or opening up the next concept. By the position of the nodes you can judge the user’s progress, and you can clearly track whether the user has ever processed and followed up on a concept

Every act of reading feels like we’re satisfying a desire

Satisfying some emotional fulfillment you hope to achieve, reach, or obtain

Whether it’s fulfillment at the cognitive level

Or fulfillment at the emotional level

It all radiates out from one point as the center

=

Just text still always feels like something is missing

If it were combined with a podcast or audio format, it would feel much better

But that’s just an idea too

When an idea is being created

This is the process of an idea surfacing; it only needs a lightweight record

The system will automatically think about and organize this idea — whether to organize it as a to-do list or as a knowledge card, either is fine

One is the process of turning it into knowledge, which may rely on knowledge cards

The other may be a to-actions process, turning it into a concrete, actionable path

Actually, thinking carefully, an idea can also be expanded through a whole series of methods — for instance, another AI with a different digital persona could hold a deep discussion about this view

Or an agent could package the idea in a series of ways, unfolding it into a series of idea cards

What should the concrete interaction form look like?

It has to be a form of entertainment or consumption

I still really want there to be some reward mechanism, but one built around encouraging us to observe and notice our own ideas, to record ideas, and later to act on them

But why record an idea at all?

The difference between an idea and inspiration: an idea is a rational piece of cognitive content or a product of thought, a concrete conception of some problem, phenomenon or concept. Inspiration is a sudden, intense flash of cognition, often emotional or intuitive in nature

What reason arrives at is usually an idea; what suddenly flashes is inspiration

On one side you’re digesting fragmented information; on the other you’re recording fragmented information

How does inspiration usually get transformed? It needs discussion, right? But inspiration has a lot of innovative, creative potential

Inspiration fades easily, and the faster you capture it the more valuable it is. Even if it’s vague, you can record keywords or the scene, and later let it ferment into an idea

Relatively speaking, inspiration is more worth capturing quickly, because it’s rarer and more easily lost

Ideas are more worth recording or managing systematically, because ideas can be made concrete and iterated

Goals

Douyin: no goals

A grand goal is itself meaningless

Building on that, think a bit more

What are humans’ deeper emotional needs

To be seen, to be understood

A longing to create something meaningful

A longing to feel their own growth and power

That is, using the product can let them become a better version of themselves

But relying too much on external incentives actually poisons users’ motivation; psychology even has a name for it — the overjustification effect

The logic is simple: you’ve turned something that could have been interesting and creative into a job done for pay

Purposeful learning, aimless emergence

Learning without a clear goal is a “breadth-first” strategy. At its core are curiosity and intrinsic drive; it pursues breadth of knowledge, connections, and unexpected surprises

In fact a lot of innovation and intrinsic drive comes from aimless emergence. In the short term it may look useless, but actually the process is enjoyable, and later it produces emergent effects

Entering a new field works the same way: at the very start there’s a concrete learning goal (the threshold of curiosity — you need a certain amount of accumulation), building a systematic framework; then in the middle stage it’s actually free exploration, exploring out of curiosity, free play. Later it becomes a natural cycle and fusion — when something interests you, dig deep, and repeat

Pearl S. Buck’s writing style is plain and unadorned

From the perspective of plain farmers, describing their own lives in their own voice, vividly depicting the corresponding story

The protagonist of The Good Earth is “the land”; land is the foundation that tightly binds farmers to survival, family, wealth and dignity — which explains why Chinese farmers are so attached to the land

The relationship between ideas and dopamine

In psychology there’s a term, spontaneous intention — for example, “I want to read a book,” “I’ll start exercising tomorrow.” This sentence needs to be recorded, because when you think of spontaneous thoughts, there’s dopamine behind them: the brain releases some dopamine, giving us the excitement of wanting to do it

And people constantly monitor their own state, and thoughts pop up like “I should…”

From the angle of cognition -> behavior -> persistence:

Cognition stage: the brain is processing too much, and thoughts are often short-term working memory with a lifespan of only tens of seconds; if they aren’t recorded by a tool, they dissipate. Even if you think “I’ll write it in a bit,” five minutes later it’s gone

The recording process itself is a gate — or complexity, too cumbersome. This has to be absolutely lightweight

And once recorded, it’s just piling up in a notebook, not converted into an executable plan, because there’s no reward mechanism and no trigger loop

Sometimes scrolling ideas in the square is quite fun

This acts as an entry point — one entry to making friends, another an entry for the subconscious to go learn and understand on its own

Likewise, actually tracking your own ideas and their eventual realization can also let you tune the AI to fit your own behavioral patterns

Lightweight recording of ideas really depends on the AI having a certain understanding of the user’s context to be done well

For example, how to look at learning a particular technology

Actually one quantifiable set of steps:

Through some articles (in practice, AI-assisted teaching).

You only need the most basic parts.

Then in the process you can generate some checklists, for example writing a program and running it, or submitting a PR to an open-source community.

In practice it’s a process the user can choose.

During execution you earn incentive points.

Halfway through a painting, let the painting’s content carry you along

This process seems to break through the original composition.

CBT-i stands for Cognitive

CBT-i stands for Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Insomnia

I remember how, in the book Why We Sleep, you have to completely break the insomniac’s wrong association in their mind of “bed = awake, anxious, battlefield,” and rebuild “bed = sleep” as a powerful, sole, almost instinctive conditioned reflex

Ordinary people see a bed and think of sleep, but a person with sleep problems has had their brain repeatedly trained into a catastrophic new association: the bed is no longer a harbor of rest, but a stage for frustration, a battlefield for wrestling with sleep

So whether behavioral or cognitive, CBT-i almost all serves this core goal. It’s like a precise “retraining” program, whose whole purpose is to let you tell your brain — with actions and thoughts — “listen, this bed has only one function, and that’s sleeping. If you do other things here, especially ’trying hard to sleep’ or ‘being anxious about not sleeping,’ then we leave. Only when you’re genuinely sleepy do we come back”

So this is also a way we adapt to environments, the way I subconsciously feel the coffee table is the place for using a computer, not the phone, and the bed is for sleeping — the moment you lie down you should be sleeping. If you’re on your phone, you should remind yourself of this line constantly

So if you can’t sleep, don’t play on your phone either. If 20 minutes pass and you still can’t sleep, get out of bed and read, or sit in meditation, and go back to bed when you’re drowsy. If you still can’t sleep, repeat these steps over and over. The purpose is to send your brain the signal that the bed is not a place to lie awake

Also, no matter how long you slept the night before, get up at a fixed time every morning. This is the most critical and also the hardest part — it helps stabilize your biological clock and build up enough “sleep drive” by the next evening

During the day try not to nap; if you absolutely must, do it before three and only for twenty-some minutes

How REM sleep heals step by step: the brain’s memory reconstruction process during sleep

Memory is reconstruction; sleep is the brain’s main memory process

Hot memory: when you experience an event with strong emotional impact, two parts of the brain work at once

The hippocampus

The amygdala

Entering REM sleep, an absolutely unique zero-stress state

Megacities

Since 1950, when New York became the world’s largest city, in 2000 Tokyo became the world’s largest city — Greater Tokyo — and it has stayed that way until now

In many poor countries, overcrowded slums, due to a lack of sanitation and malnutrition, leave their residents’ health in a worrying state. By 2030, 2 billion people worldwide will live in slums. In Ethiopia, Malawi and Uganda — three of the world’s least developed countries — 90% of urban residents live in slums

How alcohol works

First the nervous system, affecting neurotransmitters: it can reduce neuronal excitability, leading to slowed neural activity, producing sedation, relaxation and impaired coordination

Then suppressing the action of excitatory neurotransmitters: alcohol suppresses the action of the excitatory neurotransmitter glutamate

Then dopamine, affecting the brain’s reward system, stimulating dopamine release, so people feel pleasure and relaxation after drinking — this is one of the main reasons for alcohol addiction

In fact, alcohol dilates blood vessels in the body, making the skin feel warm, but it also speeds up heat loss. It suppresses the release of antidiuretic hormone, causing increased urination and dehydration

Alcohol (ethanol) is a volatile substance; when it evaporates it carries away moisture from the skin surface

Alcohol wipes generally shouldn’t be used on the face either, to avoid irritation. Long-term use of wipes containing alcohol can also cause an oil-water imbalance

In the sun also try to avoid alcohol wipes — they accelerate moisture loss and then increase the skin’s sensitivity to UV, so it’s best to use them only on the hands, just for disinfection

Behind Japanese sleep

Japan’s average sleep time per person is very short

Partly a cultural signal, a kind of sleep debt

“Inemuri” (nodding off in public) is physiologically the same as night sleep or a nap, but sociologically it’s a completely different behavior; its core meaning is “dozing while people are present”

When a person is exhausted but chooses to doze off in a public place or a meeting room rather than fully leaving to rest, this isn’t avoidance — it’s silently indicating that you are “physically present.” This is exactly the embodiment of Japanese culture’s high emphasis on “belonging” and “participation”

Japan’s sleep problem is the result of multiple factors working together. First, long working hours are the direct cause of reduced sleep time. Second, commute time is also a big obstacle

Changes in lifestyle habits are also an important trigger. Using a smartphone before bed is considered one of the main causes of declining sleep quality and reduced sleep time

“Karoshi” (death from overwork) is the most tragic, most irreversible consequence of Japanese work culture; it refers to cardiovascular or cerebrovascular disease or suicide caused by extreme fatigue and stress. In recent years, the number of officially recognized karoshi cases in Japan has continued to set new all-time highs, especially in industries like “transport and postal,” “medical and welfare,” and “manufacturing.”

The dream of lightning

If I think about something very anxiety-inducing at night, I feel terrible. Lightning in dreams often symbolizes sudden pressure, conflict, anxiety or uncontrollable external events

Suddenly I’ll think of something very anxious or tense, and then that night I’ll be very sensitive

Dreams that are “long and realistic” may relate to an extended REM sleep phase. Long, continuous dreams often happen in the REM phase of the latter half of the night, when cortical activity is very active and dreams have more coherence and a sense of reality

It feels like you really went through an event

It suddenly dawned on me that it’s still necessary to add lucid dreaming practice — it could give me a big boost — so the lucid dreaming task goes onto a list

To survive, first cultivate qi; to nourish health, first nourish the mind

The two cornerstones of TCM health cultivation: energy and emotion

So true health cultivation is still inward self-cultivation — not chasing some miracle elixir to eat, but learning to manage your own emotions well, and letting your inner self be calm and peaceful

At the same time, through the right lifestyle, maintain or clear out our energy system

Podcast-type scenarios

Americans really like listening to podcasts, largely because many Americans drive to work, and especially in tech many people live in the suburbs. As a country with a lifelong-learning culture,

Monotonous driving time is suitable for listening to podcasts

Scattered time like chores, working out, running, queuing can be used for podcasts

Then podcasts can also be consumed at the same time as other things

Essentially, it’s the need to acquire information (curiosity, learning) ✖️ use of fragmented time ✖️ technological convenience

I asked a friend, and my friend explained a new scenario: they like listening, not watching