Last year, when I was bored at home during New Year's Eve, I impulsively wrote a farewell to 2019 article. At that time, I didn't expect that so many things and changes would happen in 2020. Looking back, 2019 was a peaceful and healthy year. I even thought about saying goodbye without looking back, but I didn't cherish world peace enough.
That year-end summary received a good response, and even a few friends wrote their own year-end summaries because of it, which greatly inspired me. The extremely turbulent 2020 gave me a deeper understanding of the world, and I shared it with everyone. However, due to many things at the end of the year, I kept postponing it until the end of the lunar year. Let's just treat it as a summary of the Year of the Rat~
Quantifying Happiness#
During the pandemic, I was forced to cook for myself. Initially, I resisted this because it was filled with uncertainty: how much salt is a pinch? What is the right heat for simmering? It was confusing. After a few tries, I found some certainty: the fourth gear on the induction cooker, frying chicken breast takes about the length of a song, and using two different heat levels can make a runny fried egg (although it's easy to break when taking it out of the pan). During meals, I can watch a lecture by Professor Li Yongle at 1.2 times speed, and I dislike doing the dishes, but I can listen to "Hope Elementary School" at the same time.
Last year, I wrote: "If I keep procrastinating on something, it means I haven't thought it through." If you break down goals, actions, and outcomes, establish clear expectations, and even simulate them in your mind, it won't be difficult to achieve them. Later, I thought, everyone pursues happiness, so can we also break down and quantify the subjective feeling of "happiness"?
For each individual, time is the only fair and equal parameter, so time is a basic factor. Being with a loved one for two hours brings more happiness than one hour, and spending an hour helping others is much happier than playing a game for an hour. The experience of playing a game of League of Legends can vary, and helping others, such as writing for Wikipedia, has a much greater impact on influencing others' thoughts.
So my conclusion is:
Happiness = (Invested Time * Time Quality)^Impact
Using the examples above, helping others brings more happiness per unit of time compared to playing games, but writing for Wikipedia has a higher impact.
So what is impact? I think if a person can bring a lot of happiness to others and put themselves in a small position, then their impact should be high. Therefore, let's introduce another parameter, "ego," to express the degree of "self." This way, the subjectivity of happiness and the subjectivity of self can be balanced:
Oops, it's actually like this:
Impact = Happiness Brought to the World / Ego
Combining the above:
Happiness = (Invested Time * Time Quality)^(Happiness Brought to the World / Ego)
This is not a very precise formula, and it may sound a bit like a trick, but the advantage is that it helps us understand how to allocate our time, do things that make us happy, do things that bring happiness to others, and do high-impact things.
Local and Global Perspectives#
The above trick formula sounds reasonable, but from another perspective:
It's all wrong.
The reason is simple. The real world is not always smooth, even when doing things we love, there are often repetitive and unexpected bugs. Therefore, the happiness per unit of time is not constant and can even be negative (imagine your cat pooping on your bed).
This is similar to the greedy algorithm. The greedy algorithm is an algorithmic paradigm that follows the problem-solving heuristic of making the locally optimal choice at each stage with the hope of finding a global optimum.
If we completely follow the trick formula as a guide for action, it is very likely to converge into a person who constantly seeks short-term gains. Although they may achieve good results each time, they often end up being mediocre in the end.
There is a joke written on the wall of the men's restroom at Wansheng Bookstore:
Think about this joke seriously. If someone really does this, they are actually very pitiful. On the surface, they have five girlfriends, spreading the risk and never feeling lonely. But they cannot give 100% of their love to any of them. They have five local optima but lose the possibility of pursuing the global optimum. They will never be able to experience true love. Stupid!
Life is not an ROI game. The trick formula is only applicable to solving local optimization problems, but life should be about pursuing long-term global optimization.
Spark#
Does life have meaning? I have been thinking about this question for a long time.
If we just live an ordinary life, it may be happy, but it doesn't seem to have much meaning. Every year, the candidates for the Nobel Prize are very accomplished. If someone is not selected in 2019 but is selected in 2020, does the meaning of their life suddenly change? Many artists are unknown during their lifetime but become famous after their death. How do we measure the meaning of their lives?
The movie "Soul" from Pixar became popular recently. In the movie, it is said that enjoying the present moment is meaningful. But I can't feel the meaning in the mundane aspects of life. I can convince myself to be content and enjoy the present moment, but it always feels like something is missing.
The universe is constantly expanding and diluting, and the stars are moving away from us every minute and second. Eventually, everything will end in heat death. The changes on Earth take millions of years, while a human life is only a hundred years. I lament the brevity of life and envy the endlessness of the Yangtze River. The universe itself is void, so what meaning does a short human life have?
Actually, enjoying the present moment that I mentioned earlier has a premise. The protagonist, Joe, has already found his spark, and he is simply enjoying it without realizing it. The movie says to enjoy the present moment precisely because Joe's present moment is full of meaning.
Last year, I wrote about "Optimistic Nihilism," and this year I want to delve deeper: we can find a spark for our own lives (also known as a path/mission/Manifest Destiny/whatever). The universe is fundamentally void, life is void, and even the spark is void. But each present moment spent pursuing the spark in the void of life is filled with meaning.
On Long-Termism#
People always advocate for long-termism, being friends with time, but true long-term thinkers are very rare.
I think this is because most people don't really need long-termism. Most things are not long-term, and truly long-term things require complete recognition and a willingness to invest in them for the long term. Most people weigh the pros and cons and find that it's not necessary.
Every year, only the top 0.07% of candidates are admitted to Peking University. They are very intelligent, but they don't end up on the Forbes list. The winners of the North Qing exam at the age of 18 may end up working for a teacher at Hangzhou Normal University or even being laid off at the age of 35. On the other hand, when I look up to older alumni, I find that although there are very few extremely wealthy individuals, everyone is doing well, upper middle class, living a decent life.
Later, I realized that for the vast majority of people, working for a Fortune 500 company and striving for success is already very good. They have a comfortable life, high social status, pressure and motivation, and anxiety and hope. It's good enough. But if you want to take it to the next level, it is not only very difficult but also carries the risk of failure, such as failed investments or failed startups. Why bother?
Even if you start a business and successfully go through several rounds of financing, becoming a billion-dollar unicorn, when the big companies extend an olive branch, should you sell? You will have a lifetime of money that you can't spend. Even if you come up with another idea, when Zhang Yiming reached a valuation of $10 billion, he would have a lifetime of money that he can't spend. He could even give each person in Longyan a 10,000 yuan red envelope for Chinese New Year, and he still wouldn't be able to spend it all. Should he sell?
But if you sell, how can the universe have a valuation of several hundred billion dollars, and how can there be the exciting story of TikTok? And if you really believe in an idea, a trend, a future, how can you stand by and do nothing? How can you trust others after getting involved?
Zhang Yiming said to develop a company as a product. The most important thing when making a product is to understand the needs of the users. God said, "Let there be light," and there was light. God also needs to express his needs before the creation.
So why not ask yourself what you want to do? Do you really need long-termism?
On Optimism#
My 2020 was once very bad. The pandemic, account suspension, quarantine, unpaid salary, breakup, two weeks of fever... but it's all in the past.
But life always has wonderful encounters. At the end of September, I went to Blue Note and listened to the Mars Radio. Starting from the song "Push Open the Door," it felt like I had opened another storyline and had some experiences and did things that I had never thought of before. It was like changing direction and making rapid progress.
The luckiest thing in 2020 was meeting Landy and even luckier, making her my girlfriend. Of course, reality is not a fairy tale, and we still need to adapt and we still argue. Landy once told me, "As long as we believe that we love each other, the future will be fine. These things right now don't really matter."
Later, I thought about this statement repeatedly and realized the power behind it.
If we believe that we love each other, what does a momentary argument matter?
If we believe that we will succeed, what does a temporary decrease in income matter?
If you believe that the world will become better and better, then why hesitate? Just do it.
And if you don't believe that the world will become better and better, well... you might be right. But the pessimist may be correct, but the optimist succeeds. So just be happy.
Be an absolute optimist, believe that there are always more solutions than difficulties, face challenges head-on, and overcome obstacles.
Sacrifice#
In primitive societies, people believed in astrology and divination, thinking that the world was controlled by unknown forces. They also understood the concept of "exchange" and even sacrificed live humans to the gods in exchange for good weather. But obviously, this didn't work.
In an abstract sense, sacrifice is the momentary giving of one's life. But what if we extend the time of sacrifice? Sacrificing one's life over several decades, can that also be considered a sacrifice? So, continuously investing time and energy for a cause, goal, or ideal, can that also be seen as a form of sacrifice?
Find your spark, practice long-termism, and continuously sacrifice time and energy for your spark.
Each person is their own god.
Choosing Gentleness#
Actually, I've finished writing here, but I want to ramble a bit more. These are some thoughts I had today.
The country encourages celebrating the Chinese New Year in place, and I was thinking of staying in Beijing (I could go skiing), but I still went home. This morning, I went to sweep the tomb, and at the entrance of the cemetery, there was a sculpture commemorating body donors, with names densely written all over it.
Last year, I wrote an article about "Life and Death Perspectives," and I wrote that the concept of heaven has bugs because it will eventually be overloaded.
This year, I have changed. Regardless of whether the concept of heaven makes sense or not, I choose to believe that heaven exists. Those whom we love and who have passed away will silently wait for us on the other side of the Rainbow Bridge.
The world often does not operate as we imagine, and there are always things happening that we cannot understand, and not everyone is rational. Being smart is a gift, but being kind is a choice.
Why not always be a gentle person?
Cover image: by Jason @Landy’s Cafe Duet
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2021/02/11 @Beijing