Last year, during the New Year's Eve, I was bored at home and impulsively wrote a post called "Goodbye 2019" (link: https://www.ventuss.xyz/byebye-2019). At that time, I didn't expect that so many things and changes would happen in 2020. Looking back, 2019 was a peaceful and peaceful year. I even thought about saying goodbye without looking back. I didn't cherish world peace enough.
That year-end summary received a good response, and even several friends wrote their own year-end summaries because of it, which inspired me a lot. The extremely turbulent 2020 gave me a deeper understanding of the world, and I shared it with everyone. However, due to the busy 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 epidemic, I was forced to cook for myself. Originally, I resisted this because it was full of uncertainty: how much salt is a pinch? What is the right heat for simmering? It was confusing. After cooking a few times, 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 at the same time can make a runny fried egg (although it is easy to break when it comes out of the pan). During meals, I can watch a video of Professor Li Yongle at 1.2 times speed, and I dislike doing the dishes, but I can listen to "Hope Primary 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 your goals, actions, and outputs, 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 break down and quantify the subjective feeling of "happiness"?
For each individual, only time is fair and exactly the same, so time is a basic parameter. Being with a loved one for two hours is happier 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 organizing thoughts and influencing others.
So my conclusion is:
Happiness = (Invested Time * Quality of Time)^Impact
Using the examples above, helping others brings more happiness per unit of time than 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. So let's introduce another parameter, "ego," to express the "self." This way, the subjectivity of happiness and the subjectivity of the self can be balanced:
Wait, that's not right. It should be like this:
Impact = Happiness Brought to the World / Ego
Combining the above:
Happiness = (Invested Time * Quality of Time)^(Happiness Brought to the World / Ego)
This is not a very accurate formula, and it may sound a bit like a trick, but the advantage is that it makes it clear how to allocate time, do things that make you happy, do things that bring happiness to others, and do high-impact things.
Local and Global#
The above formula may sound reasonable, but from another perspective:
It's all wrong.
The reason is simple: the real world is not always smooth, even if you are doing something you love, there will be a lot of boring repetitions and unexpected bugs. So the happiness per unit of time is not constant and may even be negative (imagine your cat pooping on the bed).
This is a bit like 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 above formula as a guide for action, it is very likely to converge into a person who constantly seeks short-term gains, always achieving good results, but ultimately becoming a mediocre person.
There is a joke on the wall of the men's restroom at Wansheng Bookstore:
Think about this joke seriously. If someone really does this, he is actually very pitiful. On the surface, he has five girlfriends, spreading the risk and never feeling lonely, but he cannot give 100% of his love to any of them. He has five local optima, but he loses the possibility of pursuing the global optimum. He will never be able to experience true love. Stupid!
Life is not an ROI game. The trick formula only applies 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 you just live an ordinary life, it may be happy, but it doesn't seem to be very meaningful. Every year, the candidates for the Nobel Prize have made great achievements. If a person is not selected in 2019 but is selected in 2020, does the meaning of his life suddenly change? Many artists are unknown during their lifetime but become famous after their death. How should we measure the meaning of their lives?
The movie "Soul" from Pixar was very popular recently. In the movie, it says to enjoy the present because the present is the meaning. But I really can't feel the meaning in the mundane daily life. I can convince myself to be content and enjoy the present, 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. One day, everything will return to 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 that I mentioned earlier has a premise. The protagonist Joe has already found his spark, and he is just enjoying it without realizing it. The movie says to enjoy the present precisely because Joe's present is full of meaning.
Last year, I wrote about "Optimistic Nihilism" (link: https://www.ventuss.xyz/byebye-2019). This year, I want to go deeper: we can find a spark for our own lives (also known as a path/mission/Manifest Destiny/whatever); the universe is essentially void, life is void, and even the spark is void; but every present moment in the void of life that pursues the spark is full of meaning.
About Long-termism#
People always advocate for long-termism, being friends with time, but true long-termists 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 willingness to invest in them for the long term. Most people will find that it is unnecessary after weighing the pros and cons.
Every year, the students who enter Peking University High School are the top 0.07% of candidates, very smart kids, but they are not on the Forbes list in the end. The winner of Peking University High School at the age of 18 may end up working for a teacher at Hangzhou Normal University or even be laid off at the age of 35. On the other hand, when I look up to older alumni, I find that although there are indeed very few extremely wealthy people, everyone is actually doing well, upper middle class, decent.
Later, I realized that for the vast majority of people, entering a Fortune 500 company and working hard is already very good. They have a comfortable life, high social status, pressure and motivation, anxiety and hope. But it is still very good. And if you want to take it to the next level, it is not only very difficult, but also has the risk of falling, such as investment failure or failed entrepreneurship. 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 or not? It's already a lifetime of money that can't be spent. Even if you have more ideas, when Zhang Yiming reaches $10 billion, it will take several lifetimes to spend it all. You can even give each person in Longyan a red envelope of 10,000 yuan for the Chinese New Year, and you still can't spend it all. Should you sell or not?
But if you sell, where is the valuation of several hundred billion dollars for the universe, and where is the exciting story of TikTok? And if you really identify with 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, "Develop a company as a product." The most important thing when making a product is to understand the needs of users. God said, "Let there be light," and there was light. God also needs to provide requirements before the creation.
So why not ask yourself what you want to do? Do you really need long-termism?
About Optimism#
My 2020 was once very bad. Epidemic, 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 band "Fire Mars." Starting from the song "Open the Door to the World," it felt like I had opened another storyline and had some experiences 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 more luckily making her my girlfriend. Of course, reality is not a fairy tale, and we still need to adapt and we will have arguments. Landy once told me: as long as we believe that we love each other, the future will be fine, and these things in front of us "really don't matter."
Later, I thought about this sentence repeatedly and realized the power behind it.
If you believe that you love each other, what's the big deal about a momentary argument?
If you believe that you will succeed, what does it matter if your income decreases for a year or two?
If you believe that the world will become better and better, what's the hesitation? 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 right, but the optimist succeeds. 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. People also understood the concept of "exchange" and even sacrificed living beings 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 decades, can it also be seen as a sacrifice? So, continuously investing time and energy for one's own cause, goal, or ideal, can it also be seen as a sacrifice?
Find your own spark, practice long-termism, and continuously sacrifice time and energy for your own spark.
Everyone is their own god.
Choose Gentleness#
Actually, I have finished writing here, but I want to ramble a bit more, something I thought of today.
The country encourages celebrating the Chinese New Year in place, and I originally wanted to stay in Beijing for the New Year (I could go skiing), but I still went home. This morning, I went to sweep the tomb, and there was a sculpture at the entrance of the cemetery, a memorial for body donors, with names written densely all over it.
Last year, I wrote an article about "Life and Death" (link: https://www.ventuss.xyz/remember-me). 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 people we love, after they leave, 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 that we cannot understand and not everyone is rational. Being smart is a talent, 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