Author: Prophet Bookstore
The thinker Leo Strauss once said: "The problem of our time is that it is wise in the second most important thing and completely ignorant in the first important thing; Rational and calm in small things, gambling like a madman in big things. We retail sane, but wholesale crazy. ”
The above famous saying, if condensed into a familiar word, is: "mismatch".
Mismatch originally refers to the combination of long and short cycles, large and small assets in financial market investment, resulting in risks and losses. But in fact, the phenomenon of "mismatch", from the individual to the organization, from the organization to the national level, is almost everywhere.
In our language and culture, there are many idioms, which are actually descriptions of mismatches. For example: summer insects talk ice, chickens talk with ducks, play the piano to cows, lose big because of small mistakes, small wisdom and foolishness, and so on.
In the real world, all kinds of mismatches are everywhere, such as:
○When efficiency should be stressed, ideals should be emphasized; When it's time to talk about ideals, it's also about performance. It is common in various companies where so-called "wolf culture" prevails.
○When it is time to talk about right and wrong, we should talk about principles; When principles should be told, motives are also talked about. Commonly found in organizations where bureaucracy prevails.
○When we should be talking about science, we should talk about politics; When it's time to talk about politics, it's time to talk about science. The former is common in response to various large-scale public events, and the latter is common in the various utopias of building paradise on earth with planning thinking.
The above "mismatch" has made us miserable. However, of all the mismatches, there is one that is the deadliest but has been ignored: the mismatch between "precision" and "ambiguity"—from cognition to practice.
It is no exaggeration to say that this is the "culprit" of most of the "mismatch" phenomenon.
▍ Two types of things in the world:
Precise things versus fuzzy things
Economist Hayek found that the human mind or mental structure can be divided into two types: "precise" and "fuzzy".
Coincidentally. Thinkers also divide talents into "hedgehog" and "fox":
○ "Hedgehog-type" talents only know one big thing, they are sharp-minded, calculating, focused on the goal, and never give up;
○ "Fox type" people know a lot of things, have a complex mind and full of uncertainty, adjust their goals at any time, and look as they go.
Obviously, "hedgehog-type" talents correspond to "precise" mental structures, and "fox-type" talents correspond to "fuzzy" mental structures. Correspondingly, things in the world can also be divided into two types: "precise things" and "fuzzy things":
○Those things that have clear goals, clear boundaries, and feasible solutions are precise things. Such as science and technology, machinery manufacturing, data calculation;
○ There are too many variables, and each variable changes at any time, and a highly complex chaotic system is a fuzzy thing. Such as running a family, business management, military warfare, social transformation, national governance. (Distinguish between two things with "clear causality" and "too many variables", and deal with them with different thinking, it is recommended to read "In a complex modern society, the wise are always full of doubts, but the fools are convinced" and)
The two types of things can be described as very different. The former is typically method-driven, requiring precise planning in advance and efficient execution in the event; The latter is a typical direction-driven type, which only needs to and can only determine the general direction in advance, and cannot plan precisely, and can only be patient, bold trial and error, and timely correction.
Of course, the above is just a classification of two different types of things. In the real world, anything complex, or something that is defined as great afterwards, is never an either/or binary choice, but a combination of ambiguous things and precise things.
And the more directional, innovative things are, the closer they are to fuzzy things, requiring alertness, love, risk-taking, imagination, not precise calculations.
Fuzzy things, once completed innovation or judgment, are transformed into executable, calculable and accurate things, which need to be completed through goals and plans. In the process of performing precise things, once new variables appear, they become vague things that need to be rejudged and decided.
It can be seen that being able to distinguish between complex things and precise things is the first step in cognition; To understand the complex world and solve complex problems, it is more important to be able to disassemble which are ambiguous parts and which are precise parts of a complex matter, and pursue them in corresponding ways.
However, the biggest sadness in reality lies in the "mismatch" between the two: using "big and big" to treat precise things, and "excellence" to deal with ambiguous things.
▲ The controversy between Keynes and Hayek can be seen as the difference between "precision" and "ambiguity", or "hedgehog" and "fox".
▍We are convinced of the four words "pursuit of precision"
But the pursuit of precision has only just been solved
What often hinders our knowledge is not the unfamiliar, but the familiar and convinced.
We are all too familiar with the words "pursuit of precision" to become a politically correct slogan. However, many things that are familiar and convinced us are just a new version of sitting in the well and watching the sky. The same goes for "precision pursuit".
◎ Several soul questions about "pursuit of precision"
"The pursuit of precision" is nothing new for modern people who benefit from technological civilization, and it can even be said that human beings are approaching the limit in the pursuit of precision - the unit of measuring distance has been as small as nanometers and as large as light years; From the industrial revolution of "making machines that can make machines" to the intelligent revolution of "beginning to develop people that can make themselves", it took just over two hundred years.
"The pursuit of precision", for the precocious nation that saw "the difference is a thousand miles" as early as more than 2,000 years ago, and in just a few decades of opening to the outside world, it has completed the transition from mechanical manufacturing to intelligent manufacturing - almost all categories of precision manufacturing are either imported or manufactured independently, "pursuit of precision" does not seem to be a problem.
However, in the face of history, "Why is modern science and technology not born in China?" And in reality, "Why are core technologies such as chips still facing stuck necks?" "When waiting for the problem, it is inevitable to fall into embarrassment again.
What exactly is "pursuit of precision"?
Is the "pursuit of precision" just a technical and engineering field?
Why does the "pursuit of precision" require more adventure, love and imagination?
Are the protagonists of the "pursuit of precision" careers those "demigods and half-humans" in science and technology and industry, or generations of unknown engineers?
Is "pursuit of precision" "body" or "use"? Or is it "art" or "Tao"?
The spirit of "pursuing precision" has existed in human beings since ancient times, but why has this spirit been implemented in some places as products, industries, standards and advanced productive forces, but in other places it has been reduced to slogans, and even become a cumbersome etiquette and exquisite ruling technique to declare strictness?
These problems penetrate history and reality, connecting the destiny of countries, enterprises and everyone. To think and answer these questions, we need to stand on the shoulders of wise men.
The historian, thinker, and pioneer of precision manufacturing, Simon Winchester's just-published book The Pursuit of Precision not only provides direct answers or indirect inspiration to the above questions, but also corrects many of our prejudices and blind spots on the question of "pursuit of precision." However, before summarizing these answers and inspirations, it is necessary to understand the outline of the whole book, otherwise it will inevitably feel like empty deduction.
◎ "In Search of Precision": A Narrative Historian's Thought AdventureOn June 15, 2023, when Simon Winchester visited Huawei, a leading precision manufacturing company in China, Ren Zhengfei told him, "Your writing is very good, and it will promote China's industry very well." The "book" that Ren Zhengfei mentioned is exactly this one that has just been introduced and published by Zhanlu Culture. As an entrepreneur, Ren Zhengfei of course attaches more importance to the value of "pursuing precision" for his own enterprises and Chinese-made/intelligent manufacturing. However, as an ordinary reader, if you carefully read the whole book, you may be able to say to the author: "This book is not so much well written as it is well written; It is not so much that it will have a good role in promoting China's industry, but that it has a good role in improving the scientific and technological civilization literacy of the Chinese people, and has a good error correction function for reducing the mismatch between precision and ambiguity. This passage is full of praise, but it is by no means cheap and beautiful. Simon Winchester, best-selling author of the Order of the British Empire, whose famous book "The Professor and the Madman" has long been known to the public for its characters and narrative style, which has long been known to the public for its characters and narrative from selling more than one million copies in the year of its publication to being adapted into a Hollywood blockbuster. So, how does this style navigate the professional and ambitious topic of "pursuit of precision"? In addition to the author's background in a family of precision manufacturing, as well as years of research on precision manufacturing, the answer is in one word: "wonderful" - the layout of the article! If you summarize the main content of the book "The Pursuit of Precision" in one sentence, it is roughly: this is a brief history of more than 250 years of precision manufacturing of mankind woven with the "bizarre" stories of a group of "geniuses and madmen". The problem is that the very concept of "precision manufacturing" may "dissuade" most ordinary readers. Precision manufacturing is not only different from the general history of the industrial revolution and artificial intelligence that we are familiar with, but also contains professional knowledge in different dimensions such as engineering history, industrial history, and enterprise history. However, a little understanding of the history of precision manufacturing, it is not difficult to find that the history of precision manufacturing is most of the history of modern science and technology, but also a history of the rise and fall of emerging industries and giant enterprises, and even the history of the rise and fall of large countries. It is both history and a future that is happening. However, for best-selling authors who are good at narrative, it is not difficult to outline the historical outline of precision manufacturing and write it vividly and interestingly, the difficulty is how to integrate professionalism, height and depth, so that it is possible to "promote the development of Chinese industry" and "improve the engineering culture and scientific civilization literacy of Chinese people, and reduce the mismatch from cognition to practice" while establishing a legacy for precision manufacturing, otherwise it is difficult to escape the fate of "a good read but fast bestseller". But Simon Winchester did, or more accurately, he is one of the few people of the contemporary era who can do it. Because he was not only a best-selling author and pioneer of precision manufacturing, but also a historian, thinker, and explorer. The "wonder" of the layout of "In Search of Precision" is the result of these labels being integrated. The most important thing in the so-called layout of the book is how to build the structure of the whole book, so that the warp and weft can not only go their own way, but also meet at the key places. Obviously, at this point, non-fiction works are more difficult than fictional literary creation. ●"The Pursuit of Precision" uses "tolerance" as the warp line throughout the book. This makes us realize that in the world of "precision", the matter of how many zeros after the decimal point is not only very important, it is a revolution in itself. How did the tolerance, or "minimum tolerance value", shrink from 0.1 to 0.000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 01? The author subtitles each chapter with "tolerances" of different magnitude and advances the order of the book with "History of Tolerance Reduction."
No matter how complex precision manufacturing is, no matter how many revolutions it has undergone, no matter how many people, companies and industries are involved, it all starts with a problem, and finally a problem: how to narrow tolerances - this is the soul of precision manufacturing, or the history of technological civilization. ●Take the bizarre story of "genius and madman" as the weft line. Each chapter uses the story of one or two "disruptors" to connect the technology and industry (enterprises) of their respective eras, and embed this into the narrative of the larger history of human civilization, thus extending the value of the book beyond precision manufacturing.
It is worth mentioning that these "geniuses and fanatics" selected in the book - whether it is the "father of precision manufacturing" John Wilkinson, or William Edward Boeing, who founded Boeing, Brad Parkinson, the "father of GPS", and Gordon Moore, the discoverer of Moore's Law, in the familiar history of the public, they were obscured by the light of Newton, Einstein, Turing and other "demigods", but without them, no matter how great science and technology, it is difficult to industrialize and benefit ordinary people. ▲ The book "The Pursuit of Precision" is a longitude and latitude line formed with "tolerance" and "genius and madman". Therefore, "The Pursuit of Precision" is not only a biography for precision manufacturing, but also an alternative form for these obscured "geniuses and madmen", which makes this book a little more tragic.
So much so that Mr. Tian Tao, who recommended the preface to this book, appealed: "People born in modern society should give a part of their highest respect for the great scientists and thinkers who were Newton and Einstein, Adam Smith and Keynes in the same hall, to these protagonists in this book." Of course, we understand the synopsis of the book "The Pursuit of Precision", not to appreciate the master's plot layout, nor to revel in another type of heroic narrative, but to stand on the author's shoulders and answer the soul questions that "pursuit of precision" cannot bypass, so as to upgrade our understanding of "pursuit of precision" from the literal meaning to the proper meaning of technological civilization and modern civilization.
◎ From "Mr. Almost" to "Made in China", the "pursuit of precision" has just been solved
If precision manufacturing in the pursuit of precision can almost be equated with modern scientific and technological civilization and material civilization, then "large-scale" as its opposite is undoubtedly the number one enemy that hinders scientific and technological progress. This "big and transformed" is extremely prominent in our culture: ○ The Republican thinker Hu Shi once wrote the article "Biography of "Mr. Almost", which set up a different kind of biography for the Chinese people, and be wary of the sloppy habits of the Chinese people. The result of "almost" and "big and big" is that the pursuit of precise "slogans" prevails, while disdaining technological progress, and even disparages it as "magic and skill".
○Not to mention that after the defeat of the Opium War, the late Qing elites who tried to seek prosperity and strength through the Western Affairs Movement, whether they played the slogan of "mastering and destroying with great skill" or the background of "using the Chinese body in the West", were all contemptuous of the pursuit of precise technological civilization in their bones.
○Even as great as Zhuangzi, he once satirized the machinery that can irrigate a hundred acres of fields in one day: "Whoever has machinery will have something; He who organizes must have an organic heart; If the machine is in the chest, it is pure white; If you are pure white, you will be born uncertainly; He who is born of God is uncertain, and the place of the Word is not contained; I don't know it, I don't know it, I don't know it." However, since the reform and opening up for decades, as we have actively embraced the achievements of human scientific and technological civilization and the rise of "Made in China", "pursuit of precision" has gradually landed into various standards, rules, and engineer culture in various fields from mechanical manufacturing, civil engineering to the Internet.
Although the upgrade road from "Made in China" to "Made in China" is encountering difficulties and dangers, and even the risk of stagnation and switchback, it should not be denied that the "pursuit of precision" at the technical level has indeed undergone unprecedented changes in China. However, as we understand "the pursuit of precision" more deeply, the more we find that what we are familiar with is only the literal meaning of the four words "pursuit of precision", and the pursuit of precision is just a problem solved.
▍ Farewell to "Mr. Almost" is still a long way off
Although the "pursuit of precision" is first and foremost technical, if we stop at this, it is just the "pursuit of precision" of the "almost Mr. version". The pursuit of precision, written by an author who has been titled a historian and thinker, naturally does not stop at the level of "art".
◎ "The pursuit of precision" is not a simple calculation and control, but the adventure of human intelligence accelerating to approach the limit mentioned "pursuit of precision", many people's first reaction is still to control the error of parts of the machinery manufacturing industry, such as screws and bearings, to the minimum, that is, "precision" under the world of Newtonian mechanics. When it comes to the importance of pursuing precision, many people can think of the proverb "one less nail, one country dies", and the story that can be told is only "the White House was burned down by the British army because the guns of the US military at that time were notoriously unreliable." In fact, human pursuit of "precision" has been soaring towards three dimensions since the 20th century:
◇ One is the macroscopic world under Einstein's general theory of relativity - large enough to calculate the speed of celestial bodies traveling tens of thousands of years away;
◇ The second is the microscopic world under quantum mechanics - as small as a 5-nanometer chip, it can actually hold 15.3 billion transistors, and 5 nanometers, only one ten-thousandth of a hair.
◇ The third is the complexity of the whole world - today, in the world we live in, everything can be "accurate", everything is "accurate": quantum clock is accurate time measurement error, GPS positioning is accurate spatial measurement error, nanoscale chip manufacturing is an all-round comprehensive accuracy of environmental impurity control, flatness control, and optical knife accuracy control. The complexity of the world is growing exponentially.
In the precise world of "everything can be", the gap between people, enterprises and enterprises, and countries will no longer be a "quantity" gap, but an "order of magnitude" gap, and once this gap is formed, it will only widen and widen, and it is difficult to catch up. Just take the familiar word "engineer" as an example. In my impression, engineers in the field of engineering and machinery are often synonymous with restraint and dogma, while engineers of Internet giants often laugh at themselves as "code farmers" who are accustomed to "nine ninety-six" and "eat youth".
However, after reading "The Pursuit of Precision", it is not difficult to find that outstanding scientific and technological talents and engineering talents have become more and more complex: outstanding scientists must be passionate and imaginative engineers; Great engineers are destined to be scientists with strong hands-on ability. So it was with Wilkinson, Ford, Henry Royce and their companies, and even more so with Apple, Google, ChatGPT and their engineers.
◎ "The pursuit of precision" is a technique, but also a Tao, but also a value, and the history of human civilization for thousands of years has more evidence of the pre-emptive role of ideology in system and system in civilization. However, the book "In Search of Precision" imprints the words "the ultimate love of precision has shaped the modern world" on the cover. This seems to be contrary to the "institutional determinism", "cultural determinism" and "belief determinism" popular in the social sciences. However, if we follow the questions raised in the book "The Pursuit of Precision" and read classic works such as intensive reading, it is not difficult to find that this feeling of "contradiction" is caused by our deep-seated prejudice against the cognition of "pursuit of precision" - viewing technological civilization as the "body" in the debate of physical use, and the "technique" in the dispute between Tao and art.
In fact, modern civilization contains at least three dimensions: institutional civilization, spiritual/ideological civilization, and technological civilization. The idea of equality and the democratic system were born in the Axis Age more than two thousand years ago, but only in the past two or three hundred years, with the blessing of technological civilization, did they jointly evolve into a highly rationalized modern civilization and a complex modern world. However, what we see most is either the disparagement or demonization of technological civilization, or the separation of technological civilization from other civilizations.
In fact, technological progress has helped humanity solve far more problems than it has caused. This is a statistical problem – the increase in human life expectancy, the decline in deaths due to poverty and disease, and the number and duration of human wars are clear at a glance. More importantly, the role of the "pursuit of precision" technological revolution in promoting social progress has also been greatly underestimated. It is true that technology itself is neutral and has no values. But how was technology born? How does the birth of new technologies drive social progress? Thinking about these questions is itself answering the "battle of the way of magic".
"The soil of freedom is more conducive to the emergence of science and technology", which has long been a consensus at the level of values. So, how does technological progress drive social progress? We know that the progress of society includes the scale and scope of social organization, the degree of complexity, and the degree of humanity. Looking through the cases in the book "The Pursuit of Precision" and reviewing history, it is not difficult to find: ● Without the birth of precision manufacturing opened by "machine tool + steam engine", human production activities may only be limited to small workshops, modern factories will not be born, and large-scale division of labor and cooperation among human beings can only appear in the construction of pyramids for Egyptian pharaohs, rather than in the field of social production. Without the electric revolution and the communication revolution, there would be no large-scale cities, and globalization and global villages would only be a fantasy. ● If it were not for the arrival of the knowledge society spawned by the third scientific and technological revolution, no matter how large the company, the management model might still be the "Ford-style" of bureaucracy + assembly line, rather than the more flat and humanized "Google-style".
In a sense, it can be said that without technological progress, there will be no revolution in management. It can be seen that the promotion of social division of labor and cooperation by technological progress is revolutionary, and it is technology that makes society more and more complex and more civilized. Technological civilization is "art", "Tao", "use", "body", and more importantly, values. Amazingly, the most important things in modern civilization began in a special year: 1776. In 1776, Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations was published; In 1776, the United States was founded; In 1776, another important event was the birth of precision manufacturing - Watt successfully improved the steam engine, and the Industrial Revolution broke out. And this incident is the beginning of the book "The Pursuit of Precision". This may be a coincidence, but the comparison of more than 250 years of modern history and ancient and modern history is enough to show that technological civilization, systems, and ideas never operate alone, but promote and restrict each other. In the long run, where it is backward, all three are backward, and where it is advanced, all three are advanced.
So far, mankind has not yet had a case in which the system and ideas are very advanced, but the technology is very backward. "The soil of freedom is more conducive to the emergence of science and technology" is the basic consensus, but the technological revolution of "pursuing precision" should pay more attention to the role of promoting social progress, which is the clear value of the book "The Pursuit of Precision".
◎ Verification of "the pursuit of precision": the "Great Divergence between East and West" is by no means a historical accident, and there is a famous "Needham's question" in the scientific and intellectual circles: Why did the East, which had a well-designed management/ruling system and a precocious culture, not give birth to modern civilization, and with the outbreak of the Industrial Revolution in the West in the 18th century, there was a great divergence between the East and the West? This issue has long been settled by historians. However, through the investigation of the "pursuit of precision" history, it has been further verified that the great divergence between the East and the West is not an accidental event at a historical moment, but from the moment when Qin Shi Huang unified the six countries, or even earlier in the Spring and Autumn Warring States Period, it was doomed by the respective cultural and historical characteristics of the East and the West.
The spiritual core of "pursuing precision" is the pursuit of science and advocating reason, which is one of the undertones of Western civilization. From the ancient Greek pursuit of geometry and logic axiomatic systems, to the rigorous arguments of medieval Christian theology, to the tradition of scientific experiments pioneered by Bacon and Galileo, after more than two thousand years of accumulation of countless geniuses, it began to explode in the 18th century and got out of control. It can be said that the "pursuit of precision" is the product of the Western rational spirit and the civilization of faith. On the contrary, although traditional China also had the germ of scientific ideas, it even led the world in mathematics, geometry, astronomy, water conservancy and other fields. Among the ideas of hundreds of schools, there are also sporadic ideas of commercial civilization and technological civilization. However, the appeal to the internal Confucian culture, the lack of religious belief in secular philosophy, especially after the completion of the unification of the Qin Dynasty, the high degree of imprisonment of politics, economy, and thought, the germination of science was stifled in the cradle, and the "pursuit of precision" was gradually led to cumbersome etiquette and exquisite ruling techniques.
Great things come from God's reward, not from human plans
"Science discovers God's code, technological invention rewrites God's code, and precision manufacturing reconstructs God's code." This is a sentence that a wise man casually came out of his mouth after listening to the story of the Hubble telescope, Webb telescope, and laser interference gravitational-wave observatory in the book "The Pursuit of Precision". However, such a classic word, just as an evaluation of a few highlight moments in the history of science and technology, is still a little wasted. In fact, this sentence not only speaks of technological civilization, or the protagonist of the pursuit of precision, but also outlines that technological civilization is a complex system and a great ecology.
If you re-read works such as "The Pursuit of Precision" and "Cambridge History of Science" with this sentence, the more important recognition is: from science to technology to products, the more subversive innovation in each field, the closer it is to fuzzy things, they are all geniuses, madmen and fanatics, created with talent, passion, adventure, imagination, which is a typical fuzzy thing, difficult to plan or design. ◎ Dominant "technological civilization" are geniuses, madmen and fanatics, who are often anachronistic and even have serious character or moral flaws.
◇ The discovery of gravity, the three laws of motion, the theory of relativity, quantum theory, these "God codes" is the precursor of every great technological revolution, and these great discoveries should be attributed to scientists. In "The Pursuit of Precision", the author believes that Newton, Turing, the word "genius" can no longer describe them, they can only be "half-man and half-god". However, great as Turing, he could not tolerate the laws and morals of England at that time, and was subjected to chemical castration and led to suicide. (To understand these three "half-human and half-gods" in the history of science, it is recommended to read the most classic biographies of the three: "Einstein's Biography")
◇The inventors of great technologies and products have rewritten the "Code of God" with passion, imagination, ambition to change the world and countless defeats. However, even Jobs, who invented the "apple", was regarded by many engineers as a "paranoid" or an unreasonable "madman". (Understand the representative figure of "genius and madmania" in technological civilization, Jobs, recommended reading) ◇ In addition to scientists and inventors, technological civilization is also inseparable from countless unknown engineering talents and management talents. However, the one who can precisely organize all people, if not the "invisible hand" of the market, can only be God Himself.
◎ Geniuses and fanatics are not cultivated and planned, but precisely to "reduce the harm of the system and culture to them." Genius is a statistical field point in society, not on the statistical mean line. Therefore, genius is not cultivated, but "grown". Looking through "The Pursuit of Precision" and "The Cambridge History of Science", this is also verified - no genius or fanatic is cultivated according to the "so-and-so plan". On the contrary, most are "outliers" of the era. (Reflecting on planning thinking, recommended reading and Why Can't Great Be Planned?) We know that the IQ of human society is normally distributed. The number of geniuses in any society should be proportional to the population of that society, for example, one in ten thousand.
This means that where the ratio of the number of geniuses to the total population is too low, there must be something that seriously restricts or even stifles genius, mainly including: "jealousy, system and culture." Geniuses often have IQ, status and fame that ordinary people cannot match, and in the face of ordinary people, the "jealousy" rooted in the bottom of human nature often turns into "evil" that kills geniuses. ◇The stifling of genius by autocracy has long become a consensus. Today, it is alarming that in modern democracies, standardized production greatly increases efficiency, but it can easily stifle genius, because the market and democracy tend to measure all resources by the same standard. ◇The emergence of geniuses is a typical ambiguous thing, what is needed is to abandon the delusion of "planning" greatness, restrain our jealousy, give geniuses more free and relaxed environment, reduce the system and culture that harms them, and "geniuses" will naturally return to normal distribution.
However, what we see in reality is more mismatch—all kinds of plans to cultivate genius, creative talent—which is using precise methods to solve ambiguous things. ◎ The more "pursuit of precision", the more we should be in awe, the more we must be wary of "mismatch" "In the chip industry, there is a popular saying: do it again, try again, double the power again, and reduce the size by half. Let the word "impossible" become unmentioned, unheard of, and ignored in the chip design and manufacturing industry. (The Pursuit of Precision, p332) According to the great Moore's Law, looking back at the history of the development of transistors, this kind of all-powerful, infinitely precise enterprise seems feasible. The level of human intelligence and creativity has indeed reached the point where they are deeply disturbed and feared.
However, in the last chapter of the book "The Pursuit of Precision", the author quickly switches from the role of historian and pioneer of precision manufacturing to the identity of a thinker, talking about the "necessity of equilibrium", and the author is soberly aware that accuracy has a limit, and once it exceeds the limit, it will be eaten back. This insight not only elevates the book, but also raises a more important and eternal question: only by acknowledging the finite nature of reason can we fundamentally avoid "mismatches" and reduce tragedies and disasters that would otherwise be unnecessary. Today, humans can design infinitely complex and infinitely sophisticated instruments, and even design "intelligent people" and "real virtual worlds", but it is still impossible to explain "who designed the human beings, whose complexity is unknown orders of magnitude higher than Boeing aircraft?" ”
If this is not "nature's forethought", it can only be God's own masterpiece. Great as Newton, after the failure of stock market investment, also sighed that "I can calculate the speed of celestial bodies, but I can't calculate people's hearts". Hayek, known for his insight that "deadly conceit is human," published a book early on warning that human constructive rationality could lead to disaster if it was abused and mismatched into ambiguity. In recent years, some people on the Internet have falsely lamented Einstein's name and lamented that "the end of science is God". Unfortunately, prophets like Newton and Hayek who were aware of reason and its limits will always be the case. Therefore, the more advanced the technology and the more rational it expands, the more it is necessary to return to humanities and faith.
▍Farewell to the "mismatch": a "cognitive puzzle" for the modern world is needed
A "pursuit of precision" between technology, history, and thought, but at the same time, reading, thinking, and promoting it is undoubtedly a real "adventure" for a bookstore specializing in humanities and social science classics - because it is a new work by a best-selling author and explorer, and more importantly, Ren Zhengfei, who has been used as an industrialist's symbol since its publication, defines it as "a good book that has a good role in promoting Chinese industry". The above text is a summary of this expedition, but together with the past reading journey, it has completed a "cognitive puzzle" about the key parts of modern civilization.
● In our inherent thinking and cognition, the importance of "scientific and technological civilization" is seriously underestimated - many people's cognition of "pursuit of precision" is still stuck in the low-level slogan of "excellence", and this is the first reason for the backwardness of science and technology. Therefore, humanistic thought must first embrace scientific and technological civilization, and the primary function of the book "The Pursuit of Precision" is to improve the literacy of our scientific and technological civilization.
Every great achievement in technological civilization contains ambiguous things and precise things, and none of the most critical ambiguous things are planned. Reading the biographies of "Newton, Einstein, Turing" and others (Newton, Alan Turing), as well as works such as "The Pursuit of Precision" and "The Cambridge History of Science", we can only interpret it as God's reward for the talent, love, imagination and adventurous spirit of those geniuses, madmen, and fanatics in history. Therefore, science and technology must return to humanities, and be wary of failures and disasters caused by "great plans and abuse of reason". This is the question raised in the final chapter of The Pursuit of Precision, but it is present throughout the book. It also leads our thinking to the most critical "parts" of the modern world.
It has to be admitted that "great planning and abuse of reason" is the mainstream of human nature - because it is easy to bring a sense of security and sacredness to a few people, and create an illusion that the future is certain. This is the insight of the Scottish Enlightenment (recommended reading "Ten Lectures on Scottish Moral Philosophy"), as well as Hayek and others. Such phenomena are not only common in the business world and in the field of science and technology, but also in the practice of transforming human society with planning. The difference is only in:
◇ In the field of science and technology, whether it is a vague thing or an accurate thing, it is mainly "truth-seeking", so it is falsifiable, correctable, and linear and irreversible. Once Einstein's theory of relativity was born, physics could not go back to Newton's time; Nokia is already good, but "Apple" is born, and it can only go to the history museum. But in the social realm, there are too many variables, and it is difficult to unify standards, and most things are vague. For example, no one denies the values of fairness, freedom, and justice, which are about "goodness." However, everyone defines, understands, and feels about these concepts differently. Therefore, mistakes that have been made are destined to be repeated again.
◇ "Plans" in the fields of science and technology and business are scattered and partial, and even if they are mismatched, the cost and impact are limited. When a person makes a mistake and a company makes a mistake, the result is nothing more than paying for its own failure; But for latecomers, these mistakes are the most valuable stepping stones. On the contrary, the "plan" in the social field - the greater the plan, the more it manifests itself as a large-scale and long-term "social transformation project". However, the larger the scale and the longer the time, the more variables there will be, and the closer to fuzzy things, and fuzzy things cannot be precisely planned. Therefore, for the countless people who have been caught up in the "great plan", this is the tragedy of paying for the mistakes of others, and for the latecomers, because the variables cannot be completely identical, it is difficult to really learn from history.
This is why technology seems neutral and business seems profit-seeking, but it should be given more encouragement and less restrictions; Politics should naturally be good, but it must be checked and balanced for the fundamental reason. However, this kind of "mismatch" has been pouring out throughout the ages. What we can do is to complete the intellectual puzzle of the three "key parts" of the modern world from the cognitive point of view: "Humanities must first embrace science and technology, science and technology must return to humanities, and humanities and science and technology always need the escort of institutional civilization." ”
This is not necessarily what the author of "The Pursuit of Precision" wants/needs to express, but it is what we here and now, when reading the book "The Pursuit of Precision", we have to think about. To this end, we have selected the classic works mentioned many times in this article to help us complete this "cognitive puzzle" (including many prophetic exclusive books), which are placed in the specifications of the book "In Search of Precision" for the convenience of book lovers.
Planning: Manuscript: Prophet Bookstore Manager, Editor: Prophet Bookstore Manager Typesetting: Art: Yu Yang