Category: Uncategorized

Yes We Humans Are Vulnerable as Always

Coincidentally, a few incidences involving people’s death/missing happened during the last weekend and became headlines around the world.

In the US, massive shoot developed in a Pittsburgh synagogue, leading to at least 11 deaths.

In Chongqing, China, a bus ran off a bridge into deep water of Yangtze River with an estimate of 15 on board.

In Indonesia, a Boeing-737 MAX with Lion Air crashed into the sea after took off with 189 people on the plane and 0 survivor has been found so far.

[May those taken from us rest in peace]

While there are different reasons (or direct causes) behind these tragedies, they all reminded us of how vulnerable our species is. Technology and society advancements have their own ways of going wrong.

Our ancestors don’t have much direct advantages to survive their world; yet we have conquered and shaped our planet to an ever increasing degree over our history. We can protect ourselves from stronger animals which would otherwise make us their food; we can fight destructive fires which would otherwise burn our settlements; we can cure those deadly pandemics which would otherwise wipe out half of a continent’s population or even an entire regional population…

However, things made to combat threats could go wild and we can’t resist.

The tools we created and the capabilities we built into them dwarf our physical/natural abilities. We are not very much improved genetically as a species over the last 1 million years (and not very much different from genus Pan as genus Home).

Naturally we can’t survive a gunshot and can’t find a way out under deep water from a closed room (e.g. bus, plane).

Although life expectancy has gone from 20 to 40 to 80 and may go to 160 in the future, we are still humans.

Sometimes we just need to forget all those achievements and just be human.

Life is valuable because it is limited. May everyone of us enjoy it.

Reading List 上线

今天上线了reading list页面，先把之前微信上发过的2016和2017年读书小记里的书放上去了。今年的读书小记也在准备着，计划15-18本吧。

今天还想聊聊几点我对书的看法。

首先，文字是人类无与伦比的发明之一，是人类积累盈余知识的关键起点。大多数写下来的东西更精炼，更深思熟虑。knowing that写下来的东西可能被保存很久，被很多人看，会是作者更慎重、更花心思地准备写作。

在大部分情况下，微信里的文字总是比语音要更高效，对于接受信息一方而言。理论上来说，图片和视频比文字包含的信息量是要高很多数量级。但高效地使用文字，是我们训练了千年的技能；图片也算比较熟练，尤其现代人类对于infographics的运用又上了一个台阶，使得图片的信息传递效率提高了很多；但视频作为比较新的载体，似乎还在发展初期，相信它会成为新一代高效率信息载体。

一个我选书的规律 – 我似乎偏好那些作者已不在世的书。经过历史沉淀是一方面，流传下来的应该比创作出来的所有书的平均水准要高。另一方面，我似乎更信任这些书 – 我信任那些要把自己最精华的思想留给后人的作者。我不否认书在当代就应该有价值，但平均而言，想着要把书流传下去的作者平均水准会比所有作者的平均水准要高。或者说我是更喜欢读相对无私的书？anyway，这是我觉得书籍中的bias，所以按照这样的逻辑，应该是能找到更有趣更有价值更不一般的书。

2016年及之前，也没有很在意中英文这个问题。2017年开始，更加注重原版 – 如果原版是我能读懂的，我很坚持地要去看原版 （也就只能看懂英文和中文…）。我觉得这更能贴近作者的本义，也防止翻译中的loss of information之类。我也承认，有一些翻译的人是很厉害的，有的翻译甚至能给书加上一层厚度，二次创作。但平均来看，还是原版更值得一读。一种语言就是一个社会；有些独特的文化，只有借助相应的语言才能准确表达；哪怕一个词语的消失，也意味着文化的一角缺失了。