Chapter 107

Academician Ding heard their dialogue and turned back.

He sighed softly, "do you think it's funny and powerless? These days, we have been discussing how to repair the technical hidden dangers left by our predecessors. But there are greater hidden dangers around us, as well as social and cultural hidden dangers. "

"I don't know how many hidden dangers are hidden in our civilization. Ethnic conflicts and ideological conflicts, any small problem, may lead to big problems. Even if the decision-makers know, they don't know how to solve it... "

"Do you know how much we have paid to develop space? We can't stop development because of some hidden dangers. "

It is difficult to predict what will happen in the next tens of thousands of years.

But what can we do? Without these people, how long will the development of Europa be extended?

Many people on earth may never know that some people are paying silently for their beautiful days.

Zhang Yuan sighed deeply and nodded.

The vision limitation of human beings is only their own life. From the perspective of Informatics, most political policies are arranged according to the "greedy algorithm", that is, the local optimal solution in the current state.

Future interests should make way for immediate interests.

It is beyond the limit of human wisdom to plan for thousands or tens of thousands of years.

He won't be sentimental about it. Even if he is the decision-maker himself, he can only choose this way.

Since it exists, it must be reasonable.

The more complex and developed a civilization is, the less powerful an individual will be. Even if he is the leader of the coalition government, what can he do? In today's society, various forces have constraints on each other, and there are many things that can't be changed by one person.

At this point, elder martial brother Zhao suddenly said, "in terms of future development, there is a profound and complex discipline in the new civilization school, which is still in the dream so far, called new civilization historiography. I don't know if you've heard of it."

"New civilization history? History? " Zhang Yuan didn't hear the term for the first time, but he didn't know much. His ears stood up curiously.

Zhao Qingfeng smiled. "This subject is very complex. If you explain it in one sentence, you want to find the global optimal solution of civilization, rather than a simple greedy algorithm step by step."

"Let me give you an example. The development of civilization is actually very similar to the process of personal growth."

In ancient times, due to the poor living environment, a teenager would be pulled to work as long as he had a little strength. Although it meets the current survival needs, it also stifles future interests. This training method is called "local optimal solution strategy", that is, only consider the present, not the future.

In the modern environment, a teenager will receive compulsory education. Education seems to have no current interests, just pure pay. However, the knowledge learned will play a greater social value only when a person grows up.

A person's life span is only a short hundred years, and there are a large number of samples. It is not difficult to make overall planning and find a relatively good solution in the sense of life.

But what about a civilization?

Civilization is a collective of all the population. It itself has extremely high complexity. Its life span is thousands of years, which completely exceeds the life span of a single human. How to make an overall plan?

But this is what new civilization historiography wants to study.

"In the early stage of the development of civilization, with a small population and backward science and technology, there is a risk of premature death. Equivalent to human infancy. "

"Baby, you know? The world outlook and values are not mature. Therefore, a civilization is also the most plastic in the early stage of development. "

"What about us... We inherited a large inheritance." Zhang Yuan said with a smile, "is it the kind of rich second-generation baby?"

"You're right." Elder martial brother Zhao's expression became serious: "of course, we have a deeper foundation, which is equivalent to the rich second generation, but it doesn't mean that we can spend recklessly."

"What do you think is the most important thing for a civilization?"

"Technology, of course!" Zhang Yuan immediately replied.

Elder martial brother Zhao smiled and made an expression of "I knew you would say that".

Then he shook his head: "technology is the external skill of civilization. External skill, you know? The kind that can be done quickly as long as you are willing to work hard. "

Zhang Yuan frowned and said, "quick?"? The development of science and technology is not so easy... "

"The quick success here refers to Xiaocheng. If some simple technologies are not limited to patents, it should not be difficult for other countries to imitate them?"

"OK..." Zhang Yuan accepted this statement for the time being.

"For a civilization, what is more important is internal skills, including cultural environment, political system, people's ideology, etc. These things need to be cultivated slowly. It is basically impossible to achieve them quickly."

"These internal skills actually determine the upper limit of the development of science and technology, that is, the key research content of the history of new civilization."

Zhang Yuan has never been very interested in politics, but influenced by various cultural courses in college, he also knows a little.

Like some countries in South America and Africa, people's ideology tends to enjoy themselves and pay attention to being satisfied when they are full. Under this relatively lazy ideology, the whole country is naturally difficult to develop and can only be the place of production of raw materials.

In the East Asian cultural circle, people have a strong sense of hardship and are willing to fight for a better tomorrow, even if they can endure some hardship for the happiness of the next generation.

Therefore, in this humanistic environment, it is historical inevitability for these countries to go to the forefront of the world.

So why is there a completely different human environment?

"The new civilization historiography you mentioned should be biased towards liberal arts?"

"No! You are wrong. Its ultimate essence is mathematics! "

"Ah?!" Zhang Yuan stared in surprise. He didn't know why.

Elder martial brother Zhao smiled, "... According to the viewpoint of new civilization history, the inherent history of the whole civilization is divided into a large number of key nodes, and each node contains major historical accidents at that time. The history of the previous node will have a certain impact on the latter node and the whole network. "

"You can think of it as a neural network."

This idea is very intuitive and easy for Zhang Yuan to understand.

"When there are few key nodes in the early stage of civilization, the final output of the network is easy to be changed, that is, a single great man can have a great impact on it."

"However, with the increase of population base, information and culture, there are more and more network nodes, and a single genius will have less and less impact on the whole network."