从游泳馆玩水回到家,我重新按说明书走一遍安装 APP 并连接的流程,成功连接后,并没有在手表系统设置页找到快递员所说的 SN 码。于是我去问京东客服这个手表国补订单的签收要求,原来只需要下图中的三张照片,手表背面的 SN 码照片、外包装 SN 码照片、手表背面与外包装 SN 码的合照。手表都不用开机,这快递员估计也是第一次送佳明表的国补订单。
搞定完签收环节,开始捣鼓这块表了。首先外观上,比较厚,塑料质感,没有触屏,五个实体按键,笨笨的感觉。看网友都说戴着比 Apple Watch 要轻,我感觉不出来,差别不大。然后功能上,手机要安装三个 APP ,一个管理运动记录和数据,一个下载安装应用,一个社交。想换个表盘,提示必须在 Garmin Express 中更新手表才能安装,都什么年代了,手表升级个固件还需要在电脑端操作。
因为认知 B 出现了偏差,从而导致了行为 C 的产生。而这个时候,如果人们还能理性地回到事实 A 进行讨论,才能找出认知 B 的偏差点。那么现在,客观世界被包裹进了另一个无限死循环的假设里面:
认知 A+ → 事实 A → 认知 B → 行为 C → 事实 C+ → 证明认知 A+ 正确性
接着《油漆未干是事实还是观点?》里的那个例子,如果在车辆驶向自己的这个事实前面,还存在一个更加底层的认知偏差——即所有人都要害我,在这种假设情况下,事实 A 已经不复存在了,已经完全变成了当事人的主观世界,所以他可以轻松地断定正在对向行驶的车就是要撞死自己所以他躲过了,从而创造了一个「我躲过了汽车所以我没死」的客观事实 C+,更加证明了他认为所有人都要害自己。
但是呢,因为我跟这个人有另一个共同好友,他们私下的关系更亲密,不如我跟这位创作者中间隔着一层「他是经验更丰富的创作者」的身份。所以从这个共同好友这里,我又看到了另一个视角的「他」。他其实非常「恐惧」AI,所以他拒绝使用 AI,认为 AI 会破坏创作者的灵感,使得作品变得更没有人情味。所以他会对创作会里其他成员使用 AI 作为辅助工具的行为非常反感,甚至到震怒的地步。他会一直强调 AI 的想象力不及人类,所以要避免依赖 AI。但是这段时间,随着 AI 创作视频、文字甚至剧本的能力,他所在的行业开始遭受冲击,于是把这份怒火转移到了所有使用 AI 的「人类」身上。
当然啦,这个视角的信息我并没有向他透露过「我知道」,所以大部分时间我还是装成是一个也在利用 AI 创作的傻逼以满足他的爹味。
回到最开始他说的那句话,没意思的不是人类,而是那些认为 AI 有意思的人才是最没意思的。但是还有半句话:
爱惜羽毛的前提是你得是只老鹰
魔镜魔镜告诉我
朋友说,有人和我一样做着日更的博客。我看了看,AI 味浓得不能再浓了,AI 搭框架、自己扩写一部分,连小标题的 emoji 都懒得修改一下。人的逻辑不可能这么好的核心原因,是人类大部分时候采用的是归纳法,但是 AI 使用的是演绎法,人类要使用演绎法就会建立在大量的「经历」与「底层逻辑」上面,而每一个人的经历是独一无二的,都可以拆解到闪光点。
人类思维的美妙,就在于经验通常是不完美且带有主见的,绝对中立客观的不是人类,而是自我驯化出来的人类,跟秉持中庸之道等着别人先选择的人一样。或者说,人不是不能做到客观,而是在看见客观的自己时,先有一个不客观的人站在了镜子前面,才可以分裂成三个人,站在镜子前的自己(个体)、镜子里的自己(幻想)和正在观察自己照镜子的自己(客观)。缺失了任何一个,演绎法的逻辑链都会断裂;但是 AI 不是照镜子得出的结论,是回应了照镜子的人最想听到的答案。
If your executive calendar is packed back to back, you have no room for fires, customers, or serendipities. You've traded all your availability for efficiency. That's a bad deal.
Executives of old used to know this! That's what the long lunches, early escapes to the golf course, and reading the paper at work were all about. A great fictional example of this is Bert Cooper from Mad Men. He knew his value was largely in his network. He didn't have to grind every minute of every day to prove otherwise. His function was to leap into action when the critical occasion arose or decision needed to be made.
But modern executives are so insecure about seeming busy 24/7 that they'll wreck their business trying to prove it. Trying to outwork everyone. Sacrificing themselves thin so they can run a squirrel-brain operation that's constantly chasing every nutty idea.
Now someone is inevitably going to say "but what about Elon!!". He's actually a perfect illustration of doing this right, actually. Even if he works 100-hour weeks, he's the CEO of 3 companies, has a Diablo IV addiction, and keeps a busy tweeting schedule too. In all of that, I'd be surprised if there was more than 20-30h per company per week on average. And your boss is not Elon.
Wide open calendars should not be seen as lazy, but as intentional availability. It's time we brought them back into vogue.
Ideals are supposed to be unattainable for the great many. If everyone could be the smartest, strongest, prettiest, or best, there would be no need for ideals — we'd all just be perfect. But we're not, so ideals exist to show us the peak of humanity and to point our ambition and appreciation toward it.
This is what I always hated about the 90s. It was a decade that made it cool to be a loser. It was the decade of MTV's Beavis and Butt-Head. It was the age of grunge. I'm generationally obliged to like Nirvana, but what a perfectly depressive, suicidal soundtrack to loser culture.
Naomi Wolf's The Beauty Myth was published in 1990. It took a critical theory-like lens on beauty ideals, and finding it all so awfully oppressive. Because, actually, seeing beautiful, slim people in advertising or media is bad. Because we don't all look like that! And who's even to say what "beauty" is, anyway? It's all just socially constructed!
The final stage of that dead-end argument appeared as an ad here in Copenhagen thirty years later during the 2020 insanity:
I passed it every day biking the boys to school for weeks. Next to other slim, fit Danes also riding their bikes. None of whom resembled the grotesque display of obesity towering over them on their commute from Calvin Klein.
While this campaign was laughably out of place in Copenhagen, it's possible that it brought recognition and representation in some parts of America. But a celebration of ideals it was not.
That's the problem with the whole "representation" narrative. It proposes we're all better off if all we see is a mirror of ourselves, however obese, lazy, ignorant, or incompetent, because at least it won't be "unrealistic". Screw that. The last thing we need is a patronizing message that however little you try, you're perfect just the way you are.
No, the beauty of ideals is that they ask more of us. Ask us to pursue knowledge, fitness, and competence by taking inspiration from the best human specimens.
Thankfully, no amount of post-modern deconstruction or academic theory babble seems capable of suppressing the intrinsic human yearning for excellence forever. The ideals are finally starting to emerge again.