Stroy 0：Different Cognition

I served a professor from United Kingdom, and I took him around Beijing and talked a lot with him along the way. When he saw similar placards hung on the street, and saw some large characters carved on the Mountain near the Mutianyu Great Wall, then he would ask me what it meant. He also told me that he saw nine dragons on the wall in the Forbidden City and told me: “We think the dragon on the wall represent evil, but Chinese people think it as lucky and good.” We walked many places together, and when he stopped to rest, he said: “It’s amazing!”

The cultural differences between us left me a deep memory, and it was the symbol of dragon that caused me to think about it, and then I thought that the symbol itself would convey a different message to us. Just like what you are looking at, it you don’t understand, you just see a bunch of symbols, and I’m sending you information. I realized that symbols, as the carrier of information, produce a cognitive process between the transmitter and the receiver, but the cognitive results may be inconsistent, which leads to thinking, discussion and debate.

Story 1：Different PROOF

I listened to a course called Program Theory. The teacher mentioned the 3n + 1 conjecture: “The terminating and correctness of this program has not been proven.” Then, a student present immediately raised his and to speak: “Teacher, I can prove it.” The teacher asked him how to prove it. The classmate said: “I wrote a program…”, and then barabara talked a lot. The teacher smiled:” Why don’t you write down the proof process and give it to me. I can help to check whether the proof process is correct.” I realized that the proofs given by teachers and classmate are not the same thing. I think that the proof mentioned by the teacher is a process of drawing conclusions strictly in accordance with certain rules, while the “proof” mentioned by the classmates makes me think: “I tried it and there is nothing wrong with it. If you don’t believe it, try it.”

Story 2：CORRECT Usage

I chatted with a senior in the software industry, and I asked him: “How do we prove that the software developed is correct”. He told me: “You don’t need to prove that the software you developed is correct, you just need enough confidence that it’s done right.” However, where does confidence come from? The predecessor went on to say: “By experimenting and not finding any mistakes, I begin to feel confident that I have done it right. If I continue to experiment with another method and still find no mistakes, my confidence will increase.” Simply say, there is no trial and error, that is “correct”.

Story 3：USELESS Research

I chatted with a senior who was doing research. I thought some research was useless. He told me straightforwardly: “Yes.” What surprised me was that he clearly knew that he was studying “useless” things, but he was able to concentrate and persist in doing it. I realized that “useless” things do not mean things that do not need to be done, but things that have no effect or benefit subjectively found.

My Thoughts

The experience of communicating and discussing with different people has been correcting my cognitive results. What I thought was correct in the past has become less obvious now. I have been thinking about “proof”, “correct” and “useless”, these things make me feel incredible. Somethings, I feel powerless to prove something “right”, and just want to convince myself by not finding a mistake: “Yes! That is it!”. Finally, I sigh with emotion, it is really precious to be able to concentrate on doing “useless” research!