Do you know that you have been "dimensionally reduced attacked"?

When I heard the word "dimensionality reduction attack", a dark light passed by, which made people feel frightened...

"Dimensionality reduction attack", a term popularized by Liu Cixin's science fiction novel "The Three-Body Problem", refers to the high-dimensional world falling to low dimensions from the point of impact, and perishing due to the loss of one dimension. For example, when a spacecraft loses altitude, it is like ice cream on hot invisible glass. It melts rapidly from the bottom and turns into an extremely thin layer. The energy is instantly released like a flame spreading on the flat surface - the spacecraft changes from three-dimensional to three-dimensional. Being reduced to two dimensions, the boat and the people on it became two-dimensional information, all of which were preserved. Once the "Dimensionality Reduction Attack" is launched, it will spread rapidly to the entire world. If it cannot escape at the speed of light, no one will be spared.

Such an attack method is very scary, but it is commonplace when it occurs. It does not seem dangerous at all. It has nothing to do with the word "attack". Just like that fatal but ordinary day in the Garden of Eden, the snake Shi Shiran chatted with Eve: "How can God Is it true that you are not allowed to eat from any tree in the garden?”

▲The cover of the English version of the science fiction novel "The Three-Body Problem". The term "dimensionality reduction attack" became popular because of the novel's popularity around the world.

Why is it said that people have been "dimensionally reduced"?

What everyone has in common is the pursuit of happiness. The so-called success, love, etc. that everyone longs for are actually just ways to achieve happiness. However, after generations of pursuit, happiness is still elusive or short-lived. Some philosophers and thinkers have summarized it in dignified language. For example, the German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860) once said that people "It is difficult to find happiness within oneself, but impossible to find it outside oneself." "Life is like a pendulum that swings back and forth between pain and boredom." The Irish writer Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) echoed this: "There are only two human tragedies: one is not getting what you want, the other is getting it."

Jack London—a famous American writer who rose from poverty to blue-collar success and believed that money and success would bring all satisfaction. He studied writing with unparalleled motivation and diligence, but after the successful banquet, he felt quite disappointed and sighed: I climbed to the top of the mountain, and the scene was not very beautiful. This is the voice of many successful people.

The lamentation in the field of personal life may be even more helpless. Human beings pursue love one after another, but those who only want to hold hands and grow old together often find that marriage, which they thought was a palace of happiness, turns out to be a "siege" or even a "prison" created by outsiders who want to get in; those Marriage for the sake of marriage, marriage for security, conformity, survival, etc., is of even worse quality.

▲German philosopher Schopenhauer said: "Life is like a pendulum swinging back and forth between pain and boredom."

There are also people who use human beings' ability to predict the future and see such results in the distance on the road to success and "happiness". Therefore, they have no motivation to pursue, and "it is over before it even begins." They will get to the bottom of things and ask a question: "Why?" or "And then?" If they ask a few more "And then" questions, they will lose motivation. These people are often seekers of ultimate meaning, so they are "looking for trouble" and are not satisfied with food, clothing, fame and fame.

Human beings seem to have an extraordinary need for the meaning of life. People who feel the meaning of life have an advantage in longevity, fighting against diseases and difficulties, and gaining quality of life. On the other hand, people tend to feel dissatisfied whether they are successful or not, whether they have love or not. They either find philosophy, or have some philosophical thoughts; or they find God, or awaken the sleeping religious consciousness in their hearts; or they are cynical, enjoy themselves, or find alcohol, drugs, etc. Many people who find philosophy often find deeper emptiness and depression. They feel what Milan Kundera put it in a nutshell: "the unbearable lightness of life." Happiness is even more out of reach.

And if bad means are used to achieve success, most people will have an "unknown" judge appear in the face of conscience, and hear the accusation in a voice that only the person can hear. Hong Hanyi, the biggest drug lord who once lived in black and white in Hong Kong, suffered from severe depression, could not sleep, and wanted to commit suicide in the days when he had many wives and concubines and countless money. And this is not a "problem" of modern people. The Bible, Ecclesiastes, says, “There is nothing new under the sun.”

This peculiar sense of dissatisfaction in people has led to many peculiar psychological phenomena. Many people have expressed it in appropriate language. For example, the American artist Faith Ringgold said: "Less is better than less." Less; and more, is not enough.” Marty Rubin described this dissatisfaction as “the feeling that something is missing when nothing is lacking.”

"It feels like something is missing when there is nothing missing." What a tragedy. Why do people do this? Why being busy for survival or success is like a kind of wandering that has temporary and specific goals but no ultimate destination - wandering among people, work, sex, drugs, entertainment, etc., but there is always an inexplicable unexplained feeling in the heart. Satisfied, but I don’t know why.

▲Human beings pursue love one after another, but those who only want to hold hands and grow old together often find that marriage, which they thought was a palace of happiness, turns out to be a "sieged city."

“If we find ourselves with a desire that this world cannot satisfy, the most likely explanation is that we were created for another world.” Thinker, writer, and Oxford University scholar CS Lewis said.

So, where is the "other world" he mentioned?

Or is that world our "past"?

In the early morning of human history, God breathed His breath into the body of the first ancestor Adam in the Garden of Eden, and man thus became a "living spirit"—because God is spirit, self-existing and eternal, and man created in the image of God has God. The spirit also has eternal consciousness. Then God commanded people: "You may freely eat from any tree of the garden, but you shall not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for in the day you eat from it you will surely die!" (Genesis 2:6 , 16-17)

"In the day you eat you will surely die"? Adam didn't die immediately? Is what God says inaccurate? Or do we not understand?

This "fruit of the knowledge of good and evil" has somehow become what later generations call an apple, and the "tree of the knowledge of good and evil" has also become the "tree of knowledge", as if God is an anti-intellect and a dictatorial emperor who likes to rule by ignorant people. In other words, once people judge good and evil according to their own standards, they no longer rely on God. This independence is a separation from God, the source of the soul. Therefore, in the Garden of Eden, "a cool breeze blows from the sky" and "death" Coming quietly, the curse enveloped the entire land. But this "death" may not be exactly what we call "death".

In "Three-Body", what causes the dimensionality reduction of the earth is a weapon called two-way foil - a piece of paper the size of a credit card, has no thickness, no color, looks harmless and powerless; however, once it is activated, it touches The world he touched immediately became two-dimensional, with only two dimensions left.

When it comes to the body alone, we have the three dimensions of length, width and height, but as a human being as a whole, we have the "dimensions" of spirit, soul, and body. In the Garden of Eden, the serpent spoke softly, which seemed reasonable and harmless, but it caused humans to lose their spiritual dimension and become isolated from God. The reason why people feel that life is just "swaying back and forth between pain and boredom" is actually because of the emptiness and indescribable nostalgia after the loss of the spiritual dimension. Is it because of the melancholy left in the heart by forgotten memories, reminding us: we once There has been an extremely significant loss.

Nowadays, many people are looking for the location of the Garden of Eden. As a layman in archeology, I wonder: Is it possible to find a paradise where God actually walked in by adding a spiritual dimension?

▲On the one hand, humans are trapped in the digital world and are digitally alienated. After losing the spiritual dimension, they are further destroyed in the soul dimension; on the other hand, robots are becoming increasingly smart and gradually possess human emotions, thoughts and other "souls". ” latitude. Will they replace people? Will it become the most terrifying foreign threat to mankind besides nuclear weapons?

Today’s internal disturbances and external worries

His mother called out from outside the room: "Xiao Gang, it's time to eat!" Xiao Gang didn't answer and continued to play with his mobile phone. He was a high school student, and his room was very messy. An apple was half-hidden under a pile of clutter and paper, and it was ripe to the point of rottenness. His parents were anxious and at a loss because Xiaogang had been diagnosed with severe depression, and they were afraid that if they behaved inappropriately, his condition would be aggravated.

Xiaogang is just one of the representatives of Generation I (born after the mid-1990s)1. This generation, the future owners, grew up with smartphones and are more anxious, depressed and lonely than the previous three generations, and have a higher rate of mental illness. According to research, children who play with computers and mobile phones for more than two hours are most likely to develop mental illness. But how many children are immersed in the digital world for more than five hours a day and have lost sight of real life?

If the loss of spiritual dimension makes human beings low-dimensional, then adults and children who have been immersed in the digital world for a long time seem to have also been digitized, and the human soul (psychological) dimension is being destroyed. This is the "internal disturbance" in which people are attacked structurally.

At the same time, technological development is in full swing, and artificial intelligence research has reached the fourth wave, reaching full automation and intelligence (such as driverless driving, industrial automation), and artificial intelligence in a small data environment.

And robots are indeed doing some incredible things. For example, Xiaomingbot, the robot writer used by "Toutiao" in mainland China, wrote more than 20,000 articles in four months from August 2016 to the end of December 2017. Reporting on sports, real estate and international hot news around the clock, with an average of seven articles per hour, with a reading rate of 16%, which is the same as the reading rate of articles written by real reporters; but Zhang Xiaoming has great advantages in speed and flexibility of length, making " The investment cost of "Today's Toutiao" has been greatly reduced.

After the famous AlphaGo defeated the human Go champion, it lost to the rising star AlphaGo Zero - a robot that knows deep learning. It defeated the previous champion with a record of 100-0 in three days.

There is also IBM’s Watson technology. The New Zealand company that produced the prototype of the movie "Avatar" hired Rachel as a "digital" employee. The first thing the boss does every week is to spend an hour talking to her and listen to her advice, because she is beautiful and will tell him: Boss, what is happening here, how is the market there, what should you pay attention to. Moreover, she is gentle and intelligent. She is a robot but not like a robot. If you were an employee of his company, would you panic? Do you feel like the troops behind you are unstoppable, and there is no way or direction in front of you?

Alexa launched by Amazon is an intelligent machine that gets along with people day and night. It can know your and my shopping habits, help you find recipes, and can also say hello to you with a "gentle-like" mechanical voice when you walk around in the middle of the night. Do you have Alexa at home?

People will inevitably doubt: "Can robots acquire the same emotions as humans through deep learning capabilities? Will such emotions be independent of humans? Once they go against humans, how can humans be their opponents?!"

On the one hand, human beings are trapped in the digital world and are digitally alienated. After losing the spiritual dimension, they are further destroyed in the soul dimension. On the other hand, robots are becoming increasingly smart and gradually possess human emotions, thoughts and other "souls". dimensions. Will they replace people? Will it become the most terrifying foreign threat to mankind besides nuclear weapons?

Are we digging our own graves? Where should technology be?

As the issue of restraining North Korea's nuclear weapons continues to evolve in the international political arena, influential figures in the technological arena have not turned a blind eye to the crisis. Apple CEO Tim Cook said in January 2018 that technology should not be overused, so he would not allow his nephew to use social networks. A former Facebook executive recently said social media "is ruining the functioning of society," and one of the iPhone's inventors said Apple and other tech companies need to do more to address the problem. 2

At the same time, many knowledgeable people, including educators and parents, are advocating limited use of mobile phones and other mobile platforms. These efforts are related to the health of people, especially the i-generation, to the families they will form and their descendants, and thus to the future of mankind.

Regarding robots, some people in the industry believe that we do not need to panic, although the problems caused should serve as a wake-up call. According to Li Lei, technical director of artificial intelligence experiments at Toutiao, it is currently difficult for writing robots to generate in-depth content. Their reasoning capabilities and understanding of natural language are still limited, and they cannot yet be personalized for different readers.

But can these bring us comfort?

▲Awe, as a human emotion as old as human history, has only become an object of scientific research today. It is a "frontier" waiting for scientific research exploration and discovery. This shows that human cognition lags behind in the mysteries of life.

Awe—the “frontier” of scientific research

Happology, which is as emerging as artificial intelligence, uses scientific methods such as brain scanning to study people's happiness, and has discovered an interesting "frontier" position - awe.

Dacher Keltner, a professor of psychology at the University of California, Berkeley, co-authored an article with Jonathan Haidt, a professor of social psychology at New York University, in 2003, "Approaching Awe: A Virtue, Spirituality, and Aesthetics" "Approaching awe: a moral, spiritual, and aesthetic emotion" (Approaching awe: a moral, spiritual, and aesthetic emotion), this article is often cited and has catalyzed many serious scientific research projects and results on the theme of awe.

Awe is defined in scientific literature as: "The feeling that occurs when a person faces an entity that is grand, higher than oneself, and beyond the existing knowledge structure." This means that you need to re-understand the world and your own position.

Awe, as a human emotion as old as human history, has only become an object of scientific research today. It is a "frontier" waiting for scientific research exploration and discovery. This shows that human cognition lags behind in the mysteries of life. The good news is that it is making progress after all. In the past two decades, various heroes of psychology have made their own discoveries. The common point is that they all believe that awe can not only prevent depression and increase people's happiness and joy; it can also increase curiosity about knowledge and make people feel real and profound. The earth is humble and healthier for it. New psychophysiological research also suggests that disruption of cytokines is bad news for a person's health, but a sense of awe can counteract it.

"Know thyself," said Socrates. But it’s not easy for humans to know themselves! People have been trying to be self-reliant and abandoning God; but after going full circle, they discovered that the pursuit of happiness cannot be separated from meaning and cannot be separated from awe. Without awe and ultimate meaning, human life loses an indescribable taste, so that there is always the feeling of "thinking that nothing is lacking but feeling that something is missing." In the Garden of Eden, the snake's clever tongue gently The "dimensionality reduction attack" launched makes people lose their spiritual dimension. This dimension is ridiculed by many people and considered unreal. This is not surprising, since the five senses are used to perceive things in the physical dimension, they cannot perceive the lost spiritual dimension. Unless God opens it specially for people, only "faith" can reach that dimension, and only a thirsty and open mind can receive the signal waves it sends.

▲The words in the Bible become our enlightenment every day.

There are some records of this special opening in the Bible. For example, the king of Syria fought against the Israelites and besieged the city to capture Elisha, the prophet who supported the king of Israel. Elisha's servant cried out, Alas! Elisha said, "Don't be afraid! More are with us than with them." And asked God to let him see. Then the servant saw a mountain full of chariots of fire and horses of fire surrounding Elisha.

Such openings still exist today. Hong Hanyi, the gangster leader mentioned earlier, also saw hell and heaven because of the favor he received, and realized that the true loyalty to his younger brothers is to tell them where his life belongs. As a result, he changed from a gangster to a priest, changed his past and became a human being again.

"The Three-Body Problem" describes that when the three-dimensional civilization of the earth is reduced to two dimensions, if you want to escape, you must be in a spaceship with the speed of light. Intelligence, rights, interests, cultivation, and good deeds are all useless. Christ said that as the way, the truth, and the life, He is the only way to and back to God. It seems overbearing, but what if He is the only "spaceship with the speed of light"?

"The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom." The Bible, as a letter home, calls people to reconnect with God and return to their homeland by accepting the propitiation of Christ. Can current scientific research help people wake up and come back? Are people willing to use the propitiation of Christ to be saved from the "space shuttle" of the "dimensionality reduction attack"?

"The heavens declare the glory of God; the firmament declares his handiwork." (Psalm 19:1) When we face the depth, subtlety, or beauty that is beyond our reach, the surprise and trembling of our hearts can become clues and signposts to guide us. Do we return to God, our Creator?

Note:
1. For information about the i-generation, please refer to Mu Su’s article "Does Your Family Have the i-Generation?" in Issue 51 of this magazine. Draw three circles and three lines>
2.         http://www.businessinsider.com/apple-ceo-tim-cook-doesnt-let-nephew-use-social-media-2018-1

Li Wenping: Traveler—a journey of body, mind and spirit. The journey is also the purpose.