2.a 起点

Make Time Your Friend 2.a: The Starting Point

> By Li Xiaolai · 2008-05-18 · [Original (web archive)](https://web.archive.org/web/20111113110816/http://www.lixiaolai.com/archives/424.html) (Chinese)
> Our translation from the Chinese original.

As a human being, the most astonishing experience you might have in this life is nothing other than discovering this magical phenomenon: we can, of all things, use our brains to control our brains.

We can use a hammer to drive nails. However, we can't hammer a hammer with a hammer, nor nail a nail with a nail. The relationship between the brain and thinking is far, far more complex than the relationship between a hammer and a nail. We use our brains to think, yet the way we think and the results of our thinking are often influenced by the way and results of our previous thinking, and at the same time will influence the way and results of our next step of thinking.

A single sentence can show both how complex our thinking can get and how limited language and writing sometimes are—"We can even think about whether our ways of thinking and the results of our thinking are truly reasonable ways of thinking and results of thinking."

Just a few minutes is enough to let us feel that we, surprisingly, possess unimaginably powerful mental strength—this is the first step in opening our minds and carefully cultivating, developing and adjusting our own mental strength.

> Examining ourselves, using our own minds, we will know that each person can divide themselves into two parts: what they themselves know and what they themselves do not know. Sometimes we do not know ourselves. For example, everyone has had this experience: suddenly one day someone you care about a lot says to you, "How can you be so selfish!" At such a moment you are very hurt—even if people are selfish by nature, you have always been entirely selfless toward him, because you yourself know that you really do care about him very much. Yet his assessment now may well show that there is a part of you that you yourself do not know. And the example above may also show another thing: each person can divide themselves into two parts in another way: what others know and what others do not know.
>
> | | | |
> | --- | --- | --- |
> | You | Known to yourself | Not known to yourself |
> | Known to others | | |
> | Not known to others | | |
>
> Perhaps for everyone, the most hidden part of themselves is the shaded area in the table above: the self that you don't know and others don't know either. [Translator's note: the table as captured in the snapshot shows no shading]
>
> Now, as for what exactly "the you that you yourself don't understand and others don't understand either" is, and what significance there is in figuring out exactly what it is, that isn't important here for the moment. What really matters is: **you now, of all things, merely by your mind, know of the existence of a self of yours that you originally didn't know—the one "you don't know and others don't know either"!**

The differences in mind between people are unimaginably huge. In Chinese there are expressions describing this: people are always "looking without seeing" and "hearing without listening"; in English there is also this saying: "People talking without speaking, People hearing without listening……" In fact, what they all ultimately describe are behavioral phenomena that differ in form but come from the same essence, produced by most people's lack of ability to use their minds.

While some people can't even understand geometry and algebra, others can, merely by their minds, imagine hypercubes that cannot be observed in reality; while some people can't figure out in their whole lives what classical physics is all about, others can, merely by their minds, work out where exactly the starting point of time is[[1](#footnote_0_424 "Although some people disagree, Hawking holds that the starting point of time is the instant of the Big Bang; before that, time did not exist; and even if it existed, it had no meaning at all—*A Brief History of Time*.")] ; while some people, after buying stocks, stare at the analysis charts every day at a loss, others can, merely by their minds, grasp the macro and even micro trends of the economy and then make appropriate investment decisions.

A person with a very high IQ might be described by us as "clever." However, when a person's mental strength is very powerful, we often use another word to describe them—"wise." What we often call "wisdom" often has nothing to do with IQ—this explains why someone can use his "cleverness" to successfully earn a doctorate, yet may be taken in by a con for lack of enough "wisdom"—even though what he runs into may be a con that has already existed in this world for hundreds or thousands of years. So people are always in the habit of adding the word "little" in front of "cleverness," while in front of "wisdom" they are in the habit of adding the word "great."

If we can use our brains to control our brains, then we should use our brains to control our brains—in fact, this is precisely the difference between us and monkeys, even though it is said that humans evolved from monkeys[[2](#footnote_1_424 "In fact, Darwin never said that humans evolved from monkeys. What Darwin meant was that humans and monkeys evolved from a common ancestor.")] . Human DNA differs from chimpanzee DNA by only 1.6%, while human DNA differs from gorilla DNA by 2.2%. Chimpanzee and gorilla DNA differ by 0.6%; how long would that take to evolve? Scientists infer that chimpanzees branched off about 4 million years ago, and gorillas about 6 million years ago. Evolution took 2 million years to make up a difference of 0.6%.

Psychologists believe that what makes humans human is that we have a special "frontal lobe" of the brain; precisely because of this, we have an ability that other animals can hardly have—the "ability to reflect"—which is perhaps precisely the concrete expression of the less-than-3% difference between humans and monkeys. [Translator's note: the original writes 大脑额页 ("frontal page of the brain"), a slip for 大脑额叶, "frontal lobe"; there is also no punctuation after it; translated by the intended sense] Humans, having the ability to reflect, eventually acquired language, invented writing, developed the ability to think logically, and in the end came to possess powerful mental strength.

Once you understand that you can, of all things, use your own brain to control your own brain, you only need to firmly remember one fact to keep making progress from the starting point. The fact is: things or principles in this world can by and large be divided into the following four cases:

1. Actually right, and we also think it right
2. Actually wrong, but we think it right
3. Actually right, but we think it wrong
4. Actually wrong, and we also think it wrong

As shown in the figure below:

> | | | |
> | --- | --- | --- |
> | Some things/principles | Actually right | Actually wrong |
> | We think right | 1 | 2 |
> | We think wrong | 3 | 4 |

So, in the first and fourth cases, we are safe; however, in the second or third case, we will inevitably face danger, and may well pay a painful price for our own errors of cognition.

But in any case, firmly remembering the fact itself that "our cognition not only may, but indeed often does, depart from reality" is already enough to guarantee that we keep making progress—by understanding this fact we already have a good mechanism for self-reflection. [Translator's note: the original writes 足已, a slip for 足以, "enough to"; translated by the intended sense]

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Footnotes:

1. Although some people disagree, Hawking holds that the starting point of time is the instant of the Big Bang; before that, time did not exist; and even if it existed, it had no meaning at all—*A Brief History of Time*. [[↩](#identifier_0_424)]
2. In fact, Darwin never said that humans evolved from monkeys. What Darwin meant was that humans and monkeys evolved from a common ancestor. [[↩](#identifier_1_424)]

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