.......

Let's look at your question.

I have to say, you made a profound point. If you went to Japan, you'd definitely be welcomed there.

I chatted with a Japanese friend about AI not long ago.

Unlike the all-in AI strategy of China and the US, and unlike Europe wanting to all-in but lacking channels, Japanese society expresses remarkable composure.

Colloquially speaking, Europe knows it's fallen behind, while Japan doesn't consider being behind as being behind.

I asked my Japanese friend, how do you understand this AI thing?

He recommended a book to me: "The Chrysanthemum and the Sword." He said that to understand how Japanese people view AI, you first need to try understanding Japanese people.

I said I don't need to read any book. My generation grew up watching Japanese anime, Japanese animation, and playing Japanese games. What don't I understand?

I understand your history better than your period dramas do.

He said, what you understand is just the surface, not the character.

What do you mean by character?

Process versus result—which do you think is more important?

Japan believes a flower is beautiful precisely because it will wilt. If it never wilted, what beauty would be worth cherishing?

Similarly, a sushi master ages and loses his former skills, so while he's alive, we queue and make reservations to experience "ichigo ichie"—a once-in-a-lifetime connection.

If he were a rice cooker, would I still need to make a reservation?

Conversely, you (he meant me) think results matter more, because you yourself mentioned that as a child, your grandmother's colleague asked you to solve a Rubik's cube.

The first time you took the Rubik's cube apart and reassembled it.

The second time people forbade you from taking it apart, so you went to a small shop and bought a new one to turn in.

That is to say, your (he meant my) mind has no process, only results.

But in Japanese culture, results are meaningless; process has value.

That sushi master isn't selling a bowl of rice—he's selling a form of performance art.

Colloquially speaking, do you appreciate his decades-long dedication to perfecting the craft of cooking rice as performance art?

If you don't appreciate it, you'd think he's crazy, because that bowl of rice can be achieved in a thousand different ways with the same effect. There's no need to spend decades on it, making it seem like performance art.

This is how Japanese people understand life.

I appreciate your performance art, you appreciate mine, and we pay for each other.

.......

I said a lot of polite things that day. Essentially, I meant: you're so great, I'm so inspired, I've learned so much.......

But after the call ended, I wasn't convinced.

We learned a principle when we were very young: productive forces determine production relations, not the other way around; economic base determines superstructure, not the other way around.

What that Japanese friend was saying was very true, but also very nonsensical.

You can do that in a local market, but globally, it's impossible.

Don't China and the US understand that people's feelings matter? They do. But they understand even more that increases in efficiency transcend human feelings.

If you insist on emphasizing the importance of process, then have the guts to not use weaving machines either. Go back to being a weaving master for me.

So the reader's question has the same answer.

You think AI's development will make the distinction between real and fake blur, collapsing humanity's past order based on seeing as believing.

So what?

Humanity being disrupted by productive forces in its social relations isn't a one-time or two-time thing.

When James Hargreaves invented the spinning jenny, it disrupted the social relations of men farming and women weaving.

A few decades ago, we still had clans, ancestral halls, and White Deer families living clustered together like in "White Deer Plain." Now what?

Rural areas declined, families atomized.

Production relations are supposed to adjust with productive forces, aren't they?

If you can't adapt, then adapt to it.

The Jurassic ended, the Cretaceous arrived, Earth's temperature dropped. If dinosaurs said we won't adapt, then they just disappeared.

New life forms that could adapt were born instead. Isn't this the symphony of fate that's cycled for hundreds of millions of years?

So this idea is beautiful, but also nonsensical.

Earth wasn't born just so we humans could live on it.

We exist because we adapted to it.

A company isn't a retirement home, much less a military academy. If you can't do it, someone else will. It doesn't owe you the meaning of a job.

Our very behavior of demanding meaning from this world is the most surreal thing.

Does AI really destroy the meaning of our work?

I don't think so.

Why not?

Because most people's jobs have no meaning to begin with.

Years ago I recommended a TV series about a KMT secret police teahouse waiter named Xu Zhongyi.

His boss was Li Weigong, the KMT chief. His rival was Qi Gongzi. Additionally, Yu Xiuning and her husband were his allies.

Xu Zhongyi was good at making money. When his boss Li Weigong took office, he presented him with a Cadillac. After that, profit-sharing from business never stopped.

Yu Xiuning and her husband, his partners, also benefited greatly from him.

Only Qi Gongzi wouldn't budge and opposed him constantly.

As time went on, would allies always remain allies?

Not necessarily.

One day, boss Li Weigong made enough and wanted a safe landing. The first thing he wanted was to frame Xu Zhongyi.

Because only with Xu Zhongyi dead would his past remain unknown.

Would ally Yu Xiuning definitely help him?

Not necessarily.

Faced with an unsolvable opponent, allies also retreat.

Would opponent Qi Gongzi definitely pour salt on the wound?

As long as you can find what the other side wants, you can turn enemies into allies and team up to neutralize Li Weigong.

This is what workplace really is.

There are no permanent friends, no permanent enemies, only eternal interests.

You talk to me about meaning?

Everyone talks about work, but everyone thinks about business. Even the top boss Li Weigong only thinks about Cadillacs.

The reason you're not thinking about it is because you're still an intern. You haven't yet built your own business in the workplace.

Of course, I won't deny that some interns never build a business by 35, and there are plenty of them.

But after 35, they'll be sent out into society as talent, and when they drive for Didi, they'll still build their own business, just passively.

People like Duoji in "The Tree of Life" whose work has meaning can't possibly be the majority.

Most people's workplace experience is similar to mine when I was young.

All my former bosses were similar to Li Weigong, all my former colleagues similar to Xu Zhongyi and Yu Xiuning.

Because we're neither in the grain industry nor the medical industry. When your work has nothing to do with human basic needs, so-called work meaning is just something you make up yourself, isn't it? 😁#Gate广场AI测评官 $GT