I thought of it from the water droplet of the cosmic probe in "The Three-Body Problem"

In his novel "The Three-Body Problem", Liu Cixin mentioned that the space detector made by the Trisolaran people was called a "water droplet" by humans because its shape is similar to a water droplet. Before the war started, when humans measured the material composition of "water droplets", they came to an astonishing conclusion. Human beings discovered that the material on the surface of "water droplets", even if the microscope was magnified to 10 million times, still showed a smooth mirror surface without any traces. Subtle molecular structure - this shows that the hardness of the "water droplets" is unimaginable.

In order to intercept the water droplets, humans sent more than 2,000 stellar-class battleships to the edge of the solar system to fight. The water droplet showed the strength of the Trisolaran civilization to humans and staged a doomsday battle that lasted only 50 minutes. Except for 7 ships that escaped, all human warships were annihilated. This battle tells us that the most powerful weapon in the world is theoretical physics. The biggest gap between civilizations is the gap in scientific levels. All the glory of mankind will be shattered in one fell swoop.

From this clip, I have two insights.

First, the cognitive gap between people may be huge.

Before humans measured "water droplets", they had no way of imagining that the Trisolarans could create materials that were still smooth even though they were mirrors that were magnified 10 million times. This is just like what was written in the book "The Scale of the Universe". It is difficult for humans to understand the scale beyond their own living environment, so when understanding the universe, there are often obstacles to understanding.

So what is "cognition"? Cognition is an accurate judgment based on a comprehensive situation. Once there are cognitive differences between people, they will make completely different decisions, and these decisions are the biggest difference between people.

The cognitive gap may be so great that some people cannot imagine it. To give an exaggerated example, people with low cognition are like ants living in a two-dimensional space. Their range of action is only front, back, left, and right, thinking that this is the entire world. People who live in a three-dimensional space will feel that they are too small when they look at an ant crawling on the ground.

However, in the eyes of higher-dimensional creatures, humans living in three-dimensional space are just like ants in our eyes. Many people have this experience. When they think back to themselves 10 or 20 years ago, they feel that they were stupid and that many of their ideas were too naive. The reason why we think this way is because we are already in a higher dimension than we were at that time. Imagine dynamically, if you let yourself look at us 10 or 20 years from now, are we just low-latitude creatures? ,

What I want to say is not that as long as it takes time, we can continue to enter the next dimension. Time cannot bring cognitive upgrades. To continuously upgrade, you can only rely on long-term learning to get yourself to the next level as soon as possible. Just imagine, when everyone around us is upgrading, but we are still standing still, after a few years, we will be "ants" in the eyes of others.

Second, great people are like "drops of water".

The appearance of the water droplet is very ordinary, and the attack method is also very simple, which is to directly hit the fuel tank of the human spacecraft. Within 50 minutes, humanity's most powerful fleet was crippled.

True great people are like "drops of water". They have two major qualities: ordinary on the outside and amazing on the inside. Have you noticed that those who are muscular and bully the weak with force are not the objects of admiration by everyone, just like no one wants to immigrate to North Korea. And those countries that are civilized, equal, innovative, and free are places that everyone yearns for, such as Northern Europe and North America. Great people are generally very humble (because they know that there are higher dimensions), but if you take a closer look at their lives, you will find that they have a pattern of life that has lasted for hundreds of years, and they are always learning. No matter how many times you zoom in to see them, no matter what things are used to disturb them, they are not affected and silently complete their personal upgrades.

How to make yourself a great person? There are also two points. It is not good to be a teacher to others, but you should keep learning internally. To be a good teacher is to show off your future achievements and to take advantage of others. No one likes to take advantage of others. There is no need to constantly announce your academic achievements to the outside world. If you do it, everyone will know about it.

Another quality of great people is that they do things accurately. They will think deeply about any problem, and once they put forward their opinions, they can go straight to the core of the problem, just like a "water droplet" can accurately hit the fuel tank of a human spacecraft without any unnecessary movements. You have to admire people like this. This reminds me of the protagonist Fogg in "Around the World in 80 Days". He was able to circle the earth in 80 days "with careful planning". Who dares to say that he had not accurately calculated the entire trip before doing it?

The above is my personal experience.