Science and engineering students who lack science and engineering thinking

Ban said: In the university of life, even among people who have graduated from science and engineering, science and engineering thinking is scarce.

The economics that Luo Pang talks about in this episode is also the field that interests me the most.

If I were to define what economics is, it would be to apply science and engineering thinking not only to study and work, but also to every aspect of life.

What is economic thinking? In fact, it is science and engineering thinking.

That is, abandon intuition and emotion, and only believe in cold data and objective facts.

But in the university of life, even among people who have graduated from science and engineering, science and engineering thinking is scarce. Most people still only think based on their gut feelings, such as boycotting American products and Chinese Americans.

Why do science and engineering students also lack science and engineering thinking?

For traditional science and engineering students, rational thinking is limited to textbooks and laboratories, while economic thinking applies science and engineering thinking to life.

Let us first look at the science and engineering thinking of economics.

Economics is about stripping away the high-sounding morals and superficial rhetoric of human beings, and seeing what behaviors people will show when motivated. And often these truths are things that no one likes to hear and are inconsistent with human expectations.

For example, the Japanese are very particular about Tao. The reason why sushi ramen is well made is because of the Tao. The most typical sport of sumo wrestling is sanctified, and it is very holy, but how can it be possible to avoid fraud as long as the game is in competition. Economists use data to expose the lies behind sumo wrestling matches. Of course, the Japanese cannot accept such a sacred thing being "dirty".

Then let’s take a look at the thinking of ordinary people’s liberal arts students. What is the difference between the thinking of liberal arts students and the thinking of science and engineering students?

This involves fact judgment and value judgment. The former is to judge what the facts are, and the latter is to judge how things should be.

Liberal arts students often think only in value judgments, using wishes as a tool to understand the world, and lose sight of the facts.

What are the consequences of liberal arts students’ thinking:

For example, in order to protect workers, everyone intuitively thinks of setting a minimum wage. But it has completely made workers who could have received meager wages completely unemployed.

For another example, in order to protect women, maternity leave and even maternal leave are set up. However, employers recruit fewer female employees.

Another example is prohibition of alcohol, which will force people who love to drink to drink secretly without admitting it, becoming hypocrites and even breaking the law.

These are the bad consequences of having good intentions but ignoring the facts.

The science and engineering thinking will believe that there is no absolute good or bad thing, and nothing is worth pursuing regardless of the cost.

What we need to do is to see the cost behind each choice, use precise calculations, and use rational trade-offs to find an equilibrium point.

There is a very important concept in economics: opportunity cost.

The opportunity cost of something is what is given up in order to get it.

In the early days of human beings, resources were scarce and they had no choice. For example, not eating leftovers would feel like a waste.

Nowadays, human beings are often faced with infinite choices, and weighing choices and opportunity costs has become increasingly important. You can choose to eat this leftover dish, or not eat it, and choose to live a healthy life. The opportunity cost of eating a leftover dish is a healthy life.

Economic thinking actually represents a slow, firm, but extremely effective thinking switch that humans are undergoing. This switching of thinking is not about any one person, but a switching of thinking of the entire human race.

Modern society is becoming more and more free. Blood origin, official position, academic qualifications, and class no longer restrict people's development. The only restriction is cognition.

Why economic thinking is particularly important, it helps us see this complex world clearly. Because the complexity of social structure, social collaboration and human hearts is far beyond our imagination. If a person still makes intuitive judgments based only on wishes, then he is restricted in the prison of cognition.

What should we do

Should we give up completely because liberal arts students have such poor thinking?

In fact, both have their own uses.

Liberal arts thinking is the result of millions of years of human evolution, in order to survive, save energy and be efficient.

It is characterized by directness, speed, emotion, concreteness and visualization.

Science and engineering are suitable for the pursuit of truth, while the thinking of liberal arts students is suitable for the pursuit of goodness and beauty.

The human value system is very complex and contradictory, and we need to be more and more tolerant.

As Wang Shuo, deputy editor-in-chief of Caixin, said: First-class wisdom is always self-contradictory.

In this complex large collaboration of modern society, what should we do?

The answer is, trust the experts.

In such a complex collaboration, everyone can only see their own collaboration module at most, and other modules cannot be seen. To survive better, we can only choose to trust others and bear the cost of possible mistrust. This is also a process of comparison and trade-off.

Finally, new problems will always arise. Our current theories are only temporary solutions to current specific problems. Just solve the problem when it comes. So I returned to the WeChat official account platform. Although there were many problems and I was not prepared enough, I will solve them slowly on the way.