Chapter 30 9. Solve problems in an easier way

Suppose you are a top student in a famous university, and you are very lucky to be hired by a famous scientist as an experimental assistant.One day, a scientist was conducting an experiment, and because he was too busy, he asked you to do something. He took out a pear-shaped glass bubble and said to you: Please calculate its volume, I need this data. Things seem simple, but because the light bulb is not a standard square or round shape, but a pear shape, it is not so easy to calculate. After taking over the light bulb, will you mobilize the relevant knowledge you have learned in college, measure with a ruler, and calculate continuously on paper?If you do, you may be a student who can apply your knowledge, but unfortunately, you may not be an efficient person.

The above scenario once happened in the laboratory of Edison, the world's inventor king.Edison had an assistant named Upton, who came from a famous family and was a top student in the university.In the era when the concept of family status was very heavy, Upton was a little disapproving of Edison, who sold newspapers for a living and was self-taught when he was a child. One day, Edison arranged for him to do such a job of calculating the volume of a pear-shaped bulb. He used a ruler to measure it for a while, and then calculated it for a while. After a few hours, he was sweating profusely, but he just couldn't figure it out.

At this time, Edison came in. He looked at Upton who had a stack of manuscript papers in front of him, and understood what was going on.So he picked up the glass bubble, filled it with water, handed it to Upton and said: You go and pour the water in the glass bubble into the measuring cup, and you will get the answer we need. Upton suddenly realized: Oh, it turned out to be so simple!For this alone, he had a deep respect for Edison. What does this story teach us? (1) Find out if there is an easier way to do everything In the impression of many people, the way of thinking seems to be associated with complexity: they not only see the problem as complicated, but also complicate the way to solve the problem, and even get into the corner and cannot get out.Learning to simplify problems is the embodiment of top wisdom.

In Chinese culture, simple wisdom is especially valued. The "Book of Changes" is respected as the first of the hundred classics, and its meaning of change usually has three meanings: one is change, the other is not easy, and the third is simplicity. Each of the hexagrams in "Yi" is composed of and ﹎, which is extremely simple, but infinitely varied. Sometimes the simple solutions are the best.Let's look at a well-known example: In the early days of the founding of the People's Republic of China, in a laboratory of a certain university, researchers urgently needed to figure out the internal structure of a machine.Inside the machine is a sealed section made up of a hundred bent tubes.To find out the internal structure, it is necessary to find out the respective inlet and outlet of each of the bent pipes, but at that time there were no relevant drawings and materials to consult.Obviously this is a very difficult and troublesome thing.Everyone tried their best, and even used some instruments to detect the structure of the machine, but the results were not ideal.Later, an old flower worker who worked in the school proposed a simple method, which quickly solved the problem.

The tools used by the flower workers are just two pieces of chalk and a few cigarettes.Here's how he does it: Light a cigarette, take a deep puff, and blow it into a tube.When spraying, write 1 on the inlet of this pipe.At this time, let another person stand at the other end of the pipe, and immediately write 1 when seeing which pipe the smoke comes out of.The other pipes are also handled in the same way. As a result, the entrance and exit of a hundred bent pipes were cleared up in less than two hours. Why is it that an uneducated flower worker easily solved a problem that many scholars could not solve?

It's not that the Huagong's intelligence is higher than that of the scholars, but that the scholars are bound by a fixed mindset, and the Huagong only seeks to solve problems more simply! (2) More is not necessarily better, just right We tend to think: the more you do, the more rewarding you will be, the more you think, the more profound you will be, and the more you write, the more talented you will be.Is it really? Before the independence of the United States, Franklin and Jefferson were recommended to draft the document of the Declaration of Independence, which was written by Jefferson.Jefferson was talented in writing, and he didn't like others to comment on his own things.When he handed over the document to the committee for review, he waited in the conference room for a long time without reply, so he became very impatient.

At this time, Franklin told him a story: A young man who decided to open a hat shop designed a signboard, which read John's Hat Shop, made and sold all kinds of top hats in cash.Then ask friends for comments. The first friend said that hat shop and selling all kinds of top hats have the same meaning and can be deleted; the second and third said that making and cash can be omitted; the fourth suggested crossing out all the words except John. The young man listened to his friend's advice, leaving only the word John, and drew a novel top hat under the word.After the store opened, everyone praised the novelty of the signboard.

After hearing this story, Jefferson quickly calmed down.The Declaration of Independence, which was announced later, was indeed a word-of-words bead machine, and became a handed down work that shocked the world. Why is the simpler the better? The first is cost-effective needs. If the problem can be solved in the simplest way, why is it complicated? Second, the problems are summarized and dealt with in a more refined way, and the main points can be grasped better! (3) OMIT method: cut down information irrelevant to the essence Sometimes problems are difficult to solve, not because of lack of information, but because of too much information and branches.This often leads to three situations:

(1) Secondary information overwhelms primary information, resulting in no distinction between primary and secondary; (2) Too much time wasted on details and parts; (3) Going astray, or even going the wrong way. OMIT is the omission method, which is similar to the exclude method (exclude, reject) and the Remove method (take away from the original position, exclude).There is a famous allusion to this method in the history of philosophy: Oakham's razor: The philosopher Oakham was very dissatisfied with medieval scholasticism, believing that it had always been limited to tedious conceptual deduction and discarded the root of the problem.Therefore, it is proposed to use a razor to greatly remove unnecessary things.

(4) Be a fundamental generalizer Fundamental generalizers should be good at grasping the fundamentals and expressing the problem in the simplest form. Einstein has always regarded the pursuit of simplicity in form as one of the most important conditions for scientific research.He said: Scientists must grasp some general characteristics that can be expressed by precise formulas in the vast and complex empirical facts, so as to explore the universal truth of nature.This form may be a concept, it may be a formula, it may be diagrams and symbols.Geniuses are always good at expressing problems well with these concise but vital expressions.

Einstein had one of the most famous energy and mass formulas: E∥MC, which couldn't be simpler.But it is based on this simple formula that human beings have developed nuclear energy, including the manufacture of atomic bombs. (5) Rhetorical questions about the premise of the argument Sometimes the problem is complicated, often because there is a problem with the premise of the argument.Sometimes, conclusions or methods are put forward under the premise that it cannot be established at all, or they set up their own premise to bind themselves. When King Alexander attacked the city of Gedan, he found that there was a large knot of Gedan knot tied with a rope at the gate of the city. People in the city said: Whoever can untie it can become the king of Asia.No one dared to try it. Alexander thought about it in various ways, and finally realized one day: the problem is to untie the knot, and there is no limit to the method of solution.So he slashed at the big knot, and the knot was untied, and he became the king of Asia. The reason why no one dared to try it before is that they set their own premise: to untie a knot is to untie a rope. "Think Tank" written by Feng Menglong in Ming Dynasty is a classic study of wisdom.In the book, Tongjian is placed in the superior wisdom of the first volume.The preface of the Tong Jian Juan is written like this: There is nothing wrong with the world, and nothing disturbs others.The only way is to be simple, and the day will be bright when the ice disappears. Translated into modern Chinese, the general idea is: Many things in the world are actually made by mediocre people themselves.Just be reasonable, and approach things in a way that doesn't complicate things, and the problem will be solved like ice melts when the sun comes out.