Glamor Economics

Chapter 30

Chapter 5 Section 2 Why Chickens Choose to Suicide——Information Selection
Information plays a vital role in decision-making.Today is the information age, and all political, economic, and military confrontations are, to a greater extent, information confrontations.

A farmer fed the chicken the night before killing the chicken, and casually said: "Eat quickly, this is your last meal!" The next day, the chicken was dead and left a suicide note: "I have eaten rat poison, don't think about it." It's time for you to eat, and your mother is not easy to mess with."

This joke reflects the importance of information for decision making.Nash said: "When the opponent knows your decision, he can make the best decision for himself." So confidentiality and information security are very important.When two armies confront each other, the one who knows himself and the enemy often wins.At the poker table, cheaters win every time.There are confidential documents in the company, which are business secrets and must not be disclosed. A little disclosure may bring bad luck to the company.In commercial warfare, information warfare is a common phenomenon.There was a case in Chongqing's telecommunications market, which was an example of information warfare.

Once, China Unicom Chongqing Branch suddenly published an advertisement in the newspaper: the price of mobile phones will be reduced the next day.China Telecom Chongqing Company immediately learned of the news, discussed countermeasures that afternoon, and sent the telecom mobile phone price reduction plan to the newspaper office for immediate release in the evening.In the early morning of the next day, some employees of China Telecom and the temporary ad distributors hired by them distributed the advertisement of the same-day price reduction of China Telecom mobile phones to passers-by.As a result, Telecom fought a beautiful "late strike" battle.The failure of China Unicom is that they did not keep the long-planned price reduction business secret until the last moment, thus leaving a gap for China Telecom to take action.

Information is competitiveness. The competition between countries and enterprises has become more and more related to information.Due to the importance of information for our decision-making, we need to find information that is beneficial to us from the massive information around us, so as to make decisions that are beneficial to us.

In the 60s, my country explored and developed the famous Daqing Oilfield.At that time, the vast majority of Chinese people did not know the specific location of Daqing Oilfield, but Japan's Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Group knew the Daqing Oilfield well.

At that time, due to various reasons, the specific situation of Daqing Oilfield was kept secret.However, the information experts of Japan's Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Group unearthed extremely important economic information from some ordinary information and revealed the secret of Daqing Oilfield.

Mitsubishi Heavy Industries first deduced that the Daqing Oilfield was located in the north of the three northeastern provinces from the large-scale photo of the iron man Wang Jinxi published.Because Wang Jinxi in the photo is wearing a big padded jacket, and the background is white and snowy.Then, they deduced from another photo of people pushing people on their shoulders that the oil field was not far from the railway line.Then, these information experts saw this passage from a report in "People's Daily": Wang Jinxi went to Majiajiao and said: "What a big oil sea, we want to throw the hat of China Petroleum's backwardness to Go to the Pacific Ocean!" Based on this, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries judged that the Daqing Oilfield is located in Majiajiao in the northeast.

In 1964, Wang Jinxi participated in the Third National People's Congress held in that year.Mitsubishi Heavy Industries also came to the conclusion that the Daqing Oilfield had already begun to produce oil. If there was no oil production, Wang Jinxi would not be elected as a representative of the National People's Congress.

At the same time, they deduced the diameter of the oil well from the frame of the handle on the rig where Wang Jinxi stood on the published photo; and calculated the approximate reserves of the oil field from the distance and density between the oil wells on the rig where Wang Jinxi stood and yield.At that time, information experts from Mitsubishi Heavy Industries calculated that Daqing's annual oil output was 3000 million tons, which was almost exactly the same as the actual annual output of Daqing Oilfield.

According to China's technical level and capabilities at that time and China's demand for oil, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries concluded that China must import a large number of oil production equipment.Therefore, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries quickly gathered relevant experts and personnel, and after analyzing and processing the obtained information, fully designed oil production equipment suitable for Daqing Oilfield, and made full preparations for winning the bid.

Sure enough, China soon turned to the international market for oil extraction equipment.Mitsubishi Heavy Industries won this huge order with the fastest speed and the design and equipment that best meet China's requirements, and made a lot of profits.

Now, with the popularization of the network—"high-speed information highway", we are entering the era of information economy. What people are pursuing is not the comprehensiveness of information, but the effectiveness of information.More and more information is flooding the screen of the computer. It is absolutely impossible for people to be trapped in the infinite pursuit of comprehensive information, which will consume too much time and cost.In general, information selection methods mainly include the following:

1. Discriminate according to the source of information.First-hand information is relatively reliable, if it is hearsay, the degree of reliability will be reduced.

2. Do not blindly believe the information you have obtained.Judge according to your own rational judgment and original experience, and don't draw conclusions easily from the information you get.

3. Obtain information through multiple channels.Expand the way to obtain information, and a wide range of information will help you make rational decisions.

4. Check with authorities.For example, if you can't identify the high imitation banknotes on the market, you should check with the bank or other departments.

[links to related words]

Information technology is the technology to study the acquisition, transmission and processing of information, which is a combination of computer technology, communication technology and microelectronics technology.That is to say, information technology is the use of computers for information processing, the use of modern electronic communication technology to engage in information collection, storage, processing, utilization, and related product manufacturing, technology development, and information services.

(End of this chapter)