Road to science and technology

Hearing what Yue Yuanzhou said, Shang Shaojian became excited.

Shang Shaojian could tell that among the four of them, Colonel Weber could be ignored. After all, this guy couldn't fight. As for Dr. Banks, she probably knows that the rules have been localized in the United States. Now she only has ten minutes to familiarize herself with the Sichuan Mahjong rules. Obviously it cannot be done overnight, so he is the best at playing mahjong.

It’s a sure win!

Sure enough, at the beginning of the first game, Shang Shaojian noticed that Colonel Weber was playing completely randomly. He even suspected that the US military officer could not even understand the words on the mahjong.

Time passed slowly like this, and this scene was also recorded by the photographer.

In the camera, the humans in the mirror are playing mahjong on one side, while the heptapods on the other side are discussing the meaning of simple set concepts such as "points", "lines" and "surfaces".

On one side, there was the clatter of mahjong mixed with the sound of ‘touch! ’ ‘What a nonsense! ’ ‘Bang! ’ ‘Touch yourself! ’ With such a shout, on the other side, a group of heptapods kept making sounds of ‘water splashing’.

It seemed extremely weird.

The happiest person belongs to Shang Shaojian. In less than an hour, he has won three games. He feels like he is the sparrow god today.

In fact, he didn't know that if Yue Yuanzhou hadn't appeared, he would have been playing mahjong in front of the heptapods, but it was a lot of entertainment and no prizes, just to communicate with the heptapods, but he still succeeded, and he also Be the first person in the world to decipher the language of the heptapods.

Of course, Yue Yuanzhou didn't know either. He only knew that the plot had been changed by him.

Unsurprisingly, this temporary mahjong match ended with Shang Shaojian's victory, because although Yue Yuanzhou did not cheat on himself, he still won the most. Fortunately, he did not mention himself in the first place.

The heptapods had been discussing it for most of the night, and finally, with the efforts of their greatest scientific team, they tried to describe the simplest mathematical set of mankind.

But what disappoints Yue Yuanzhou is that the description of the heptapods is still not detailed.

Also, the heptapods did not give a quantum mechanical explanation for Fermat's law of minimum time.

Fortunately, the purpose of comparing mathematics with the heptapods is not to discuss mathematics, but to compare each other's descriptions of nature. Therefore, even if the heptapods cannot describe the simplest geometry in detail, for Yue Yuanzhou it is That's enough.

At least now we can have a real conversation.

In the process of communicating mathematics with the heptapods, Yue Yuanzhou felt that he had discovered something very magical, about the heptapods' writing, or their thinking patterns.

In the heptapod cognition, cause and effect are not two independent entities, but are intertwined, influencing and interacting with each other, and the two are inseparable.

There is no innate and inevitable order between concepts. There is no so-called "chain of thinking" that follows a fixed route. Instead, all components in the thinking process have the same importance, and there is no one. A thought has priority.

Only in this way, Yue Yuanzhou believes that it can be explained why the words on the heptapods are in such a shape.

Humans rely on intuitive means to discover that physical properties are properties displayed by a certain thing at a given moment, and then on this basis, they are given human understanding in linear time to describe the phenomena of nature. This is true for concepts such as motion and speed.

These events are explained in sequence and in a cause-and-effect relationship.

One event leads to another event, and one cause leads to another result. This leads to a basic world view in which things develop from their past state to their future state.

However, the heptapods do not. They intuitively know that the physical properties themselves are meaningless. These properties only become meaningful after a period of time.

Based on these cognitions, Yue Yuanzhou believes that the thinking of the heptapods is really different from that of humans. Unlike humans, the heptapods seem to view objective facts teleologically.

That is to say, after observing certain events for a period of time, you will later find that these events themselves have a certain purpose, and for this event, only when it understands its initial and final stages in advance can it achieve its purpose.

That is, the ‘effect’ is known in advance before the ‘cause’ is activated.

"So the heptapods saw the 'fruit' of my arrival and changed their itinerary and did not go to Shanghai? Because once they went, they would become the 'effect' of that incident. ?" Yue Yuanzhou recalled the fact that the heptapods did not go to Shanghai and thought to himself, "According to the thinking of the heptapods, they should not be able to make a choice."

"Have you seen through the future?" Yue Yuanzhou asked, looking at the two representatives of the heptapods, Ben Bo'er Ba and Ba Boer Ben. But as soon as he asked, he felt that something was wrong, because the heptapods did not understand human beings at all. Said 'future'.

After thinking about it, Yue Yuanzhou changed his words: "Have you seen the impact of my presence on the stage of the event for which you are here?"

The heptapods seemed to understand. He saw Ben Bo'er Ba on the left raised a limb and sprayed out several ink-colored rings to answer: "There is no event there, 伱, China, there is no event stage to help us, we provide, no, Tools/Methods.

You, the event is destroyed, the event disappears, the event is incomprehensible, we don’t want to communicate with you, but the event is unavoidable, we must exist in the stage of communicating with you, communicating with you is a new event, and any stage of a new event is unknown, uncertain, and incomprehensible , but has implications for old event purposes that we cannot understand. "

Hearing the heptapod's answer, Yue Yuanzhou secretly thought that he was carefully analyzing the meaning expressed by the heptapod.

"It seems that I have affected their purpose, and then all events about me will become uncertain. And these heptapods don't understand what uncertainty is at all. Because in their world view and in their thinking , events are certain, and certain things cannot be avoided." Yue Yuanzhou thought to himself.

After a moment, he waved another piece of text and asked: "Do events occur simultaneously in nature?"

"Yes, we are at this stage. It is an action quantity and a process. What we do, the event closure stage must be in nature." This time, Ba Bolben answered.

Is this synchronous thinking?

Yue Yuanzhou seemed to understand, and he continued to ask: "What is your purpose for coming to Earth?"

This time the Heptapod's answer was not straightforward. First of all, Benbo'erba sprayed out seven ink-ring articles: "The event in question is incomprehensible, and the impact of answering or not answering on the purpose of the event is incomprehensible, so we chose to answer. I hope you can understand." ."

Ba Bolben also spewed out several sentences: "We exist as the 'action quantity' of the event. The purpose stage of the event is for humans to help us, and the action stage is for us to help humanity."