This morning, the house was in an uproar. I was still asleep when I was woken up by a cacophony of noise from the living room. After listening for a while, I roughly figured out what was going on. Last weekend, I took my wife to Changsha to see a concert, and my grandparents were taking care of the kids at home. My eldest son was secretly watching short videos on his iPad. He deliberately hid from his grandparents and watched for six hours straight.
My wife was furious when she found out. She unleashed a torrent of abuse during the few minutes the child was eating breakfast. After sending the child out the door, she grumbled to my mother about the dangers of children watching short videos. She said that a rule would be established in the family: adults cannot watch short videos in front of the child, and if they watch them privately, they must wear headphones so the child cannot hear them.
Okay, while I'm usually quite lenient with my children, I completely agree with her approach in this matter. The harm that short videos can cause to users is multifaceted, including but not limited to:
1. Highly addictive and extremely time-consuming.
2. Algorithms cater to information, creating information cocoons.
3. Content production is driven by traffic, emotions, and low aesthetic standards.
4. Fragmented attention and loss of focus.
5. They are accustomed to passively accepting information and have lost the ability to actively explore.
I won't explain the first three points. I'll mainly talk about points 4 and 5, because they are of great importance to you.
Watching too many short videos raises the dopamine threshold, making slow-paced products feel boring. For example, when I watch long videos or movies, I can't help but speed them up, starting at 1.3x and sometimes even 1.5-2x.
My problem isn't bad, but it's not fatal. What's worse is that many of you can't even finish reading slightly longer articles now. Every night, I get tons of comments tagging me and asking me to summarize my content. I've been deliberately controlling the length of my articles, generally keeping them under 2000 words, which should take about 4-5 minutes to read, but even that short time is too much for many readers.
Another issue is that reading difficulties arise with slightly longer paragraphs. Even if you've read them, it's easy to miss information. Some readers still ask questions repeatedly about things I've already written in the article, which is alarming, folks. This can be considered a form of cognitive impairment.
In addition, I have been recommending that everyone take some time to chat with AI, such as asking 20-30 questions every day. Many readers have given feedback that they don't know what to ask, have no direction, and have no ideas.
I thought about it later, and this might be a side effect of watching too many short videos. Because watching short videos involves completely passively absorbing information; they play one after another, and you don't need to think or interact. You just watch whatever they play, and over time you lose the ability to actively explore and learn.
I've said before that TikTok is the most amazing internet product in the world over the past 10 years. It's not only successful in China, but it's also been incredibly successful worldwide. Even Silicon Valley elites couldn't do anything about it, and in the end, the government had to step in and force it to be transferred.
However, from the user's perspective, while providing addictive entertainment, it severely damages many of the user's abilities. Perhaps society doesn't need so many adults to continuously learn and improve, but children at home still need to be protected. Old Deng can rest, middle Deng can collapse, but young Deng cannot be rendered useless.
I think it's important for adults to maintain their curiosity, because curiosity drives you to constantly seek answers. For example, I've been exploring and learning about several trending events these past few days, and I just haven't written much of it into my evening news articles.
For example, why were Iran's enriched uranium discovered by the United States and Israel? Couldn't they have just dug a cave or a basement to do it secretly?
No, because uranium enrichment requires tens of thousands of centrifuges, which are enormous power-consuming machines. Operating 24 hours a day would consume 40-50% of Tehran's daily electricity, making it impossible to conceal. Furthermore, the enrichment process generates significant electromagnetic radiation and material emissions, which would be monitored by instruments. The International Atomic Energy Agency monitors all trade in nuclear-related materials; any purchase by Iran would expose the process.
Then I became curious: how did Israel, Pakistan, India, and North Korea manage to develop nuclear weapons back then?
This is too complex to explain in detail. Almost every country's successful acquisition of nuclear weapons is a complicated story, involving the source of technology, equipment procurement, material imports, and resistance to external pressure during the research and development process. Behind the development of nuclear weapons by these countries, there is, to some extent, the support and tacit approval of superpowers.
In the process of exploring information, I learned that South Korea had also developed nuclear weapons during the Park Chung-hee era, but the effort was suppressed and halted by the United States. Taiwan also secretly pursued a nuclear weapons program during the Chiang Ching-kuo era, but it was ultimately thwarted by a defection of an American informant.
Another important point of contention in this round of US-Iran tensions is that Iran will cease supporting foreign armed groups, primarily allies of the Crescent of Resistance (Houthi, Hezbollah, Hamas, and Iraqi militias), which would effectively surround Israel.
Iran provides its allies with $2-3 billion in aid annually, the bulk of which goes to Hezbollah. Hezbollah borders Israel and is constantly on the front lines of ground combat; Iran provides them with money, oil, electricity, and weapons, otherwise Hezbollah would have collapsed long ago. Additionally, Hamas, the Houthis, and Iraqi militias receive hundreds of millions of dollars in subsidies each year, and the drones they use are all Iranian-made Witness series.
Actually, there's something else I'm quite curious about: do college application tutoring businesses similar to Zhang Xuefeng's exist in Europe and America?
The answer is yes, and the scale is enormous, amounting to billions of dollars annually. However, the specific details differ. For instance, in the United States, all universities are required to publish employment rates and salary standards for all majors. The data comes from official data from Social Security and the Department of Labor, which cannot be tampered with or falsified. Therefore, American college students can know the employment situation in advance when choosing a major without having to pay someone to ask.
However, top American universities require individual applications, and this process should begin as early as middle school. A group of professional college counselors will help your child plan extracurricular activities, polish application essays, and conduct mock interviews to improve the success rate of the application.
These personalized services can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, or $10,000 to $20,000 for an average middle-class family. Poor people can get services that are charged by the hour, at $300 to $500 per hour.
In Europe and America, there are now people working on professional AI to replace these kinds of services, and the price is cheaper; you can ask unlimited questions for $200.
That's interesting; China and the US have reached the same conclusion on this issue, albeit through different paths.
Original Article: View Chinese Version
