Mathematical problem-solving often feels intensely meaningful, but that feeling may not come from a unique “math module.” This essay argues that math can co-activate three evolved pathways at once: social comparison, effort-reward binding, and group recognition.
Genetic Anchor of Moral Intuition
Moral intuition is often treated as abstract culture or pure reasoning. This essay argues that it is deeply embodied: empathy, safety regulation, and cross-generational fitness logic converge into a body-level sense of “this is right” or “this is wrong.”
From Unification to the Post-AI Era: Thinking, Education, and Talent
Why do we keep searching for one framework to explain everything, and why does education often train exam competence more than real-world effectiveness? In the post-AI era, standardized middle-layer work is compressing, while deep specialists and high-level integrators gain value. The practical path is to build a T-shaped profile with real depth and cross-domain synthesis.
When AI Has No Desire: The LLM Anchor Problem
Modern LLMs do not possess desires; they learn statistical patterns and then approximate human preferences through RLHF. That makes them useful, but also prone to averaging conflicting values into bland, rootless answers. The deeper question is whether we should try to give AI an abstract meta-goal at all, or instead treat it as a mirror of human ambiguity and constrain it with boundaries.
Why Our Brain Feels Like an Old Version That Refuses to Upgrade
Why do we need to simplify complex subjects before learning them? Why are small accidents forgotten quickly while major trauma can last forever? This post argues that the brain is still running an ancient survival-oriented operating system: it compresses reality, locks high-stakes memories, and prefers survival over correctness.
Outcome Worship and Probability Blindness in the AI Era
Why do we admire success outcomes yet dismiss effortful but failed processes? This post argues that modern society suffers from short-sighted probability vision: we mistake one-shot results for long-run quality. In a future where AI makes outcomes cheap, truly scarce value may shift to unique, auditable, high-quality processes.
Why We Crave Strong Leaders Yet Fear Power Corruption
Humans often reject autocracy in principle yet emotionally long for strong, just leadership under uncertainty. From an evolutionary view, followership and hierarchy were adaptive survival strategies, while leadership itself was costly and rare. The enduring challenge of civilization is to design institutions that restrain power degeneration without denying our deep leadership instincts.
Why We Can’t Live Without Stories: A Survival Instinct Hypothesis
Why are humans so addicted to stories, including fictional ones? A possible answer is that the brain is fundamentally a story processor optimized for survival simulation. From shock and character arcs to sacrifice narratives and speculative fiction, stories may function less as entertainment and more as compressed training for uncertain futures.
Who Pays for Slow-Burn Value in an Age of Overload?
In overloaded information systems, fast metrics dominate and slow-burn value gets filtered out too early. AI can reduce screening and comprehension costs, but it cannot replace trust. A possible long-term path is a data-bank style trust infrastructure that turns early sacrifice into distributed investment and fairer value sharing.
Thucydides Trap After the Beijing Summit: Is Conflict Inevitable?
After the 2026 Beijing summit, the Thucydides Trap returned to the center of global debate. But modern geopolitics is no longer a simple two-power duel: credibility games, third-party buffers, and shared systemic risks are reshaping outcomes. The key question is not who wins a rivalry, but whether guardrails and cooperation can prevent a lose-lose future.