DB Essays

About forty years ago, a respected teacher Fang Lizhi from my alma mater gave a lecture on "Soul Immortality". Alumni still often talk about it now. But I think most of them don't remember Teacher Fang's original intention, thinking that what he said is what people usually say that souls can continue to exist after death. Or by extension, the soul is the non-material thing "attached" to the body, which can be called "spirit", "ghost", and can even leave the human body in some cases. After the human body is gone, this thing can still wander around in space, and sometimes it may attach to others, or other animals or even plants again. But what does Teacher Fang really mean? I think what he was thinking at that time was nothing more than an interesting and meaningful scientific imagination. That is, one day in the future, a person's soul can be fully understood, and then it can be "copied" and then used as software on computer ...

When I was young in the countryside, I was a naughty kid. When I say this, friends who know me won't believe it, and I don't believe it a little bit myself. But things are still in my memory, and I have not yet reached the age when I speak out of nothing. The first thing is that I have played on the speed car. Specifically, I was waiting on the side of the road. I saw a car with a gripper behind it came and chased it from behind, grabbing the gripper, first as a swing, and then Climb up little by little, play for a while and then jump down. This is probably influenced by the movie "Railway Guerrillas". But I think it must be because the car was driving slowly at that time. Otherwise, how could a child catch up and jump off! Moreover, why the driver can't see it and don't care, I really don't remember. The problem is that one day, I climbed up, played for a while and jumped down, then my body leaned back inertially, and my head banged like an egg on the wal...

In the early nineties, I was a graduate student at Princeton University. My mentor John was not eager to direct me on my research yet, so I had to read all kinds of literature by myself, looking for an interesting topic for my dissertation. Of course, I still have to give myself some restrictions, that is, to choose within the scope of his research interests, including decision theory, optimization, asset allocation, parallel algorithms and so on. Reading these documents, a doubt began to come to my mind, that is, why should financial risks be measured by volatility? Of course volatile stocks have high future uncertainty in their prices and are likely to fall sharply and cause losses. Therefore, it seems understandable to use volatility to describe risks. My question is that volatility considers both the upward and downward changes in stock prices. That is to say, the uncertainty of how a stock rises is also included in the volatility, but for stock holders, what are the risks if a sto...

For a while, I learned to push hands from my colleague Master Zhang. After learning, I had an "epiphany" and felt that investment should be like pushing hands. On the one hand, we must stand firm and manage risks well. On the other hand, we must seize the opportunity to win good returns. Empty hands cannot withstand knives and guns, so pushing hands is just a recreational fitness exercise. But the ancient wisdom contained in the sport of pushing hands is useful in all confrontations with opponents. For example, the two armies face each other, even if they use artillery to conduct a positional offensive and defensive battle, they are essentially pushing hands. In today's trade war, how to confront each other, in essence, is also pushing hands. The inspiration of the game of pushing hands on investment has allowed me to form my own investment philosophy. I have talked a lot before, and I especially emphasized "listening", that is, to cultivate one's own sensit...

The wise man said that happiness comes from an optimistic attitude. This is right, but it is not very operable. A happy person is probably optimistic by nature. How can a person who is not optimistic by nature be happy? He needs to understand the meaning of happiness before he can find a way to be happy. I think that happiness does not necessarily mean laughing often, which is of course good, but what is more important for happiness is to understand things so that they can be treated calmly. And to understand things is to avoid a mess, a darkness, a chaos! This reminds me of the concept of "entropy" in physics. What is entropy is order. Order is a measure, which is meaningless in itself, but the changes in order are easy to understand. When we have figured it out and things are in order, then we will be able to understand and clarify. We have a sense of comfort and happiness. Physically speaking, the entropy becomes smaller. The greater the entropy, the more disorderly. What ...

The Nobel Prize economist Paul Krugman had an article in New York Times on March 1 titled "Too much choice is hurting America." He is a leftist, so it is not a surprise that he was finding fault with the other side. He believes that when the rightists present their policies (mainly less supervision and small government), they usually say that the motivation is to give people more choices,  more choices can only be good. But in fact, he said, too many choices bring problems, sometimes serious problems. What are the problems? Too many choices are dazzling to people and make them not knowing how to even start. Moreover, too many choices provides opportunities for bad people and criminals to decive or exploit people. What's more, making too many choices makes people nervous leading to mental illness. When making choices on simple things are so terribly nervous, people tend to make even more terrible decisions on important things their actions. This is especially true for the ...

The air is warm, the trees and grass on the shore are dazzling green, the flowers bloom brightly, and the birds lazily hide in the shade of the trees and do not want to make a sound. Only the occasional boat can break this calm temporarily. There are several small bridges on the canal, connecting Prince Albert Road, Regent's Park and the London Zoo in the north of the park. When we were approaching Camtown Market, I heard accordion music again. And it was him, the gypsy, a familiar face, standing in the corner of the bridge playing. Every year when the weather is warm, he will be there to remind me that I have spent another year in London. The buildings on that section of the road are very close to the water, a bit like Venice. But their simple and concise decoration tells me that this is absolute London. Camden Market is our goal. Where the canal meets the city of Camtown, it is like returning home, not going any further. Some small boats that can live in are docked there, and you...

Andrew Yang is currently running for mayor of New York, and I have no interest in him, but if he is elected, I would not be too happy, so I write an article to oppose him. Of course, if it is another Democratic candidate, like Bill de Blasio, it will be even worse than Andrew Yang. But in general, the Democrats will never do a good job in New York, so thank goodness if they could maintain the status quo. This is very sad. After all, I was a big fan of Andrew Yang. I wrote so many articles and donated a lot of money to him. He was the only person with a Chinese face, how excited I was. Now I don't even want to look at this person, and there is no other decent Chinese. Maybe someday I can only rely on myself! Why did he disappoint me? This is partly because of his own problems, and partly because I learned more about the Democratic Party when I followed him. Regarding himself, the main thing is this: Since Andrew Yang dropped out from the election, he has become a diehard follower of...