Sometimes I envy people who can turn their work into a hobby,
spending day after day in a world of operators and parameters.
But I can't help wondering: is it really his hobby?
Or is he doing the same thing as the model:
climbing leaderboards, tuning, watching the numbers inch up, overtaking others in the rankings,
like a machine with higher precision.
As a kid I thought loving something was simple:
if you want to try it, try it; if you don't like it, switch.
When I filled in my university applications after the gaokao, I thought I loved computers from the bottom of my heart.
But in my very first class at university, outdated lecture notes and crude teaching
shattered my expectations of college on the first day.
I began to wonder whether I had ever liked it at all,
or just wanted it to earn a living.
So frontend, backend, large models… I wanted to touch everything,
try every one of them,
really only because I didn't know where I was going.
Until I came across MIT's courses,
opened Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs,
and found Professor Jiang Yanyan's lectures on operating systems.
In that moment I suddenly saw the world as it really is.
Not dull exam papers, not mechanical grunt work:
those precisely interlocking complex systems had such pure and elegant logic.
I seemed to find again the heartbeat I'd felt when choosing my major:
AI may soon brute-force every engineering problem,
even treat the hardest theory as homework,
but no amount of compute
can stop a person's curiosity about how complex systems really work.
I've never understood
why some people believe so firmly in all kinds of -isms and theories.
The most moving moment of Suguru Osako's career
isn't how many records he broke,
but how, after finishing his race at the Tokyo Olympics, he calmly announced his retirement.
He walked away from the applause, the sponsors, and everyone's expectations.
Yet some time later,
he quietly laced up his running shoes and came back.
Most ordinary people's passions are like this too, never free of wavering and doubt.
When something is crammed full of competition, survival and other people's judgment,
we're stuck inside it, unable to breathe,
and can't even tell whether we like it.
Sometimes you have to leave once,
until all the voices around you fall silent,
to discover that after such a long detour,
some things had long since become an indispensable part of your life.
Even if code and algorithms are one day taken over entirely by machines,
the pure way mathematics and computing explain the world is still captivating.
Once I let go of chasing fame and fortune,
some loves truly showed themselves.
So why would anyone feel they "have no choice but to bury their talent in yesterday"?
If we can't even model the giant turbulence of human society,
if the jobs of the old order will sooner or later be flattened by technology,
then those so-called "skills" we struggled to learn just to make a living
are no great loss to leave in yesterday.
And besides, taking a step back:
maybe I never had any talent to bury.
To occasionally understand a little of how complex systems work, in a chaotic world,
and at some moment find it beautiful,
is already enough.