网络沟通也是一门学问. 不幸的是从来没有人教过上网的每一个人, 到底应该怎么做. 我每天在回复一些电子邮件和 IM 上与人聊天的时候, 明显感觉到不同的人或礼貌或冒昧, 或文雅或粗鲁. 为了高效的进行网络沟通, 我觉得掌握一定的网络礼仪是有必要的. 因此, 写下我的一些看法.

常记在心的一些原则.

1. 我们是在和人交流, 即使是陌生人. 因此现实生活中如何沟通, 网络上也该如何.

2. 尊重别人. 尊重他人的隐私, 不要随意公开私人邮件, 聊天纪录和视频等内容. 尊重他人的知识. 人都会有犯错误的时候, 不要好为人师, 不要自诩高人一筹. 尊重他人的劳动, 不要剽窃, 随意修改和张贴别人的劳动成果, 除非他人主观愿意. 尊重他人的时间. 在沟通提问以前, 先确定自己无法解决, 且对方是正确的人.

3. 自信, 但是要注意谦虚, 做好细节. 不要刻意放低自己, 但是如果对某个方面不熟悉, 不要冒充专家. 任何消息发送前, 要仔细检查语法和用词, 不要故意挑衅和使用脏话.

关于电子邮件

1. 主题应当精当, 不要发送无主题和无意义主题的电子邮件.

2. 注意称呼, 避免冒昧: 当与不熟悉的人通信时, 请使用恰当的语气, 适当的称呼和敬语.

3. 注意邮件正文拼写和语法的正确, 避免使用不规范的问题和表情符号. 使用简单易懂的主题行以准确传达您的电子邮件的要点。

4. 因为邮件容易丢失, 因此应当小心查问, 不是无理猜测并暗责对方. 在自己做到及时回复邮件的同时, 不要对他人回复信件的时效性做过分期许.

5. 不要随意转发电子邮件, 尤其是不要随意转发带附件的电子邮件, 除非你认为此邮件对于别人的确有价值. 在病毒泛滥的今天, 除非附件是必需的, 否则应该避免Word, PPT附件. 多使用PDF. 在正文中应当包含附件的简要介绍. 邮件要使用纯文本或易于阅读的字体, 不要使用花哨的装饰. 最好不用使用带广告的电子邮箱

6. 如果不是工作需要, 尽量避免群发邮件. 特别不要参与发连环信这种活动(把这条消息发送给10个好友之类). 群发邮件容易使得收件人的地址相互泄漏, 因此最好使用邮件组或者暗送(Bcc). 两个人商量事情牵涉到第三方时, 应该将邮件抄送(CC)给第三方.

7. 在给不认识的人发送邮件时，请介绍一下自己的详细信息，要么在签名中注明自己的身份，没有人乐意和自己不明底细的人讨论问题。

8. 如果对方公布了自己的工作邮件，那么工作上的联系请不要发送到对方的私人信箱里去，没有人乐意在和朋友们联系的信箱中看到工作上的问题. (Thank Wenbo for this)

关于即时通信软件

1. 不要随便要求别人加你为好友, 除非有正当理由. 应当了解到, 别人加不加你为好友是别人的权利.

2. 在别人状态为 Busy 的时候, 不要打扰. 否则要Busy 这个功能有什么用呢? 如果是正式的谈话, 不要用”忙么, “there”, “打扰一下” 等开始一段对话, 而是把对话的重点压缩在一句话中.

3. 如果谈工作, 尽量把要说的话压缩在10句以内. 要记住, IM 不适合谈工作.

4. 不要随意给别人发送链接 或者不加说明的链接. 随意发送URL 是一种很粗鲁的行为, 属于强制推送内容给对方. 而且容易让别人感染上病毒.

关于Blog BBS 留言

1. 尊重别人的劳动, 不要随意转载, 不要做语文老师, 或者否定对方知识层次. 不要自诩高人一筹, 使用侮辱性质的词句.

2. 不要做鉴定师和价值判断人. 不要断章取义, 不要留下一句楼主火星, 鉴定完毕等鉴定师语言, 不要抓住对方一句话发挥, 要认真阅读后发言.

3. 说出理由, 不是说出脏话

我不是要做卫道士和道德大师, 只是觉得做好这些, 相信您的网络沟通能更加高效. 况且其实都是些基本常识, 也就是日常生活中的一些沟通技巧平行推广到互联网而已.

PS: 这篇文章我好久前就准备写了, 日前看到所谓的火星体脑残体的报道, 因此整理一下. 对于想使用互联网认真做点事情的人, 礼仪还是重要的. 对于脑残的爱骂人的以及不会说人话的, 火星在左上方, 幼儿园在右下方, 垃圾场在左前方, 医院在右前方, 请您绕道行驶)

PS2: http://www.albion.com/netiquette/ 是一个讲解网络礼仪的好去处, 尽管是英文的, 原则是通用的.

When I was in collage, I had two classes in computer science, namely, “Algorithm” and “Data Structure”. These two concepts are universal in both computer programs and software applications, whether on a rescued laptop or a million dollar mainframe. Nowadays, Web becomes tremendously popular, and of course, extends significantly in scalability. Therefore, are there still any general concepts like algorithm and data structure in modeling the web? Here are some incomplete thoughts of mine about the computation and storage model of the web.

1. Google.

For Google search engine, it treats the web as a sorted list based on different keywords. Thus, provided with keywords, the web is sorted by the relevance and PageRank system. Google does both the computation and the storage. For general users, these lists are sorted via some criteria extensively studied by Google; we just get the result out. It seems to me that this is the most successful model for user to access the web. However, sorted list requires both sophisticated sorting mechanism and advanced computational power. Although there are fairly amount of search engines in the world, for most of them, their “sorting quality” or “general coverage” are not as good as Google.

2. Del.icio.us/YouTube/Flickr/Google Base, etc.

For these and other similar sites, they basically organize the web or some special media files on the web on a tag-based system, or preciously, an n-to-n mapping structure. All these four in this category are the leading websites on their own fields. For instance, YouTube is the largest video-sharing website, etc. I would conclude that n-to-n mapping about the media sharing is suitable for socialized website. We can find other success models elsewhere.

3. Amazon, Facebook, Microsoft and Google’s Data Storage API.

According to R/WW, today Microsoft announced Windows Live SkyDrive. Facebook actually quietly released the Data Store API beta recently. Amazon has already had the famous S3 service for a while. They are all treating the web storage as Lookup Table. A closer look shows that all these four data storage API sets are trying to let the user to store heterogeneous media as “object” and support random accessing via keys. For some startups, this feature is critical as the storage scalability is usually an obstacle. Via using these four APIs, the scalability is hidden or moved to these big name companies. Treating the Web as objects will absolutely simplify the storage model and reduce lots of overhead in scalability. Similar to organizing all files under the same folder or on a disk using the file name as the key, sooner they might need some search tool/index/tag mechanism to get rid of the name space nightmare. Additionally, as meta-information should be stored in this system, a search will take twice the database access. Obviously developers have to do more than simply dump the data in. The bottom line is, data storage pools are not big trucks, developers has to maintain them. But I do see the dawn of gird computation here. Here, this is for storage task, but if we can later provide a similar interface to computational task, we will jump into the era of grid computation.

4. Yahoo! Pipe and Google Mashup Editor, FQL, etc.

There is an article about Yahoo! Pipe named “web as a database”. I would rather say that Pipe treads the web as an UNIX file with handy tools dealing with it. Later we got Google Mashup Editor, which is ugly but powerful (at least for me). GME is somehow like Yahoo! Pipe but more natural for programmers. They both tread the Web as a special file (or the concatenate of several files). They provide the “operation system” where you can run the services like sorting and filtering on that particular file. They are making some sort of operation system and binary applications on a Google Inside (or Yahoo! Inside) web. FQL is another funny thing worth mention. It models the Facebook data like people and groups as RDB, and FQL/Facebook platform is RDBMS. My conclusion in this section is Yahoo! Pipe might be a GUI for mashup editing and GME is like a console-based editor. It’s hard to tell which one is better now. Facebook is quite aggressive in reorganizing the web information; guys at Facebook are going to re-model the web in a Facebook manner via the F8 and several millions of users.

5. SUN/SETI@home

While SUN is selling the CPU power at 1$/h to general public, SETI@home utilizes all the idle CPU power around the world. Since I haven’t done much research on the computational model, I just list these two here. The previous one might become the future of grid computation. Actually SUN is very good at grid computation. The second one is the distributed computation. We also have other computation models like P2P computation or other decentralized computation model. While SUN is treating itself as the CPU for the web, SETI@home is treating the Web as the CPU. It’s hard to judge which is superior. SUN might be the first several companies who can develop the actually grid computation on the web, with SETI@home project might be the most powerful computer on the web.

Keep in mind that there is not silver bullet in modeling the web. I do believe that if one wants to setup a big company, he/she does need a big picture about how to model the web and how to setup the model.

Again, all ideas here are immature and need to be refined. You are more than welcome to leave comments and suggestions.

今天一个好朋友 phoenix 上线给我发消息, 商量一个比较重要的事情. 因为他开头几句话语气特别异常, 因此我怀疑不是他本人, 于是, 我开始了漫长的身份认证. 以下是除去重要信息后的聊天记录.

[第一回合, 个人信息下套验证]

P: 能把材料发过来么?
X: 好的 不过 我人在上海耶 而且 我真名是?
P: …我是phoenixinter… 我的msn没有被盗.. 你叫You XU..
X: 先确定一下再说
P: 不然我不会知道你叫Eric.. 你在上海?
X: 你说我在哪里, 我们怎么认识的
P: ……不是你刚才说你在上海么。
P: ……我们通过某某认识的(一个朋友的名字)…
P: 你在wustl.. 我真的是phoenixinter…
P: 你在哪里? 说实话… 上海? wustl?
X: 美国. 用Gtalk. 我先确认一下. 你是你
P: 难道你还在怀疑我不是phoenixinter…@_@
X: 大哥 你我所有的信息都是公开的亚

[第二回合 计算机问题认证]

P: ……那你问点私人信息好了。。
X: 给我讲讲并查集
P: …要怎么讲？
X: 或者 GCJ 的照片 你用的计算机是 HP 还还是DELL? 选择题
P: 。。。。这我真的没注意。。。 还是讲并查集吧。。
X: GCJ 是什么的缩写
P: Google Code Jam…
X: 不问了, 并查可以 Google 到

P: ..哦.. 宥哥 你猛。
P: 你可以找一道题, 我给你讲…
X: 我开始相信了
P: 怎么样@_@

[第三轮: Gtalk + Facebook 认证, 我们开始使用 Gtalk]

X: 最后一个问题, 问完结束
X: 我 Facebook 现在的 Status 是什么 F 的 S 的分别是什么
X: 这个我知道了 就行了. MSN 太容易被盗号了
X: 还有 用的电脑是什么你肯定知道的. 没理由不知道. 我从图片上都能看到…P: …我进facebook看…… 没注意。。。
P: F的是%#^* S 的是@^&^% 你的是 *%$** 相信了？
P: 大哥，你想点你觉得只有真的phoenixinter才会知道的东西吧

[第四轮, 终于找到公钥系统了]

Y: 我们得要一个公钥: S 同学最近追的女生是, 英文名是?
P: F, 英文是F..
P: 这个应该是他”仍然”在追的吧. 我不知道他是否放弃了。。
X: 好的 好, pass

然后我彻底相信了, 这时候, 我们开始攻辩小结.

X: 其实我本来想问动规的, 就是太简单了, 没敢问.
P: 动规是什么? 哈哈, 是不是开始怀疑了 ;)

X: 哈哈. 100% 相信了; 你问我贪心是啥 我都不怕了
P: 其实你可以找个题目给我做.. 然后我发现我不会… @_@
X: 哈哈, 那就搞笑了. 因为这种事情还常有
P: 。。。我用的本是什么牌子的? gcj上面? 我还真没注意。。。
X: IBM 呀. Goolge 从不给人其他牌子.
P: …我就说.. 你给个hp / dell的选择.. 也太bt了……不过我确实连ibm都想不起来..
X: 恩, 不搞点trick. 防止上当

X: 我是想验证你不是你的同学冒充的, 所以问动规没用, 问了一下 GCJ
X: 然后 问了一下并查 因为挫人不懂并查
X: 我的意思是 不做竞赛的
P: 你当时其实可以问, 并查集的复杂度推导给我看一下, 然后我就不知道了, 我是假的了.
X: 我想问 TAOCP 谁写的
P: ……这也太弱智了。。。
X: 哈哈 我原来想问 并查不加路经压缩 最差是多少. 但是这个也弱智
P: 这个还是要想想的.. 我应该会去翻算法导论。。。
P: 但是… 你这样只能判断出, 聊天的人至少是懂一点cs的
X: 对的 我慢慢来 先问这个, 缩小范围
P: ..太狠了你

X: 强命题我没这么容易构造. 我要慢慢想的
X: 还不能问通过你 Blog 知道的; 只能问大家都知道的
P: 对…

X: 零知识认证, 真麻烦. 非要借助第三方
P: 比如 B 同学……。。。。这个第三方太搞了。。。。
P: 因为B没有在任何网络上点名F. 这个认证显然可以把范围缩小到一个很小的范围
X: 对的. 这个游戏很好玩. 找到两个人共同的知识.

P: 先不谈正事了, 我们继续玩这个游戏吧
X: orz…

大家不妨和自己的好友闺密玩玩这个游戏, 看看你们到底有多少共同的秘密, 或者分享了多少只有你们两个知道的一些事情. 说不定, 能听到意想不到的八卦, 还能和朋友更加默契.

今天小百合上十大一则新闻, 说一个孩子考上了东南大学, 母亲在患绝症情况下, 不想拖累孩子, 选择自杀. 如果 Google 搜索”考上大学”+”自杀”, 得到的每条结果, 都是一个人间悲剧. 有人会说, 我们的大学助困体系很完备了, 为什么这些人还是这么愚昧不了解呢? 不是那些人愚昧, 实在是若干年的所谓”教育产业化”口号在人脑中种下的恶果. 而且经过了这么多年严重的教育负担, 要让这些家长再掏出不菲的大学学费, 的确是生命不能承受之重负.

我不想批评任何人, 只说说我从小到大, 经历过的一些事情.

我记得小时候, 我的姨妈舅舅婆婆叔叔和很多亲戚都很关心我家, 我听到的很高频的一句话, 就是 “小明家负担重, 两个孩子要上学”. (小明是亲戚长辈口中我妈妈的名字). 我小时候很不理解, 因为学费从来就不是我要考虑的. 我的小学, 中学, 从来就没拖欠过学费. 而我的爷爷和我爸爸, 因为在教育系统工作, 还常常有村民熟人, 来拜托能否办手续减免学费. 也就是说, 我只看到别人家的孩子为几百块钱的学费发愁. 我上初中的时候, 第一次听说一个词: “义务教育”, 那时候学生失学, 班主任好像还有责任的. 因此记得两个同学初二辍学了, 班主任还骑车好远去说服. 中考完, 还是有若干同学, 考上了高中, 却不可避免的失学了.

高中过得特别快, 我上大学了. 我父亲说, 标准是一年一万 (连学费4600+1200住宿. 我花钱比较快, 最后每年都超标了, 这是后话) 宿舍中有两个同学申请了助学贷款, 直到他们申请的那天, 我才知道, 原来银行是可以借钱给人读大学的. 直到我大四, 我的父母都刻意不让我知道钱这个东西对于他们的压力, 我手头也一直非常宽, 当然花钱也算计着点, 因此从来不觉得金钱是个压力. 我只是从每天只吃蔬菜, 一年只穿两双鞋的同学身上, 依稀看到一些压力. 我毕业后出国时候才知道, 原来国家每个月给我们大学生的补贴, 是26元; 国家每年助学贷款6000元, 减去住宿费和学费, 是200元. 大学时候有两个朋友, 都是国防生, 拿军队的资助读书, 读完大学后, 因为不习惯军队, 退掉了国防生资格, 退还了所有钱, 同时被剥夺了保研资格. 我知道, 若是当年没有军队的资助, 或许他们就在自己的家乡, 或者广东上海, 开始打工了.

大四的时候, 我面试完了微软, 拿了 offer, 和老爸谈心, 老爸说, 要是你不喜欢工作, 就别去了, 薪水不重要. 我知道老爸让我放心, 所以我开始理解, 嗯, 薪水其实的确很重要. 后来是考研报名, 宿舍的一个同学考金融, 我让他报光华管理学院. 他说, 北大以后可能要收费, 而且去北京的车票太贵了, 所以最后选上海. 不是我矫情, 这是我人生中第一次听到竟然一张车票, 一个收费, 就能影响人生的抉择. 我一直以为我很受限于环境, 我一直认为没有足够的钱闯荡江湖, 或者投资自己, 我这时候才意识到, 我在做人生选择的时候, 是多么的自由.

考研结果下来后, 我还在等 Google 消息. 我不想去北大, 因为去了北大后, 我觉得读生物研究生太辛苦了. 父母很想让我去, 于是, 某天晚上我回了一趟家, 就究竟是工作还是读书和老爸长谈. 我原想老爸肯定会说出一番人生哲理, 学业为重等等, 我也做好了据理力争的准备了. 没想到, 老爸一开口, 就是: 你上研究生的钱我早就准备好了, 钱你不要担心. 我很错愕. 我那个从来不和我谈钱, 和我说钱只是人生很小的一部分的老爸; 我那个花钱好像从来不计算, 我伸手就能提款的老爸, 居然对我说, 不要担心钱. 实际上, 我的确从来没担心过, 而我老爸老妈, 估计从我上大学的第一天, 就开始担心了.

我和老爸说我想出国的时候, 爸妈说, 或许我们只能给个机票钱了. 我说, 是, 只要机票钱. 我爸问, 资本主义美国凭什么花钱养你呢, 要不要留你在那里上班啊 (新加坡就是这个方法, 所以他有此疑问). 我详细解释了一下. 我爸最后, 和我共同得出了美国好于新加坡好于中国的结论. 这是很少我和老爸在 ABC 三样东西排序的选择中达成一致.

在我要出国的时候, 我父亲正好从一线工作上下来了. 因为我和老弟也都成年了, 以后全靠我们自己走了, 老爸老妈年龄也大了, 也未必要拼命工作了, 怡情养性, 花鸟鱼虫, 琴棋书画都可以慢慢捡起来了. 我一直觉得这个是一件非常好的事情. 不过老爸退出一线工作的根本原因, 倒不是因为我出国和老弟上大学, 而是我们当地政府操纵下的义务教育产业化.

基于众所周知的原因, 不是所有的人民都能到政府大院开会的, 所以, 我们的人民公仆一般来说代表着人民. 而值得赞扬的是, 地方政府通常喜欢干一些有利于”人民”的事情. 比如说, 他们发现, 如果灭掉所有的公办学校, 整合资源只办一所民办学校, 是最有利于资源配置和”人民”利益的. 当然, 不同的利益和不同的个人在这个里面或推波助澜, 或背后操作, 这个古今中外, 也都一样. 因此, 在行政干涉的市场化下, 我父亲负责的一所正常的中学就很华丽而后现代的被合并了. 除换牌子兼并, 其他学校还必须无条件出优秀教师, 无条件避让其招生, 总之, 谁和此中学过不去, 谁就和 “人民” 过不去. 于是, 我们小镇上只有一所像样的初中了, 其他没合并的中学, 就是属于回收站级别的设置了.

我亲自经历这个过程, 一切感同身受. 听我爸爸说, 在撤掉他那个中学, 货车搬学校的设施到新学校的时候, 一个老太太说, 要过去就从我身上过去吧. 对此, 我唯一能做的, 是盼老太太家每学期要多收三五斗麦子, 老太太的孙子每天多走三五里从而身体强健. 至此, 教育在我们小镇, 的确产业化了–学校附近的房子有人租了, 镇上市场周末买东西的人也多了. 租房子照顾子女的, 在农村都有地(过几年就会被圈成开发区了); 读书的学生, 以前走两步就到学校, 现在需要住校. 他们, 真的就想着被城市化么? 当然了, 所有的这些城市化, 让我非常佩服我们镇领导的英明神武. 在佩服之余, 我真愿意给出另一中肯建议: 我们小镇上已经有完整的初中高中了, 要是我们能搞个民办江苏省江都市大桥大学, 这样从小学到大学齐全配套, 全部产业化, 形成教育城. 届时, 咱们小镇也就算是首屈一指全国教育强镇了.

最后顺便提几句美国. 美国鼓励私人办学, 我所在的学校就是私立学校, 自己负担财务. 不像国内大学, 这所学校不是基于为人民服务而建立的, 而是某些资本家为了赚钱, 自发成立的. 虽然名字叫华盛顿, 美国政府却不闻不问. 每年本科生都要付极其高昂的学费, 同时本科学生贷款和各种资助项目也多如牛毛. 学校基于多元化考虑, 还刻意招收出身寒门的, 不同文化和种族背景的人. 我和很多国际学生一样, 被美国的某个科研机构的基金养着, 为老板打工. 我们的研究成果间接转化为美国的生产力, 这就是我见到的美国的教育产业化.

我生在不算贫困的家庭, 父母把工资和劳动所得供我和弟弟上学, 我觉得, 他们在教育上的投资是自发的. 在中国, 一个孩子想要改变命运, 这种投资是无奈但必须的. 常常听有人说, 国家为培养一个大学生, 花了很多很多钱, 因此我们要回国报效国家. 我所能感觉到的, 只是每年按时从父母手里拿走厚厚一叠钱, 到学校缴纳学费, 住宿费; 只是吃着学校食堂贵而不惠的饭菜, 住着按时熄灯限电拉闸的宿舍, 以及领着每月20多元的国家补助. 在我从小到大, 我欠我父母很多. 但我从来没直接感觉到, 国家给我们投入了多少教育成本. 虽然这么说有点显得不爱国, 可是我真的没感觉到, 某措施, 某设施, 是国家为培养我准备的. 我只知道, 我父母这么多年, 累坏了. 这些, 就是我对我这么多年感受到的教育产业, 下的唯一评语.

–
自行束脩以上. 有教无类. — 孔子

Why I am writing blog posts in English.

The reason is elementary, my dear Watson:

0. “The British are coming!” (Just kidding)

1. I want to improve my English

2. While we wait for the babel fish, I have do something.

–
“You forgot Poland.” — George W. Bush

====Chinese Version==中文版==

我为什么用英文写作?

最近间或写一些英文的文章, 一些读者来信表示不快. 因为我的母语是中文, Blog 也大部分是朋友在看, 用英文写作给他们的阅读也带来了麻烦. 那么, 为什么我要用英文写作呢? 我可以用两句英语解释清楚, 因为美国朋友很欢迎我用英文写作. 但我必须费点功夫告诉我的中文读者, 我这样做不是瞎折腾, 是有我自己的原因的.

1. 我想通过写作提高英语水平

我 的英语不好, 这一点我很小就知道了. 高中时候, 英语没有城市里的小孩好; 大学时候, 英语没有那些刻苦准备GT的同学好; 四六级过是过了, 也不能算好; 跌跌撞撞到了美国, 更加知道自己英语很糟糕. 因此我觉得要有意识的提高自己的英语. 而英文写作很有帮助.

我从去年开 始订阅了<时代>, 新单词新句型记录了很多, 可惜从来没有实际用过, 转眼即忘. 英文写作能让我牢记单词和句型, 用多了还能信手拈来, 脱口而出. 如果您细心看, 就觉得我用的句型大部分会来自最近几期<时代>上的文章, 引文也来自互联网上最新的一些资讯. 我觉得模仿是比较有效的方法. 而且既然写出来给人看, 就要多次检查, 防止语法错误等等. 这样战战兢兢好几次, 现在也能独立于语法检查器写出没错误的句子了, 算是不小的进步了.

2. 我想让更多的人了解我, 和我交流

IT 圈子中, 大家都知道王建硕(Jiansuo Wang), 毛向辉 (Issac Mao). 他们都在坚持写英文的Blog. 他们的英语水平或许都不算特别好, 不过他们都有很多的国际读者. 思想是核心, 语言是承载. 可惜在Babel Fish 到来之前, 我们还都必须受制于语言. 用英语写作, 不是我不爱母语, 而是我想更多的把我用母语表达的意思用另一种语言, 传给更多的人. 至于写英文是否崇洋媚外, 我倒不想辩论. 我尽量做到行文不中英夹杂, 因为我觉得夹杂中英文才是对母语最大的玷污. 如果您觉得看英文不舒服, 略过去就是了. 以后我尽量每周写一两篇英文的, 大家可以捧捧场, 也可以喝个倒彩. 我倒是希望通过写作英文Blog, 我的国际读者相对多一点, 读者之间的交流更加多元一点.

小提示: 您可以使用 Google Translate 把英文翻译过来. 虽然质量不够高, 差不多也能知道大致的意思了.

–My thoughts on making choices.

I have to admit that starting an article with the cliché “to be or not to be” [1] is somehow awkward. But actually, this is the topic of this article. No, I am not trying to answer the question asked by Hamlet. Everyone asks the same question towards different things over and over again everyday, and so do I. Several bits and pieces came to my mind recently, so I just record them down. Instead of getting the answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe and everything, which is 42 [2], here, I want to figure out my principles in making choices.

Thought #0: Making choice is a choice, or why only the paranoid survives.

Lots of people won’t make decisions unless they have sufficient information. But in the real world, information is necessary, but never sufficient, for making decisions. The idea never making decision before you get sufficient information is common but misleading. The long period of making decision finally hurts the outcome of that decision for lacking of time in implement it.

In making choices, our goal is to choose the best one. However, usually there is no obvious superior as the world is complicated, that’s the reason why information is needed to distinguish all the alternatives. Keep in mind that information should be helpful instead of delusive. Sometimes, conflicted information will make people lost and let the decision-making procedure be very painful. Therefore, in the decision-making process, one still makes decisions like ‘whether I should take this information’ or ‘whether I should wait for more information’. I would call this procedure “meta-decision making”.

My idea here is at any time, never let the meta-decision making take up the actual decision making time. I’ve seen more than once that someone staggered at the opportunity and hesitated before deciding. Needless to say, they finally make no better decision than roulette. There is a famous saying that only the paranoid survives. The paranoids usually make decision at the very beginning and hold on straight to the end. There is no meta-decision making for them. Sometimes they make worse decision, but hopefully, they can make superior decisions surprisingly, and they survive. Thus, please focus on the decision making itself and do not let the meta-decision murder your decision. Be aware of them, they may kill your decision.

Thought #1: Occam’s razor, or why more is less.

Once upon a time in my life, I had three pretty good offers, and I have to choose one among them finally. Frankly speaking, I’ve never imaged that. Anyway, I had to choose one. I began to realize that the more is not always the better. Sometimes, we do need an Occam’s razor [3]. Why is that?

The reason was because I felt satisfied with any of the choices, which means I could not simply nuke any one of them. Actually I shouldn’t always mention my achievements in the past, but please allow me to explain it in brief. My first choice is attending Peking University for the graduate study. Before taking the graduate entrance exam, I just want a try. I didn’t want anything more than an exam score. The thing turned out to be amazing that I ranked the 1st among all the students in that major–one of my favorite majors–Bio informatics. My second choice is Google China. At that time, Tina (I guess she is a senior assistant to Dr. Kai-fu Lee) told me that I have a probability of 99.9% to get an offer from Google China. In the meanwhile, I got the offer here, Washington University. Well, for some distinguished students, probably they can withdraw all of these and choose Stanford or MIT. However, for me, all these three are really really good — I had my beloved girlfriend studying in Peking University at that time; Google China was (and is) shining and flourishing; I wanted to stay in Beijing as lots of my relatives and friends were there; I wanted to have my own start up in Zhongguancun with some friends there and Web 2.0 was a buzzword at that time; USA is a free land and the major is computer science, my dreaming major; My advisor was (and is) doing excellent research work in his field; professors at Peking University were quite nice to me; to stay in Beijing would be definitely better for my parents; Gee, tons of pros and cons in my mind at that time. All of these things are twisted together. As a result, I got serious insomnia and was in a blue funk in making this decision. I would rather choose to hide under the rock.

Then, I would like to say that my uncle and my advisor gave me the Occam’s razor. My uncle suggested that I shouldn’t consider too much about others’ idea; and my advisor just told me that I could choose Beijing and Google in future. I’ve noticed that, unlike me, someone takes a different decision [4]. I would like to say, there is no standard Occam’s razor. I absolutely admire him if he didn’t get insomnia in making this decision :). I am saying that the more is not the better is not because I’ve hold such three good offers and am trying to show off, I just want to say that keeping the life simple and stupid is indeed very necessary. For more details about why more is less, I recommend a Google Video [5] for you guys.

Thought #2: Murphy’s Law, or how to use greedy algorithm.

This is about making decision between the current worse choice and the future better choice. Some people will take a risk of 80% probability to get another opportunity in the near future that is 20% superior over the current one. It sounds perfect, right? Since you can get a better one at a relative high probability, why bother with the current one. Now let’s do a simply mathematics. The expectation of the outcome of the future opportunity is 80% * (1+20%) = 96%. Boo, it’s worst than 1, so why not holding the current opportunity?

Most people, if not all, are very optimistic towards the future opportunities, and this 80-20 principle is universal acknowledged. But simple mathematics reveals the truth that one should never be too optimistic to put a bid on the future, unless it’s 25% or more better than the current one. In fact, in my opinion, 25% is not enough. If we take into account the time wasted in waiting for the future, I won’t bid for it unless it’s 30% or more better than the current one.

I am not trying to persuade others to be conservative. In fact, I encourage taking a risk on high-rewarded opportunity. But the Murphy’s Law states “things will go wrong in any given situation if you give them a chance.” [1] The future event will always have a larger probability to go wrong than your expectation. Therefore, if you want to be greedy, the best algorithm is not choosing the best choice in terms of result, but the best choice in terms of expectation. That’s the usage of probability. :)

Thought #3: No bargain choice, or don’t catch the deal if you don’t want it.

Some people make decisions to do something not based on their need, but because doing those are easy. In other word, they want to catch the deal. For instance, a friend of mine had two choices: one was going to a big company as an intern; the other was going to US for graduate study. The previous offer would delay his admission for half a year. Actually, the previous offer, even accepted, wouldn’t help much about the graduate study here. However, he would like to choose the first one because he thought that the later one was “difficult” for him at that moment. Therefore, the previous choice is like a bargain — you can live without it, but if it comes, just get it.

I am going to say “no” to bargain choice. First, bargain choice will misdirect one from the main road. Second, as Paul Graham pointed out, bargain choice will consume your energy [6], and you will be controlled by all these bargain choices. If you don’t really want it, why get it? Remember that more is less, and too much bargain choice will degrade your vision in making choices.

I’ve put all four thoughts here. If you have other principles or idea that is worth while sharing, why not leave your comments? ;)

PS: I am not an expert in making choice per se. Here I just summarize my thoughts in making choice. I will be very glad if someone can help translate this article back to Chinese, as I really have no time to do this.

References:

[1]: To be or not to be in Wikipedia
[2]: The ultimate answer
[3]: Occam’s Razor
[4]: http://blog.wangjunyu.net [A Google China employee's Blog, recommended]
[5]: The Paradox of Choice — Why more is less.
[6]: Stuff by Paul Graham