An error doesn't become a mistake until you refuse to correct it.
- Orlando A. Battista
A few days ago, a student named Shanshan in the group mentioned a short story about the Great Leap Forward:
The exaggerated high yields raised doubts. However, Qian Xuesen wrote an article in China Youth Daily claiming: "Has the land reached its maximum food production for people? Scientific calculations tell us: it's far from it!" "If we take 30% of the sunlight that hits one acre each year as the part plants can use, and if plants use this sunlight to convert carbon dioxide from the air and water into their own nutrients, allowing themselves to grow and bear fruit, and if we consider one fifth of that as edible grain, then the annual yield per acre of rice and wheat would not only be more than two or three thousand catties now, but more than 20 times that amount!",
Mao Zedong answered that he believed in the satellite-reported yields after reading Qian Xuesen's article. The national grain collection quotas set according to these false reports seriously exceeded actual production, even collecting farmers' rations to make up for the shortfall, directly exacerbating the conflict between farmers and grassroots cadres, becoming one of the main reasons for the subsequent famine.
Today, I discussed this topic with my psychiatrist, and I sighed, why is the technocratic bureaucracy immature, why do amateurs guide professionals.
The psychiatrist brought up a perspective: whether or not the advice of physicists on agriculture was followed at the beginning is not the most critical issue; the key is whether there is a correction mechanism within this system. If there isn't, it's like the emperor's new clothes; if there is such a mechanism, it doesn't matter if mistakes are made, we will gradually correct and improve them, rather than thinking they are absolutely right, or turning wrong things into right ones.
We look forward to superhuman beings and superhuman power. Children may have such thoughts: at first, they think they are gods, believing that when they cry from hunger, milk will come, and when they feel uncomfortable from wet diapers, someone will change them; later, they think their parents are gods, omnipotent, able to solve all problems.
Children cannot understand that there are many difficulties in the world that we are powerless against; many questions to which no one knows the answers.
All we can do is keep trying and making mistakes.
The publication of "The Criterion of Truth," moving from dogmatic adherence to the 'Two Whatevers' to a pragmatic approach of seeking truth from facts, marked a shift away from the immature, overly idealized belief in superhuman beings and forces, and the desire to oversimplify complex issues.
Not all successes are one-time successes. They all involve a process of continuous trial and error. We don't need to create perfect people.
We need gods even less.