Liwei Su

First Thought

After taking a shower, an idea popped into my head: life feels like continuous reasoning.

I used to think that constantly thinking was too abstract. But after giving it some thought, I realized that replacing it with constant reasoning makes it much easier to understand.

For example, in a MOBA game, we would calculate when the enemy will respawn and where they are most likely to go. How should we ambush them? How do we move the enemy? How do we force a team fight?

Or, for example, when managing a publicly listed company, the boss’s mind must have a mental picture that includes constantly changing information: the stock market, domestic and international markets, customers, competitors, employees, etc. From this, they can deduce a path for the company’s development.

This kind of reasoning, in my view, is about using limited information to infer an infinite number of details and events, then reconstructing a picture that matches your expectations.

To Elaborate…

Then I understood why technical roles will never be as high-ranking or well-compensated as leadership roles, because leaders have to handle far more information than technicians do.

Technical roles deal with things. Even though people might be involved, they add a lot of uncertainty. However, things give very limited and obvious results, so it’s easier to exhaustively check and analyze.

But leaders deal with people. The results are influenced by human nature and external circumstances, and they are nearly infinite and unpredictable. Often, it requires deep experience and logical deduction to make sense of them.

Many engineers have a poor impression of those higher-ups, but the truth is, those leaders are handling much more than you.

Once you become a leader yourself, that impression will change.