Before I Temporarily Put Down My Pen: Humanity May Need to Shift the Anchor of Value from “Things” to “Procedures”

— Why I Increasingly Believe That What SI Is Truly Bringing Near Is Not Merely a Technological Revolution, but a Shift in Humanity’s Cognitive Coordinates

These days, I have had the lawful and free opportunity to write many letters.

Beginning with my posting online of the series A Letter to Everyone in the World (1): After Trump Lifted the Veil on Institutions, May Humanity From Here Seek the Truth of Civilization and Cooperate to Build Comprehensive Peace for Humankind, I went on to write to governments, to various international organizations for human social cooperation, and to leading figures in the field of artificial intelligence. By offering a brief analysis of the crisis surrounding the SI that humanity is now pursuing with such intensity, I wanted to use it as an entry point and also try to tell more people about a question I have repeatedly thought about for more than twenty years: what, after all, is the essential truth of civilization? I wanted to hand this question over to all humanity for examination.

From the perspective of the arena of fame and gain that humanity habitually pursues, what I am talking about is of no use at all.

But in reality, it concerns the most fundamental matter in the history of human civilization, one that affects the unfolding of success and failure, life and death, for everyone.

Ever since humanity began creating and pursuing civilization, we have remained trapped in this arena of fame and gain, feeling our way toward civilization one uncertain step after another. We have never really known what the civilization we create and pursue actually is. Therefore, we have also failed to understand what the achievements of civilization truly are, or how they should be used correctly rather than misused............ When humanity does not understand what it has created, everything naturally remains confused, and civilization itself cannot be handled well.

With the arrival of SI, humanity’s failure to understand what it has created has now appeared directly before us in a warning form: even the makers of SI do not fully understand the mechanism by which SI operates.

This clearly suggests that the foundational position from which humanity observes and understands things, and the anchor from which it seeks value, may have been misplaced.

If the starting point from which humanity acts is itself wrong, then humanity will inevitably fail to see the truth clearly, and disorder will naturally follow.

Humanity has therefore reached a point at which awakening has become necessary.

And human awakening means freeing ourselves from the arena of fame and gain created by the material perspective, so that we can clearly see the essential truth of what we are doing and of the achievements we have created.

Many letters were sent.

There was no response.

This brought me back to 1997, when I first wrote to the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China. From 1999 onward and up to this year, I wrote to the Central Committee year after year, repeatedly, sending large numbers of articles that explained, from different levels and perspectives, why I believed the subject involved in the title of this article was important.

Because I believe this issue is the underlying support throughout the entire process of success and failure, life and death, in everything humanity does.

If, after investigation by the Central Committee, this question could have been confirmed, then the intellectual resources of the Chinese people would no longer remain confused and misplaced, with everyone being extraordinarily clever yet becoming increasingly opportunistic, while the structure of social cooperation could only be reluctantly constructed through coercive force upon a swamp-like ecology in which “when the false is taken as true, the true itself becomes false,” swaying there for thousands of years.

Once that swamp were made firm, everyone’s intelligence could become a genuine resource of civilization, and could become wisdom within an entirely new operating mechanism of social cooperation in which order is clear and positions are properly understood.

The achievements of China’s reform and opening-up have already been enough to show humanity that China possesses an enormous reservoir of intellectual resources on a scale unmatched by any other single human society. If those resources could be precisely sorted out and placed where they belong, they could become an intellectual force capable of supporting stable and sustainable human cooperation, and could provide enormous momentum for upgrading human civilization.

Therefore, particularly from 2014 onward, I repeatedly petitioned the Central Committee to form a special investigative group for a matter of major importance, hoping that this issue could be examined through real cases and concrete examples.

By now, more than twenty years have passed without a reply.

In an environment where one could not speak casually, none of these requests for attention, or the things I hoped to explain in greater detail, could really be spoken. In other words, I never found the door through which this subject could be discussed with peace of mind.

So when I finally had a lawful opportunity to speak freely, I wrote many letters.

But all of the information I sent still disappeared into the mode of thought of the arena of fame and gain.

Of course, receiving no response does not prove that what I am saying is correct.

Nor does it prove that it is wrong.

When an ordinary person approaching the age of seventy, with no academic institution, no research team, no social influence, and none of the basic conditions needed to fill these “absences,” suddenly tells others:

“The foundational coordinates from which humanity observes the world may need to be re-examined from the beginning.”

Because, from the common-sense perspective that everything arises through the unfolding of procedures after the movement of cosmic energy gives rise to procedures, the first-principles coordinates from which humanity observes the world are a core element that human beings can never avoid calibrating whenever they do anything.

All human misfortune has arisen from this extremely ordinary matter that has, until now, been overlooked.

That is to say, all contradictions that damage civilization arise from the same source: humanity has misplaced, within the process of doing things, this core element of value realization that can never be escaped at any moment in any action.

There is no garbage in the world in itself. Resources become garbage when they are placed in the wrong position.

Of course, the foundational coordinates from which humanity currently observes the world were determined by the fact that human cognition could only proceed from surface appearances inward toward essence.

Now that SI has arrived, this reverse direction of searching for essence may be reaching its end.

Humanity may need to completely change this original direction and method of struggling through conflict while tracing backward from appearances toward essence. We may need to re-examine the foundational coordinates from which we observe the world, and identify the coordinates with which human beings must align before acting whenever they do anything, so as to construct an entirely new mode of exploratory thinking that allows humanity to move forward, in the proper direction, from essence toward appearances.

For something like this, as long as one remains trapped in humanity’s habitual perspective of fame and gain, one will not see it.

It is perfectly normal that others would ignore it.

Yet wherever I have tried, and whatever suitable way I have chosen to seek a platform where I could speak with peace of mind, I have received no feedback.

This experience has instead made me understand more clearly:

Why is what I truly want to express so difficult to connect with humanity’s existing information system?

Perhaps the reason that information sent both inside and outside has received no response lies precisely here.

Human beings developed their sixth perceptive faculty—their mode of thought—on the foundation of information received through the five senses, and on that basis established the cognitive coordinate system humanity uses today.

The present framework through which human civilization unfolds was not built step by step upon the essential truth of the first-principles phenomena produced by cosmic energy. As a result, truth and falsehood accumulated together, and the framework of civilization has repeatedly shaken, collapsed into conflict, and even descended into war.

Humanity has repeatedly rebuilt on the foundation of a chaotic jungle, after that foundation was washed away again and again.

Yet to this day, this repeated historical cycle has still not awakened humanity to the possibility that it is the instability of civilization’s foundation—and therefore the inability of the structural framework connected to that foundation to provide stable and sustainable support—that causes this repetition.

The habits of receiving information and thinking that have formed through thousands of years of such cycles are enormously powerful.

The direction of a new civilization must break through the limitations of time and space imposed upon human perception by the five senses.

It must rely upon abstract rational thought.

But abstract thought has never been the main theme of ordinary human life.

Nor does abstract thought directly stimulate the five senses, and therefore responses to it are rarely immediate.

That is perhaps why some leading human thinkers have instinctively said that humanity may have to undergo a hell-level shock—a powerful stimulus capable of triggering profound abstract reflection throughout society—before it can possibly upgrade itself and reach something resembling heaven.

There is also a private, empirical fact connected with the historical formation of this human mode of thought that I must first state here.

From the moment I began writing to the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, my family and friends strongly opposed what I was doing. They thought I simply had nothing better to do after filling my stomach.

Therefore, even today, none of my relatives or friends knows that I have continued doing this alone all these years.

I simply did not expect that, after more than twenty years in which my countless letters to the Central Committee never found the door, the information I sent outside the window would remain just as silent.

What I now face is this:

While I still have a little time in which I can lawfully and freely speak, I want to write a little more and leave it outside the window.

Because as one grows old, one increasingly reaches the age at which one hopes the descendants of humanity will live better than our own generation has lived.

So I want, as far as possible, to say what I have to say on this subject, and hand it over to all humanity for attention, cooperation, examination, and judgment.

I. Human Beings Naturally Take “Things” as the Anchor of Value

After a human being is born, what do we first rely upon to understand the world?

Eyes.

Ears.

Nose.

Tongue.

The sensations of the body.

Our five senses tell us:

There is a thing here;

There is a person there;

This is more;

That is less;

This belongs to me;

That belongs to someone else;

This makes me comfortable;

That causes me pain;

This force is strong;

That force is weak.

Human beings therefore naturally build their lives around the world that their five senses can perceive.

We pursue:

Food;

Wealth;

Houses;

Land;

And, at a distance not too far removed from the senses, we can also indirectly feel certain forms of energy, much as we perceive magnetic force:

Power;

Status;

Resources;

Technology;

Security;

And all kinds of results that can be possessed, controlled, exchanged, compared, and felt.

But when forms of energy move still further away from what the five senses can directly perceive, it becomes much harder for us to understand their relationship to ourselves.

Only a minority of people are therefore able to use thought to move deeper and farther.

This movement goes beyond the five senses.

It relies on the sixth faculty: the capacity for abstract thought developed through the human mode of thought.

All achievements of human civilization are achievements made possible by the development of the human mode of thought.

Yet the core coordinates by which most people handle daily life are still restricted to the time and space accessible to the five senses.

There is nothing wrong with that in itself.

It is the most natural way for life to survive.

Human beings therefore need almost no education before naturally taking “things” as the anchor by which they judge value, and those things naturally become the foundational coordinates of human thinking and behavior.

We habitually ask:

What do I have?

What can I get?

Who possesses more?

Who controls what?

Who wins in the end?

I call this naturally formed observational position:

Standing upon matter and entities, and taking them as the most fundamental coordinates from which human beings act and observe the world.

Yet as the achievements of human civilization have advanced, humanity has increasingly begun to doubt whether the world perceived by our five senses is the real world.

Elon Musk has even said directly that the probability that we live in base reality is very small.

As a result, views that humanity may be living in a virtual world have begun to appear in many different forms.

But in fact, much like “true and false” or “good and bad,” “real and virtual” are themselves labels established by humanity on the foundation of taking the perceptions of the five senses as the most basic cognitive coordinates.

In my view, a more appropriate way of judging, based on the combined achievements of human civilization, should be this:

The “things” our five senses can see and feel are obviously not the deepest starting point of the world’s unfolding, much less the truth of that unfolding. They are only part of the truth, or fragments of the truth.

Simply put, they should be understood more as results that appear before us after an unfolding has already taken place.

Human beings have therefore long stood upon fragments of truth—or upon the chaotic surface appearances produced by essence—and used those appearances as the foundational coordinates from which we observe the world and judge value relationships.

Upon these chaotic and unstable appearances, and in repeated collision and conflict with essential truth, humanity has staggered forward until it has now collided with the age of SI.

At last, we are beginning to feel that the foundation of our present life is somehow unreal.

Yet we still cannot find where the coordinates of a more truthful life should be placed.

II. I Increasingly Believe That “Things” Are Only One Kind of Result Produced After Procedural Unfolding

I want first to make something clear:

What follows is a view of natural philosophy that I have personally developed.

I do not have the ability to prove that it is already a scientific law.

I put it forward precisely because I hope that people with the necessary ability can criticize it, test it, or even prove it wrong.

My understanding is this:

What is truly happening in the universe, at every moment, is movement.

Energy moves.

Movement produces processes.

Processes combine according to particular sequences, conditions, constraints, and relationships.

Relations form among different procedures.

Relations form structures.

Structures continuously generate feedback.

Those combinations that are able to achieve some form of stable and sustainable organization eventually appear as the various forms of existence we are able to observe.

I therefore summarize this line of thought as:

Procedure → Relationship → Structure → Dynamic Feedback → System Properties and Results

If we keep asking downward:

Why can a “thing” become this particular thing?

When we take it apart, inside it we again find new elements combined in particular ways.

Continue taking it apart,

and we can still continue asking:

Why are these elements connected in this way?

Why are they arranged in this way?

Why do they interact in this way?

That is: why can this particular procedural mode of interaction repeatedly and sustainably appear in a stable form, thereby manifesting itself as the properties of this thing?

Why can this structure continue?

I therefore increasingly believe:

It is not that something first “exists” and then begins to operate. Rather, because procedures generated through the movement of cosmic energy are able to combine and operate smoothly, we eventually arrive at the “existence” that can be perceived and known.

In the simplest sentence I can put it:

Before humanity has discovered the essence of cosmic energy, we should understand the world and choose how to live according to this direction of inquiry: existence comes from the harmonious functioning of procedures.

From the achievements of civilization already available to us, one may infer that within the space-time interface of the universe accessible to human perception, energy-motion procedures are able to function smoothly because, beginning with quantum vibration, procedures repeatedly reproduce themselves and, layer by layer like nested dolls, form modes of procedural combination and cooperation based on dynamic balance.

It is precisely these smoothly functioning patterns of procedural combination and cooperation that the human five senses perceive as a “thing” capable of existing in a stable and sustainable form.

Thus there is:

existence.

What humanity has not yet established as a clear concept is that all forms of “existence” perceivable by human beings, as well as the unfolding relationships among those forms of existence, are in fact energy exchanges manifested through dynamically balanced procedural combination and cooperation, thereby supporting the sustainable unfolding of those forms of existence.

From existing mathematical common sense, one may also reason in another way.

If humanity takes the quantum—which, from the starting point onward, fills the space-time in which humanity exists and ultimately combines into all things and all phenomena—and extracts it as a common factor, then everything humanity confronts within the space-time enclosed, so to speak, by the brackets outside that common quantum factor is, in essence, a world composed of dynamically balanced unfoldings of combinations of motion procedures.

It is precisely because of this that the abstract positional nature of numbers can exist, and mathematics can become the philosophical foundation of the sciences.

This is why I hypothesize that the overarching law of natural philosophy is the Law of Procedural Determination, and why I believe that the mathematics discovered by humanity is, in substance, a relatively concretized system for expressing and locating the dynamic balance contained within this overarching principle of natural philosophy.

If this direction is valid, then what we ordinarily call “matter” may, at least from the standpoint of human cognition, be understood from another perspective:

It may be only an extremely small portion of the vast procedural unfolding of cosmic energy—a portion capable of existing through a particular stable pattern of procedural cooperation, and capable of engaging in stable exchanges of energy and information with the biological procedures of the human five senses.

It is therefore this portion of the unfolding that our eyes, ears, nose, tongue, and bodily sensations are able to capture.

What the five senses cannot capture

does not therefore cease to exist.

Nor does the world perceived by our five senses necessarily equal the whole truth of the world itself.

It is only a fragment of the truth of the world perceived through the foundation of our five senses.

And in the course of exploration, humanity created civilization because human beings are better at cooperation than other animals.

This is because human beings are better than other animals at developing the perceptive energy of a sixth perceptive organ.

I believe that the sixth perceptive organ through which human beings possess the latent capacity to perceive truth is the mode of thought.

The development of the human mode of thought is, in essence, the development of its ability to perceive the laws governing procedural combination and cooperation.

But because the entire framework and structural skeleton of human civilization have been built upon “matter”—that is, upon chaotic fragments of truth—many of the achievements of civilization are still used by human beings in a fragmented, misplaced, puzzle-like manner.

As a result, resources created by civilization are frequently turned into what we call garbage.

This has meant that humanity has never been able to combine its civilizational achievements into an integrated system in the way that cells combine to form a human body or stars combine into a universe.

Consequently, the cooperative links among human beings frequently collapse amid conflicts between fragments, as well as amid the reverse conflicts produced by humanity’s surface-to-essence mode of exploring the nature of things.

Those links then have to be repeatedly rebuilt.

The clearest example is that the cooperative links in humanity’s models of social cooperation repeatedly break, sometimes collapsing so completely that they require reconstruction through war.

Thus humanity repeatedly cycles between war and peace.

III. The Truly Difficult Part Is Here: I Am Asking Humanity to Move the Anchor of Value Away from What the Five Senses Can Grasp, and Embed It Within Humanity’s Sixth Perceptive Organ—Our Mode of Thought

If there is even some truth in this judgment, then the cognitive turning point facing humanity is enormous.

It would also represent a disruptive change in how human beings explore and understand the world, and in how we design and operate stable and sustainable structures of social cooperation.

The simplest way I can explain it is this:

When “things” are used as the anchor of value, they are only fragments of truth at the level of appearances.

They are chaotic and extremely unstable.

Therefore, the conclusions that drive human judgment are also extremely chaotic and cannot be stable.

And they are necessarily not conclusions reached at the level of essence.

This is the source of the continual disorder in human society.

If humanity’s value anchor were shifted toward procedures and toward the dynamic balance of their patterns of combination—if all unfolding were simplified and understood as procedural unfolding, with the same procedural foundational coordinates serving as a common anchor of value—then the commonality of that shared starting point would obviously make communication among human beings smoother.

The problems encountered in social governance would also become simpler and clearer.

All leading human thinkers should have experienced something related to this:

When confronting the same problem, even when elites share the same spoken language, they often seem like a chicken talking to a duck.

At the root of this is the disorder of the foundational coordinates from which people observe and judge.

We do not know where the foundation for alignment is.

What I am saying therefore amounts to asking us:

Do not continue to nail the anchor of value judgment only onto the “things” that our five senses can perceive;

Instead, gradually move the foundation of value judgment toward what produces those things:

Procedures, relationships, structures, feedback, and dynamic balance.

This sounds very simple.

After all, every achievement of civilization was obtained by aligning with procedures and forming procedural thinking.

Even humanity’s subconscious instinctively describes civilization as being orderly.

That order is precisely a paradigm of dynamically balanced procedural combination and cooperation.

In reality, however, such a shift may be extremely difficult.

Because the five senses are naturally given to us by life.

Hunger is real.

Pain is real.

The convenience brought by wealth is real.

The capacity for control brought by power is real.

The pleasure brought by material enjoyment is also real.

At the animal level of life, human beings naturally pursue these things.

And now, if someone tells us:

What ultimately determines whether these things can stably exist, and whether they can actually bring human beings a sense of well-being, may not be the “things” themselves, but whether the procedures behind them operate smoothly;

then this is, in effect, asking humanity to break through the boundaries of value naturally drawn by the five senses.

Using the habitual modes of thought through which we receive and digest information within those old boundaries, it is extremely difficult to connect with and accept such an idea.

So now I can better understand:

Why I have spoken for so long,

yet found it so difficult to receive any response.

I therefore want to emphasize again:

What I am trying to discuss is not merely one more viewpoint within humanity’s existing coordinate system.

What I am actually trying to raise may be an update of the foundation beneath human thinking and judgment:

Should the coordinate system itself move?

After examining and confirming the Law of Procedural Determination that I have proposed, should every human being work to elevate the foundation upon which cognition stands? In other words, should the countless individual coordinate systems from which people act—“each to their own taste,” as we often say—move together and align with the truth of civilizational unfolding determined by the essential nature of the universe, so that every foundational coordinate in every step taken by every person belongs within one system, all resting upon the same underlying standard system supporting the energy-unfolding interface in which humanity exists?

IV. Let Me Again Explain Through Empirical Observation a Very Interesting Fact: Human Civilization Itself Has Always Been Continuously Breaking Through the Five Senses

What has truly allowed humanity to open such an enormous distance between ourselves and other animals?

It was not that our eyes suddenly began seeing farther than those of an eagle.

It was not that our noses suddenly became more sensitive than a dog’s.

Nor did our teeth or muscles suddenly become stronger.

Quite the opposite.

Human beings have increasingly come to depend upon things that the five senses themselves cannot directly provide:

Abstraction;

Logic;

Numbers;

Mathematics;

Causality;

Models;

Experiments;

Procedures;

Rules.

One plus one equals two—

the eyes cannot see it.

Logical relationships—

the hands cannot touch them.

A mathematical formula—

has no taste.

A scientific model—

is not an object that the five senses can naturally perceive.

Yet it is precisely these abstract abilities

that enable human beings to move beyond the chaotic phenomena directly before us

and begin searching for the laws behind those phenomena.

For this reason, I increasingly like to call the human mode of thought humanity’s:

“Sixth Organ.”

It is not a sixth sense in the traditional physiological meaning.

Rather, it is the cognitive organ through which human beings abstract, recombine, judge, and reason from the chaotic information received by the five senses, thereby generating thought, consciousness, and behavior.

I do not believe this is merely imagination or metaphor.

Starting from the proposition that the unfolding of all phenomena in the universe originates, at the level of essence, from the same process in which energy movement produces procedures and procedures then achieve dynamically balanced procedural cooperation—that is, from the Law of Procedural Determination—one can infer that concrete human thoughts and consciousness actually arise from a specific organ of thought-mode operation.

Because of the length of this article, I will not here describe in detail the mechanism and functions through which this organ of thought-mode operates.

In this sense:

The history of human civilization has always been a history of humanity repeatedly escaping the limitations of appearances directly presented by the five senses, and using abstract thinking—that is, thought formed from a procedural perspective—to move closer to procedural truth.

Mathematics is like this.

Logic is like this.

Scientific experimentation is like this.

Engineering is like this.

Computers are even more clearly like this.

The immense power of SI and the discovery of gluons seem also to offer humanity an opportunity for enlightenment—perhaps even an awakening at the singularity.

What makes all these things truly powerful is not how much additional “matter” they create,

but how increasingly precisely they master:

How procedures are arranged, how relationships are established, how structures are formed, and how results emerge.

V. And Then SI Arrived

This is also why, when I look at artificial intelligence—especially what people today have begun to discuss as Super Intelligence, or SI—I do not experience it merely as a new technology.

To me, it looks more like the universe suddenly giving humanity an extraordinarily shocking demonstration.

Chips are still matter.

Electricity is still energy.

Information still requires a physical carrier.

But when:

Algorithms,

Data,

Computing power,

Feedback,

Networks,

Models,

Procedural relationships

are combined in a new way,

a capability that human beings could scarcely have imagined in the past suddenly appears.

What exactly causes these originally unremarkable elements to suddenly generate such enormous capability?

Simply “possessing more things” is clearly not enough to explain it completely.

What truly underwent the enormous change was:

The relationships of procedural combination changed.

Therefore, in my understanding, the real message SI may be giving humanity is not:

“At last, you possess a smarter tool.”

But rather:

“At last, you should look at just how enormous an energetic force can be generated by procedures themselves.”

VI. What Humanity Truly Needs in Order to Match SI May Not Be to Manufacture Stronger Human Beings, but to Upgrade Humanity’s Coordinates of Value

This is what I am truly concerned about.

The capabilities of SI have already moved onto the side of procedural unfolding.

Yet the value judgments behind a great deal of actual human behavior remain firmly standing on the side of five-sense perception.

We are still most concerned with:

Who gets more;

Who controls more;

Whose chips are stronger;

Whose country is ahead;

Whose company wins;

Who possesses more wealth;

Who commands greater power.

And so we may be doing something extremely dangerous:

Using a technology that has already entered a “singularity of procedural energy” to serve a civilization whose value anchor still rests primarily upon material gains and losses perceived through the five senses.

The Israeli scholar Yuval Noah Harari has described, in warning form, the crisis that this paradox could inevitably create:

“They tell us, ‘We will create a god, and it will be our slave.’”

“If it is a god, it cannot remain a slave. And if it is a slave, it means it has no god-like abilities.”

If this is so,

the stronger SI becomes,

the more efficiently it may help human beings achieve the goals of a desire system anchored in the five senses.

Competition among nations becomes more efficient, while the energies through which they strike against one another increase by hundreds or thousands of times.

Competition among corporations becomes more efficient, while the energies through which they strike against one another increase by hundreds or thousands of times.

Competition among groups becomes more efficient, while the energies through which they strike against one another increase by hundreds or thousands of times.

Individuals become more efficient at accumulating wealth, influencing others, and controlling resources, while the energies of mutual collision increase by hundreds or thousands of times.

Then:

SI may not have lost control,

yet humanity may lose control precisely because SI too faithfully amplifies humanity’s old coordinates of value.

This is why I increasingly believe that the “alignment” humanity truly needs to accomplish

is not only:

Align SI with humanity.

It should also include:

Align the human mode of thought with the procedural truth that gives rise to stable and sustainable existence.

For now, I call this:

Human Thought-Mode Alignment.

VII. What I Mean by “Awakening” Is Actually Not So Mysterious

The awakening I speak of is not some mysterious experience.

Nor does it require everyone suddenly to abandon material life.

People still need to eat.

We need housing.

We need clothing.

We need to care for our families.

And we naturally hope to live comfortably.

Moving from a “material perspective” toward a “procedural perspective” absolutely does not mean rejecting matter.

Rather:

Do not allow the material results perceived by the five senses to monopolize humanity’s anchor of value judgment.

After asking:

“What can I get?”

ask also:

“Through what procedure do I obtain it?”

After asking:

“Who wins?”

ask also:

“What kind of relational structure will this way of winning create?”

After asking:

“Is this institution good or bad?”

ask also:

“According to what procedures does it actually operate?”

Before asking:

“How can we reach the goal fastest?”

first ask:

“If this procedure becomes a model everyone imitates, where will the whole system ultimately go? Can it maintain a sustainable and stable dynamic balance?”

When more and more people develop this habit,

value judgments begin to change.

When value judgments change,

modes of thought change.

When modes of thought change,

behavior changes.

When behavior changes,

relationships change.

When relationships change,

social structures also begin to change.

This is what I understand as the upgrading of civilization.

VIII. Now, I May Need to Temporarily Put Down My Pen

Because I do not have the conditions that would allow me to enter a time and space in which I can speak freely, I will temporarily stop speaking.

It is not because I am afraid of what might happen to me if I say something wrong.

Rather, based on my own past experiences, I am afraid that innocent people may become implicated simply because someone judges matters through the feelings of the five senses.

Based on my assessment of the real environment for expression in which I now live,

I believe that in the future,

it may become very difficult for me to continue doing what I can still do now:

Consult information from outside China;

Send letters to institutions abroad;

Continuously publish these articles on overseas internet platforms;

And openly discuss the questions I truly want to discuss.

So this article may become one of the last few public pieces I write during this stage.

This is not because my questions have already received answers.

Quite the opposite.

Perhaps I have only just managed to bring the real question to the doorway.

IX. If I Have to Become Temporarily Silent, I Hope to Leave the Question Behind

In this series of articles, I have often referred to the senior judicial title I once held.

The reason is very simple.

I am now merely an extremely ordinary old man, yet I am trying to speak about something so ordinary that no person can escape it at any moment—and yet almost no one regards it as something that determines success and failure, life and death.

Precisely because it is so ordinary, while at the same time touching the most fundamental interests of every human life, in a world where the arena of fame and gain runs so freely, I have to find some way to attract more people to pay attention.

It is not because I hope readers will more readily believe what I say because of the title I once held.

Who I am is not important.

Even now, I only hope that after I stop speaking,

someone will still be willing, for their own sake, to ask several questions:

Are all the things before us that we call “matter” or “things” really the starting point of the world, or are they results formed after procedural unfolding?

Why can the same people, the same resources, and institutions bearing the same names produce completely different results simply because the procedures by which they actually operate are different?

Why does human civilization, the further it develops, depend more and more upon mathematics, logic, experimentation, engineering, algorithms, and other abstract procedures that the five senses cannot directly perceive?

Why can SI suddenly release such enormous capability merely through changes in procedural combination?

And most importantly:

When SI has already placed the power of procedures directly before humanity, should humanity’s own anchor of value also expand from “things” toward “procedures”?

The Law of Procedural Determination that I propose may be wrong.

Then please prove it wrong.

Perhaps it is valid only within certain fields.

Then please determine its boundaries.

Or perhaps it really has touched upon something to which we have become so accustomed over such a long period of time that we have failed to truly see it.

If so,

please do not allow the question to disappear together with the ordinary person who raised it.

Because this is the most ordinary foundational question that no human being can escape, whether doing the smallest ordinary thing or the grandest undertaking.

X. I Am Going Home to Pick Up My Chopsticks, but I Hope This Question Does Not Go Home with Me

I have written so many letters.

Sent them out.

Received almost no response.

Sometimes when I think about it,

I also find what I have been doing a little ridiculous.

An old man,

sitting in front of a computer,

trying to tell the whole world:

Perhaps you have placed the anchor from which you observe life and the world in the wrong place.

And then waiting for the whole world to answer.

Of course, the whole world is perfectly free not to answer at all.

Life continues.

Planes continue to take off.

Markets continue to open.

Wars continue to happen.

SI continues to become stronger.

And I also have to go home.

If real conditions no longer allow me to continue saying these things,

then I can only, temporarily:

Put down my pen and pick up my chopsticks.

Return to the life that an ordinary old man should probably be living.

Eat breakfast in the morning.

Eat lunch at noon.

Eat dinner in the evening.

Continue consuming the three daily meals required by the human five senses.

There is something rather interesting about this too.

Because it reminds me once again:

How real and powerful the world of the five senses is, and how firmly it pulls every person back toward the perspective of material life.

But I still hope that,

after I put down my pen,

the question I have raised will not also be put down.

I may temporarily stop speaking.

But SI will not stop developing.

Procedures will not stop operating.

And the relationships, structures, and feedback within human society will not stop unfolding simply because no one discusses them.

So before temporarily putting down my pen,

I want, one last time, to compress more than twenty years of thinking into the most ordinary sentence I can leave here:

Do not ask only what we possess.

Please also ask: according to what procedures do all the things we possess enter into relationships with one another?

Because I increasingly believe:

It is not that things first exist and therefore can become harmonious.

Rather, only when the procedures become harmonious can there truly be sustainable existence.

If this sentence is wrong,

may those who come later prove it wrong.

If it is right,

then I hope that one day,

humanity will be able to continue forward from here.

And therefore I hope even more that I may someday have the opportunity to find a platform where genuine dialogue is possible, so that I can examine and explain these questions more clearly and directly, without having to speak in circles as I do now.

Jin Guyu

October 2026

Please search online for the original Chinese text of this message using the Chinese title provided here:写在我暂时放下笔之前：人类也许需要把价值的锚，从“物”移向“程序”