Survivorship Bias

Chapter 2: The golden mean

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"So it's the word blame." The boy beside him finally spoke.

An Wujiu turned his face away, caught a little expression of curiosity being satisfied on his overly indifferent face. His name was also suspended, Wu You.

"Ah, I'm also curious about this." The beauty on the right also spoke, with the word [Zhong Yirou] floating in front of her. She rested her chin on her palm and tapped her nails lightly on her cheek, "This name doesn't look like a pauper who will come to compete at all."

She was wearing berry-colored lipstick, her eyes were big and beautiful, "Your neck..." Zhong Yirou pointed at An Wujiu's side neck with a finger, and moved closer, "Are these flowers tattooed on it?"

"Flowers?" An Wujiu lowered his head. Seeing that he couldn't see him, Zhong Yirou spread out the palm of her left hand and put it in front of An Wujiu, with a small round mirror embedded in the palm, "Here, this white one looks pretty good."

From the reflection in the mirror, An Wujiu found a large cluster of flowers on his neck, the shape of blooming was outlined by the thin snow-white edges, the petals were complicated and layered on top of each other, from the left collarbone obliquely upwards, all the way to the right ear back.

But he didn't seem to have these flowers in his memory.

"I don't remember either." An Wujiu put his fingers on it, and rubbed his skin red, but he couldn't get it off.

Is it really a tattoo

"Shaoyao." Wu You on the side interjected, but quickly added in a low voice, "It seems to be."

Zhong Yirou was very surprised, "Peoniaceae? Have you ever seen peony flowers? This ornamental flower is almost extinct now."

In a world where land and water pollution is rampant, there is not much soil to grow food crops, let alone ornamental vegetation.

Wu You pursed his lips, "My mother..." He seemed to feel that he had said something wrong, stopped, and explained perfunctorily, "I have a collection at home..."

Zhong Yirou felt even more strange when he heard this, "What kind of rich and powerful family are you?"

"Fake." Wu You pressed the brim of his hat, folded his hands on the table, "artificial."

"I see." The suspicion on Zhong Yirou's face did not disappear completely, she put away her small mirror, observed the skin on An Wujiu's neck again, and said to herself: "It doesn't look like a tattoo... it seems It’s not artificial leather either.”

An Wujiu didn't think about the strange peony pattern on his body anymore, after all, he has lost his memory now, so thinking about it is useless.

He lowered his head slightly, and saw Zhong Yirou's cheongsam slit revealing the straps on her legs. The skin on her left calf is different from other places. It should be a whole piece of artificial grafted skin, made of shark cartilage polysaccharide, which is strangely smooth.

In addition, she carried a roll-shaped bag on her back. The index and middle fingers of both hands had thin calluses, and there were slight cuts on the sides of the fingers. They were slender and slender only by very sharp knives. The nails are short and painted with red nail polish, and there is a little black thing on the end of the little finger.

oil

The voice sounded again, An Wujiu stopped observing.

"This warm-up game is called, and the rules are very simple."

A holographic projection is projected on the desktop, which is a display screen with eight numbers that rotate continuously.

"Among the 100 natural numbers from 1 to 100, each of you needs to choose one of them and write it on the handwriting screen in front of you with your finger."

The rotation on the eight monitors stopped, and eight numbers appeared randomly, and then, a new number appeared above the eight monitors, "Sum these eight numbers and divide them by 8 to get an average value."

"The number you write down is closest to 1/2 of the real average as the winner of the warm-up game, and enjoys the advantages of the official game and the right to determine the competition system."

"Give everyone five minutes to think, and five minutes to write down the answers."

"Then, the timer begins."

A countdown number appeared on the round table, which instantly changed to 4 minutes and 59 seconds, and continued to decrease. The noise that had stopped not long ago reappeared, cold sweat dripped from An Wujiu's forehead, and his hands began to tremble again. He took his hand under the table and tried to hold it tightly, only to hear a strong man on the opposite side say, "Actually, I have a math problem for me."

An Wujiu stared at the strong man who spoke just now. His name was Liu Chengwei. He looked quite old, at least thirty years old, but he was dressed like a gangster. There were many small pinholes on his arms, two fists They are all covered with metal exoskeletons, but the material is average.

"Damn it, what I hate the most is counting." Liu Chengwei had an old scar on his face, which slanted down from the middle of the brow bone to the cheekbone. The whole eye was injured, and the eyeball in the orbital bone was a little shrunken. is gray.

Wu You was still playing with the Rubik's Cube in his hand, his head was lowered without raising his eyelids, "Haven't you even learned how to count?"

These words were not pleasant, and Liu Chengwei was immediately irritated by him, "Can you talk, kid?" He looked at Wu You's old clothes that didn't fit, "You think you look like you went to school?" people?"

This world is completely run by capital.

Capitalists, who account for nearly 90% of the world's wealth, enjoy and waste excess resources, including education. The essence of class solidification is to master the cognitive ability of the lower class, so the compulsory education system for all has long since disintegrated. Basic mathematics education is expensive, and a complete set of basic subject education has discouraged many poor people, let alone physics, astronomy or artificial intelligence.

Want to understand the nature of the world

Just have money.

Wu You rolled his eyes, "At least I'm not illiterate."

"Well, I'm sorry to interrupt everyone..." A dull-looking boy with glasses and freckles couldn't help trying to persuade him, "Just guessing the number is not a difficult question, everyone. Stop quarreling."

The name floating in front of him is [Ueno Daisei], a Japanese. Looking at the mouth shape, it seems to be speaking Japanese, but what An Wujiu heard is Chinese.

Ueno's words did not calm Liu Chengwei's anger, but the other party took it out on him instead, "You poor guy who can't even afford implantable glasses, what are you talking about!"

"I... I'm sorry." Ueno swallowed the words and pushed the old glasses on the bridge of his nose in embarrassment.

"What he said is not wrong. It's not difficult. Just now, Shengyin said, let's compare it with the average 1/2 of the sum of all the numbers." Zhong Yirou smiled charmingly, and pointed to the numbers on the table one by one. People, "You choose 10, you choose 20, and so on..." She turned her head to look at An Wujiu, and tapped him with her slender fingers, "It's up to you at the end, if you choose 80, eight people, the last The average number is 45, take one-half, that is, the person who chooses 22 and 23 is the closest."

After finishing speaking, Zhong Yirou smiled, "It's not difficult to calculate, but who can guess which number each other will choose?"

"That's right." Yang Ming, the middle-aged man who has been targeting An Wujiu, said, "The warm-up game this time is also strange, it's all due to luck."

An Wujiu stared at his face, this man could hide his tone when he spoke, but he couldn't hide the subtle expressions on his face well enough.

"What does Mr. Yang do?" Zhong Yirou turned the topic to an irrelevant direction with a smile, but it coincided with An Wujiu's thoughts, "It feels like you are wearing a tie and a shirt, compared with us , a lot of seriousness."

Her tone was teasing and joking, and it really didn't sound very serious.

This is an excellent observation point. An Wujiu silently watched everyone in sight, Wu You didn't react too much, he was still playing with Rubik's Cube, Liu Chengwei looked like he was watching a show, interested in hinting at the beauties, the old man held a pen, as if he didn't care too much This sentence, just thinking about it for himself, the freckled man with glasses looked at Zhong Yirou timidly.

An Wujiu's observation eyes fell on the face of the mechanical Guanyin directly opposite him, but he found that the other person was facing him with the statue of Guanyin on top of him, motionless, and seemed to be staring at himself.

The beauty flattered her, and Yang Ming, who was sitting across from him, was cautious, but subconsciously adjusted his tie knot, "It's not an important job, it's just an ordinary office worker."

"Salary workers are good." Zhong Yirou smiled brightly, "In our society, if you want to be an office worker, you don't know how high a degree you have to be. The competition is so great." She seemed to feel the heat, and deliberately unbuttoned the top part of her cheongsam A button, "When I saw you, I thought you looked like a white-collar worker, the kind... from the financial industry."

An Wujiu stared at Yang Ming, his vigilance obviously lowered a bit, the corners of his mouth were raised slightly, and his thin cheeks seemed plump and moist because of these flattering words, "It's okay, it's okay , not so exaggerated."

He did not deny Zhong Yirou's guess.

Realizing this, An Wujiu tilted his head in thought, but when he came back to his senses, he found that the guy in the mask sitting directly opposite was staring at him.

Wu You next to him didn't stop playing Rubik's Cube, he just muttered in a low voice, "Whoever does well will come to the altar..."

On Wu You's left sat an old man who had been silent for a long time. His platinum hair seemed to be haggard. He looked at least sixty years old, but his physique could still be called robust. An Wujiu didn't notice him until he spoke.

"There are only three and a half minutes left in five minutes. Don't you guys talk more about the game?" He has a western face and his mouth seems to be French, but like Ueno, they can hear Chinese directly.

His name was projected in front of him, it was the word [Old Yu], and there was no foreign name.

"What are you talking about?" Yang Ming's tie was crooked, and he glanced at Old Yu, "Could it be that you want us to report all the numbers to be filled in, and you can write them after you do the math?"

"Can you figure it out?" Liu Chengwei laughed.

Yang Ming's expression looked very relaxed, and he clasped his hands on the table, "Actually, this is just a warm-up game. As long as the winner is not An Wujiu, it doesn't matter who he is. As long as he gets the advantage of the game, we It's dangerous."

An Wujiu remained silent.

"I agree." Liu Chengwei broke his fist and suggested, "How about we tie this kid up and prevent him from answering the questions, so as to ensure that he won't get an advantage."

The noise in the head became insanely severe.

Old Yu hesitated, "Is...isn't this a foul?"

Zhong Yirou raised his eyebrows, "The offender will either die directly, like that guy just now, or be pushed into the punishment stack ①, you should be careful, few people can come out of that ghost place in a normal state. but… "

She shrugged, "If you can really eliminate a dangerous element directly, I have no problem."

These competitors were unscrupulously discussing about their own "handling methods", but An Wujiu didn't care to listen, the beeping sounds like a countdown appeared in his mind.

The last sound stopped, and after a moment of silence, a sharp and piercing noise made him bow his head involuntarily. The next second, he heard an unreal electronic analog female voice, the content was incomplete, only a few intermittent sentences.

[You still have time… ]

[Trust me, you will find all the memories. ]

[… Be sure to survive and come to see me alive. ]

[You need company, never alone. ]

The sound stopped abruptly, like a terminated ECG monitor, leaving only the single sound of long sleep.

Is this the last voice my mother left behind

Where are the memory chips

An Wujiu supported his head with his hands, panting heavily, but that voice never appeared again.

On the back of his badly injured hand, a number appeared, like the number -99.

His amnesia was indeed man-made.

Wu You saw that something was wrong with him, "What's wrong with you?"

"Leave him alone." Yang Ming sneered, "He's started acting again."

He smiled and rolled up his shirt cuffs, "The game is about to start, anyway, it's just luck, so don't worry about it."

Yeah? An Wujiu raised his head.

This game is not about luck at all.

but intelligence.

Not only did he know this, he believed that Yang Ming knew it too.

Just listening to the rules, this guessing game seems to be to see who can happen to be in the range of the average, but in essence it is a war about intelligence and prediction.

If other parts of his memory system are not too biased, this game is born out of the "beauty game" model in economics②.

The process of choosing the average number is like betting on the winner of a beauty pageant. The most important thing is not whether she is really the most beautiful in my heart, but the most beautiful in most people's hearts. The bet is not on the game itself, but on It's the psychology of the other contestants.

Under Zhong Yirou's flattery offensive, Yang Ming did not deny his identity in the financial industry, and kept exaggerating the element of luck. He knew that the probability of this theory was at least 80%.

An Wujiu didn't have much expression on his face, staring at the blank handwriting screen in front of him.

"The last thirty seconds, the countdown begins."

"30—"

He is very clear about his current situation. If what Yang Ming said before is true, according to his description of the previous game, it seems that he is not the type of fighting alone. If this is the case, even if he can win the warm-up match and gain a certain advantage, he will become a target of public criticism in the official game. With such a serious injury, it may not last long.

"29—"

On the basis of the unknown competition system, he cannot guarantee that he will survive as a public target.

It doesn't do any good to show your sharpness.

"28—"

It's hard to get rid of other people's fears.

The best thing to do is to deflect fear.

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The author has something to say:

① A stack is a data structure, a linear structure that inserts and deletes data at the same end. Push the data in first and then pop it out.

②Beauty contest game, also known as "beautiful number guessing", proposed by economist Keynes in "The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money", "Professional investment can be compared to a competition held by a newspaper, and a hundred photos are published in the newspaper. , the contestants are required to choose the six most beautiful among them, and whoever chooses the result similar to the average preference of all the contestants may win the prize. In this case, each contestant does not choose the one he thinks is the most beautiful. Six, and choose the six that others think are the most beautiful. Use your intelligence to speculate on the most beautiful in the eyes of ordinary people."