Technological life-the law of solving problems

Introduction to This article will introduce the research background of the problem, the general and special laws of solving the problem, and the dialectical relationship between the two.

Author: He Xuexue

A series of articles on the methodology of technology one position in the past:

"Technical Life" Topic Chapter 1: What is the No. 1 position of technology?

"Technical Life" Part 2: Learn to analyze the essence of things

1. Background

1. Speaking from the essence of things

The essence of things is the evolution process of main internal contradictions and secondary contradictions. At the same time, the evolution process is subject to the interrelation and mutual influence of other things in the external environment. In a common situation, the life cycle of a thing is a manifestation of the process in which its main contradictions and minor contradictions are resolved. How to analyze the nature of the problem, we have already given the analysis process and template "Methodology of Technology No. 1 [Theory]-The Operational Steps of the Analysis of the Nature of Things and the Necessity of Analyzing the Nature of Things" Students can use this template to guide themselves in analyzing their own business.

When we encounter problems in daily life and work, we start with the main contradiction first, and solve the main and secondary contradictions. As things develop to a new stage, new primary and secondary contradictions will continue to appear. Of course, the new primary and secondary contradictions do not appear out of thin air, but evolved from other contradictions in the past. At the stage of the current life cycle of things, within the scope of the problem, they have become the main contradictions and secondary contradictions that hinder the continued development of things. This constitutes the development process of things, and the development process of things obeys this law.

As shown in the figure above, when we face complex things, we can only perceive the most closely related aspect of the current thing and ourselves, that is, a certain dimension of the thing. Starting from this dimension, solve the most core problem, that is, the main contradiction. With the continuous investment of energy and resources, when the main and secondary aspects of the main contradiction are gradually resolved, and new main contradictions appear, the development of things will enter the next stage. As shown in the figure below, the vertical direction of things in a certain dimension Development is actually a process of continuous refinement of the granularity of a problem, as well as a process of continuous deepening of the transformation of things by productivity. this tells us that we need to look at the problem in depth rather than superficially.

When things develop vertically, as vertical problems are continuously solved, new horizontal dimensions will gradually become the main contradiction and secondary contradiction of this complex thing. As shown in the figure below, things are perceived and processed in horizontal development. With more dimensions, people's cognition of things changes from a single dimension to multiple dimensions. tells us that we need to look at the problem comprehensively rather than one-sidedly.

When we see the process of vertical development of things in a certain dimension and the process of horizontal development of things in multiple dimensions, we must realize that these two processes do not occur before one process occurs before the other. More of it happens at the same time. The combination of the two processes and the continuous evolution of the respective development process is the law of the development of the thing itself. In the end, we can see the whole picture of a thing through several stages of development from the figure below. This tells us that we need to look at problems systematically rather than sporadicly. At the same time, we must also look at problems from a developmental perspective, rather than statically.

The above content is to look at its development process from the things, combined with the analysis of the nature of things , we also need to see the correlation and mutual influence of other things in the external environment and current things. also tells us that we should look at the problem in general contact rather than in isolation.

Based on the previous illustrations and descriptions, to look at the problem in depth is to see the details of the development process of things, the details of the fields in each dimension, this is a micro perspective; to look at the problem in a comprehensive way is to see more The dimension is the macroscopic perspective; this process is actually the process of switching from the microscopic to the macroscopic perspective.

To look at problems systematically rather than discretely, that is, in the process of switching the perspective from the micro to the macro, the focus must be switched from the local to the whole, so as to look at the problem from a global perspective;

To look at problems in a universally connected, rather than one-sided, one-sided way is to see the relationship and mutual influence between the external environment and the internal primary and secondary contradictions of things. Influence and internal and external influence and feedback. This process is actually a process of switching from the inside to the outside perspective.

It is necessary to look at the problem from a developmental perspective rather than a static perspective, that is, when looking at the problem from a macroscopic or microscopic perspective, it is necessary to simultaneously look at what the problem was like in the past, what it is now, and in the time dimension. How the past has evolved into the present, and what may become in the future;

When facing complex problems, we can only clarify the essence of the problem from these perspectives, and then we can grasp the essence and key points when solving the problem.

So the process of solving the problem is actually: problem is solved from the main to the second, from the main to the detail. As the process continues to iterate, the granularity that needs to be processed becomes finer and the dimensions of the problem to be solved increase. Under normal circumstances, the solution of all problems conforms to this law, which reflects the universality of the problem-solving methods.

2. What is the law

When discussing the nature of things, we mentioned that the development of things follows a law, but what is the use of understanding the law in solving problems in practice? Why do you need to understand the law of solving the problem? Is there any law to follow in doing technology and doing business?

Before answering these questions, we must first take a look at what a law is, how the law is analyzed from the perspective of Marxist philosophy, and what characteristics the law has. The following content is all the key content extracted from the textbook of "Marxist Philosophy Principles" (by Chen Xianda and Yang Geng). Due to the length of the article, some of the content is omitted by ellipsis. Readers who are more concerned can view the original text for more comprehensive and systematic To understand what the law is:

Laws are essential, inevitable and stable connections

• The connotation of the law

first law is the essential connection between things and their development. There are universal connections between things, but not all connections are essential connections and constitute laws. ... This means that laws are not phenomena of things, but things that belong to the essential level of things; laws are not directly graspable through the senses, and the knowledge of laws belongs to the knowledge of rational thinking.

Secondly, law is the inevitable connection of things and their development. Law and inevitability are concepts of the same degree, representing the inevitable and invariable trend in the development of things. The so-called inevitability of the law refers to the inevitability of the existence of the law, the function of the law and its consequences. Specifically, the existence of some things will inevitably lead to the emergence of other things; this stage of the development of things inevitably leads things to another stage. …… In reality, the inevitability of the law does not mean that the law has only one form of expression, nor does it mean that the law can only be realized in one way . When understanding the inevitability of the law, we must pay attention to the proper distinction between the inevitability of the law and the way in which the law is realized.

Finally, the law is the stable connection of things and their development. so-called stable connection means that as long as certain conditions are met, the law will work repeatedly and be universally realized. The inevitability of the law is reflected in the repetition and universality of the law. ... Therefore, the repetitiveness of the law is reflected in one by one that cannot be repeated, and the repetitiveness of the law is only the repetitive content of the inevitability that runs through similar things. uses the non-repeatability of things to deny the repetitiveness of the law, which actually confuses the difference between the repetitiveness of the law and the repetitiveness of things.

The essence of the law is not a total induction, but a grasp of the essence of things. There is the general in the individual, and the infinite in the finite. Prove the regularity in certain things or activities, that is, prove the repetitiveness of the law in infinite things of the same kind.

Any law is objective. It does not exist and function based on people's intentions and desires. It can neither be created nor destroyed. Laws can neither be created nor destroyed by humans. It does not mean that all laws that have worked in history will work forever.

Any law works under certain conditions (this sentence is extremely important, and it is the basis for the conversion process of general and special laws discussed later in this article). law can neither be artificially created nor destroyed, nor does it mean that people are powerless in the face of the law. People can change the form in which the law takes effect by changing and creating specific conditions under which the law takes effect.

• Type of law

According to the different fields of the law, the law can be divided into the law of nature, the law of history, and the law of thinking.

According to the different scope of the law, the law can be divided into general law and special law. The so-called general law is a law that affects everything in a certain field and affects the entire process of development. Special laws are laws that work on certain things in the field and on certain stages of the development process.

The reason why the general law and the special law have the difference in the scope of action lies in the different conditions required for the general law and the special law to work. Generally speaking, in a certain qualitative system, the reason why the general law can affect all things in the system and the whole process of its development is because the conditions required for the general law to function are relatively general, relatively few, and special. The conditions required for a law to take effect are more specific and more specific than the conditions required for a general law to take effect.

From the perspective of the conditions under which the law takes effect, the degree of universality and commonality of the law is inversely proportional to the number of conditions required for the law to take effect. The higher the degree of universality of the role of the law, the fewer conditions it needs to function; the lower the degree of universality of the role of the law, the more conditions it needs to function.

The law of the unity of opposites is the essence and core of dialectics (the content of this part has nothing to do with the subject of this article and is only released for the purpose of popular science)

The law system of materialist dialectics is composed of three basic laws: the law of the unity of opposites, the law of quantification and qualitative transformation, and the law of negation of negation, as well as a series of categories such as content and form, essence and phenomenon, cause and result, necessity and accident, reality and possibility. Constituted. Among them, the law of the unity of opposites constitutes the essence and core of dialectics.

3. Why study the law

1. research law is to scientifically, seek truth from facts and correctly solve the problems encountered in daily production and life, and avoid losses due to non-compliance with objective laws.

In daily work, we often encounter situations that seem very complicated. If we do not analyze the problem clearly, do not look for the laws hidden behind the problem phenomenon, and in the process of solving the problem, we will copy some past experience or knowledge from books. , Then it is very likely that empiricism will appear, and there will also be dogmatism in which theory deviates from reality. Regardless of experience or knowledge, both need to be based on facts and not violate the objective laws of the development of things, otherwise they will be taught in the opposite direction by the laws, and an extra price will be paid. Therefore, studying the law is beneficial to stop loss. In short, people can avoid the risk of failure by "doing things in accordance with the law".

1. The purpose of studying the law is to find the law that the problem conforms to, and then combine the conditions required for the law to work, create this condition through a certain productivity method, and use the development trend of the law to guide the development of things to reach us The desired purpose is .

In daily work, especially in business, as far as the technical position is concerned, if you can only immerse yourself in the needs of your own hands without understanding the laws of business development, you will not be able to invest the appropriate forces at the appropriate time to do the appropriate thing. Under this circumstance, the No. 1 technical position has actually become a "contractor" with only a team to do the needs, rather than the No. 1 technical position that can assist the business No. 1 to complete the important task of promoting business development.

In the previous article, we mentioned what the responsibilities of . Among them, in terms of system architecture, the premise of the forward-looking and scalability of the system architecture is to be able to grasp the law of business development and make the technical architecture in advance. In addition, the organization and coordination aspects such as the input of troops and the initiation of campaigns also need to conform to the law of business development. If you don’t care about the problems and primary-secondary contradictions at the current stage of the business, and regardless of the direction this primary-secondary contradiction will develop in the future, then the final technology can only passively respond to business needs and be driven by business needs.

If the person raising the demand grasps the law of business development, it is good, and once the person raising the demand can only see the problems raised by the customer rather than the business development trend and law, then it can be imagined that the investment in technology is essentially Do useless work around the minutiae. For those capable technical positions, the various technical decisions made can not only support the development of the business and ensure the operation of the business, but more importantly, use the improvement of productivity and combine the laws of business development to guide and drive the development of the business. . We will not talk about how to do a specific thing today. If some students want to discuss an example, we can communicate offline. What everyone needs to understand is that each business is in a different environment, and each business is in a different development stage, so it makes no sense to talk about more examples. We should start directly from the commonalities in different cases, explain them thoroughly, and find the rules, so that more people can know what to do now, why they want to do this, and what to do next when doing business. is to “predict the law of the development of things” and rely on the law to benefit from the development of things.

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1. The purpose of studying the law is also to use the dialectical relationship between the general law and the special law to master the ability to break the law, so as to allow things that seem impossible and not in accordance with the law to happen, so as to benefit from it.

What “seems impossible and not in line with the law” may be to accelerate the development of a certain stage of things, or it may be to skip a certain stage of development and go directly to the next stage, or it may be to prolong the development of a certain thing. Stay at a certain stage. In short, structurally affecting the development of things is more beneficial than simply using or obeying the rules, and of course the impact is more profound.

For example, in the process of doing business, we can use existing middleware and system services to reduce the technical input in the business startup process to accelerate the business startup process; we can use the existing basic guarantee mechanisms and system tools to reduce the business development process The systemic risks in the system can focus on the solution of business problems, thereby skipping the repetitive stability building phases and accelerating the business development process; the original life cycle stages that a business must go through will follow. Due to the reuse of related technologies and the improvement of productivity, the time is compressed or skipped directly, so the business development speed is faster than pure manpower.

Therefore, when the special law of "business development obeys its life cycle" is broken, the business can skip certain links that seem necessary and cannot be skipped. is to "break the law" to create what seems impossible.

We need to understand "seemingly impossible" dialectically. It seems impossible that something "beyond the cognition of someone or certain groups" has actually happened. From the perspective of a group with higher productivity, the former’s vision of impossibility is a common occurrence. Let’s take a simple example: airplanes are "impossible" and "ordinary things" for primitive tribes and modern civilizations. In essence, the problem is not airplanes, but the differences in productivity held by different groups. For groups that think "impossible", the easiest way for them to break the existing laws of cognition is to give each other more advanced inter-generational productivity.

2. The general law and special law of solving problems and the dialectical relationship between the two

1. Why analyze the law of problem solving

Many things in our daily production and life can finally be abstracted into solving problems in essence, but the problem belongs to different fields, different backgrounds, different aspects involved, and the environment and development stage of the problem are also different. Although it is ever-changing, That is to say, things have their own particularities, but there are general and special laws in how to solve problems, which is also consistent with the universality of contradictions. Therefore, a clear study of the law of problem-solving and a clear analysis of the dialectical relationship between the general law and the special law of problem-solving are of great benefit to our daily work and life, or in other words, it is helpful for the first position of technology. To do a good job in daily work and fulfill the responsibilities assigned by the role.

2. Why analyze the dialectical relationship between general laws and special laws

In the above analysis, we can see that the highest level of studying the law is to break the law, and breaking the law requires understanding the dialectical relationship between the general law and the special law.

If we simply discuss this general law in a pure and abstract way, then the guiding significance for solving problems in our actual production and life is too weak. If we do not discuss the most basic general law for solving problems, then when we discuss more specific scenarios, It is unclear how the special laws come from, and how the special laws are broken. Therefore, the dialectical relationship between the two is the theoretical basis for our most efficient use of the law.

We quoted a passage from the textbook "Principles of Marxist Philosophy", which is about the relationship between general laws and special laws. However, it can be seen from the discussion that the textbook only briefly mentioned the difference between the general law and the special law, and did not discuss the relationship between the two. Here we try to analyze the correlation between the two, analyze the dialectical relationship between the two, so that we can benefit from it, and guide us to see clearly in the process of daily business and technology. What is the general law, what is the special law, how to use the general law to "break" the special law, or use the special law to break the general law, so that the development process of things can be guided by us.

"Breaking the law" seems to be contradictory to "doing things in accordance with the objective law", but "breaking the law" essentially refers to changing the conditions for things to conform to the law, so that things conform to the new law; and "doing things in accordance with the objective law" "It is about that no matter how the conditions of the environment where things belong, they will follow a certain law. Therefore, the two are not contradictory in nature. It is necessary to understand the relationship between "breaking the law" and "doing things in accordance with the law" dialectically.

3. Dialectical relationship between general laws and special laws

In the following discussion, we will simplify the expression of the role of law on things as "control". This is not an academic simplification, but simply to streamline the discussion process and to make the presentation colloquial.

The dialectical relationship between the general law and the special law is as follows:

• In a certain field, general laws work for all things, including things in the field that conform to a particular law.
• In a certain field, things controlled by special laws appear to be controlled by special laws, but it does not mean that the role played by general laws does not exist.
• In a certain field, special laws and general laws are superimposed and play a role together. Under the conditions of special laws, things develop along the constraints of special laws. When the conditions that meet the special laws disappear, the overall development of things is governed by the general laws. control.
• In a certain field, "constructing conditions that conform to special laws" is the key factor that determines whether things are controlled by special laws or general laws, and productivity is the key factor that determines the key factors.

Regarding general and special laws, we can see from the above schematic diagram that general laws have a large range of influence and high universality; special laws have a small influence range, with low universality and high specificity; at the same time, special laws require higher Productivity, while the general law does not require high productivity. At the same time, we need to know that the application of productivity will bring costs, so the conversion between general and special laws will also involve cost factors, as shown in the following figure:

Based on the above analysis and schematic diagram, we can know the following conclusions: things are affected by special rules or general rules can be converted to each other, and the key to this conversion occurs is the level of productivity controlled by the thing. When productivity is low, it is difficult for things to switch between general or special laws. Under the environment and conditions, things are more inclined to abide by the laws that make them produce without changing the laws that they observe; when productivity increases , The difficulty of switching between general and special laws becomes lower with the increase of productivity. The laws that things obey can be adjusted with the help of productivity to allow people to indirectly influence the development laws of things.

Therefore, when we want to apply the law or even break the law, we can continue to draw the following conclusions from the above theoretical analysis:

1. When our productivity level is relatively low, solving problems must conform to the law of development of things;
2. When the level of productivity is relatively high, we can adjust things to comply with special laws to make things obey special laws, or let things no longer obey special laws and return to the control of general laws;
3. If we want to break the law to make seemingly impossible things happen, we don’t just invest resources on the things themselves, but at the same time we need to invest in the related productivity improvement. The investment ratio needs to be adjusted according to the actual situation.

4. General and special laws for solving problems

After discussing the dialectical relationship between the general law and the special law, we can finally discuss the general law and the special law for solving problems.

In the background chapter, we deal with the nature of things and extend the law of problem-solving, that is: problem-solving process conforms to the essential evolution process of things, "from the main to the second, from the main to the details", iteratively repeats until the disappearance of the thing. According to the classification of the types of laws in the principles of Marxist philosophy, this law should belong to a general law, not a special law, because most people can grasp the key points in the process of solving problems except for very few cases. To solve it, even if this person does not understand Marxist philosophy or is not familiar with the theory of contradiction, this law requires few conditions and has a very wide range of applications, so it is a general law.

The special law of solving problems is related to the particularity of the problem, that is, it is related to a specific type of problem. Next, we will analyze the general and special laws of the technical, business, and organizational problems encountered in our daily work. .

3. The general laws and coping strategies of technology, business and organization

Regarding any delineated matter in the world, you can find the law within the scope, the law within the small scope may not be applicable to the large scope, and vice versa; the law within the large scope may not be applicable to the small scope, and vice versa ; There are countless kinds of things, there can be countless ways of delimiting the scope, then there are countless laws. For different people, some things are as light as a feather, and exploring its laws can not produce any value, while for others, it is just the opposite. We need to look at the behavior of exploring the laws of things objectively and dialectically. This is a process of tracing back from knowing what is happening.

For business developers, the two most important things are business and technology. For the first position of technology, an organizational dimension needs to be added, because every thing in the enterprise has a corresponding organization to support it. , Or any team has its own problems to be solved. We simply put aside the organization to talk about the law of solving technical or business problems, naturally there will be a very important dimension missing. Therefore, in the next issue, we will mainly discuss the evolution law of business, technology, and organization from the perspective of the number one technology position, as well as the corresponding response strategies, so stay tuned!

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