Dream Guide

When Aoki first saw the symbols on the ground, he felt an inexplicable sense of familiarity. Something was crawling out from the depths of his mind, like an insect, rustling, biting his brain when it couldn't crawl out.

This was not the first time this had happened. Every time he thought about something in depth, especially about his own past, his head would hurt like this.

He once wondered whether he was infected with the gray brain virus. If his subconscious mind was not still able to use it freely, he even suspected that a shadow had taken over his brain.

In the past, when encountering such a situation, he would inevitably stop thinking, stretch lazily, and then light a cigarette. Now, his cigarette is soaked in water. Without smoking, the brain cannot secrete more dopamine to suppress the pain of nerves.

His mind was now like a boiling hot pot, and the symbols on the ground turned into delicious ingredients. They were crushed into pieces and thrown into the pot, mixed with his brain, accompanied by red chili oil and Dots of peppercorns were tumbling up and down together.

He grinned and winked at those things and said, "I seem to be able to understand a little bit..."

Everyone is looking at him, waiting for him to speak - if you understand a little bit, then speak out, speak out to clarify everyone's doubts.

But Aoki couldn't tell. It's not that he's lying, it's that he doesn't know how to say it. There is really no way you can explain to a foreigner who has never eaten Chinese food what hot pot is and what exactly is inside!

The crow moved lightly on his head: "Quack, quack, I told you not to brag casually, quack! There are linguists here, and it's wrong for you to brag about linguistics in front of a linguist! Just like that! No one can brag in front of Ruhua that they know how to make sauce elbow..."

Aoki reached above his head and grabbed the crow's ankles. The crow was startled, flapped its wings and shouted: "Hey, don't be like this, I was just joking, quack, don't throw me away!"

Aoki didn't throw it away, but grabbed its feet and scratched its head, as if the scalp was itchy and scratching would make it feel better.

"Wow, cool!" Crow immediately scratched his scalp proactively, "Don't you have lice?"

Su Huilan said: "Qingmu, what exactly did you understand? Tell me quickly."

Aoki said: "All I saw were fragments of information that could not be completely pieced together into something meaningful, so I didn't know what to say, but I did understand a little bit."

Mrs. Larry encouraged: "Then describe the fragmentary information you saw, even if it is only a small bit. This is how language deciphering is done. When Champollion deciphered the Egyptian hieroglyphics, he only learned from a pharaoh's It starts with the name. You just need to give me a little hint, and maybe we can work together to translate the text completely."

Aoki shook his head and said: "No, ma'am, it's hard for me to describe, because what I saw cannot be converted into words. What I saw was a lot of patterns, and I don't know what they mean."

"Pattern? What I saw is also a pattern. What the lady drew on the ground is a pattern. Could it be that whoever saw it didn't?" Petru said.

Mrs. Larry's eyes shone brightly, and she said: "Mr. Aoki, please tell me, what kind of pattern do you see? Oh, you don't need to describe its specific content, you just need to tell me what it looks like. , such as shape, color, etc.”

Aoki thought for a while and said: "It's three-dimensional, like a holographic projection, but it's all broken. As for the color, it's a mess, and I can't tell clearly."

Mrs. Larry looked a little excited and her breathing was quickening. She frowned, clenched her hands into fists, and kept rubbing her fingers. After a while, she said: "I understand, this is a more advanced type of writing, even more advanced than I imagined!"

"How advanced is it?" Alice asked.

Mrs. Larry said: "Linguistics is actually a branch of information science. Writing is a way of recording and transmitting information. In linguistics, the most commonly used method is to divide it into pictograms, ideograms and phonetics according to their origin and function. , but there are also some rare methods that classify characters according to their appearance. For example, we call the characters on the fragments of clay tablets found on Crete called linear characters, and we call Chinese characters square characters. Do you have any Have you heard a saying that Chinese characters are equivalent to QR codes, and English are equivalent to bar codes?”

Alice said: "I've heard of it, but it's just a popular opinion on the Chinese Internet. It has no academic significance, right?"

Mrs. Larry said: "Indeed, this has no academic significance and is just for the self-entertainment of netizens, but the fact it reflects is unquestionable - the amount of information carried by Chinese characters is much greater than that of English."

Su Huilan suddenly said: "Madam, do you mean that English is actually a linear text, that is, one-dimensional, while Chinese characters are two-dimensional, and two-dimensional information modules naturally carry more information than one-dimensional information modules. "

"That's the truth." Mrs. Larry nodded with a smile. "After the unification of linguistics and informatics, we proposed the dimensional theory of language. However, this is very complicated and involves the application of the laws of thermodynamics in informatics. application, but there is an interesting conclusion - the communication of information between organisms usually uses an information encoding method that is one dimension lower than the spatial dimension in which it is located."

This sentence is a bit convoluted, and the listeners unconsciously repeated it in their mouths: an information encoding method that is one dimension lower than the spatial dimension in which it is located...

Mrs. Larry looked at everyone who seemed puzzled and explained: "To put it more simply, people are three-dimensional creatures. Our language and characters usually use two-dimensional encoding, because this encoding method can carry the largest range of information within the scope of our understanding." Amount of information. If three-dimensional encoding is used, the amount of information will be greater, but the human brain cannot respond and it will be more difficult to learn. If a lower dimension, such as one dimension, is used, the amount and efficiency of information transmission will be very low. . This is how knotting ropes were used to record events in ancient times.”

"But madam, you were saying just now that English is linear and Chinese characters are two-dimensional. Are we Europeans and Americans lower-dimensional creatures than Chinese?" Alice said unconvinced.

Mrs. Larry said: "Of course not. What I said about the linearity of English is only relative. In fact, both English and Chinese characters evolved on the basis of standard two-dimensional coding. English gave up pictograms and only retained the phonetic function. It reduces the complexity of information encoding, but improves the ease of information transmission. You can think of it as 1.5 dimensions; while Chinese characters combine pictograms, meanings and pictographs to improve the efficiency of information encoding. You can think of it as 2.5. Dimension. These information encoding methods are all within the scope of our normal understanding. Which one to use depends on what we need. Different eras and social models have different requirements for the speed and efficiency of information dissemination."

Su Huilan said: "I understand, madam, these words on the ground use a more advanced encoding method."

Mrs. Larry nodded and said, "Yes, actually I should have thought of it when we were at the altar. These words were projected onto the ground through the moonlight in the gaps between the pumice stones. The real information may be in the spatial arrangement of the stones in the air. It’s a pity that I can’t see it anymore. Fortunately, Mr. Aoki reminded me. I think this is a kind of three-dimensional coded text information.”

"Madam, you just said that biological information uses a encoding method that is one dimension lower than the spatial dimension where it is located, and Mr. Aoki can actually see the three-dimensional encoding information of these words, then..."

Alice looked at Aoki with a strange look, but she didn't say the second half of the sentence - isn't he a four-dimensional monster?