As a mage, I just want to pursue the truth

Chapter 317 Bridge
“Previously, there was only one player, Kechuang Future, in the entire brain-computer VR field.

This is similar to the early days of smartphones, when there were only a few manufacturers such as Apple and Microsoft making smartphones.

The real explosion of mobile Internet had to wait until domestic brands such as Dami, Huawei, and OV entered the market, which gave birth to a vast market.

Now that Kechuang Future has decided to license its technology to external parties, it signals the beginning of a new Internet era.”

Zhang Lei's speech usually has a literary flavor.

For example, at the ESG Global Leaders Summit held by Sina Finance, Zhang Lei said: Pessimists are often right, and optimists win the future.

Compared with other investors, Zhang Lei, who was the top scorer in the liberal arts in the Henan Province College Entrance Examination, often shows his scholarly side when speaking and communicating.

Young is a pure science and engineering guy with a PhD in chemistry. He also has his own views on technology stocks:
“Today it’s just the two of us, so I’ll be frank.

Smartphones and 4G networks have bridged the gap between the potential demand of the lower-income groups and the supply capacity of the elite class.

For example, before Pinduoduo came out, no one realized that there was such a huge demand for online shopping in county towns.

The same is true for Douyin and Kuaishou. Previously, the only form of entertainment for the lower class was television, and movies were only affordable for customers with a certain level of purchasing power.

Short and fast videos can provide users with much faster feedback than TV.

In the first half of brain-computer VR, we need to invest in target customers with certain purchasing power.

Because even previous players in the smartphone field and companies in the foreign consumer electronics field have all entered the market.

However, due to cost constraints, the price of brain-computer connected VR is at most more than 3,000 yuan.

This price is unaffordable for China's huge number of low-income users.

No matter what kind of complete functions Kechuang Future works with other companies to build for brain-computer VR.

In the short term, VR is still just an entertainment tool, not a productivity tool.

So in this context, the value of 'Tik Tok' is far greater than that of 'Kuaishou'.

The value of Tmall is greater than that of Taobao. "

Young talks about his insights into investing at different stages.

What he meant was very simple. The overlapping group of users who can afford brain-computer connected VR with Douyin is greater than that with Kuaishou.

Zhang Lei nodded and said: "The difference between VR and smartphones is that VR creates new demands, while smartphones discover potential demands.

There are differences in the fundamental positioning of the two.

An important reason why I am optimistic about VR is that brain-computer connected VR has largely solved the problem of insufficient sense of immersion in traditional VR.

The latest FutureVerse even makes it a bit difficult for me to distinguish the boundary between the real world and the virtual world.

This is really amazing.

In today's age, the huge gap between the rich and the poor and the high-pressure pace of life make it easier for people to become addicted to the virtual world.

The lower-level people are addicted to the virtual world, helping technology giants achieve higher valuations.

Tech giants use higher valuations and greater profits to develop more powerful technologies and more addictive business models.

This is a positive cycle that continues to increase users' addiction.

In the VR era, this phenomenon will definitely be more serious.”

Let me say a few more words about how to make a comeback in such an era. Either become a programmer and join in, or use the platform to make money.

Or restrain yourself, curb consumerism, and focus on saving and purchasing assets.

Of course, even if most people save, they cannot resist fluctuations in the macroeconomic situation and the economic situation around them.

But saving and then buying assets is the only way for most people at the bottom to turn things around.

Especially if you are able to encounter a financial crisis and have cash on hand during the financial crisis.

Take the financial crisis in 08 as an example. The financial crisis in America was caused by the collapse of the real estate market.

That year, real estate prices fell by 20%, and the cumulative decline over five years was 33%. However, they have completely recovered in recent years, and the value of properties in core areas has even increased significantly compared to before the financial crisis.

Buying assets to protect against inflation also requires buying core assets.

Home prices in New York quickly returned to their original levels and continued to grow, while home prices in North Carolina have remained within 5% for twenty years.

“So human nature is the biggest driving force behind the rapid development of the Internet.

Internet practitioners are constantly discovering and creating new needs for people.”

Zhang Lei and Young would talk about macro things, but they would never talk about what projects they are optimistic about recently.

No matter in which field, colleagues are enemies.

Especially since both of them have good vision, once you mention a project you are currently negotiating, the other party is likely to snatch the project away.

A truly good project with a reasonably mature founding team will generally not lack investment.

If someone like Lu Zhengyao wanted to start a business, many people would want to invest in him.

Of course, the situation in recent years is different from that in previous years.

From 16 to 19, there was a lot of money but few good projects on the market. After 20, there is little money and few good projects on the market.

In recent years, investors have been more inclined to companies with stable returns, such as resource and energy companies, while their pursuit of Internet companies has declined.

Or it is because the dividends from PC and mobile Internet have almost been exhausted, but now the situation is different.

A new round of Internet dividends is about to begin.

"I heard that you and Cheng Gang invested in Temple Education? Online education is a good track, and I have also invested in some online education companies."

Although IDG Capital, to which Young belongs, and Hillhouse Capital, founded by Zhang Lei, are both VCs, there are still differences between the two in VC.

IDG prefers to participate in angel rounds and AB rounds of financing, and sell most of its shares in the later rounds of financing.

In the era of money shortage 20 years later, IDG's characteristics were fully utilized. IDG participated in the angel round of companies such as Yunmai Xinlian, Feidu Technology, and Cider.

As mentioned earlier, IDG participated in the Series A financing of Jiuan Dadi.

One of the classic cases that IDG has invested in the Internet industry is Bilibili. IDG participated in Bilibili's A, A+ and B rounds of financing.

Later, IDG withdrew from Bilibili's subsequent round of financing. However, even when Bilibili was listed on the Nasdaq, IDG Capital still held 7.6% of Bilibili's shares, making it the fifth largest shareholder of Bilibili.

IDG prefers to participate in early-stage financing.

Hillhouse Capital also invests in the angel round, but they are not shy about entering the market in the later rounds.

In addition, Hillhouse Capital likes to participate in the private placement and acquisition of shares of listed companies. Among them, the one that A-share investors talked about most was Hillhouse Capital's participation in the acquisition of Gree.

In 19, Hillhouse Capital acquired 46.17% of Gree’s shares at a price of 15 yuan per share.

You should know that of the more than 40 billion in cash, more than 20 billion was borrowed from banks. Gree's stock price has been falling since then, and has long fallen below Hillhouse's purchase price.

Originally, Hillhouse Capital wanted to gain control of Gree.

The result was that she lost more than she gained, as Ms. Dong had the veto power over any matter proposed by Hillhouse Capital.

Ms. Dong’s overly strong position has meant that Hillhouse has not had a say. At the same time, Gree’s stock price has been falling, coupled with the interest cost of the original bank loan of 200 billion yuan.

For Zhang Lei, this business still represents a paper loss, even with Gree's large annual cash dividends.

Young asked back: “Good future?

You and Jack invested in TAL together? I saw it in the news.

It is precisely because of this investment style that Young chose Temple Education, and Zhang Lei chose New Oriental, a listed company.

Zhang Lei nodded and said, “TAL’s business model is relatively clear, and the management team is capable.

Their teaching resources are still maintained at a relatively good level.”

The reason why we did not invest in New Oriental is that New Oriental’s main business has been transferred to Oriental Selection.

After the double reduction, they gradually graduated all the subject-related teaching resources.

Even in the most difficult times, New Oriental has maintained its core team of teachers.

“It turns out that the essence of the soul is the reflection of the higher-dimensional space in the material world.

This can also explain why my soul and memory were able to travel hundreds of millions of light years from the Mage Alliance to Blue Star."

As Zheng Li's research on the soul deepened, he came to a definite conclusion about the nature of the soul.

This is just his personal judgment, and there is currently a lack of experimental evidence.

However, just from the fact that the soul can cross such a long distance, we can get a clue.

The straight-line distance between points on a plane, and to turn two-dimensional space into three-dimensional space, you just need to fold the paper, and the distance between two points will become no distance.

And it is precisely because the soul is a mapping of high-dimensional space that this mapping can ignore the concept of distance in low-dimensional space.

“So the essence of the soul is the matter of the higher-dimensional space. If the soul is divided into countless pieces, it is just to set coordinates that can carry the soul mapping of the higher-dimensional space soul in each organism.

The annihilation of such a coordinate will not affect other coordinates.

I have a rough idea of ​​how to do it, but there is still one problem: memory.

How do memories get transferred across such great distances?"

Regarding soul and memory transfer parasitism, this is the magic of the Mage Alliance. Zheng Li only knew how to use this magic before, but did not understand its essence well enough.

During this time on Blue Star, Zheng Li has begun to gain a deep understanding of the essence of this magic.

“But this is not important, and it does not affect my ability to store memories through the biological cloud.

At the same time, I manage the memory storage medium well, so that even if half of the biological cloud is destroyed, it will not affect the integrity of my memory. "

Zheng Li realized that he had taken another big step forward on the road to becoming everything in the world.

The storage media management here is somewhat similar to the raid processing performed by Bluestar's magnetic material storage media.

For example, if two hard disks store the same data at the same time and one of them is damaged, it will not affect the integrity of the data.

In recent years, RAID technology has also made great progress. Only one check disk is needed to ensure data recovery when the other four disks are damaged.

“My main focus this year will be on the study of high-dimensional space.

If you have any good ideas in this field, you can always communicate with me via email or directly. ”

There are so many talented people in CERN, and communicating with them can also bring inspiration to Zheng Li to a certain extent.

And after the Nobel Prize award ceremony at the end of the 26th year, CERN researchers all regarded Zheng Li as an idol.

After Zheng Li returned to CERN, the researchers all urged Zheng Li to give them his blessings.

It’s just a pity that there are no birds flying over CERN.

“Alan, I think we can start with dark matter and Planck’s constant.

Combining these two detection methods, we study high-dimensional space by applying it to dark matter speculation and Planck's a posteriori combination."

"Alan, I think we can use regularized regression to study general results in high-dimensional spaces."

Everyone is very interested in high-dimensional space.

Especially after proving that soul particles will escape into higher-dimensional space, CERN researchers realized that higher-dimensional space may be able to solve the eternal issue of mankind for thousands of years - immortality.

Among them, only a few of the solutions they proposed were valuable, and most of them could not be implemented.

There is a long distance between experimental planning and implementation.

For example, in the first scenario, everyone only speculates about the existence of dark matter, and no one has directly observed it.

This is a solution that sounds good, but actually has many pitfalls.

On the road of scientific research, the biggest role of a mentor is to prevent you from falling into a pit.

He, his friends in the academic circle, his mentor's mentor, his fellow students, etc., must have stepped into many pitfalls and have a lot of experience around this specific sub-field.

A good supervisor in your doctoral program can help you choose a topic that is a little difficult, but that you can accomplish and then publish in a top journal.

The mentors who give full play to their duties are not the worst ones.

The worst ones are those who ask you to help them complete their project, and then help you choose the results that are almost impossible to produce.

An important reason why China can develop at a rapid speed is that it has avoided some of the pitfalls that other countries have encountered.

Of course, I have made some mistakes, but the nature of human nature makes it unrealistic to avoid making any mistakes at all.

Back to research, Zheng Li's thousand-year-long research career in the Mage Alliance allowed him to have a very clear judgment on which plans are feasible and which plans are big pitfalls.

"The question we need to clarify now is whether time is considered a dimension."

There has been a lot of debate in the academic community about whether time is a dimension.

Einstein believed that time combined with three-dimensional space becomes four-dimensional space-time.

However, many scientists believe that dimension is a spatial concept and an indicator that can be changed, while time is linear and irreversible.

However, Zheng Li doesn't care whether time and space are the same concept.

He just wanted to know whether there was a concept of time in the higher-dimensional space where the soul went.

(End of this chapter)