Back to the 80s Machinery Factory

Chapter 393 What are sophomores and juniors doing here?!

Friday night,

Chen Luyang took a shower, shaved his head, changed into a clean and neat new outfit, and walked confidently towards the Three Teachings with a pair of shiny leather shoes.

When you're giving a lesson, you need to act like you're giving a lesson!

Regardless of how others see me.

Anyway, Chen Luyang raised himself up a level, first considering himself a teacher.

When he arrived at the classroom door with the original text and the manuscript that he had translated most of, Chen Luyang's hands were trembling with excitement!

Big!
Wow, that's huge!

This classroom is much bigger than the philosophy department's classrooms!

It can easily accommodate 200 people!
Even the row of small folding chairs that had been idle by the window were brought out, all waiting to listen to the lecture.

Everyone's waiting to hear my lecture!
Chen Luyang felt both happy and relieved.

I'm so glad I dressed up today and prepared my lesson in advance.

Otherwise, with such a grand setup, it would be disrespectful to the students who came to listen to the lecture if I just brought a book to show off.

"Cultural Committee member, why aren't you going in?"

Gao Xiaolin and several other girls, carrying their schoolbags, walked towards the classroom chatting and laughing. Before they even entered, they were drawn to Chen Luyang, whose dog was lurking and secretly observing them from the doorway.

Chen Luyang immediately feigned a blank and uncertain look and asked:
"Is this the classroom? There are so many people... I hope it's a professor giving a lecture and I've gone to the wrong place again."

"We didn't go the wrong way," Gao Xiaolin affirmed.
"Now it's not just first-year economics and philosophy students attending the lectures; second- and third-year students are also here."

"Huh?" Chen Luyang was genuinely bewildered: "Really?"

"real."

Gao Xiaolin lowered her voice: "This afternoon I saw Li Yufan, a junior in the Philosophy Department, borrowing Samuelson's original text in the library, saying, 'I need to understand what the production function is tonight.' There was also the class monitor of the sophomore in the Economics Department, sitting in the last row... Look, the one in the gray coat."

Chen Luyang looked in the direction she pointed, and her eyebrows twitched.

"That's the class monitor??? I thought he was the teacher!"

“They’re just older.” Gao Xiaolin lowered her voice. “I heard they were soldiers before, and only got into university after they were discharged. It seems like the students in their two cohorts were all quite old.”

Indeed...

Chen Luyang's gaze swept across the classroom.

Tao Runze was one of the older students he had ever worked with.

Age is one factor, but the environment in which Tao Runze lives also makes him look older; his face looks much more mature than others.

But today in the classroom, Chen Luyang was surprised to find someone who looked older than Tao Runze!
Apart from the class monitor in the second year,
Two students sitting upright by the window in the back row of the classroom, one with a buzz cut and the other wearing black-rimmed glasses, looked like they had "worked in the organization" and didn't seem like students who had just come from high school.

Needless to say, the back row is even more so.

The men leaning against the wall, wearing old jackets and carrying canvas bags, could easily be called "brother" by Tao Runze. There was also one man with a lunchbox next to him, as if he had rushed over to listen after work.

How... how did this get so out of hand?
Chen Luyang muttered to herself.

He originally thought that this class would just involve him reading some original texts to the first-year students to help them understand and get their thinking straight.

I never imagined that it would not only be cross-departmental now,

They even crossed grade levels?!

Chen Luyang had some doubts: "Freshmen don't have textbooks or notes, they have to start from scratch, so they can just listen to what I'm learning."

"Why are sophomores and juniors getting involved?"

But then I thought about it again!
"I wonder who the president of Peking University is. Shouldn't they give me some lecture fees?"

A slightly arrogant and audacious thought welled up in Chen Luyang's mind.

If only I could earn the money from Peking University~
Mom and Dad will be so happy!!!
As Chen Luyang thought about it, a happy smile couldn't help but appear on her face.

“Still young…” a middle-aged man in an old jacket leaning against the wall said.

“He’s really young…he’ll stop laughing after a few lectures,” the man carrying the cloth bag replied, turning his head slightly.

As the two talked, they occasionally nodded to the philosophy students who came in.

When the philosophy students saw the two, their eyes widened, and they all looked as if they had seen a ghost, nodding and greeting them repeatedly.

Unfortunately,
Chen Luyang, who was on the podium, was looking down and taking out the original book and manuscript paper, completely unaware of the middle-aged man's presence.

Ring ring ring~
As the school bell rang

The classroom gradually quieted down.

Chen Luyang coughed a few times, cleared his throat, and said loudly:
"Hello everyone, I am Chen Luyang from Class 1 of the Department of Economics. I am very happy to have the opportunity to read Samuelson with you. Today we will read 'Producer Behavior' and 'Production Theory'."

"..."

Because she had prepared her lesson in advance and had a translated manuscript on the paper, Chen Luyang spoke with great ease and confidence.

The content and methods of the lectures were also very simple and crude.

He first read the original text aloud section by section, and then translated it into Chinese to make it easier for everyone to understand.

When encountering proper nouns and important concepts, write the nouns and their definitions on the blackboard, lead everyone to read them aloud, and then write any unfamiliar words that everyone doesn't know next to them, thus expanding everyone's vocabulary.

He was speaking up there.
The people below frantically copied down everything, as if they wanted to copy down every single word Chen Luyang said.

There's no way around it... whether you're a freshman, sophomore, or junior.
Even though he's a senior in college!
We all have to face a harsh objective reality:

There are no textbooks.

Everything was reviewed through the teacher's lectures in class.

Even their class notes become the textbooks for the next batch of students.

Now that someone is finally willing to translate the textbook sentence by sentence for them, everyone is trying their best to seize the opportunity and copy as much as possible.

Soon, the large blackboard was covered with keywords such as "production function," "isoquant," and "minimum cost combination."

"The following section is quite long, so I'll copy it onto the blackboard."

Chen Luyang noticed that some people in the classroom were already sore from copying that they were shaking their wrists.

He consciously slowed down the pace, picked up the chalk and wrote a series of English words on the blackboard, giving the students a chance to rest.

"A rational producer seeks to maximize output or minimize cost, subject to constraints of technology and resource availability."

Before Chen Luyang could finish speaking, a voice rang out from the classroom:
"Then I would like to ask, is it not possible to achieve 'maximize output' and 'minimize cost' simultaneously?"

The sound wasn't loud, but it was quite abrupt.

Everyone paused, their pens stilled, and turned to look at the person who had asked the question.

It was a freshman boy sitting in the middle by the window, wearing a blue-gray jacket, his expression full of doubt.

"For example, if I want to be more productive and also save money, is it possible to achieve both goals at the same time?"

Chen Luyang looked at the person who spoke.

He remembered this person; he was a freshman in the Economics Department (Class 2).

Without rushing to answer, Chen Luyang looked towards the classroom and asked:

"There are quite a few second- and third-year students in the classroom today. Is there any upperclassman who can answer this?"

For a moment, the atmosphere in the classroom shifted subtly. Several older students exchanged glances.

The question isn't difficult, but it's hard to answer it well.

A superficial answer appears unprofessional.
If the answer is too academic, it may be difficult for the first-year students to understand.

Several seconds passed, and not a single person uttered a sound.

The classroom was so quiet that the only sound was the rustling of papers turning over.

Chen Luyang didn't urge him or rush him.

Seeing that no one answered, Chen Luyang became less polite.

"If no one answers, I'll give it a try."

Chen Luyang raised the chalk in her hand and circled the "or" in the phrase "maximize output or minimize cost."
Next, a horizontal line was drawn between the two target words:
"These two goals seem like an ideal combination, but in practice, they often come at the expense of each other."

"If you want to produce more, you have to invest more, such as hiring more people, working overtime, and running more machines, which will naturally increase costs."

"If you want to save money, you have to save on materials, reduce working hours, and decrease input, then output will not increase."

"Therefore, they are not achieved simultaneously, but rather through 'choice' and 'trade-off'."

Chen Luyang held the chalk in reverse and gently tapped the "or" on the blackboard:
"You can only choose one as your primary goal and switch flexibly according to the actual conditions."

"If your resources are fixed, you pursue maximizing output; if your goal is a fixed workload, you pursue minimizing costs."

"This is what Samuelson called 'rational choice'—the optimal solution under finite conditions."

"For example!"

Chen Luyang clapped his hands and gave an example he was most familiar with:
"You're like a workshop foreman in a factory."

“If the factory plans to complete 100 machines this year, you have to figure out how to do the job with the least amount of money – that’s called ‘minimum cost’.”

"But if the factory doesn't give you anything, just two tons of steel and three old pieces of equipment, then you have to figure out how to squeeze the most out of this little bit of material—that's the 'maximum output'."

"So the difference between the two is that one has a task and tries to save money to get things done; the other has materials and tries to produce as much as possible."

"This is also a manifestation of rationality—not wanting both, but knowing which goal is most suitable under what reality you are in."

"Dear student, have I explained it clearly?"

Chen Luyang smiled as she looked at the boy who asked the question.

"Understood, thank you!" the boy said honestly, raising his hand from his seat.

"Okay, let's continue reading."

Chen Luyang had just answered her classmate's question and was secretly thrilled.

however,
I wonder if it was the question I just asked that ignited the fire of thought in the classroom.

Before he could even begin speaking, a philosophy major girl with braided pigtails in the back row raised her hand.

"Chen Luyang, I'd like to ask you a question."

"You say?"

"I'd like to ask you something," the girl said calmly, yet with the characteristic philosophical rigor of a philosophy student:

"In philosophy, we divide rationality into instrumental rationality and value rationality. So, to which category does Samuelson's concept of rational producers' 'rationality' belong?"

The classroom suddenly fell silent.

The eyes of the two middle-aged men sitting against the wall instantly lit up!

This goes beyond Samuelsonian economics and falls into the realm of philosophy.

The middle-aged man carrying the cloth bag instinctively crossed his arms and looked at Chen Luyang with great interest, wanting to hear what he would say.

Chen Luyang laughed: "Are you testing me, classmate?"

The philosophy major realized she had said the wrong thing and quickly explained:
"Chen Luyang, don't misunderstand, I wasn't testing you. I just heard you talk about rationality and suddenly had a question, so I just asked it out loud."

The female philosophy student blushed with nervousness.

Chen Luyang gave them a few lectures on Samuelson, and she subconsciously began to regard Chen Luyang as her teacher, completely forgetting that he was a freshman majoring in economics.

Forget about understanding "rationality," they probably don't even know what instrumental rationality and value rationality are.

Isn't this blatantly making Chen Luyang lose face in front of everyone?
Just as the philosophy major girl looked annoyed and tried to change the subject so that Chen Luyang could continue lecturing,
Chen Luyang, however, spoke with a smile.

"I'm not a philosophy major, but my classmates asked me, so I'll try to answer. If I'm wrong, please ask the senior students in the classroom for criticism and guidance."

Saying,

Chen Luyang picked up the chalk and quickly wrote down two phrases:

"Tool Rationality"

Value Rationality

As soon as these two words appeared on the blackboard,

The philosophy students, who were originally waiting to see a joke, suddenly widened their eyes.

Isn't he an economics major?

How can you even talk about philosophy?!

Chen Luyang looked at the classroom and said, "Instrumental rationality pursues efficiency, while value rationality pursues meaning."

"In economics, Samuelson uses the term 'rational producer.'"

"We translate it as 'rational producer,' which means that he makes decisions with purpose, logic, and marginal judgment."

"Samuelson's concept of the 'rational producer' clearly emphasizes how to maximize output and minimize costs under constraints."

"So its 'rationality' is about 'how to do it most cost-effectively', not 'whether it is worth doing this'."

"From a philosophical perspective, this is 'instrumental rationality'."

However, in reality, many people go beyond that!!!

Chen Luyang raised her voice slightly, attracting the attention of everyone in the classroom!
It's all just theoretical talk; once you've heard it, it's over.

If you want to leave a deep impression and make people remember you, you can't just talk about the matter at hand; you have to go further and explore it!
It needs to be understood by everyone!

"For example, there are two types of vulcanizing agents in a rubber factory."

Chen Luyang raised his left hand: "One type of vulcanization is faster and cheaper, while the other is more expensive, but it has less odor and is less irritating, making it more worker-friendly."

Which one to choose?

Chen Luyang looked towards the classroom. "If you're just a pure economist, you'd choose the one that saves money."

"But if he's still thinking about whether the workers will develop health problems later on—then he's not just someone who cares about efficiency."

"This person is using instrumental rationality to calculate costs, and also using value rationality to make choices."

"Therefore, I think that the 'rational man' in reality is not necessarily the rational man in the textbook."

……

Unheard words and concepts echoed like a storm in the classroom.

Some philosophy students frowned slightly, as if instinctively wanting to find fault, but after thinking it over in their minds, they found... to be completely flawless!

(End of this chapter)