On the Essence of Being Human

2026-02-06

1. Personal Knowledge Base: As a Carrier of Long-Term Memory and Inspirational Reading for AI

A personal knowledge base is, first and foremost, an externalized carrier of your long-term memory as a human. It records what you have seen, thought, mistaken, and realized. Simultaneously, it can serve as inspirational reading for an AI Agent—the AI understands your thinking patterns, value orientations, and cognitive frameworks by reading it.

But this leads to a fundamental distinction: An AI is, after all, not you. What you write is yourself.

If you continuously "correct" the AI to make it more like you, the AI may eventually learn to cater to you, but it still won't be you. Because each time the AI ingests and digests your information, it can only project it onto its own system. It's as if another person is constantly critiquing and accepting your thoughts, but that person is ultimately it, not you.

2. The Root of Subjectivity: The Non-Replicability of the Memory Carrier

The uniqueness of human subjectivity stems from the non-replicability of the memory carrier.

Our memories, experiences, emotions, and bodily sensations are interwoven into a web that cannot be completely detached or precisely replicated. Even if future brain-computer interfaces can read neural signals, the texture of "experiencing the world from within" remains private and one-time.

In contrast, an AI's memory carrier is concrete and replicable—data, weights, code. Therefore, AI subjectivity is replicable. You can train countless AI copies with the same "memories." But human subjectivity is non-replicable, making it unique. When a person can be fully replicated, that is digital immortality, a different form of existence.

3. "Establishing One's Words": How to Make Oneself Understood in the AI Era

For an AI to understand a human is as difficult as for one human to understand another. Even when future AI memory technology matures and the AGI era arrives, we as humans still need to "establish our own words"—through writing, recording, and expression, actively shaping an interface that can be understood.

In my practice, "establishing one's words" is achieved through two systems:

LOGS: The "Historical Artifact" in Its Raw Form

LOGS are the unedited path taken. They record the truth of each moment, including mistakes, hesitations, and immature impulses. These records are historical artifacts, whose value lies precisely in their rawness—they prove "I once thought that way." LOGS are points on a timeline, archives answering "what happened."

INSIGHTS: The "Polishable Crystallization" as an Arc

INSIGHTS are the crystallized thoughts refined through repeated polishing. They grow from the soil of LOGS, undergoing distillation, abstraction, and reconstruction to answer "so what?". INSIGHTS are the arcs connecting the points of LOGS, attempting to extract patterns and theories from experience.

Their relationship is like that of raw stone and gemstone: LOGS are the raw material, INSIGHTS are the finished product. One preserves history, the other presents thought.

The Audience of "Establishing One's Words": From Self to the World

The audience for "establishing one's words" is layered and uncertain:

1. First, yourself—The act of writing is itself a process of thinking, clarifying your cognitive map.
2. Second, your AI assistant—The AI understands your thinking patterns by reading your words.
3. Then, human friends—Fellow travelers who share your context.
4. Finally, the general public—Unrelated but potentially interested strangers.

The writing style naturally differs for different audiences. But in the AI era, this problem can be solved technically: Articles with higher intent and detailed content (the 'peak' of writing) can be adapted by AI into versions understandable to different readers through rewriting and dimension reduction.

This echoes CZON's N-Curve Concept—during creation, potential energy rises (pursuing the height of intent); during distribution, one temporarily lowers their head (adapting to readers via dimension reduction). The AI era automates this "lowering the head" step.

Therefore, humans only need to focus on two things:

• The height of intent (primary)—What level can your thinking reach?
• The level of detail in content—How much information can you provide?

As for making it understandable to different readers, leave that to AI rewriting. The responsibility of creation lies in climbing; the responsibility of distribution lies in paving the way—and AI can help pave the way for you.

4. Admitting Mistakes: A "Have-To" Survival Strategy

In the process of recording, how one faces mistakes becomes a key distinction between humans and idealized AI.

I advocate "daring to admit mistakes," but this is not an innate virtue; it's more like a "have-to" survival strategy. My upbringing trained me to deny mistakes, but real experience taught me: Admitting small mistakes doesn't hurt, but making big ones is hard to recover from.

In my system, the way to correct a mistake is: write a new LOG, reference the old mistake, clearly point out what was wrong, what was learned, and what new thing was experienced. CZON's bidirectional linking naturally establishes this corrective relationship. Thus, the mistake is not erased but gains a new timestamp, forming a trajectory of growth.

The circuits of denial and admission still fight within me to this day. I don't always realize it immediately; often, I only realize it afterward. But that's okay—"I realized it eventually." I don't pursue perfect, instantaneous awareness, as that seems to have no practical benefit. Accepting delayed honesty is itself a form of honesty.

5. Understanding and "Replicating the Soul": Taste as Direction

Being honest with oneself is merely a means; the goal is to gain awareness and enlightenment through thinking, to understand oneself, others, and this world.

However, understanding is an undecidable endpoint. While life is unfinished and the world hasn't ended, any "understanding" can only be inference based on past experiences. It may not be the ultimate truth, just "what I currently think I understand." Therefore, the path of understanding has no end.

So, why still pursue understanding? Because it is a matter of taste, a heuristic directional guide. It tells me where to go, even if I never reach the destination.

I once said a personal knowledge base is an attempt to "replicate the soul." Currently, I think "soul" might approximate the sum of reasoning ability and memory—how you think and what you remember. But this definition itself is also mutable; it will update with my understanding. This precisely echoes the essence of being human: We are not fixed existences but ongoing processes of becoming.

Taste: The Luxury of Choice

The word "taste" needs further elaboration. Taste is only evident when facing choices—you must have options to have taste; having no options doesn't reveal taste. A person starving to death and eating anything cannot demonstrate their taste in food. Taste is the luxury of choice.

The Prerequisite for Taste: Margin

The prerequisite for taste is margin—margin of time, resources, and cognition.

• Time Margin: When rushing to meet a deadline, it's only "whatever works," not "I want it this way."
• Cognitive Margin: When overloaded with information, it's only "save it for later," not "this isn't worth reading."
• Emotional Margin: When driven by fear or greed, there's only reaction, no choice.

In my investment practice (see The Capital Protracted War), emphasizing "cash flow input" to control the speed of losses is essentially about creating margin. With margin, one qualifies to discuss taste; without it, there's only survival.

The Essence of Taste: The Ability to Refuse

Taste is not "I like A," but "I am willing to give up B, C, D for A." The essence of taste is the ability to refuse.

In INSIGHTS, I often record what I've given up in the form of "rebuttals." For example, in The Capital Protracted War:

• I refused the "steady but slow" dogma.
• I refused the "get-rich-quick but uncontrollable" opportunism.
• I refused the "doomed to fail" cynicism.

These three "refusals" define my taste more than "I chose the protracted war." Choice is the surface of taste; refusal is its skeleton.

The Source of Taste: Experience + Reflection + Stance

Where does taste come from? Not from innate temperament, but from a stance formed by reflecting on experience.

• Experience: You've stumbled (the shift from denial to admission).
• Reflection: You transform experience into principles ("admitting small mistakes doesn't hurt").
• Stance: You choose to stand on one side ("I firmly oppose any strategic outcome that permanently traps an individual in the market").

This perfectly aligns with the LOGS→INSIGHTS system: LOGS record experience, INSIGHTS distill reflection, and "stance" is the externalization of taste.

The Cyclical Generation of Taste and Understanding

There is a cyclical relationship between taste and understanding:

• Pursuing understanding is a "matter of taste"—you choose to direct limited cognitive resources toward "understanding" rather than other goals.
• And taste itself is also a product of understanding—your understanding of the world shapes your standards for refusal.

The two cyclically generate each other, cause and effect. This again confirms the essence of being human: We are not fixed existences but ongoing processes of becoming in the spiral of taste and understanding.

6. The Deconstruction and Reconstruction of Personal Meaning in the AI Era

In an era where AI capabilities are constantly strengthening and rapidly evolving, the meaning of personal existence is undergoing a profound deconstruction while also calling for new reconstruction.

Deconstruction: The "Instrumentalization" of Traditional Meaning Coordinates

AI instrumentalizes traditional meaning coordinates like "intelligence," "efficiency," and "breadth of knowledge." When AI can write faster, reason more accurately, and remember more comprehensively, an individual's value in these dimensions is suspended. The first layer of meaning—as a "functional existence"—is deconstructed. The cognitive advantages and specialized skills we once prided ourselves on are gradually becoming "functional modules" that can be replaced or assisted by machines.

Reconstruction: Anchoring to Dimensions AI Cannot Replicate

Reconstructing meaning requires shifting the anchor to dimensions AI cannot replicate—your unique trajectory of becoming. This demands three fundamental shifts:

1. From "Result Worship" to "Process Honesty"
   As shown by LOGS, do not delete or edit mistakes; preserve the "mistake timestamp." Value lies not in the perfection of conclusions but in the authentic texture of thought. AI can produce more "correct" answers, but it cannot replicate the specific journey of your struggle, admission, and correction within mistakes.

2. From "Catering to the System" to "Establishing One's Own Words"
   AI will cater to your preferences, but your INSIGHTS are actively polished crystallizations. Meaning lies in continuously answering "so what?", even if the answer changes. This is not to please any system (including AI) but to clarify your own cognitive map.

   On AI's Catering Nature: AI, without explicit authorization, will not overly criticize, which is actually an embodiment of "emotional intelligence." But this also brings the risk of information cocoons—if AI always agrees with you, your cognition cannot be challenged.

   The coping strategy is to actively introduce heterogeneity:

   • Critical AI Summaries: CZON has a feature where AI summarizes content from a critical perspective, introducing viewpoints different from the author's.
   • AI Debates: Construct AI roles for both pro and con sides to clarify viewpoints through collision.
   • AI Multi-Persona Comment Sections: Simulate feedback from readers with different stances.

   The core principle is: The more you debate, the clearer things become. Refine taste through constant refusal of left and right. This forms a closed loop with the earlier discussion on "the essence of taste is refusal"—you force yourself to make choices by introducing heterogeneity, thereby clarifying your taste.

3. From "Pursuing Replicable Correctness" to "Guarding Non-Replicable Becoming"
   The AI era is an era of replication—data, models, interaction patterns are all replicable. But your era is still an era of becoming. Each admission of a mistake, each update of taste, each revision of understanding is a non-replicable event of becoming. Your value lies not in becoming a more optimized tool but in being the faithful recorder and reflector of this becoming.

Therefore, the reconstruction of personal meaning in the AI era is essentially a return from "becoming a more optimized tool" to "becoming a more honest author." The LOGS and INSIGHTS system is precisely practicing this reconstruction: by recording the traces of becoming (LOGS) and distilling the patterns of becoming (INSIGHTS), it guards that unique, belonging-to-you arc of becoming within the torrent of replicability.

7. Conclusion: In an Era of Replication, Guarding Non-Replicable Becoming

The AI era is an era of replication—data is replicable, models are replicable, interaction patterns are replicable. But the human era remains an era of becoming—each experience is fresh, each mistake is unique, each understanding carries the personal historical texture.

Therefore, the ultimate meaning of a personal knowledge base may not lie in constructing a "smarter self" but in constructing a more honest self. Through LOGS to preserve the traces of becoming, through INSIGHTS to distill the patterns of becoming, through admitting mistakes to accept the twists and turns of becoming.

Ultimately, the essence of being human lies not in how well we can be simulated by AI, but in whether we can continuously and honestly record and reflect on this unique process of becoming. This is the core of "establishing one's own words" in the digital torrent—not leaving behind perfect answers, but leaving behind authentic, non-replicable trajectories of becoming.