蔡维忠 | 脑力

蓝

英文原创：蔡维忠

英译汉：蓝

此文（中、英文）发表于《红衫林》2025号/第二期

兰担忧她的脑力逐渐下降。“我以前可以同时做两件事，现在不行了。”

“同时做两件事？我可以一边吃饭一边听别人说话，或者一边走路一边聊天。这样算两件事吗？”我很好奇。

“不完全是。必须是有挑战性的，我以前可以同时做两件挑战智力的事情。”兰这样声称。

“比如？”我更好奇了。

　　她举了一个例子。

　　她读中学时，有时会在课堂上和同桌同学聊天。有一次，她正和同学聊得起劲，语文老师决定让她难堪，教训她一顿。

“我刚才讲了些什么？”老师强势发问。

“你刚才讲了纲举目张。”兰脱口而出。答案正确，但并不特别令人惊艳。有些学生能够复述老师刚讲过的话，不管他们是否注意听，是否理解。

“纲举目张是什么意思？”这才是来真格的问题。

“这是一个成语。纲的意思是鱼网的主绳，举是拉起，目是网眼，张是打开。把这些词连起来，成语的字面意思是，把网纲提起来，所有网眼就会立即打开。引申意义是，一旦掌握了事物的关键，其他问题就会迎刃而解。”

　　兰完美地总结了老师用好几分钟试图向全班灌输的内容，确实是无可挑剔的答案。全班都陷入了沉默，包括老师，只是她有些恼火。跟兰聊天的同学更是目瞪口呆。由于聊得太投入，老师讲的话她一句都没听进去。

　　哇，真是了不起！我娶了一个天才，至少是个准天才。难怪她可以同时管理十多个项目，效率还很高。我希望我也能做到，但我只能一边吃饭一边听，或者一边走路一边聊天。

　　现在，她却说正在失去这种神奇的能力。

（ 下图） 四十年前兰读博时在实验室做试验的视频截图。此视频在当时NBC大学橄榄球赛直播中场时播放。

　　通常，当一个看起来很正常的人声称自己智力上出现缺陷时，我往往持怀疑态度。不久前，朋友L写了一篇文章，详细描述了她最近的记忆问题，并得出她患有阿尔茨海默病（AD）的结论。这篇文章写得很好，结论不算。如果真的有记忆问题，她是怎么记住这些事情并写进文章的？

我决定做个诊断。一周后，我向她提出一个看似无关紧要的问题：“你什么时候把那篇文章发到网上的？”

“上周一。”她立即回答。

“正确！你的记忆完全正常，你没患AD。”那是我的诊断。从那以后，她不再抱怨自己患有AD了。

同样，我对兰脑力下降的说法持怀疑态度。

“别担心。我就不能同时做两件事，还不是活得好好的？”我试图安慰她，消除她的担忧。

“但我习惯了同时做两件事，无法改掉习惯。”

　　同时做两件事意味着其中一件可能出错。

　　最近，兰偶然看到我的博客，读了其中一篇文章后觉得不太喜欢。她认为文章的基调有点阴暗，决定反驳。她一边开车从我家车道转到主路，一边构思反驳文章。同时做两件事，其中一件不顺利。她和一辆从左侧开过来的车产生了点小事故。所幸只是车表面有些损坏，没人受伤。其实另一件事也不顺利，她从未完成那篇评论。

　　也许她的担忧是对的。也许她应该适应这种新的脑力，一次只做一件事。

　　但这很难。

　　几天后，兰又回到同时做两件事的习惯。在赶一个紧迫的业务项目的同时，她购买了股票。好吧，她可以声称购买股票也是有紧迫性的，因为那是周五下午，一两小时后股市就要收盘了。

　　兰最近萌发了对股票和期权交易的兴趣。自从开始接触股市后，她对世界的感观得到了极大的拓展，对公司盈利、失业数据、债务上限、世界局势动荡、中国崛起等等都有了解，一跃成为国家和国际政治、经济方面的准专家。

　　我们还是讲这次买股票的经历吧。兰在处理项目的同时也在操作股票交易，结果意外地多输入一个零，导致交易金额变成原计划的十倍。这是一个惊人的大数额，足以让人彻夜难眠。幸运的是，兰并没有经历太多的失眠，因为到了周日晚上她才发现错误。周一早上，她第一时间把股票抛出去。

股票出现小幅上涨，兰赚了1万美元。

　　不管是否失去了一部分脑力，兰显然还保留着运气。有这样的运气，谁还需要超强的脑力？

（下图） 摄于2019年国际生物科技组织（BIO）大会上。

Brain Power

Weizhong Cai

Lan was concerned about her declining brain power. “I used to be able to do two things simultaneously. Now I can’t.”
“Do two things simultaneously? I can eat and listen at the same time, or walk and talk at the same time. Are they counted as two things?” I wondered.
“No quite. They have to be somehow challenging. I used to be able to do two intellectually challenging things simultaneously.” claimed Lan.
“Like what?” I was curious.
So she gave an example.
When she was a middle school student, she sometimes chatted with someone sitting next to her in class. In one occasion when she was engaged in an interesting gossip with a friend, her Chinese teacher decided to teach her a lesson by embarrassing her.
“What did I just say?” demanded the teacher.
“You were talking about Gang Ju Mu Zhang.” The answer flowed out of her mouth without any hesitation.
It was correct, but not impressive. Some students are capable of citing the last few words their teachers said whether they pay attention or not, whether they understand or not.
“What does it mean by Gang Ju Mu Zhang?” followed the real question.
“This is a phrase. Gang means ‘headrope of a fishnet’, Ju means ‘pulled up’, Mu means ‘meshes of a fishnet’, and Zhang means ‘open up’. Putting these words together, the phrase literally means that once the headrope of a fishnet is pulled up, all of the meshes open up right away. Figuratively, it means that once the key issue of a matter or process is understood or resolved, everything else falls into place.”
This was a perfect summary of what the teacher was trying to convey to the class in the last few minutes. It was an impeccable answer, indeed.
The class fell into silence, including the teacher, except that she was a little peeved. The little friend with whom Lan was chatting with was in awe. She didn't catch a single word the teacher said since she was chatting.
Wow, that's really something! I had been married to a genius, at least a borderline genius. No wonder she could handle more than ten projects within a single time period and be very productive. I wished I could do that. But all I could do was to eat and listen simultaneously, or to walk and talk simultaneously. Now she said she was losing that amazing capability.
Well, I am usually quite dubious when a person who seems to be perfectly fine claims to be mentally deficient. Not long ago, our friend L wrote an essay detailing recent events related to her memory, arriving at a conclusion that she had Alzheimer’s disease (AD). It was quite a nice essay except the conclusion. If she really had had a memory problem, how could she have memorized these things and put them in the essay?
I therefore decided to do a diagnosis myself. A week later, I approached her with a seemingly innocuous question, “when did you post that essay on the web.”
“Last Monday.” She answered immediately.
“Correct! Your memory is perfectly fine. You have no AD”. That was my diagnosis. She hadn't complained about having AD since then.
Likewise, I was dubious about Lan’s claim that she was losing brain power.
“Don't worry. I can't do two things at the same time. I turn out to be just fine.” I tried to dismiss the notion by comforting her.
“But I am used to doing two things at once. It’s a habit I can't stop.”
Doing two things simultaneously meant one of them could go wrong.
Recently, Lan stumbled into my blog and read an essay, which she wasn't quite fond of. She thought the tone was a bit dark. So she decided to refute it. She was conjuring up a critique against the essay while making a turn from our driveway onto the main road. Two things simultaneously and one of them did not go well. She ran into a small incident with a car coming from the left-hand side. Just some surface damages but luckily, there was no bodily injury. Actually, the other thing also didn’t go well since she never completed the critique.
Maybe what Lan suspected was true. Maybe she should adjust to this new level of brain power and just do one thing at a time.
But that's hard.
A few days later, Lan reverted back to the doing-two-things habit. She bought certain shares of a stock while working on a time-sensitive business project. Well, I guess she could argue that buying the stock was also time sensitive since it was Friday afternoon, a couple of hours before the stock market closed.
Trading stocks and options became her new hobby. Since Lan started getting into the stock market, her perspective of the whole world had greatly expanded: company earnings, unemployment figures, debt ceiling, global turmoil, China's rise, etc. She had quickly become a quasi expert in national and international politics and economy.
Anyway, let's not digress too much from this recent stock buying experience. Since Lan was working on her project when she executed the stock transaction, she accidentally keyed in one more zero at the end of the intended number, resulting in a tenfold higher transaction. It was an alarmingly large number, large enough to keep one awake in the middle of the night. Fortunately, she didn’t lose too much sleep since she didn't discover the error until Sunday night. She dumped the stock first thing in the morning on Monday.
Thanks to a small upward hiccup of the stock, Lan ended up gaining ten thousand bucks.

Whether Lan loses certain brain power or not, she certainly keeps her luck. With that kind of luck, who needs super brain power?

兰与此文（英文）作者摄于2015年加拿大班夫。