Einstein's "Ignorance"

x happened to meet a child prodigy in a TV program. A little boy, only 11 years old, on the spot to perform a specialty: back "Xinhua Dictionary". The host called out a few Chinese characters at random, and the boy blurted out the page number of the character without thinking. The host is skeptical, turn over a brick thick "Xinhua dictionary" one by one after checking, the mouth can not close - even exactly! An audience member stood up in disbelief, gave his name, and asked him for the page number of those three words. The little boy continued to answer, word for word. In a flash, applause, the scene of the audience are impressed, have a thumbs-up.

If I hadn't seen it with my own eyes, I would have found it hard to believe that such a great man could exist.

After the performance, the parents of the child prodigy were invited to the stage to introduce their godchild experience to the audience. It was a middle-aged couple. The mother was very excited to see her son showing his face. She said that her son has a good memory since childhood. When he was five years old, they began to force him to memorize the dictionary. After six years of hard work, he finally got today's result.

At the end of the show, the host asked the boy, "What do you want to be when you grow up?" With a childish look on his face, he replied, "I want to be a scientist, a great scientist like Einstein." Dream big, and a burst of warm applause. Unfortunately, Einstein won't be able to hear it, and if he knew, he would be very angry.

Einstein was persecuted by the Nazis and forced to emigrate to the United States. When he arrived in the United States by plane, the airport was packed with welcoming crowds. Such scenes, of course, involve journalists. A reporter had no words to find words, asked him a number in physics, but no one expected, Einstein answered straight: "I don't know." Unbelievably, it was a commonsense question, the answer of which was known even to many of the laymen present, and which, by rights, could not have puzzled the greatest scientist of the twentieth century. Was it because he thought the question was too simple to answer, too pompous?

Soon after, when asked about this, Einstein said earnestly, "I really don't remember that number." Seeing the wonder, Einstein explained, "I don't need to waste my precious energy. I never remember a number that I can turn to in an encyclopedia."

Turns out, Einstein's theory of relativity is not memorized!

After watching the program, I suddenly came to the interest, the Internet search for relevant information, the results were a big jump. In China, there are prodigies in large numbers. In addition to those who recite dictionaries, there are four-year-old girls who recite PI to 350 decimal places, and five-year-old boys who memorize thousands of Tang poems. Disliking those who can not show ability along the back, back PI...... It is true that there are other people in the world.

Can one become a linguist by memorizing a dictionary, a poet by memorizing a thousand Tang poems, or a mathematician by memorizing PI? Of course not. If there is any point in going backwards, then backwards is puzzling. What is the use of such a prodigy?

If it is meaningless, why do so many people continue to enjoy it? This may not be the child's intention, but the parents can use it to satisfy their own poor vanity: Look, our child is capable! As everyone knows, such a son, training out of but is a recitation machine, is at the expense of the child's precious innocence and imagination at the cost of all harm and no benefit. The truth is very simple, the core competitiveness of talent, depends on its innovation ability, is not mechanical repetition.

After all, even if a child could recite "Cihai" and "Encyclopaedia Britannica" backwards, he wouldn't be able to recite "Relativity", would he?