1 . We have been defending humanities for many decades now, but the crisis of the humanities only grows. In the face of declining student interest and mounting political scrutiny (审查), universities and colleges are increasingly putting humanities departments on the chopping block.

As a humanist, I am prepared to admit that I do not know what the value of the humanities is. I once asked the best teacher I ever had why she no longer taught her favorite novel, and she said that she stopped teaching a book when she found she was no longer curious about it. The humanistic spirit is, fundamentally, an inquisitive one.

In contrast, defenses of the humanities are not - and cannot be - conducted in an inquisitive spirit, because a defensive spirit is inimical to an inquisitive one. Defensiveness is, it must be admitted, an understandable response when the chopping block is brought out and you need to explain why you shouldn’t be on it, which requires their participants to pretend to know things that they do not actually know.

Nonetheless, we should be alert to the danger of becoming accustomed to putting our worst foot forward. An atmosphere of urgency and calls for immediate action are hostile to fields of study like literature and philosophy that require a reflective mood, and the pretense (假装) of knowing what one doesn’t actually know is hostile to forms of inquiry that demand an open mind.

A defensive mindset also encourages politicization. If the study of literature or philosophy helps to fight sexism or to promote democracy — and everyone agrees that sexism is bad, and democracy is good-then you have your answer as to why we shouldn’t cut funding for the study of literature or philosophy. Politicization is a way of arming the humanities for its political battles, but it comes at an intellectual cost. Why is sexism so bad? Why is democracy so good? Politicization silences these and other questions, whereas the function of the humanities is to raise them.

Humanists are not alone in their ignorance about the purpose of their disciplines. But scientists are under a lot less pressure to explain why they exist because the society at large believes itself to already have the answer to that question. If at some point I am called on to defend the study of Homer or Descartes at some official hearing, I will do my best, but I will not run to battle; the battle will have to come to me.

The task of humanists is to invite, to welcome, to excite, to engage. And when we let ourselves classrooms but also in our public-self presentation, we find we don’t need to defend or prove anything: We are irresistible.

3 . Bed rotting — the practice of spending long periods of time just staying under the covers with snacks, screens and other creature comforts — is gaining popularity on social media. Some Generation Z trend followers are now viewing it as a form of self-care, but doctors warn too much could be “sign of depression”. Are these extended breaks really wise for one’s mental health — or could they be a cause for concern?

Dr. Ryan Sultan, a professor at Columbia University in New York, who treats many young people, called the bed rotting trend attractive. “In our culture today, with too much to do, too many expectations and too much productivity, many young individuals (个人) are feeling burned out and often aren’t getting enough sleep. It’s easy to see why taking time off to lie around is attractive,” Sultan said. “In many ways, this is beneficial. It’s a chance to get away from real-life problems and clear your head before returning to life in a better state of mind, ” he added.

For the downside, however, he said a long-term need or desire for bed rotting could do harm to one’s physical health. Spending too many daytime hours in bed — awake or not — could destroy sleep schedules. Our brains are fine-tuned for sleep in darkness and alertness in light. Lying in bed half-asleep during the day will worsen sleep schedules — once that happens, it is a challenge to fix. It could also lead to blood pressure problems and obesity (肥胖).

Long-term need or desire for bed rotting could also be a warning sign of depression, according to a mental health expert. Dr. Marc Siegel, professor of medicine at NYU Langone Medical Center and a Fox News medical contributor, agreed that while some downtime can be useful in terms of de-stressing and rejuvenation (更新), too much bed rotting is a bad health practice. In addition to increasing the risk of depression, it contributes to decreased motivation (动力) as well.

Instead of bed rotting, Siegel recommends regular exercise as a better form of de-stressing. While the occasional lazy day can be beneficial, too much could have the opposite effect. If it happens every day, that’s a fairly sensitive test for depression. Those who lack the motivation to get out of bed could also try calling or texting a family member for support, socializing with close friends, finding a small task to complete, or reaching out to a medical professional for help.

4 . As higher education leaders dive deeper into the conversation on Digital Transformation and Education 4.0, they are also learning how to incorporate the Digital Twins realm concept into their curricula, because Digital Twin technology can serve the university of the future.

A Digital Twin is a virtual representation of a real object or system which is updated from real-time data and uses machine learning, simulation (模拟), and reasoning to help decision-making. In other words, a Digital Twin can create a highly complex virtual model which is the exact replica of a physical thing. Connected sensors on a smart campus can collect data in real time. This data is used to create a map onto the virtual model, thus creating a Digital Twin of a campus. When school administrators look at the Digital Twin, they can see crucial information about how the real campus is doing.

The applications for Digital Twin technology do not stop there. Students and faculty can benefit from using the technology as well. For example, hybrid classrooms have become more and more common nowadays. Digital technologies have accelerated the transition into the university of the future. Digital Twin technology, one of the trending technologies related to Industry 4.0, helps faculty create simulation models based on course requirements.

Digital Twin technology makes the ultimate immersive learning experience possible. By using a Digital Twin, students can learn highly engaging tasks which can be too dangerous, complex, or expensive for the classroom. Rather than hands-on laboratory dissection of a physical frog to learn animal science or having to wait for available human organs in the health science lah, medical students can use the virtual twin of an animal or human organs for their study.

The complexity of chemistry or microbiology requires students to be totally engaged. By using Digital Twins in a Virtual Reality simulated learning experience, faculty can achieve a maximum level of engagement helping each student learn abstract concepts in their own unique way and much faster. By running simulations, students can better explore system behavior under different conditions, understand failure and develop an understanding of system sensibilities as well as how changes in the system parameters (参数) and external disruptions make an impact on the results.

Some universities, such as Stanford and Copenhagen School of Marine Engineering, have incorporated Digital Twin technology into their teaching curricula, applying it to disciplines like architecture and engineering as they believe they are the reality of the industry. Overall, this enhances student motivation, accelerates understanding, and improves the overall learning experience. Moreover, the industry encourages universities to incorporate educational Digital Twins in automation to give students the initial understanding of tools and skills they will need in their future.

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“What if…?” thinking is anytime you try to guess the future outcome of an action you take. For example, “I want to ask for a pay raise but what if…?” Your mind then fills in the blank with many alternate scenarios, almost all of them negative.

It’s a powerful combination of focusing on the negative and the unrealistic. It causes you to suffer through events that may not even happen as you try to predict the future and work out how you’ll cope with all these possible(yet unlikely)scenarios. But the absolute worst thing about “what if…” thinking though, is that it tries to convince you it’s helping. You tell yourself that you’re just preparing yourself, you’re protecting yourself. But “what if…” thinking rarely leads to taking practical, preventative actions. Instead, you torture yourself by imagining all sorts of terrible outcomes, all in the name of being “prepared”, the idea of which is captured beautifully by this quote: “Do not be fooled by ‘what if…’ thinking! You are not a fortune teller. Even if you were, mentally rehearsing how you’ll cope with a negative outcome has limited usefulness. You’re much better off just coping with the situation once when it happens.” By torturing yourself imagining all the possible bad things that could happen, you end up living through all these horrible possibilities that you don’t have to.

Even if you do get it right, and one of the negative scenarios is the outcome, you’re unlikely to remember your well-rehearsed comeback or safety strategy in the heat of the moment.

Another separate problem with “what if…?” thinking is that it makes you so fearful of all these potentially hideous outcomes that it stops you from actually living through the situation, if you can at all avoid it.

By stopping yourself from acting, not only do you cut off the potential benefits of actually asking, but you also cut off the opportunity to see that your predictions were wrong—because you don’t test them out by entering the situation regardless. Unchallenged like this, “What if…” thinking seems like it actually protects you and seems even more “helpful” next time around.

Once you’ve decided on a course of action, “what if…” has got much louder and soon will stop you from taking action. I like to not give them an opportunity. Once you’ve made a decision, force your own hand: make the phone call straight away, enroll and pay for the course, make an appointment in your calendar, etc. before your fears and negativity even get a chance to get up off the couch.

6 . In our information-driven society, shaping our worldview through the media is similar to forming an opinion about someone solely based on a picture of their foot. While the media might not deliberately deceive us, it often fails to provide a comprehensive view of reality.

Consequently, the question arises: Where, then, shall we get our information from if not from the media? Who can we trust? How about experts—people who devote their working lives to understanding their chosen slice of the world? However, even experts can fall prey to the allure of oversimplification, leading to the “single perspective instinct” that hampers(阻碍)our ability to grasp the intricacies of the world.

Simple ideas can be appealing because they offer a sense of understanding and certainty. And it is easy to take off down a slippery slope, from one attention-grabbing simple idea to a feeling that this idea beautifully explains, or is the beautiful solution for, lots of other things. The world becomes simple that way.

Yet, when we embrace a singular cause or solution for all problems, we risk oversimplifying complex issues. For instance, championing the concept of equality may lead us to view all problems through the lens of inequality and see resource distribution as the sole panacea. However, such rigidity prevents us from seeing the multidimensional nature of challenges and hinders true comprehension of reality. This “single perspective instinct” ultimately clouds our judgment and restricts our capacity to tackle complex issues effectively.

It saves a lot of time to think like this. You can have opinions and answers without having to learn about a problem from scratch and you can get on with using your brain for other tasks. But it’s not so useful if you like to understand the world. Being always in favor of or always against any particular idea makes you blind to information that doesn’t fit your perspective. This is usually a bad approach if you would like to understand reality.

Instead, constantly test your favorite ideas for weaknesses. Be humble about the extent of your expertise. Be curious about new information that doesn’t fit, and information from other fields. And rather than talking only to people who agree with you, or collecting examples that fit your ideas, consult people who contradict you, disagree with you, and put forward different ideas as a great resource for understanding the world. I have been wrong about the world so many times. Sometimes, coming up against reality is what helps me see my mistakes, but often it is talking to, and trying to understand, someone with different ideas.

If this means you don’t have time to form so many opinions, so what? Wouldn’t you rather have few opinions that are right than many that are wrong?