元键政6：越小的政治问题越有意义 - Meta Political Discussion 6：The Smaller the Political Question, the More Meaningful It Is

请读者用一分钟时间认真想一想：中国和美国，谁会赢得未来，成为下一个霸主？

Take a moment—just one minute—to seriously think about this: Who will win the future, China or the United States? Who will rise as the next global superpower?

恭喜你浪费了人生中的一分钟。我保证，这个问题是一个没办法回答的问题。不是说我们键政的水平还不够，不知道谁会成为下一个霸主，而是，即使一个人了解这世上发生的所有真相，听了这世上所有的床，他/她仍然没法判断谁会成为下一个霸主，甚至连概率都很难估算出来。回答这个问题和算命没有本质区别。

举一个最简单的例子：假如明年又来一场疫情，或者某国的科技公司搞出来了遥遥领先的人工智能，或者某位领导人突然去世了，刚才这个问题的答案马上就不一样了。

Congratulations. You’ve just wasted a minute of your life. Honestly, this is a question with no real answer. It's not that our political analysis isn’t sharp enough to predict the outcome, but rather that—even if someone knew every single truth about the world and had heard every secret behind closed doors—they still wouldn’t be able to say who will dominate the future. They probably couldn’t even offer a reliable estimate. Answering this is essentially no different from fortune-telling.

Take a simple example: what if another pandemic breaks out next year? What if a country suddenly makes a breakthrough in artificial intelligence? Or what if a key leader unexpectedly passes away? Any of these events could instantly change the answer to the question.

然而这个问题是互联网上最热门的问题之一。只要在微博或x搜索“世界霸主”关键词就能看到 不知道有多少人拍着胸脯给出各种预测，说中国会赢，美国会赢...。我看不出来这些博主他们自己信不信，不过从评论区中能看出来，他们的读者肯定深信不疑。

Yet this remains one of the internet’s hottest topics. A quick search for “world superpower” on Weibo or X will bring up countless bold predictions—some say China will win, others say the U.S. will. Whether the influencers making these claims believe them themselves is unclear, but the comment sections make one thing obvious: their audiences believe them wholeheartedly.

其他的政治大问题也大致如此，比如说“中国什么时候会打台湾？”，或者说“标普指数会涨/跌到多少？”...。这些问题的答案都是不确定的，它们也都没有意义。我们唯一能做的事就是做好两手准备，然后静观其变。

Other big political questions are much the same. “When will China invade Taiwan?” or “How high or low will the S&P 500 go?” These questions all have uncertain answers, and more importantly, they’re ultimately meaningless. The only sensible approach is to prepare for different possibilities—and wait.

相反，有意义的政治问题都是小问题，比如“在居委会会议中，应该选择哪种电梯维护方案”，或者“学生是否要与学校交涉，以改善食堂饭菜质量”。

这些问题有意义，不仅是因为这种问题可以被回答，更是因为这个问题的答案会因为你我的努力而改变，即，这些问题一经思考讨论，就有可能推动事情发展。而“经由我们的努力，让周围环境变得更好”才是键政的社会意义。

In contrast, the political questions that do matter are the small ones. Things like, “Which elevator maintenance plan should the neighborhood committee choose?” or “Should students negotiate with their school to improve cafeteria food?”

These questions matter not just because they have concrete answers, but because those answers can change through your efforts and mine. They are questions that, once considered and discussed, have the potential to drive real change. And that’s the true social significance of political discourse: “Through our efforts, we can make our surroundings better.”