Address by USST President Ding in a Ceremony Honoring the Graduate Students of the Class of 2023

Dear graduating students, parents, faculty members and friends of various circles who have supported USST both at home and abroad,
Good morning!
At this point in summer, cicadas are chirping and gardenia flowers are blooming. Now it is the graduation season again. The campus is filled with the fulfillment and joy of harvest, the sadness of parting, and the lofty sentiments and aspirations. This year, we put the graduation ceremonies of undergraduate students and graduate students on the solemn statue square of Chairman Mao Zedong and the beautiful Zhan En Avenue. Present here are graduate students of 2023 and those who failed to attend the graduation ceremony in the past. On this particularly memorable day, I would like to extend my warmest congratulations on behalf of USST to all doctoral students and graduate students who have successfully completed their studies! To all the faculty members and parents who have worked hard for your growth and success, I would like to give my highest respect!
Today, we are facing the strategic task of the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation. We recall the past, reflect on today, and look forward to the future. This is the length of history, for you will step from school into society. This is the span of life, and both the length of history and the span of life reflect systematic thinking. We need to think about our life, our future, and our journey from a systematic perspective. In this lesson today, I will share with you how to use the principles and thinking of systems science and systematic philosophy to understand and transform the world and life from three aspects. It is our hope that many years later, when you recall this parting “nagging” of mine, you will still be able to reflect on it and realize something.
Grasp the key to wisdom of “system” in a world full of “reduction”
When you cannot start and run your computer, do you disassemble the motherboard, CPU, hard drive, power supply, optical drive, graphics card, sound card, network card, and other components to test them separately, in order to find out if there is anything wrong with a certain component? The method of continuously decomposing a complex object into simple objects and decomposing the whole into parts is called “reduction.” In the past 20 centuries, human beings, based on the idea of “reductionism,” have reduced matter to a point where it can no longer be further divided. Physical research has reached the quark level, whereas biological research has reached the gene level. However, we have encountered such an embarrassment: we can observe the details of each part with a cryoscope, but we can’t detect the whole universe. We have completed human gene sequencing, but it cannot solve the problem of birth, aging, illness, and death. The dilemma of scientific and technological innovation indicates that our “reductionism” has reached its bottleneck. In the face of the complexity of the world, it seems powerless and helpless. Human beings are in urgent need of going from separation to integration, and the system theory thought that transcends reductionism and combines reductionism with holism has emerged as the times require, becoming a new awakening of human civilization.
Admittedly, reductionism is a common and important method to analyze and solve problems. For example, project research or management work often designs many tasks around the overall goal, and then decomposes each task to departments and individuals. But in the end, you may find that mechanically adding up the results of each part can not achieve the overall goal. For example, there may be a conflict between the overall will and local interests, and no one will claim and implement the task; there may also be sudden situations without emergency response, resulting in a complete loss. Therefore, students should be good at organically unifying reductionism and holism. You should not only “sweep the snow in front of your own door,” but also jump out of your own, base your foothold on the overall situation, take a long-term view, study different systems, each element within the system, and the relationship between them, avoid the dilemma of “only seeing the trees but not the forest” and “three monks but no water to drink,” and promote the overall effect of “1+1>2.” Therefore, “system” is a key to wisdom in this world full of “reduction.”
Pay close attention to the “emergence” phenomenon of complex systems
In complex systems, “emergence” is the most eye-catching phenomenon. The so-called emergence refers to the sudden emergence of new attributes or patterns at the system level when the number and interaction of parts reach a certain value, causing the system to exhibit attributes, features, behaviors, and functions that cannot be exhibited by local or subsystem systems. For example, the role of a bee colony cannot be played by a single bee, and the function of a wild geese formation cannot be achieved by a single wild goose. Emergence does not exist in each part, so the whole is characterised by irreducibility, which is also the reason why reductionism has encountered the bottleneck and failed explain complexity fully.
I would like to give an example of the current craze for ChatGPT: In the past, artificial intelligence was taught to machines as many skills as humans wanted them to perform. Therefore, many people believe that “only machines that have been taught can perform the skills, while those that have not been taught are cannot.” This is a reductive thinking, which decomposes numerous knowledge and skills, and then adds them together to form machine intelligence. The emergence of ChatGPT has overturned this cognition. It is based on massive data and supported by large models, promoting the phenomenon of “emergence” and realizing skills that have not been taught before. Machines can also learn, and machines have the same “intelligence” as humans, which can be used to draw inferences from one example and bypass similar situations. Although people currently do not know exactly at what critical point what kind of “emergence” occurs, it is certain that emergence has triggered things from quantitative to qualitative change, enabling ChatGPT to usher in a new era of universal artificial intelligence. From the perspective of systems science, the emergence of ChatGPT is innovation. Therefore, you should pay high attention and research to the “emergence” of complex systems, carefully analyze various new things, phenomena, and mechanisms that emerge, or actively promote the emergence. This habit may allow you to constantly burst out new ideas and creations, becoming a pioneer of innovation and excellence.
However, emergence is not always positive. In the world’s unprecedented great changes in this century, instability and uncertainty have increased significantly, and emergence may also become a stumbling block or obstacle to development. For example, on China’s journey to comprehensively build a modern socialist country, we have encountered negative emergence such as the COVID-19, technological blockade, and disconnection. At this time, we should stand at the height of world trends, the coordinates of the times, and the fate of the country, and calmly deal with the occasional negative emergence, we firmly believe that the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation is an irreversible necessity, maintain composure, turn a danger into an opportunity, seek progress in danger, and open up the path to a victorious future.
Understand and handle the relationship between parts and the whole well
The relationship between the parts and the whole is one of the basic issues systems science and systematic philosophy are concerned about. The local integration relationship based on the system view gives us two enlightenments:
Firstly, a part is an integral part of the whole, and everyone, as a part of the whole, should establish a sense of integration into the whole. The Twentieth National Congress of the Communist Party of China pointed out that China has entered the New Era and new journey of comprehensively building itself into a powerful socialist modernization country, achieving the second century goal, and comprehensively promoting the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation with Chinese path to modernization. Each of us should organically integrate our own future and destiny into the overall national strategic layout, in which such ideas as “deepening the supply side structural reform,” “building a dual circulation,” “promoting high-quality development,” “innovation, coordination, green, open, sharing,” “self-reliance and self-improvement in high-level science and technology” are all new concepts, new requirements, and new tasks closely related to everyone. Today, after you have stepped into society you will become the pillars of the country who will take on great tasks. You should, with a strong sense of responsibility and mission, integrate personal career development and value realization into the torrent of the construction of a great power and national rejuvenation, and take actions of integration, dedication, guidance and innovation, so as to form a community of “breathing together and sharing a common future” with the magnificent national grand strategy and development.
Secondly, individuals should unleash their immense initiative as a part to promote the overall optimization. Perhaps you may feel that an individual is just a drop in the ocean. In the system, “one is not much more than me, and one is not much less than me.” As a part, you often hold the idea of “waiting for help, relying on assistance and applying for funds ” and approach work and life passively. Since I am majoring in mathematics, I would like to break this misconception with a mathematical theory. Let me ask you a question: Which numbers do you think are greater,  integers or even numbers? Many students hold that integers are greater, and the reason is that the relationship between integers and even numbers are a whole and a part. Integers not only include even numbers, but also all odd numbers, right? But I want to tell you, following the rules for comparing infinite numbers, pairing integers with even numbers, that is, pairing 1 of an integer with 2 of an even number, pairing 2 of an integer with 4 of an even number, pairing 3 of an integer with 6 of an even number, and so on, you will find that they can always correspond one by one, no more, no less. Therefore, we must admit that the number of even numbers is as great as the number of integers, and thus we can conclude that in an infinite world, parts may probably equal the whole! In this perspective, although each small part of you is only a part of the whole, you can view yourself as the whole, freely explore within the framework of the whole, innovate boldly, and cultivate the energy of the whole. It is my hope that you will uphold this connected, developing, and dialectical “holistic view” to strive forward and forge ahead. Perhaps you are the key factor determining the overall success or failure, and the entire system cannot be achieved without you.
The Reverend Mr. Qian Xuesen is the founder of the Chinese School of systems science, while USST is a pioneer in the discipline and specialty construction of systems science and System Engineering. Since its inception in 1978, our university’s system discipline gained strong support and great guidance from Mr. Qian. In 1979, Mr. Qian also attended the founding conference of our university’s System Engineering Research Institute. So far, the thought of Systems Science has been fresh and shining in theory and practice. When talking about working methods and thinking methods, General Secretary Xi Jinping has mentioned “systems” and “systematic philosophy”many a time. “Adhering to the systematic philosophy” has been written in the report of the 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China and the the 14th Five-Year Plan (2021-2025) of our country, and has risen to a new height of governance.
Dear classmates, in the future, no matter where you are or what you do, it is our hope that you will inherit the academic and thinking genes of your alma mater, live up to the expectations and expectations of your alma mater, society, and the country. With your theoretical research, social practice, and life experience, you will understand the profound wisdom and practical power contained in the system view, continuously enrich and develop the system view, use the “systematic view” to dispel the fog of thought, and use the “system” key to unlock the future journey!
The horses from the north are emotionally attached to the north wind whereas the birds from the south make their nests among the branches of the trees in the south. Your alma mater is the eternal “birthmark” on your body, so your honor is also the honor of your alma mater. I hope you will often come back to visit your home!
That’s all for today’s class. I wish all of you a bright future and great success! Thank  all of you!