All that glitters is not gold.

"All that glitters is not gold." Lenin used this glittering metaphor to expose Trotsky's false revolution. This negative judgment reminds people that we should pay attention to eliminating the false and retaining the true in everything. If you don't distinguish between authenticity and falsehood, it's easy to be deceived.

In fact, the ancients had a personal understanding of the importance of eliminating the false and retaining the true. In the Warring States Policy, there is an argumentative essay "Zou Ji satirizes the king of Qi to be trained". Through Zou Ji's personal statement, please expect to open your mind and show that you can't listen to one side and believe the truth of the other. One day, Zou Ji asked his wife, concubine and guests in the north of the city who was more beautiful, him or Xu Gong. Three people unanimously replied that he was much more beautiful than Xu Gong. The next day, Xu Gong came to see Zou Ji. During the conversation, Zou Ji repeatedly observed Xu Gong's appearance and felt that he was not as beautiful as him. Then he secretly looked at his figure and face in the mirror and felt that the difference was too far. In the evening, Zou Ji thought and thought in bed, and finally realized the mystery: "My wife is beautiful and I am private; The beauty of my concubine is afraid of me; The beauty of the guest is me, I want my things. " It turns out that Xu Gong in the north of the city is a famous handsome man in Qi State. Although Zou Ji looks good, he is dwarfed by Xu Gong. Regardless of the facts, the wives and guests insist that he is more beautiful than Hong-mei Xu, which is completely confusing the real with the real and reversing black and white. The reason why the three of them praised Zou Ji with lies also has its practical reasons. To put it bluntly, the wife praises her husband because she likes it, the concubine praises her husband because she is afraid, and the guest praises her husband because she wants it. The praise of the three people is based on their own interests, not on the nature of things.

"Eliminating the false and retaining the true" is also an important method for people to logically process perceptual materials in the process of rising from perceptual knowledge to rational knowledge. On the basis of practice, people have obtained a lot of perceptual materials, which are colorful, complicated and difficult to distinguish between true and false. The phenomenon of things is colorful, and truth and illusion are intertwined. In particular, many things are similar in appearance, but actually different. Things with different natures often have similar phenomena, which makes it more difficult to distinguish between true and false. There is a passage in "The Warring States Policy" and "Ximen Bao is the Imperial Order": "There are many things, not the same." Then, the article gives many examples: weeds are like rice seedlings, bones are like ivory, and Beowulf stone is like jade ... This shows that these are all "specious". According to legend, Zhuge Liang wrote sixteen strategies, among which Wen Pian also mentioned that "things are different, but the same color is the same." White stone is jade, fools cherish it; Fish eyes are like pearls, fools take them; A fox is like a dog, a fool keeps it; Just like a melon, only fools eat it. " These words mean that many things are similar in appearance, so stupid that they can't tell the difference between true and false, so they are bound to be deceived. Indeed, there are many things that are similar on the surface, but they are completely different in essence. Some things look real on the surface, but in fact they are fake. Some seemingly right things are actually wrong, and vice versa. In short, truth and falsehood, good and evil, beauty and ugliness are often difficult to distinguish if they are not carefully identified. We often encounter this phenomenon. Some commodities, especially some health care products and medicines, are beautifully packaged and described with attractive descriptions. All kinds of advertisements are overwhelming, and how well the merchants promote them, specializing in treating all kinds of diseases and even curing all diseases, which makes consumers feel excited. However, people have no special effect after using it, just like the salesman said. Some patients obviously feel unwell after taking it, but they delay the treatment and aggravate their condition. Nowadays, fakes in the society can be said to be rampant, and most of them rely on outer packaging and false advertisements to confuse consumers. If people relax their vigilance and don't distinguish carefully, they will be easily deceived. In recent years, telecom fraud cases are common, and the amount of fraud is increasing, and some deceived people have lost their families, which has aroused great concern from all walks of life. However, judging from the fraudulent means of scammers, scammers often use prizes as bait to cheat. In fact, deception is not brilliant, but there are always people who can't stand the temptation of liars and are gullible. These are all realistic manifestations of the lack of distinction between things and the inability to "discard the false and preserve the true".

In real life, it is difficult for people to tell the truth for a while. There are many reasons. As far as epistemology is concerned, on the one hand, because the relationship between things themselves and facts is complex, the phenomenon and essence, form and content of things are often inconsistent. There are often many illusions in the phenomenon. In addition, the development of things has a process, when its essence has not been fully exposed, it is difficult for people to really grasp it. On the other hand, due to the subjective influence of knowledge, experience, methods and even positions and viewpoints, people's understanding can't absolutely correctly reflect the objective phenomenon. Even the subjective and objective are completely inconsistent, which is not uncommon. In this case, it is inevitable to regard illusion as truth and phenomenon as essence, resulting in various illusions and even major mistakes in understanding. Of course, when we say that truth is difficult to distinguish for a while, we don't mean that truth is always difficult to distinguish, and truth has no standard. Otherwise, it will fall into agnosticism and "no right and wrong". Bai Juyi has two poems: "The grass fireflies are not fire, and the lotus dew is a pearl." Fireflies are not fire and dewdrops are not beads, which tells us that everything is true and false after all. The problem is to constantly improve our ability to distinguish truth from falsehood. Like the Monkey King, he has developed a pair of "critical eyes" and is good at "removing the false and retaining the true". Even if the transvestite turns upside down, it won't confuse you.

To "discard the false and retain the true", we must first have the spirit of doubt, that is, dare to question the similarity between things and make sure that "the traces of doubt cannot be ignored" We don't advocate doubting everything at will, but we advocate doubting with scientific basis. A person's head grows on his neck. When he hears any unconfirmed rumors and sees any suspicious phenomena, he must think with his own mind. He should neither listen to others' opinions nor listen to others' opinions. There is a saying in the chapter "Investigation and Biography" in the Spring and Autumn Annals of Lushi, "A husband can't help but speak, and black is white, so a dog is like a jackal. Female monkeys are like female monkeys, female monkeys are like people, and people are far from dogs. The reason why this fool is greater than it. " There will even be a joke that "white is black, and black is white", and black and white are reversed. Some people were skeptical about rumors at first, but people were afraid of their remarks. When they said it, they were so confused that they had to believe that the fake was true. As the fable of "three people are tigers" in the Warring States Policy says, how can a tiger enter a busy market? A man said, "There are tigers in the city", but you don't believe him. When two people say "there are tigers in the city", you will doubt and waver; Three people said, "There are tigers in the city". Do you believe it or not? I believe! In this way, the result is still false and true. Zeng Shen is known as a sage, and his mother knows him best, but "three accusations make his mother suspicious", only to hear others say "Zeng Shen killed people!" Mother actually believed it, quickly dropped the shuttle and fled over the wall. In fact, I finally realized that a man with the same name as his son killed someone. This is also a historical story. What's more, some people don't think for themselves. As soon as they heard that wind is rain, they followed blindly. "When the dwarves get together, they always chat with others." There is an intriguing joke in Laughing Praise by Zhao Nanxing in Ming Dynasty. "If you sit with others, they will laugh at what they see and others will laugh. People ask, "Why do you laugh at what you see?" The monk said,' What you laugh at is definitely not bad.' "The blind man has no eyes, so he has to laugh with others. What makes us feel is that "there are quite a few people who have the purpose to follow everyone, and people are poor." "This kind of blind obedience phenomenon around us is not happen from time to time? The depravity, corruption and moral corruption of some corrupt officials are not unrelated to the blind obedience of various "friends" they have made. If you don't see things clearly with a purpose, you will listen to what others say, or if you don't see things in person, you will be blinded and don't know the truth. Zou Ji realized this truth. If he is partial to the truth and doesn't personally find that his appearance is farther than Xu's tolerance from the comparison with Xu Gong, then he is deceived and can't have self-knowledge.

As the saying goes, "if you don't know the goods, you dare not compare." It is an effective method to compare the opposites of truth, goodness, beauty and falsehood, evil and ugliness in the process of cognition. It can only be identified by comparison. Mr. Lu Xun once said in an essay that rural people often mistake copper sulfide for gold, and it is useless to argue with him. But if you meet a real gold mine, just weigh it with your hands and compare it, and he will understand. So he said, "comparison is a good medicine for being cheated."

To get rid of the false and keep the true, we should not only have correct logical processing methods, but also constantly test and distinguish the true from the false by practice. All the results and conclusions come from the end of the investigation, not the beginning and beginning of the investigation. Without investigation, you won't get real knowledge. In particular, overthrowing the fallacies of predecessors requires more practical courage to go deep into the tiger's den. Aristotle, an authoritative thinker in ancient Greece, once asserted that weapons with different weights fall from the air, "the speed is directly proportional to their weight", with heavy ones falling fast and light ones falling slowly. 1800 For more than 800 years, people have always regarded this erroneous assertion as truth. It can really be said: saints make thousands of sentences, and future generations follow the principle of eternity. It was not until Galileo appeared in Italy in the sixteenth century that he dared to jump out of the shackles of his predecessors and challenge authority. The famous "Leaning Tower of Pisa Experiment" completely declared the bankruptcy and end of Aristotle's law. 1589 One day, Galileo, a 25-year-old young mathematics lecturer at the University of Pisa, came to the Leaning Tower of Pisa with his debating opponents and many others. He climbed to the top of the tower and dropped an iron ball weighing 100 pound and an iron ball weighing 1 pound. To everyone's surprise, two iron balls landed almost parallel. Faced with this ruthless experiment, the opponents watching the debate were dumbfounded and at a loss. Of course, there are also some diehard opponents who still insist that Aristotle's theory can never be wrong. This is what the magical Galileo used to stop the speed of the big iron ball, but he was helpless and could not produce any evidence. Finally, he shrugged his shoulders and slipped away in the laughter of everyone.

This is praised as a beautiful story by the scientific community. It is proved by iron facts that the acceleration of different objects falling from the same height is the same. If air resistance is ignored, they will land at the same time. This is the law of free fall, which was proved by Galileo and has now become people's scientific common sense. It broke the traditional concept that has bound people's thoughts for more than 800 years.

"The Leaning Tower of Pisa Experiment" provides a vivid example for distinguishing truth from falsehood in practice from the history of natural science. "If you are cold, you will know that the pine and cypress will wither later, and practice will tell the truth of the theory." Galileo's debate with his opponent has been judged fairly by practice. Any hypothesis or theory of natural science, even if its system is perfect and its logic is rigorous and thorough, will only be generally accepted as truth after being proved by practice. If you don't see everything and hear everything, you can't assume that there is nothing and you can't fake it. We should inherit all excellent cultures and correct theories, put forward new ideas by distinguishing the true from the false, eliminating the false and retaining the true, and carry them forward in practice.