God's Imitator

After knocking, Li Renshu entered the CEO’s office.

However, this time Su Xiucen didn’t seem to hear the knock. She was standing by the large floor-to-ceiling window in the CEO’s office, gazing somewhat absent-mindedly at the scene outside.

The CEO’s office had an excellent view of the entire venue, so the scenes that could be seen in the outer corridor were even clearer from the CEO’s office.

”Little Li? Is there something you need? I got a bit lost in thought watching outside.” Su Xiucen sat back down at the large CEO’s desk.

Li Renshu also sat down in the chair across from the desk.

”Aunt Su, I came to explain the situation from the last round of the game.

”Although we completed the market research and earned 50,000 minutes of visa time, considering the current reduction in company income, we still need to conduct layoffs.

”This is also to further verify the game mechanism. We need to see whether the frequency of employees reporting data will actually change after layoffs.”

Li Renshu was somewhat worried that Su Xiucen would be quite resistant to any form of layoffs.

So after quickly explaining, she added, ”Aunt Su, these employees are all virtual, just game data.”Su Xiucen wasn’t as opposed as she had imagined, but she clearly still had opinions.

”If you’ve really thought it through and absolutely must lay people off, I’ll approve it.

”But think again, have we really reached the point where layoffs are unavoidable?”

Su Xiucen flipped over her work badge, ”It’s written very clearly here that we’re acting.”

Li Renshu nodded, ”That’s right, we’re just acting. We haven’t actually become CEOs and executives, and we’re not really laying off employees, causing them to be unable to support their families.”

Su Xiucen shook her head, ”No, no, I think that’s not what it means.

”Since we’re acting, we should seriously play our roles.

”It’s an economic winter outside right now. If you lay off these employees, it will be very difficult for them to find work again.

”I see there’s also a salary reduction option, right? If we want to cut expenses, layoffs and salary cuts don’t differ much, do they?

”Let’s all take salary cuts together. Everyone reduces a little. Can we avoid having anyone lose their job first?”

Li Renshu thought about it. Su Xiucen’s reasoning made sense.

Laying off 4 people or cutting everyone’s salary would save the same amount of money, but from a moral perspective, not laying anyone off would be better.

From Su Xiucen’s attitude, if Li Renshu particularly insisted on layoffs, she would most likely agree but after thinking it over, Li Renshu said, ”Alright, then let’s start with across-the-board salary cuts.

”But Aunt Su, you also need to understand that salary cuts aren’t unlimited. According to the game mechanism, we can only reduce these employees’ original salaries by at most 30%.

”If at some point in the future, even a 30% salary cut for everyone can’t maintain the company’s healthy cash flow, we’ll still have to conduct layoffs.”

Su Xiucen sighed, ”Fine, if it really comes to that, I’ll agree to layoffs.”

Time was running short. Li Renshu quickly left the CEO’s office and headed to the outer area with Xu Tong.

...

Fu Chen stared at the computer screen, trying to memorize every piece of pop-up information as much as possible.

After discussing with Su Xiucen, Li Renshu decided to temporarily use across-the-board salary cuts to replace the original layoff plan.

So the number of employees didn’t change this month. They just implemented an indiscriminate 10% salary cut for everyone as an initial test.

[Company 17 Limited]

[March company account balance: 90,000 minutes of visa time]

[April estimated income: 70,000 minutes of visa time]

[April estimated employee compensation expenses: 72,000 minutes of visa time]

Currently, there was no obvious impact from salary cuts on the company mechanism.

This was reasonable. After all, it was an economic winter now. As long as they didn’t lose their jobs, salary cuts weren’t particularly difficult to accept for most people but Fu Chen also had to pay special attention to whether the probability of virtual employees providing data would correspondingly decrease after salary cuts.

If it decreased, for example, from originally producing 3-4 pieces per round to now dropping to 2-3 pieces, directly causing failure in market research activities, then they’d need to carefully consider whether the money saved from salary cuts was really worth it.

Finally, sounds of doors opening and work cards being swiped through turnstiles came from outside, meaning Li Renshu and Xu Tong had returned.

Fu Chen went through the three pieces of data he had just seen in his mind again, reinforcing his memory, then stood up to go out and greet them.

”I recorded three pieces of data. Compared to before, I can’t really tell if there’s been any obvious change in probability.

”How did things go on your end?”

Li Renshu sighed, ”We failed. But fortunately we adopted a relatively conservative approach and didn’t make additional investments, so we didn’t cause greater losses.

”The other side did add 20,000 though, so they earned an extra 20,000.”

Fu Chen was stunned, ”Wasn’t it supposed to be the sociology field? What kind of question was asked?”

Li Renshu briefly recalled, ”They asked how many office workers might order takeout through their phones daily in a city with 3 million people.”

Fu Chen looked puzzled, ”This problem seems to have no essential difference from the previous problems.”

Li Renshu nodded, ”Having no essential difference is exactly right, because no matter which field you choose, this game’s mechanics are all about using logical breakdown and magnitude estimation to determine unknown data.

”These four fields may seem to have different focuses, but they’re all under this same set of game rules.

”Currently we can roughly distinguish the differences between four types of problems:

”Science problems may involve relatively basic scientific knowledge and somewhat larger calculation amounts.

”Social problems may be directly related to socioeconomic activities.

”Arts problems mainly focus on the arts and entertainment industry.

”Civil affairs problems differ from social problems mainly in that they’re closer to microscopic daily life, where common sense can better help determine answers.”

Fu Chen considered seriously for a moment, ”But these types of problems shouldn’t be easy for Community 8 either, right?

”They just happened to get that piece of data?

”Then for the upcoming games, we might have to rely on luck. Whichever side’s computer employees guess more correctly will have the advantage.”

Li Renshu looked at him, ”Or maybe... it’s not about luck.

”I suspect there’s this possibility:

”This game splits the data directly related to these problems in half, with our two companies getting one half each.

”If it were purely random, with the lucky side always guessing correctly, this game would be very unfair.”

Xu Tong looked somewhat puzzled, ”Didn’t we say not to consider fairness issues in these games?”

Li Renshu shook her head, ”No, no, no. We’re thinking from the perspective of God’s Imitators. Different game objectives naturally have different degrees of fairness.

”If it’s to complete judgment of someone, it’s definitely unfair, because you always have to exploit some human weaknesses and create necessary information gaps.

”But for this type of competitive game with relatively rational mechanisms like data estimation, basic fairness still needs to be guaranteed.

”Otherwise, why wouldn’t the designer just have us and Community 8 play rock-paper-scissors to determine the winner? Why bother with this estimation?”