The Mahjong-Playing Alzheimer’s Patient / “打麻将”的阿尔茨海默患者

Author: Dexin Kong
ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0008-3831-5725
Structured and refined with assistance from ChatGPT
AI Automatic Translation (Unreviewed)

Event

Around 2025, one of my business partners became unusually anxious for a period of time.

The reason was that his father had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease, commonly referred to as dementia.

They visited several hospitals, and all of them reached the same conclusion.

The old man had deteriorated to the point where he could no longer recognize numbers within ten.

Gradually, the family accepted the diagnosis.

They had even contacted a professional care institution and were preparing for long-term hospitalization.

Then, about one week before the hospitalization was scheduled, something absurd happened.

That day, my partner and I were discussing a project.

Suddenly, he received a phone call from his family.

They told him that his father was playing mahjong with his friends.

Later, we learned that just two days earlier, the family had taken the old man to a dentist.

Worried that hospitalization would make future treatment inconvenient, they decided to remove a severely decayed tooth root.

Observation

This incident caught my attention.

Because:

• The old man’s symptoms were real.
• The family’s concern and anxiety were real.
• The reputations of those hospitals were widely recognized.
• The entire diagnostic process was professional and serious.

And yet, the system still arrived at a conclusion that felt both highly professional and strangely absurd.

So where exactly did the problem emerge?

Reflection

Afterward, my partner and I discussed the incident several times.

Neither of us believed it was a misdiagnosis, nor did we consider it a medical accident.

We also did not doubt the professionalism of those hospitals.

If we view the entire incident as a process,

then perhaps the issue did not lie in professional capability itself.

At some point, without anyone clearly noticing,

the goal of the process may have gradually changed.

It may have shifted from:

“Trying to understand what was actually wrong with the old man”

to:

“Determining whether the old man matched the characteristics of Alzheimer’s disease.”

As a result, professional medical institutions used the most scientific and standardized methods available,

and ultimately produced a highly professional conclusion:

“Yes, all indicators match.”

Aftermath

Later, I discussed this incident with a friend working in film and video production.

He gave me an unexpected explanation:

“By changing the arrangement order of real events, you can guide the audience’s emotions. In our industry, this is an open secret.”

That statement left a lingering thought in my mind:

The order in which reality enters a process of interpretation may itself influence the behavior of the entire system.

Note:
This project is an ongoing independent research effort developed in spare time.
Because of limited time and maintenance capacity,
English documents may contain translation inaccuracies or semantic deviations from the original Chinese texts.
The Chinese version remains the primary reference whenever ambiguity exists.