Is it possible to change your mind too much? I am generally trying to be actively aware of confirmation bias, that is fitting every new bit of information into one's existing set of opinions. Plus I like the feeling of novel thoughts and how they tickle your brain.

This sometimes manifests in an instinct to run in the opposite direction when everyone agrees on something. Everyone thinks climate change will be catastrophic soon? Sure, but what about other solutions than admonishing people to behave differently? And aren't some the activists claims exaggerated? (Apocalypse Never by Michael Shellenberger is a book that tries to distinguish the science from the hyperbole; I should finish it some day.)

That same gut reaction seems to be my default in many areas. If I wanted to flatter myself, I would call it a "scientific mindset", to always question common wisdom, but I am not sure it really is that. Also it becomes potentially "dangerous" socially, in the sense that one can easily come across as obnoxious and unnecessarily crontrarian. And in the wrong context it can send the wrong signals as to how one gets sorted into the bins labelled good guy or bad guy.

Thus I am genuinely unsure whether I tend overcompensate when trying to correct my confirmation bias. After all, there often are good reasons that there is a widely accepted view, and quickly throwing out a strong prior is bad Bayesian thinking. In an extreme case, it would make me gullible, accepting new arguments or framings without weighing them properly against what I thought before.

Coincidentally, Scott Alexander wrote about the exact opposite today, trapped priors. Quite likely I have some of these, too, and I see no immediate reason why one cannot have too weak priors concerning one subject matter, and too strong ones in another.

Added 2021-03-12: Also closely related, I just heard Rob Wiblin in his podcst say the following, which gave me a chuckle:

I feel like I can notice a perverse aspect of this in myself when [...] you’ve kind of settled on what is kind of probably the true boring thing, the unexpected boring real conclusion just to some issue that has been controversial to you in the past. Then you’re like, “I’m bored of this. I have to find new takes, something new to say about this issue. [.. ] But what’s left?” What’s left is just bad takes, like dumb, unexpected contrarian takes.

We have had quite the winter here in Uppsala, Sweden. Many days my exercise was replaced by shovelling snow. It never became too much to cause real problems and we made it through the stretch of cold by emptying the firewood sheds.

Now all snow has melted already, but we are in that frustrating period called vårvinter (spring-winter) where everything is gray and ugly, snow and wet take turns, until spring finally comes at the beginning of May.

How difficult it is to consistently post on a blog! One easily gets awe-stricken by people like Tyler or Scott who put out large amounts of interesting material, without having this as their main gig.

I won't pretend I'll be able to get to their level anytime soon, but starting small and from scratch again should make it easier to form new habits. And practice matters in writing, they say.

To put it in different words: I have outsourced my babble to podcasts and books too much, and need to flex my own text generator again. Re-phrasing thoughts fosters their synthesis.

Recently, the book I have enjoyed most is Joe Henrich's The Secret of Our Success. The subtitle says very well what it is about: How Culture Is Driving Human Evolution, Domesticating Our Species, and Making Us Smarter. I found the interaction between culture and biology totally mind-boggling and think that this is one of those great books that synthesize different areas of understanding into a compelling narrative, in a very accessible and entertaining way. Here is a good interview with him, by Tyler Cowen, if you want to get a preview.
Henrich has a new book out, The WEIRDest people in the world (review by Dan Dennet), which I am eager to read - alas my copy is stuck in the mail.

If one takes "big picture" books as a genre, then Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs and Steel certainly is one of the most prominent examples. I had not read it until last year and liked it very much. I continued straight on to his follow-up Collapse but have so far passed on the latest one, Upheaval.

Why we Sleep by Matthew Walker did not leave a permanent impression on me, mostly because I needed no convincing that sleeping is important. I easily average 8,5 hours per night and generally sleep well. What really peaked my interest though was this fantastic blog post that goes though the first chapter of the book and finds a plethora of errors; very worthwhile to check out!

Back to cultural evolution. This View of Life by David Sloan Wilson was certainly interesting as well, but not as captivating to my brain as Henrich's book above. The question whether group selection is real or not gets mixed into the subject matter and I find the debate around this both confusing and semantic at times.

Last for today is Camus' The Plague. I stumbled upon my old copy, in German translation, which I must have read many years ago. But I remembered nothing of it when I started reading the other day. It is of course very well written, but also a bit dense, which is why I only progress a few pages every night in bed.

The pleasures of homebrewing include cleaning up, a lot. This time because the yeast liked the wort a bit too much and decided to climb out of the airlock. 🙄

Ok, that title takes some unpacking: A Sonoff is a microcontroller that connects to Wifi and can switch some other electrical device on and off, pictured on the right. It is basically a remote switch that can be used for all kinds of purposes, from a manually triggered remote to some fancy home automation. To flash in this context means putting a new operating system (firmware) onto the microcontroller and Tasmota is the open-source firmware that everyone seems to love and recommend.

I have had two of these switches for quite a while, but never got around to converting them to Tasmota. Earlier today I finally did, following this guide for using a RaspberryPi. The Sonoff provides an old-school serial port and wants 3.3V power internally. The only thing I had available that can do both was my Pi Zero (left in picture), and I am happy to say that it worked without much fiddling around. The most tricky part was to physically hold the Sonoff button and cables in place while turning on the Pi, then waiting for it to start up to trigger the software transfer whithout losing the connection on the cables.

Not I have to decide what to do with the switches. Probably I will go back to installing Home Assistant for central control. I have tried several years ago but I expect it to have improved much since.

Shoe company Merrell has made a running shoe called the Trail Glove for about a decade, following the hype around "barefoot" or "minimalist" running in the wake of McDougall's book Born to Run. There have been several iterations of the shoe, I have had them all and they have been my primary running shoes ever since, including the marathons I've run. Almost needless to say, I have loved them all, otherwise I would have switched to something else.

Up to and including version 4, that is. The current fifth iteration, pictured above, introduces a major flaw, in my opinion: arch support. Instead of being flat, the sole is thicker and rises significantly in the middle of the foot, so that some of the weight rests there instead of the ball and heel, where it should be. This is a total no-no, and I am sad that I will have to look into other brands, once my two Trail Glove v4 have worn out. Luckily, this will not happen anythime soon, I still use a pair of v3 as well.

By the way, if you have never heard of minimalist running before, this recent podcast gives a good motivation. In short, the reasoning is that cushioned shoes are in effect a kind or orthotics that allow running without building up the strength in the foot itself, which will more likely get you into trouble than running with a thin and flexible shoe that only protects the skin and does not get involved in the motion.

A few notes on my (not so) recent book diet.

The Strange Order of Things: Life, Feeling, and the Making of Cultures by Antinio Damasio. I really wanted to read that one after listening to this interview with the author, but I did not make it very far before I got bored. My bad! I might re-visit it some day. Related in the discussion of feelings is this podcast that I just listened to - quite interesting!

I must have mentioned before how much I enjoyed the 40th anniversary edition of Dawkins' The Selfish Gene, in which he reads the audio version of his current commentary, in dialogue with his former self. In the meantime I have read or listended to two more of his books: The Blind Watchmaker was good, but I liked The Extended Phenotype less, since it is written more for a more specialist audience and is very careful about details and nuances, which can make it tedious for laymen readers.

Stephen Fry has written (and recorded audio for) two books about ancient Greek mythology. Mythos covers the gods and creatures that were around before mankind came into play, and how all that came to be. The second part, Heroes, is about Hercules, Jason and their like, concluding with Theseus. Both are overall very enjoyable, not the least because of Fry's excellent reading.

I stumbled upon the semi-famous commencement speech by David Foster Wallace which is very much worth your time, if you don't know it yet. Prompted by that, I also read some of the essays in his collection A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again, with mixed feelings. He certainly can write and has some good insight into the human condition, so I think I understand why he gathered a fan-base. But something bothered me with his writing, maybe it felt pretentious, overly showy, or I cannot quite put my finger on it. Still, the title story about his trip on a cruise ship was great fun!

Another book that I did not finish is Against Empathy by Paul Bloom. This is not because it is bad or I found it unconvincing, on the contrary! I just had heard him make the major points of the book in several podcasts (Sam Harris & Very Bad Wizards) and needed no more convincing than that to appreciate the distinction between compassion and empathy and that the side effects of the latter are too often neglected. So be sure check out the book, if that sounds wrong (or right) to you!

My tool shed and workshop is rather narrow, so when I borrowed my neighbour's table saw the other day, the first thing I did was to build a cart on wheels/castors for it, to be able to rasily move it out of the way. At the same time I made my workbench mobile the same way and ensured that the height of the two matched, so that the bench can serve as an outfeed-table for long pieces from the saw.

This Video served as the main inspiration for the cart, but I simplified it even more and skipped the drawers for a plain storage shelf underneath the saw. I can recommend Steve Ramsey's Youtube channel throughout; I have watched quite a few of his videos and found them both instructive and entertaining.