One of the weirder tech issues I’ve had is that my laptop refuses to connect to wifi while its backup hard-drive is plugged in — it took me a while to figure out that’s what was even going on! I want my things to “just work,” and it’s so frustrating when they don’t. But it got me … More Brokenness is inaccurate emergence
I have a hard time remembering things that went well. It’s much easier for me to call to mind mistakes I’ve made: times I dropped the ball, or tried and failed to do something that matters to me. This is definitely a phenomenon many people experience (negativity bias), but at least in my case there’s … More Three Good Decisions
One of my earliest posts here was about different meanings of “habit”: there are … … intentional habits, things you regularly choose to do, … automatic habits, things you do on autopilot, and … mindset habits, your default ways of thinking. Intentional and automatic habits look very similar — the difference is how much mental effort you … More Three tools for changing your mindset
Pessimism comes naturally to me. Choosing between optimism and pessimism is like asking whether I would rather be disappointed or pleasantly surprised; it just sounds safer to choose the latter. But over time, pessimism takes its toll on my mood and health, and I’ve been advised many times to be more hopeful. Until recently, I’ve had … More How to hope
To elide the distinction is to think that your only options are resignation and denial. … More Acceptance vs. “Loving what’s true”
Our new apartment has laundry in the building, but in a room that can only be accessed by going outside and then in through a separate entrance. The result in winter is that on its way back, a hamper full of freshly dried clothes will acquire a layer of cold clothing around its warm cozy … More Why cold clothes feel damp
FiveThirtyEight recently posted a piece called “The Impeachment Hearings Just Confirmed Voters’ Preexisting Opinions”: the same wave of new information has just made everybody more convinced of what they already thought: One explanation of this phenomenon is “motivated reasoning”: a person finding data more reliable and arguments more convincing if they fit with what the … More More information doesn’t have to make you more certain
It can be kind of fun, in a self-flagellating way, to read about cognitive biases like the availability heuristic or the Dunning-Kruger effect, or just to browse through big lists like this one. If only our brains could take into account all the information they have, process it instantly, and store it forever! But machine learning engineers know that … More Cognitive Overfitting
Since I read Ted Chiang’s collection of short stories “Stories of your life and others,” including the marvelous title piece that inspired Arrival, I’ve been looking forward to his newly published collection “Exhalation.” The first story’s main character tells of his experience coping with the loss of his wife, and has this beautiful passage describing … More Ted Chiang on unspendable grief
It’s one of the great wonders of our universe that certain chemicals make electricity, and electricity makes magnetism, and magnetism makes things move. One of the classic experiments is to run an electric current through a wire to see the needle on a nearby compass swing around: I remember doing this experiment as a child, … More The magnetism of language
Owen Biesel 