Acceptance vs. “Loving what’s true”
January 31, 2021
To elide the distinction is to think that your only options are resignation and denial. … More Acceptance vs. “Loving what’s true”
Tag: self-awareness
More information doesn’t have to make you more certain
December 27, 2019
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
Cognitive Overfitting
June 22, 2019
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
Ted Chiang on unspendable grief
May 30, 2019
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
The magnetism of language
February 28, 2019
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
What we can’t spend
January 27, 2019
Some things, like money, time, and effort, are scarce resources that need careful budgeting to be used optimally. Some of those, like effort and attention, can return stronger after resting from difficult use, as if they’ve been built up like a muscle through exercise, which makes the calculus of optimizing how much and when to … More What we can’t spend
What we spend
December 30, 2018
Ever since I learned that the Dutch word for “to spend” (besteden) is used not just with time and money, as in English, but also with attention, I’ve started to wonder what else we have that we spend, and could be spending more wisely. Here is an incomplete list I’ve compiled: Money (of course). Time. … More What we spend
When Morals Collide
December 11, 2017
Monday night is chore night at the Biesel household, and that usually means a rush hour trip to the grocery store to pick up the week’s supply of ingredients. It often happens, as I’m waiting in line at the checkout, that the person behind me is purchasing a smaller load of groceries than I am. … More When Morals Collide
Goals for Winter Break
November 30, 2017
Hello there! As of this writing, I have officially finished my first term as a visiting assistant professor at Carleton College, and our unusually long winter break is essentially the whole month of December. I’m tired and looking forward to a bit of a rest, but I also don’t want to waste the opportunity to … More Goals for Winter Break
Sigmoid Perception: Lateness
August 9, 2017
Clara and I were running late a few times in the last couple days, and we noticed that the difference between arriving on time and arriving five minutes late feels much bigger than the difference between arriving 10 minutes late and 15 minutes late, or between an hour late and an hour and five minutes … More Sigmoid Perception: Lateness
