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Category: learning

  • Scratch

    Scratch is a one of the best languages to learn how to program computers. The language is easy to learn while being surprisingly powerful. Often I meet students who want to learn how to create web sites or applications. They want to immediately learn Python, C#, or other other “practical” programming languages. My recommendation is to first learn programming basics using Scratch and then learn other languages like Python. Scratch lets you focus on learning the most critical skills. Often it is faster for a novice programmer to gain mastery by learning Scratch and then “a practical language” than to start with the language they ultimately want to use.

    [toc]

    This post was inspired by meeting the teachers and students at Achungo. A WhatsApp Group for teachers and students interested in Scratch@Achungo.

    I will be adding more to this page in the near future.

    Getting Scratch

    If you have a browser that was updated in the last year and an Internet connection, just click the “Create” button on the Scratch home page and you are ready to go. If Internet access is spotty or you are using an old browser you can download offline scratch for Macintosh, Windows, Chromebooks still under support, and Android powered devices. On Macintoshes you can also download scratch through the App Store.

    The current version of Scratch does not work on older Chromebooks (like HP Chromebook Pavilion 14 at Achungo). I am working to get this fixed. I was hoping to have a copy of Scratch 3 that could be loaded onto an Chromebook by the end of March, but so far, the folks from MIT haven’t been able to get something that works to me. In the mean time, Scratch 1.4 running inside Squeak does work on old Chromebooks. It takes awhile to load, it’s a bit slow, and some of the functions in Scratch version 3 are missing… but you can still write programs and create games in it!! There is a nice textbook about Scratch 1.4 which can be borrowed for free from archive.org. Here is the scratch site from 2012 (when Scratch was at version 1.4). Have fun.

    Newer iPads can run Scratch in the Browser. There seems to be a full version Scratch in Chinese but it will be challenging to use by people who can’t read Chinese. There is a ScratchJr app which can run on iPads but it is missing most of the features of full Scratch. I will update this section if/when I find an English version of Scratch as an App for the iPad.

    Scratch Tutorial Coding Game in the Macintosh App Store is a free + pay for additional features app which walks a student through the creation of games in a very easy to follow way. Warning: sometimes it is a bit buggy and you might have to restart the lesson.

    Getting Started

    I would recommend exploring scratch.mit.edu which has links to many resources. Some good courses that use Scratch:

    • Harvard’s Creative Computing Curriculum: Curriculum including workbooks, resources, notes for classes to use Scratch to learn to think computationally.
    • Harvard CS50 Scratch Module: Harvard CS50 is one of the best college level introductions to computer science. Once the basic have been mastered using Scratch, the class using C and Python.

    Kenya has produced textbooks about programming scratch for grades 5-9 as well as training material for teachers.

    Games

    Games are fun to play, and can inspire creativity by providing ideas of things to build. There are many excellent games that have been created using Scratch. Not only can you play these games, but if you click the “See Inside” button you get to see the code which makes the game work.

    Going Further

    You will not be able to create cool games or really complex applications immediately. You will have to start with simpler programs and work your way up. There are skills that you will need to develop through practice. Often this practice can be boring… but it’s necessary, and will be worth the time you spend learning and practicing.

    Once you have mastered the basics in Scratch a good second step is learning the material covered by the AP CS Principles Curriculum. In the spirit of Scratch is the language Snap and the excellent Beauty and Joy of Computing which covers the AP CS Principles Curriculum.

    How to go from writing simple games in Scratch or Snap to being a software engineer who could work for companies like Google and Apple?

    It is said that it takes 10,000 hours of practice to master a discipline. That’s 4 hours / day for 7 years. This can be seen in elite athletics who win in the olympics or play for professional teams as well as great scientists and doctors. They constantly learn and train to become the best. Practice is also needed to become a great programmer.

    COMMON SOON: Next steps in mastering programming and becoming a software engineer.

    There is a close relationship between thinking well, problem solving, and programming. Working hard at school, especially math and science will help you become a good programmer.

    Where did Scratch Come From?

    In the 1960s there was some amazing work done by a team of people at MIT led by Seymour Papert. They used computers as a tool for students to explore and learn rather than merely an automated tool for rout memorization or for teaching computer science.  The book Mindstorms described some of their work. The Logo programming language and “turtle graphics” were two of the technologies that were invented by this team. This work has inspired many other projects. In the 1970s a group of people at the legendary Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) created Smalltalk as an environment for children to learn and program. This simple language grew into one of the most advanced programming environment used by professional programmers. Years later a free version of Smalltalk called Squeak became a beloved environment for kids and professionals alike. Several members of MIT Media Lab’s Lifelong Kindergarten wanted something a bit easier to learn than Squeak. They invented Scratch which was initially a program running inside Squeak. The current version 3 of Scratch no longer depends on Squeak. The paper Scratch: Programming for Everyone explains what the creators of Scratch hoped to accomplish.

    See Also

  • Five Minute Rule

    Even if your are the expert, it’s valuable to take the time to listen to others’ perspectives. Engaging in such discussions can lead to surprising insights or beneficial outcomes for all the participants, including the expert. There are two key reasons for this. First, what is considered common knowledge in one field can often be a fresh, novel idea in another. Second, articulating complex concepts to someone outside your area of expertise can help clarify and strengthen your own understanding.

    When Tellme Networks was formed in 1999, the leadership was very intentional in building what was an exceptional company culture. It’s worth noting that most of my former co-workers went on to work for well regarded start-ups and industry leading companies including Apple, Google, Microsoft, LinkedIn, Invidia, Netflix, and Amazon have comment that Tellme had the best culture they ever experience in a workplace. Often practices were promoted to reinforce our values. One of these practices encouraged people to place a high value on learning, mutual respect, collaboration, and efficiently getting results. I called it the “Five Minute Rule”.

    When new people joined the company we would tell them:

    We are extremely selective in who we hire. If someone is working here, they are one of the best people in whatever field they come from. If someone asks a question or makes a suggestion, always take time to hear them out. You might be surprised by what comes of the conversation.

    When I explained the five minute rule I would often share the following story.

    In the 1980s folks at Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) built a directory service (think Microsoft Active Directory) that spanned multiple countries and companies.  Connectivity wasn’t always up, and several of the links were quite slow (56Kbit/sec). As a result, updates to the directory were having trouble completing and links were saturated by directory updates. A breakthrough came from the field of epidemiology. What if the directory updates spread like a virus in an epidemic?  This question produced the solution which enabled XNS Clearinghouse to scale beyond any system of its era. A description of what the team discovered can be found in the landmark paper Epidemic Algorithms for Replicated Database. Microsoft Active Directory, created more than a decade later failed to address issues in this paper resulting in operational issues for organizations trying to use the early versions of AD at scale.

    The “five minute rule” was operationalized at Tellme in the following way:

    Everyone was encouraged to ask questions or make a suggestion when they saw something that didn’t make sense to them. It was ok, if not encouraged to cross departments and to “skip levels”.  Line engineers could ask our CFO about the company’s model for revenue recognition,  someone managing external suppliers could ask the director of architecture about the system design. A VP in sales might ask an engineer if they had considered a different framing to a problem.

    The other side of this rule was that if someone came to you with a question or suggestion you should always be willing to take at least five minutes to talk with them.  Ideally the discussion would happen when they approach you. If you were busy, you would schedule time for a conversation within the next week.

    These conversations were always productive with a few possible outcomes:

    • The question / suggestion reveals that there was an improve the “domain expert” could make.
    • The question / suggestion revealed something that hadn’t been clearly communicated. The domain expert found they needed to be more crisp and clear in their communication. The person who asked the question / made a suggestion now has a better understanding of what another team was doing. This leads to deeper trust and alignment between the individuals and the teams.
    • We discovered that there were multiple, legitimate approaches. We would need to agree to disagree of the optimal solution, permit the person doing the work to decide, and then commit across the company to support the plan. Once the decision is made we would remind each other of Barksdale’s “Don’t play with dead snakes“, PARC’s rule, “The person who does the work makes the decision (e.g. don’t bother the driver)”

    I came to deeply appreciate cross domain interaction while working at PARC. Tellme was the first place I saw it purposely built into the culture. I introduced this practice to every team / company I worked with after Tellme.

    Related Content

    The way of fools seems right to them, but the wise listen to advice. – Proverbs 12:15

  • Model of Maturity

    The following is an integration of material from Life Model Works and what I have learn while coaching and mentoring people since the 1980s.

    TL;DR

    • We first learn about love from our families. These first lessons inform our attachment style and become a lens we interpret our interactions with others through.
    • We mature in love which starts with accepting love and can grow into us being able to give love to people who are outside our family and even community.
    • A significant part of maturing is learning to manage our emotions which is different from controlling our emotions. This allow us to return to a healthy state.
    • The lack of people who modeled love and/or trauma retards growing in maturity until it is properly processed.
    • Classic “spiritual disciplines” are tools we use to grow and process life. These disciplines help us to turn our emotions into servants rather than our masters, and rewire or brains to have responses like Jesus.

    Love is the Measure and Goal

    We were made by God to experience love in the context of relationships. A concise definition of this sort of Godly love is:

    willing good toward someone else, independent of what you get in return

    This type of love is a verb and requires us to make choices and take actions.  This is a love that is offered with no expectation of a response or reciprocation.  

    The most important task set before each of us by God is learning how to love. Our ability and willingness to love others is the best measure of our maturity.

    Attachments

    God provided parents, marriage, the family to make love concrete. Our relationship with our parents is the first, and often the strongest influence of our understanding of what love is.  These early experiences frames our understanding of love which is called our attachments style. 

    Attachment theory postulates that there are four common patterns for this parent / child interaction. The attachment style we learned from our parent will affect how we form attachments with people and with God later in life. A healthy attachment allows us to take risks.

    ATTACHMENT STYLESParent Unable to LoveParent Able to Love
    Child feels Worthy of LoveDismissive-Avoidant: Often maintain some distance from their partners. They may feel that they don’t need close relationships and can be self-sufficient. They often seek independence and can appear to avoid attachment altogether.
    		Secure (Healthy): Comfortable with emotional closeness and are also able to depend on others and have others depend on them. In relationships, they are generally honest, open, and equal, with a balance of giving and receiving.
    Child feels Unworthy of LoveFearful-Avoidant/Disorganized: Desire emotional closeness but tend to feel uncomfortable with emotional intimacy. They often struggle to trust others and to depend on them, fearing being hurt if they allow themselves to become too close.Anxious-Preoccupied: Seek high levels of intimacy, approval, and responsiveness from their partners. They can be overly dependent on their relationships for their self-esteem. They often worry about their partner’s willingness to love them and are generally insecure about their relationships.

    It’s important to note that people are not stuck in any particular attachment style.  It is possible for people to learn to have healthy attachments. Indeed, learning to have healthy attachments is a key aspect of growing into maturity.

    Stages of Development

    Maturing in love starts with accepting love and ends with us being able to give love to people who we have no connection to.  There is a natural progression for people with a healthy / secure attachments. This progression can be broken into stages that are built on top of each other. To truly mature requires developing the skills in each stage before progressing to the next stage.

    • Infant: Learning to receive care and comfort
    • Child: Able to ask for what’s needed. Able to self care.  Learn to work hard. Learning to return to joy from negative emotions
    • Adult: Both centered. Act as yourself and return to joy, and take responsibility for one’s actions
    • Parent: Able to give without looking for anything in return. Nurture your children and help them return to joy
    • Elder: Be a parent to the community. Will adopt those without family.

    Emotional Regulation

    It’s worth noting that healthy attachment requires experiencing separation and cycles of disappointment followed by repair.

    No one can “control” their emotions. Emotions are unconscious and can’t be directly controlled. There is no healthy way to “stop feeling” emotions. That said, it’s possible, in fact healthy, to choose how we respond to our emotions.

    While we can’t control our emotions, a significant part of maturing is learning to manage our emotions which allow us to return to a healthy state, much like an immune system fights off an infection. I like to say our emotions are like the sensors on a car. When emotions rise up it’s a signal saying “There is something you should notice”. Often it means something needs attention. Sometimes it’s an overly sensitive detector. As we mature and make good decisions we are able to down/up regulate our emotions. To see a bit of joy and fan it into something big. To feel a bit of anger, recognize that we are misinterpreting a situation and calm down. In most case, pausing for 30 second to a few minutes before responding to a strong emotion is a good idea.

    Road Blocks to Maturity

    Deprivation

    The lack of healthy attachment (deprivation) will result in a person failing to go through this progression which makes it impossible for them to mature in love. Before a person who has experience deprivation can move forward, they need to experience what they were deprived of. For many, this is experiencing unconditional love. This doesn’t have to be someone who is a “parent” to them. It can come from being a part of a healthy community where the members take care of each other.

    Trauma

    Trauma retards our maturity until it is properly processed.  People often partition off trauma which lets them cope in the moment but causes problems in the future.  Trauma reduces our ability to learn because we are avoiding looking at the issue. Overcoming trauma requires being able to clearly clearly see and grieve over the trauma, and then move forward.

    Overcoming Roadblocks

    The solution, no matter the age of a person, is to develop relationships with people who can form healthy attachments, and then to progressively develop these skills. People can’t progress unless they are in the context of a health community. Thankfully, people who are chronologically adults with extensive life experience can develop skills in months to a year that take a younger individual years to develop.

    Spiritual disciples are the tools we use to grow and process life. These disciplines help us to turn our emotions into servants rather than our masters.

    Additional Material

    Related

    • Who We Are, How We Change
    • Embodiment
    • Essentials of Community

  • Eat the Frog

    Many people make New Year’s resolutions. Within a few weeks the good intent disappears in the face of the realities of daily life. For millennia our wise elders have told us that forming habits is the most effective way to bring about change.  the Bible, Aristotle, the Stoics, Augustine,  Thomas Aquinas and Ben Franklin. In the last century there have been numerous authors who have written about habits. A few are listed at the end of this post.

    A simple and very power habit is called Eat the Frog.  Some say the term was coined by Mark Twain, though there is no evidence of this.

    At the end of each day you decide what is the most important thing to accomplish the following day.  The task should be completable in less than 90 minutes… the amount of time most of us can keep focused.

    If the most important thing will take more than 90 minutes, identify the next step which can be accomplished in less than 90 minutes. For example, maybe the most important thing is to resolve some sort of financial issue. Experience suggests that this could take many hours. The next step might be to talk to a representative on the phone. The night before I would record the phone number and what hours the agency will receive calls so I can immediate take action the next morning.

    In the morning I start with some physical exercise which helps me wake up and then immediately do my Eat the Frog task. I do this before reading email or looking at any media. That way I don’t get distracted or let something else squeeze out what I determined to be most important.

    It also gets the day off to a great start. I know that the most important thing has been accomplished. Everything else is “gravy”.

    If you struggle with keeping consistent there are a couple of hacks that can really help.

    • Do this with someone else. Either another individual or with a group of people. Knowing someone else is doing this will increase motivation.
    • Harness loss aversion. Using a commitment contract which requires you to pay money to something you dislike if you fail to reach your goal.  Online tools like Beeminder and Stickk can help with this.

    Up-level the Nightly Plan

    Once you have the habit of deciding each evening what’s the most important thing to do the following day, you can chain several other practices to this. My cluster of activities has been influenced by Greg Mckeown’s 1-2-3 method

    • I looking at the calendar to see what activities are scheduled so I am not surprised for miss appointments.
    • I look at the predicted weather, and factor that how I plan for the following day. For example, if it is suppose to rain, maybe switch from using my bike to other transportation, taking an umbrella, and packing a lunch so I don’t have to go out for food.
    • I look at the due dates of any projects / tasks I am working on to be sure I know what will become urgent soon.
    • Decide what the most important thing is
    • Reflect on the day I just finished and record
      • Did I get done what I planned? If not, why?
      • What I accomplished that wasn’t planned
      • Anything I learned today
      • Something that I am grateful for today

    Additional Materials

    We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit

    Aristotle

  • Gratitude for Changes

    This morning I have been reflecting on, and being grateful for books, people, and events that has shaped my life. This has been brought about because I am catching up with some old friends, including one that I haven’t seen in 40 years.

    I am in Portland for most of October. It turns out I know several people here. It’s been wonderful to catch up with these old friends. To hear about their journeys and to share some of my stories. It’s also been great to meet some new people and hear how their lives have changed and lessons learned that shape their lives.

    I often share books that have moved me. I sometimes remember the content of the book, but not the title. In these cases I often pull up my post books that have really changed me. Alas, a few times the book’s title I am trying to remember isn’t on that page.

    This morning I updated the page with a couple of the books that were missing. As I was adding the book  Love Your Enemies by Arthur Brooks, I was reminded of how Doug Goins exemplified the content. Doug was full of grace and wisdom. He knew how to listen and to find common ground with others. I continue to be inspired by Doug’s generous and humble spirit, and pray that I can be more like him.

    I had planned on going for a hike today, but I missed the group. Instead, I find myself sitting on the couch, looking down on Portland, the light softened by the rain, framed by beautiful trees, warm and dry, with a cup of tea, luxuriating in the memories of blessings that have shaped my life. I don’t have time to write them all down. That will have to wait for another day.

    Are there books or people who changed your life?  If so, would you share them with me… or better yet, write a thank you note to the person or author. If they have passed, write a thank you to their spouse or family.

    Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good; his love endures forever. Let the redeemed of the Lord tell their story those he redeemed from the hand of the foe, those he gathered from the lands, from east and west, from north and south.

    Psalm 107:1-3

  • It All Comes Down to Love – Jack Kornfield

    Snipped from The Tim Ferriss Show Transcripts: Jack Kornfield (#684). BoldItalic added by me for emphasis

    Jack Kornfield: In all these years, my understanding really is that it comes down to love. I’ve met [inaudible 01:05:26]. And lamas, and gurus, and lamas and everybody else in between in my industry. And some of them are fabulous. But there’s a really interesting thing that you can have these powerful experiences and still be a little bit of a jerk. Just getting real about it because — 

    Tim Ferriss: There’s a lot we have going around.

    Jack Kornfield: Our consciousness is like a mandala and we can awaken some dimensions of it. So you have an Olympic-level athlete who’s an emotional idiot. You have a professor of nuclear physics, most brilliant, and she can’t find her shoes or her body. We can develop ourselves in some areas, but it turns out unfortunately, that doesn’t always go over to another area. And so there’s a kind of halo effect where people think, “Oh, this person is a spiritual teacher and they’ve had these spiritual experiences. I’ll go ask them for marriage advice or advice for sexuality.” They don’t know shit about marriage.

    So this is our human nature. If we’re actually to become wise, we need to direct our attention to body, to emotions, to relationships, to thought. We actually need to become wise in those major dimensions of our life. And we can’t expect that of people just because they have a certain title or robe or anything else. But having said that, my measure now for myself: are you loving? Am I loving? Are they? And that love isn’t just like, oh, sweet Valentine love, but can you be in this world and can you love it with all its imperfections? And can you bring that spirit of care and love in the middle of what’s tragic and what’s beautiful? That’s a liberated heart.

    Tim Ferriss: So love, let’s underscore this. For people who are listening, this might sound like a really strange question who are thinking to themselves, “Well, I love my dog, I love cheesecake. Love my kids.” If they have kids, let’s say, but maybe they’re like, “I’m not sure if I would recognize or even know the feeling of what it is to love the world.” Maybe they feel like they might be color blind to the first-person experience of feeling that.

    Jack Kornfield: It’s a gorgeous question.

    Tim Ferriss: Is it just something they can intuit or could you expand on that?

    Jack Kornfield: It’s a gorgeous question. You remember Einstein said that, “The task for humanity is to widen our circle of compassion, or you could call it love to include all of humanity and all of nature in its beauty.” And so we start by loving that which is right around us. It’s natural, your dog, your children, the partner, the people you care about and maybe your neighbors. And now we’re talking about, “Well, what is wisdom and what is liberation?” And it’s that widening of the circle so that when you are moving through the world, it’s not just that person over there is an object, but they become more and more a part of your family. 

    There’s a beautiful monument to a mystical experience. Going back to your asking about that in Louisville, Kentucky on, I think it’s on Fourth Street, Fourth and Walnut. And the great Christian mystic Thomas Merton left his monastery and was walking down the street in the middle of Louisville and he said, “I’d come from the monastery. We were all trying to be holy and close to God and have all these spiritual experiences the way one does and pray and so forth. And I was walking down the street and all of a sudden it came to me. I looked in the eyes of everyone going by and I saw their secret beauty that was born in them that no one can take from them. That magnificence of spirit, soul, whatever you want to call it.” He said, “The only problem would be I wanted to fall down at their feet and worship each one that went by.” He said, “If we could see each other that way there’d be no more need for war and cruelty. The world would be a different place.” So this monument, a public monument to a mystical experience, what it does is it says that this is possible, but more than that, there are beautiful trainings to do it.

    One of my favorite trainings is trainings in loving-kindness meditation. There’s bunches of it on my website in [inaudible 01:10:17]. And lots of other colleagues and teachers. And it turns out if you practice it like anything, it grows. You start with people close to you and then those in a little wider circle and gradually extend it. And for me, for example, I’m out on the street or I’m driving or something and I’m a bit of a speed freak. I can sit quiet in temptation, but my general M.O. is to get stuff done and move through the — just — anyway. And so if somebody’s driving slowly and meandering and not being a good driver in front of me and I get annoyed or even on the sidewalk, people are blocking it and not aware that I have something important I’m trying to get down, whatever, and I feel a little moment of irritation arise, which it will, I look and I see them, not as they are now, but as they were — as I imagine them at three or four years old, completely innocent child, they all were that no matter what things happened to them. And I go, “Oh, yeah, I see who’s in there. That’s like [inaudible 01:11:24]. I see that there’s that person doing the best they can and there’s that child that that’s in there.” 

    And instantly my heart changes and I go, “Oh, yeah, there’s a kind of — I wish them well, may they be safe and whatever dance they’re in, may they be protected.” And this quality of love, and kindness, and compassion, it’s grown because I practice it some, it’s where I want to live, but it’s more than that. I see it or sense it as the best expression of enlightenment. All those other things or experiences, they lead us back to love. And if they don’t, I’m not sure that they matter that much.

  • Lessons from the Camino

    The following is a list of the lessons I learned, beliefs that were strengthen, and/or topics which frequently came up in discussions with other while walking the Camino. Walking the Camino provided a wonderful opportunity to consider what makes a meaningful life. The book Walk in a Relaxed Manner by Joyce Rupp is far more in-depth and insightful than this post.

    [toc]

    TL;DR

    • The best part of this journey is experiencing the “Camino spirit” which is exhibited by most of the pilgrims and many of the residence along the way: the default response to others is kindness, curiosity, openness/vulnerability.
    • Simple acts of love and kindness can be life changing for both the “giver” and the “receiver”. If everyone’s response to others was kindness and compassion the world would be a completely different, better, place.
    • The Camino can be a transformative experience. People who benefit the most take time to reflect on their Camino journey, identify what they have learned, and then make changes in their life informed by what they have learned and regularly remind themselves what’s important.
    • The best physical preparation for the Camino is increasing the milage you walk each week in the six months before leaving. Doing once a week training hikes won’t adequately prep you for 30+ days of walking. The people who have the least physical struggles were walkers.

    Life Lessons

    • Love is the ultimate measure of a life.  Love spreads through connections and multiplies: the giver and receiver both grow love. This can result in exponential rather than merely linear impact.
    • The Camino Spirit is:
      • default is to be kind (loving) to everyone encountered
      • no judgement of others, instead curiosity when differences are encountered. Miroslav Volf would say everyone was an “us” not a “them”.
      • choosing to be vulnerable, sharing deeply and honesty which builds connection
    • Walking the Camino forces us to slow down and have space in our lives to notice what is going on in our and others lives. This is something that everyone wanted to bring back with them from the Camino. People who have done multiple Caminos reported that over time they returned to a more hurried pace. One of the reasons they returned to the Camino was to get a reset. Busyness and chasing after “success” will choke the Camino spirit out when you return home.
    • Life changing community can develop almost instantly when a super-majority has chosen to be in the Camino spirit. This is partially fueled by a self selection bias of who walks a Camino. Being on a shared journey helps brings people together.
    • Community is the key to a flourishing life and community is what many people discover on the Camino. Community requires:
      • Time / Availability / Slack. If you are always busy then you won’t have time for community. True community can only form when people are able to share their lives together. Life isn’t predicable. If your community activities are restricted to a tightly defined time-box you will miss out.
      • Care / Love / Acceptance. As mentioned above, love is so important. Healthy communities require the members to choose to love each other and the world around them.
      • Vulnerability. People need to drop their guards and lower their masks so people can truly seem them. Without vulnerability the bonds in the community will be weak.
      • Something bigger than the individuals of the group. What psychologists can transendence. Community that is only focused in itself will stagnate. It needs something bigger than itself.
    • What seems insignificant to you can be life changing for others. Don’t underestimate power of simple acts of loving your neighbor. Thank people when they have made a difference in your life. Often they have no idea they had any impact on you. Your thanks will be an encouragement.
    • The skill of listening well is hard to be developed, but is worth the effort. I often fail to listen because I am so busy formulating answers and fixes rather than listening to truly understand and be empathic.
    • Presence is maybe the greatest gift we can give to someone.  Really seeing people and being with them. Giving them our full attention, and not looking for something better in the moment.
    • Everyone is fearfully and wonderfully made. Cherish, honor, and respect others even if they are being an idiot in the moment.
    • Being a great companion requires dropping expectations and being delighted by another which results in an ease of interactions and great satisfaction.
    • Living out the Camino spirit has many similarity of what Christians would call kingdom living.
    • You can maintain a Camino spirit by cultivating gratitude, remember to put other people first, and leaving slack in your schedule so you can respond to unexpected needs.
    • Sometimes suffering isn’t about us, it’s to prepare us to help others. God loves all his children and will sometimes let one child suffer so all his children can thrive.
    • Don’t blame others. We are responsible for how we respond to all situations. If you give that away, you will always be dependent on other for a sense of happiness.
    • Contentment = CurrentReality – Expectations. We can be happy in very difficult circumstances if we don’t have any expectations, and miserable in situations that nearly everyone would be delighted by because our expectations are extremely high.
    • There is great joy and freedom when simplicity is embraced. Pack and live lightly.
    • Intentional minimalist / essentialism / simplicity focused on making time for what’s most important and getting rid of obligations and possessions that keep us busy and/or distracted.
    • Minimalist can lead to people being hyper focused on stuff, constantly trying to prune things down to a “perfect” set. Minimalism at it’s best understands that stuff is only useful when it enables spending time on meaningful activities and is best when stuff fades into the background.
    • Prayer is good, and has been at the heart of most of my most profound experiences. Yet I am not consistently praying.  This is stupid and needs to change.
    • We all hunger for transcendence because we know in our hearts that there is more than our eyes can see. Some people try to find this in nature and art but this isn’t sufficient.
    • If you don’t push a particular ideology and are genuinely curious, most people are happy to share their spiritual (or none spiritual) journey and you can hear some amazing stories. Ask questions, don’t give answers. Often these people will be interested in learning about your journey. Don’t preach at them, share what you have experience and let them decide what they think. Don’t expect or insist they agree with you. If you are interested… this is a description of my journey.
    • When people share something significant in common, like walking the Camino, other differences aren’t very important. We heard no one spewing nationalistic rhetoric. Rather than “my country is better than yours” I heard a lot more “oh, we do the same” or “We don’t do that, tell me more about…”. The only time I didn’t always see empathy / compassion is the pilgrim vs “tourist” divide in the last 100km.
    • If you want to go fast, travel by yourself. If you want to go far, travel with others. You don’t notice the miles if you are in a good conversation, and you are able to help and encourage each other when difficulties are encountered.
    • The symbolism of the Iron Cross is powerful… identify the weights you are carrying, and drop them at the cross.
    • For many people, the “Camino Spirit” persists for several months and then tends to fade. Key to keeping “in the Spirit” is to leave slack in your schedule to you can be attentive to others, and to remind yourself regularly to prioritizing contributing to your community.

    Practical Hints

    • I found two questions open up many great conversations. The first is “Why are you walking the Camino?” The second was “You don’t have to believe in it… but if someone was going to pray for you during this journey, what would you want them to pray for / about?”
    • Many people we met were carrying too much stuff and found their bag to be a burden. The people who seemed unburdened by their packs were carrying less than 15lbs. Here is a packing list for my next Camino which is less than 10lbs.
    • The right footwear makes a big difference when it comes to preventing blisters. Minimalist sandals like the Shammas Elite Maximus (Bedrock, Luna, Earthrunners, etc) are great provided you have trained your feet before embarking on a long walk. I had no blisters and no foot issues, even after 30 mile days. Ironically I have several people each day ask “Are you hiking in those sandals?” to which my answer was “Yup.. from SJPP. They are the only footwear I brought.”
    • Most people found private or 2 person rooms greatly enhanced sleep quality. Unless money is really tight, they are worth the cost. If not doing semi-private rooms be sure to have eye mask and ear plugs.
    • When you meet people that you “connect with” take their picture and exchange contacts on WhatsApp so you can stay in contact. There are a number of people I would have liked to stay in contact with from some of the first days, but we never saw each other again because we were walking at different rates. WhatsApp QR codes are the easiest way to exchange contact info. If you are using WiFi and don’t have cell coverage take a screen shot of your WhatsApp QR code for others to scan, and take a picture of their QR code for when you having Internet connectivity to connect.
    • Orginize items in your pack based on where you use them. Unpack and pack them the same way each day so you don’t forget anything. For example even if they are different, put things that going next to the bed in the same bag: charger for phone, eye mask, lotion you put on as you get out of bed.
    • The best physical preparation for the Camino is increasing the amount that you walk everyday. Weekly training hikes by themselves are not adequate to get your body ready for a month of continuous walking.
    • Bicyclists on mixed use trails should use a bell to warn hikers of their approach. It is universally recognized and doesn’t seem to startle people.
    • People who are walking as part of a tour can miss out on some of the Camino Spirit because they often travel in a bubble which keeps them from a broader interaction with other pilgrims. If you are in a tour group make a point to meet people outside the tour.
    • At the end of the day it’s hard to recognize people when hats are off, sunglasses put away, and people of freshly showered. If you are meeting someone for dinner and they haven’t arrived, double check to make sure they aren’t already there.
    • We could have sold 90+ Montbell Umbrello Hats. They are incredibly practical and made a lot of people smile. We often had people ask for selfies with us or to borrow the hat so they could have their picture taken wearing one.
    • Some more hints on my Camino page.

    Snippets of Stories

    One of the best parts of the Camino was hearing people vulnerably tell stories from their lives. I don’t feel free to share full stories without people’s permission… but some short fragments of stories I witnesses or heard to give a sense:

    • Retired minister who yearly does 750 tax returns free of charge for the poor in his community which is greatly appreciated by them and grew his empathy and understanding of what people were facing.
    • 72y old gentleman with a lot of grit who adjust his plans so as not to damage his body because he had nothing to prove.
    • A man with terminal cancer walking to Camino to prepare to be his very best self in his last year of life. When he walked the Camino in the past he found the power of kindness, the value of being present with others, and the clarity of a simple life make him better and more loving to all those he came in contact.
    • A couple that came together years ago when one of the parties came to realize the other wouldn’t hold them back but would always strive to lift them up. We could feel their gentleness just by sitting next to them in a restaurant. Though they faced some serious challenges they were joyous and thankful.
    • A couple who met on the Camino and found they enjoyed discovering the Way together. They were learning each others language and enjoying each others company. The had a joy and ease that was breathtaking because they have no expectations other than to be companions as they walked.
    • A vision impaired gentleman who noted that he has a super power… that people strived to be their very best when they saw his cane… being kind and generous to him with this could spill into the rest of their lives.
    • A women who help many of us see the “boring and ugly” Meseta with new eyes… such as how the wind move the grain like waves on the ocean.
    • A gentleman who lost his wife on the Camino 5 years ago who is finishing the walk they started, leaving little memorials each place that would have been special to his wife and sharing his experience of what makes a meaningful life.
    • Many stories of people who were burned out and recovered during their walk finding energy and joy during the Camino. One gentleman said “I was a broken man… on the Camino I was restored.”
    • People who had trouble “letting go” and so were carrying a laptop to keep tabs on things “back home”. It would have been appropriate to leave the laptop at the Iron Cross, but they took the more practical approach of shipping it to Santiago.

    Resources I Shared Frequently

    • Excellent Advice for Living – Kevin Kelly’s 450 tweet size bites of wisdom. This is an expansion of his 68 bits of advise.
    • The idea of training for the Centenarian decathlon. Ideally start in teens, as soon as possible, but it’s never too late, especially if you didn’t do a lot of exercise in your earlier life.
    • Design Your Life – Burnett & Evans. Run small experiments and design yourself into a good life rather than trying to figure everything out and then a grand plan to accomplish everything.
    • Life Worth Living – Volf, Croasmun, & McAnnally-Linz. This book provides a toolkit to explore and determine what is a meaningful life for you.
    • Harvard Study which reveals how good friendship and personal relationships are the most significant factor to health and happiness.
    • Interview with Tom Catena the only doctor serving 750,000 people in the Nuba Mountains in Sudan. Humility, simplicity, what’s important, and resiliency. Support the Sudan Relief Fund.
    • How to Build a Happy Life podcast by the Atlantic. First season was by Arthur Brooks. Other seasons followed with different hosts.
    • Books by Arthur Brooks, Richard Rohr, and Parker Palmer for their life affirming and gracious content.
    • The Good and Beautiful God – James Bryant Smith. Identifies many of the false narratives of what God is like that we believe, and encourages us to have a clearer, and more healthy understand of God’s nature and what He wants for us. Not discussed during our Camino but excellent is Practicing the Way – John Mark Comer which explores some practices which align us with Jesus’ way, a life guided and powered by love.
    • Kindness Diaries follows Leon as he travels around the globe, and then from Alaska to Argentina by relying on the kindness of strangers who freely provide him food, fuel, and a place to sleep.
    • My Unsung Hero from Hidden Brain. Encouraging stories of lives changing by simple acts of kindness
    • Lectio 365: A devotional application which provides 5-15 minutes of content each morning and evening.
    • Six Streams of Spirituality promoted by Renovare for a balanced faith and what living out those streams might look like.
    • How many people miss what the parable of the prodigal son is about, and the gracious insights of Ken Bailey.
    • My notes about the Camino
    • My Packing Light Page
    • My Healthy and Fit Page
    • My advise about money

    Re-Entry from a Pilgrimage

    Many people talk about how jarring it is to return to “real life” after a pilgrimage like the Camino. After a month of a slow paced life characterized by simplicity, quiet, and community they found themselves facing a hustle / hurry culture that is filled with noise and often more oriented toward competition than community. It is easy to get overwhelmed and to return to old patterns and habits, leaving the Camino experience something remembered fondly, longed for, but divorced from daily life. As I have talked with people about their post Camino experiences there are several things which seem to have kept the Camino spirit alive for many. The following is a summary of the advice I have heard about how to live into the Camino experience once the walk is complete.

    • Set aside some quiet time (ideally a week or more) between the end of your Camino and starting back to “normal” life to have time to think, pray, journal, and reflect on your experiences. Identify what you learned, how your perspective has changed, how your values have shifted or strengthened. Ask yourself what is important in light of your Camino experience?
    • Consider your life before the Camino and ask the question “How did my pre-Camino life align with my post-Camino understanding?”. It is likely that you will find places the two don’t align. Realize that if you don’t make explicit changes, your post-Camino life will likely look exactly like your pre-Camino life.
    • Identify changes you would like to make as your return to “regular life”. Many try to change everything, fail, and quickly give up. Rather make a list of things you would like to change and then decide on one item you will start with. Break it up into manageable steps and find ways to turn it into a habit and then a lifestyle. The book Atomic Habits is a great resource for this sort of planning. Once something has gotten established, look at your list and make the next change.
    • The most common change I heard from people was making sure they left slack in their schedule so they weren’t constantly forced to react to life. There were moments to reflect and choose a response. Many found that adding a time each day to just be was key. For some this was time to sit, reflect, and maybe write a few sentences in a journal. For others it was a quiet walk in their neighborhood or a nearby park.
    • The second most common change I heard was people striving to build a genuine community. Often, they had been part of some sort of a community before the Camino, but the experience fell far short of their Camino experience. In some cases people have found that by intentionally investing and initiating in their community they were able form a genuine community. In other cases people realized that where they were putting their time wasn’t working and that they should try something different.
    • Set a date for your next Camino 🙂

    All of these items suggest that what’s key is to identify what you loved about the Camino and then to identify little things which will remind you and keep your grounded, anchored to those things.

    My Next Steps

    • Finish nomad experiment and select the location for the next season of life.
    • Arrange my schedule so I have regular personal (1-to-1) time with people I care about and enough slack to respond when surprises come up.
    • Be more intentional to build community. Not wait for it to happen or be invited in to something that already exists but to initiate time with individuals and group events which will encourage bonding.
    • Improved my listening skills and practice the art of being present. Continue to deepen understanding of love.
    • Set aside time each day to pray.
    • Plan to do another Camino in 2026.

    I am not in control. I am not in a hurry. I walk in faith and hope. I greet everyone with peace. I bring back only what God gives me.

    Murray Bodo, The Pilgrim’s Credo

  • Remote College Classes are Painful

    I retired this pasted summer so I would have more time to pursue my interests. I decided to sign up for psychology class at Foothill college for several reasons:

    1. I am interested in psychology, and thought having introduction class would ensure I had a broad and systematic overview of the field.
    2. In my younger years I started and stopped taking college classes because I repeatedly failed one or more of my classes. As an older, and hopefully wiser person, could I now do well in college?
    3. Provide a bit of structure
    4. An opportunity to interact with some  fellow students

    Classes Take Time

    The reading, videos embedded in lecture notes, and time to do the assignments took 10-15 hours a week matching conventional wisdom that time for a class is between 2-3x the number of credit hours. Often I would find myself watching a video for 20 minutes that explained the material in a very basic manner missing nuances that I already appreciated. It was tempting to skip the video, but I felt compelled to watch it in case it covered something I was unaware of.

    Discipline Required

    The class was 100% online. Initially I was doing the school work on my laptop in the same location I do everything else. I found it very easy to get distracted. I needed to set aside specific times to do my school work, and do the work in “study” location. When I failed to do this, I had to spend time on the weekend “finishing my work”.

    Material To Study Directed by Others

    As a student in a class, I had to attend to the material selected by the teacher. I found that there were areas that I thought the material was way to superficial and would have liked to go into much more detail. There were other areas that I had little interest in, and I don’t think are that important in the scheme of things. As a “good student” I needed to attend to what the teacher wanted and do the assignments that where assigned.

    Each week we wrote multiple mini papers (>=350 words). Some of the topics required me to radically shorten what I would naturally research and what I wrote. Others topics were so uninteresting that I had to struggle to find enough words to answer the question. In almost all the cases, a large body of life experience resulted a mismatch of the class expectations and what I would naturally do.

    To do well in the class required memorizing certain facts and definitions. For someone working in the field, having this material available for instant recall would be key. For someone who isn’t interacting with the field on a daily basis, having a framework and access to the web, or even an encyclopedia would be adequate.

    Interaction with Fellow Student Not Good in Async Classes

    Due to some delays in registration, all the in-person classes were full so I registered for the 100% remote class. Structure the class provided was slight: there was a syllabus which specified the topic for the week, the quiz could be taken at the end of the week, but a few assignments and reading lists. 

    As a fully remote class the interaction with fellow students was in a very poorly designed “discussion system” which resulted each student posting a short paper answering several questions, and then maybe a couple of comments in response to the post.  Little back and forth. Hard to really pull out people’s life experiences.

    Conclusion

    At the end of the 5th week I have a near perfect score.  I have confidence that I could go back to school and get a degree if I wanted to. Alas, I feel like I have learned very little in the class and engaged in a fair amount of “busy work”. This is not a good use of my time. I would like to skip over what I already know and focus on new material. It’s very hard to do this in a structured class.

    One thing I did learn. I can improve my ability to evaluate the quality of research studies and identify ways to improve studies. I don’t know if this is something I would have discovered in most classes, but it’s something that some of my instructors assignments helped me appreciate.

    Getting through introductory classes / basic educational requirements will be a challenge for me… not due the difficulty of the material, but because it will be boring. Succeeding in these classes will depend on “playing the school game”, not about learning.

    Online discusses of academic material really sucks. It wasn’t a discussion, it was more like people making statements to each other. It’s very unlikely I will sign up for classes that don’t have synchronic  interactions as a core part of the class.  I really feel bad for the student whose college experience is largely made up of these a-synchronic remote classes.

  • News – Favorite Traditional(ish) Media

    TL;DR

    • All sources have some bias. Bias starts by only running stories that fit a certain ideology and at its most extreme are completely made up (propaganda). Listening to just one voice will often leave you in an echo chamber which will lead you to an extremism position. Make sure you have a balanced diet.
    • There is too much news, especially bad news, for any human to bear… you need to be selective
    • My recommendation for minimum diet: NPR’s Up First podcast, WSJ 10-Point daily email for subscribers, The Economist for excellent weekly analysis.
    • I also get news via podcasts, blogs, and newsletters
    • Pressreader and Flipster allows people with library cards to read numerous newspapers and magazines for free.

    I have seen excessive media consumption have a profoundly negative impact on friends. One had the news on in the background whenever she was home. It led to her being anxious and worried all the time. She recognized this and started to limit how much time she listened to the news. Within a few months she was much more at peace and abled to focus her time on things she thought were worthwhile.

    I have several friends who only listened the news from their political perspective (left and right). I have watched their position become increasing polarized. Now they can’t even imagine interacting with someone associated with the other political party, even when those people were long time friends.

    Changes in Media

    I grew up in a golden age of traditional media: the middle of the 20th century. Media companies had enough money that they left news organizations alone. Many news rooms were run by editors who had a great respect for and a desire to know “the truth“. The heros of the newsroom were the investigative reporters. In the 21st century we are returning to an earlier era where much of the news is driven by money. Newsrooms need to attract viewer and make a profit. As the newsroom has been commercialized, there are a number of websites that have been created by some of the journalists who felt displaced / constrained by the changes in the traditional media companies. I have hope that some of these organizations might continue the tradition of high quality journalism.

    Selecting Good News Sources

    My goal is to learn important facts (truths that are falsifiable) that keep me informed about the most important things effecting our world in general, and my life in particular. I recognize that I have personal biases. I don’t want to live in an echo chamber that reinforces my biases. I want to be exposed to information that will grow my understanding.

    There are several media organizations such as Fox News and MS-NBC which are beyond bias selection of stories and are approaching propaganda / intentional misinformation which makes me angry and sad. I have several friend who watch several hours from one of these outlets. I have noticed that they seem constantly worried or angry. It’s no surprise given their media diet.

    There have been several attempts to evaluate bias and accuracy in news reports such as adfontesmedia, allsides, factcheck.org, leadstories. mediabiasfactcheck. At some point I plan to look at the methodologies used by these groups to see which one does the best job identifying bias. I expect that this would be best done using machine learning.

    I am working to skew my news consumption toward issues that I can do something about, but this is just beginning so I have nothing to report at this time.

    Some suggestions about how to be a thoughtful consumer of news.

    Too Much (Negative) Information

    100 years ago people got news about their local community, and “major” stories from the world beyond the town or city. The news from “outside” would arrive maybe daily, or if you were in a remote town, weekly. As transportation and information distribution improved, and the news cycle sped up. We are now presented with a firehose of news.

    Psychological studies have demonstrated that negative information catches our attention more than positive information. News organizations bias focus on negative news because they know it’s more likely to catch your attention which has led to the truism “If it bleeds, it leads”. This has lead to crisis fatigue.

    This has resulted in people often feel that our communities are more dangerous than they were in the past. Parents feel they must walk their children to school to avoid them being snatched off the street. People are afraid the will be a victim of a violate crime, etc. Ironically, statistics indicate these crimes have decreased significantly over time. Why are people afraid? It used to be that if a child was abducted it was only reported in a local paper, maybe 100k people heard about it. Now it’s a lead story throughout the world, with hundreds of millions, if not billions of people hearing about it, and the story being repeated every hour.

    We aren’t built to carry the weight of all the problems in the world. Constant exposure can be depression if not debilitating. I appreciate David Byrne’s attempt to fight this with Reasons to be Cheerful online magazine as one way to fight against this.

    Daily

    • WSJ: I find the news from WSJ fact based with a slight conservative bias. The opinion pages are decidedly conservative. I don’t necessarily read all on the WSJ, but I always scan the daily email I receive from them (The 10-Point: A Guide to the Day’s Top News and Here’s Your Daily Discover) to decide what stories to read
    • NPR: I find the most of news programs on NPR (morning edition, all things considers, the world, etc) fact based with a modest liberal bias. The rest of the programs are variable ranging from neutral to quite liberal. I mostly don’t listen to NPR on the radio, but I sometimes listen to the “Up First” podcast to get a daily dose of news, and several of their programs which are listed on my favorite podcasts page.
    • I am experimenting with a number of daily newsletters delivered via email like 1440 and tangle news which are attempting to provide accurate, balanced coverage. I haven’t reached a conclusion what I think yet.

    Out of Rotation

    • BBC: Seems to be one of the least biased media outlets. I sometimes listen to one of their radio or TV shows, glance at their “front page”.
    • NYT: Historically was a slightly liberal leaning news papers that was a primary source for me. In recent years they have become more partisan. I have let my subscription lapse. When there is a story I want to read I do it through my library.
    • Aljazeera: A non-western/USA centered take on news.
    • Christian Science Monitor: Not currently reading but it seems to be one of the more balanced newspapers published today. First started reading in the 1980s at the encouragement of a polisci professor.
    • Reuters / AP / UPI: Neutral (just the facts) stories which by definition doesn’t have deep analysis. I tried to subscribe to all their stories and use hand crafted filters to surface stories that I would be interested in while keeping me from drowning in too much news. I was not successful. This could be a good project using machine learning techniques combined with collaborative filtering.
    • Taipei Times: The only English daily newspaper in TW. Periodically scan to get news from Jackie’s hometown.
    • fivethirtyeight: Liberal leaning but tried to take an empirical approach to analysis.
    • Politico: Liberal take on US politics. Not currently reading.
    • The Hill: Follows the goings in Washington DC. Not currently reading, but a must for people who are focused on politics

    Weekly

    • The Economist: I have been consistently impressed with their balance, deeply insightful analysis, and ability to cut through hype.

    Out of Rotation

    • Propublica: Classic investigative journalism calling the powerful to account. Slightly liberal bias because the poor and powerless are typically those getting run over.
    • 60 Minutes: In the early days was fabulous. Stopped watching because it seems to have become more bias and more sensationalized.

    (Bi)Monthly

    • The Atlantic: Liberal leaning, thoughtful, also includes conservative voices. Available on Flipster.
    • National Review: Conservative bellweather
    • American Purpose: Classic Liberal (not American political liberal) viewpoint founded by Francis Fukuyama. Website, not a magazine and doesn’t have an RSS feed 🙁
    • Foreign Policy / Foreign Affairs: Classic journals about US foreign policy. Reading inconsistently because I am not so focused on international relations

    Columnists

    The following columnists appear in a variety of publications. I have found that they simulate my thinking. Several often take positions that are different from mine, but reading them expands my perspective. This list is much shorter than it used to be, in the last 10 years we have lost many great columnists. I find many of the newer columnists overly partisan who don’t think as deeply about issues.

    Humor

    Humor is sometimes the best way to get people out of their rut and consider a different perspective.

    Other

    Take A Break?

    In 1974 I was at a summer camp for a couple of weeks. When I returned home I learned that Nixon had resigned. It made me think I needed to keep up with the new daily. I purchased a shortwave radio so I could always hear the news, no matter where I was. It has taken me a very long time to realize that it’s OK if I miss the news for a few days, or even a week or two. I finally realized that there is nothing I can do that immediately impacts any of the “big” news stories. So it I hear about it a day, a week, or even a month after the fact, nothing is really going to change.

    These days when I take a vacation, do a long backpacking trips, etc, I feel free to not worry about the news. When I return home I can catch up. Mean while I can focus on my trip without distractions and give my heart a rest from the news cycle.

    I appreciate Ryan Holiday’s article this habit is making you miserable

  • Certainty

    I am troubled by the increasingly polarized “discussions” I hear on many podcasts, in social media, and in person. I am not just talking about politics. I see the same sort of thing when people are discussing diets, system architectures, training programs, or child raising. Often I see people making bold, absolute claims. They will often cite others who hold the same position. They are so sure of themselves. Anyone who holds a different perspective is at best an idiot, and at worse evil. I would recommend the book Love Your Enemies which discusses what can be done about this.

    In the past other people’s certainty would catch my attention. If their position was different from mine it would make me pause and ask the question “What have I missed?”. I would engage and ask questions.

    I have started to process these statements quite differently. When I hear people making absolute statements I will tread more carefully and possibly disengage. I have concluded that when people make such strong claims, it is a sure sign of the Dunning Kruger Effect. DKE a cognitive bias by which people with lower expertise have a tendency to over estimate their expertise. [A nice article about DKE by Mark Manson]

    When I am just starting to learn a new topic I know I am ignorant. As I gain some knowledge my confidence grows. Often within a few months, certainly within a year I am convinced that I have got a strong grip on the content. I know I was a poster child for DKE in my twenties. Below are just two examples of this. After several decades of life I hope I am no longer so suseptable, but I can’t be certain.

    • After studying cognitive science for a few months I challenged one of my professors because he was advocating a position that my “common sense” and “study” concluded was too simple to product meaningful results. In those days he couldn’t “prove” his approach, computing was much less powerful. Today GPT suggests he might have been right 🙂
    • I read a book called Green Letters about a year into my Christian faith. The first chapter was called “Time” and explored how it took time for people to develop. It had the following text:
      • We might consider some familiar names of believers whom God obviously brought to maturity and used for His glory — such as Pierson, Chapman, Tauler, Moody, Goforth, Mueller, Taylor, Watt, Trumbull, Meyer, Murray, Havergal, Guyon, Mabie, Gordon, Hyde, Mantle, McCheyne, McConkey, Deck, Paxson, Stoney, Saphir, Carmichael, and Hopkins. The average for these was fifteen years after they entered their life work before they began to know the Lord Jesus as their Life, and ceased trying to work for Him and began allowing Him to be their All in all and do His work through them.
    • I thought about all that I had accomplished in my first year as a new Christian. In my mind I was pretty advanced. I had surged past several of my peers. I was sure that I wasn’t too far behind these heavy-weights. Surely it was possible to hit the sort of maturity Stanford talked about in just a few years. 15 seemed excessive. More than thirty years later I know these great men and women are still far more advanced than I am, and that I was an arrogant child in those early years.

    Thankfully, I was raised to practice continual learning. I would continue to drive myself to learn and master a field. As time proceeded I ran into more and more situations where I discover I missed something. My strong positions needed caveats. Rather than looking for evidence that confirms my beliefs, I start looking for exceptions to my perspective. This is called the scientific method. Constructing experiments which can falsify our beliefs. Several times I had to abandon a position and start over.

    These days you will rarely hear me make absolute statements. I am all too aware of my limitations. I have learn at least a bit of humility. I hold most of my positions less firmly. There are some which I still have extreme confidence in, but the number of these is quite small, and I am open to be convinced I am wrong but strong enough evidence. That is to say that these beliefs are falsifiable. I have come to understand that there are limits to what I can be certain of, and am careful not to go too far. I have written a bit about this in my post about truth.

    Back to my “friends” who loudly make absolute statement. Their certainty is a sign to me that they really don’t have a clue. I also suspect they are have taken up residence in an echo chamber where everyone else has the same perspective. It’s nearly impossible for people in this position to rethink their position since there is such strong peer pressure to conform.

    Rather than arguing I will ask a simple question. “Is there any information or evidence that would make you question your position?” If they can’t come up with anything I will typically try to disengage. If they can identify something, there is room for an interesting interchange.

    Good Alternative: Strong Opinions Held Loosely

    I first heard this phrase on  Peter Attia‘s wonderful podcast The Drive. The guests are typically at the top of their fields, with both academic and practical experience in the topic they are discussion with Attia. For example someone who is well published, with a PhD in nutrition science, and also held weight lifting records discussing the interplay of nutrition and training. This guest, and nearly all the other guests rarely make any absolute statements. The guests often caveat their observations. They offer tentative conclusion, often indicating gaps that they hope studies will drill into sometime in the future. Often they suggest experiments which could either support, or falsify their theory. This is the sign of a real expert rather than someone who just thinks they know something.

    The other thing I have enjoyed with several of Attia’s guests is that they are offering a perspective which is slightly out of step with commonly accepted positions of the general professional community. I think this is because professional communities can operate a bit like echo chambers. Once a belief or perspective gets established, it’s difficult to displace, even when the is data which contracts the belief. In the book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions Thomas Kuhn described how fields go through periodic paradigm shifts. I think Attia often select people who work will ultimately lead to such a shift. They aren’t crazy, out on the fringe folks, but rather people who have been insiders who are rethinking what was “accepted” as scientific fact.

    Nice article about certainty is an illusion from fs.blog.

    For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong.

    H.L. Mencken