FailForward @FailForward@social.cleverlibre.org

@napsy Yeah. Quite a spike. We considered the Starter (or whatever the name used to be - self-hosting now), but going from €4 to €19/mo is steep even for small teams. Especially since half users are not committers... I think it makes sense from their perspective as they are chasing enterprise customers, but sucks for SMEs.

# ROKR wooden 3D puzzles

Very nice wooden cut-out puzzles to assemble. Some of their models are just to assemble, but some are mechanically functional pieces. I find it very exciting. This is a bookmark for future reference. Useful as gifts for my future self :-).

* [ROKR Company page](https://rokrpuzzles.com/)
* they have a Amazon webshop

# Brandolini's law

A.k.a. **bullshit asymmetry principle**

> The amount of energy needed to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude larger than to produce it.

It is a very succinct version of what one can feel even physically when faced with piles of crap people occasionally dump in discussions, especially on Intertubes. The crap is often even produced unwittingly and with honest, if misguided intentions (e.g., I am smarter then you, therefore I must be right - many really believe that, so there's not really any ill intent in arguing that way). Yet, the stuff still remains just that - a pile of dung.

Further, the corresponding [Wikipedia page](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandolini%27s_law) adds the Lopatnikov's version:

> If the text of each phrase requires a paragraph (to disprove), each paragraph - a section, each section - a chapter, and each chapter - a book, the whole text becomes effectively irrefutable and, therefore, acquires features of truthfulness. _I define such truthfulness as transcendental._

In the past my younger and in the art of bullshit fighting less experienced self tried to push against this, only to always end up exhausted and frustrated. Now I just walk away. It's not a satisfactory outcome, as the bullshitter gets their way, but it's at least productive - as in not preventing my own further productive moves. Emotionally, I simply accept that in the long-term non-bullshit prevails - simply because **_reality has a weight and a vast momentum. It moves slowly, but you don't get to stop it. You can slow it down with vast magnitudes of energy, but never for too long._**

If in the discussion I was right, the reality will eventually prevail and whether the bullshitter learns about it or not does not matter a zilch. What matters is whether I learn something new or not. If I was wrong myself (which happens a lot!), by keeping my mind open, sooner or later, the reality (or a series of other discussions) will fix my own opinions. But I will avoid one thing: dealing with the bullshitting discussion partner. I call that a net gain.

Of course, sometimes it happens that the bullshitter crushes or harms you in the real world before the reality's truthful nature catches up (e.g., you might be actually right, but what does that matter if you are dead/in jail/lost your property/reputation/etc.). One needs defences outside of argumentation techniques to mitigate this specific risk.

And further [Gish gallop](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gish_gallop):
> [eristic](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eristic "Eristic") technique in which a [debater](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debate "Debate") attempts to overwhelm an opponent by excessive number of arguments, without regard for the accuracy or strength of those arguments.

That's what we could witness with Trump for the last few years.

# &Tilly - Afterwars

https://youtu.be/vtfJclYFcIc

Viktor!

#music

@freemo @hansw@mastodon.social

AFAIK, the committee is still out on whether minimum wage is a bad thing for a given country or not. For some references Wikipedia is rather extensive: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimum_wage#Debate_over_consequences

This debate started about US. I have no stake in that, but given the experience of most EU countries with minimum wage, I doubt it would go horribly wrong in the long run for the US either.

# # Empathy vs. Sympathy

[Brené Brown on Empathy vs. Sympathy/Psychology Today](https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/partnering-in-mental-health/201408/bren-brown-empathy-vs-sympathy-0)

The little cartoon movie in the article puts it in a very very nice and understandable manner.

> _empathy_ fuels connection
> _sympathy_ drives disconnection

> empathy:
> 1. perspective taking
> 2. staying out of judgement
> 3. recognising emotion in other people, and
> 4. communicating it

It does not have to be necessarily too bad.

> but i'll grow up to be just like you, yeah
> -- [Krezip/I would stay](https://youtu.be/1W2iksJ9Tc4)

Sometimes you meet a young person who is very well aware of their parent being an example they (want to) follow. When I was in my late teens and early twenties, I wanted to be anything but like my dad. With years and (ever) growing number of failures forward, I recognise him in myself more and more. And I like it that way more and more too.

# ACM Fellows 2020 announcements

[Press release](https://awards.acm.org/binaries/content/assets/press-releases/2021/january/fellows-2020.pdf)

Very nice to see many outstanding scientists from broader community around intelligent agents and multi-agent systems (formal logics, knowledge representation & reasoning, planning and robotics) recognised this year.

# Timing matters when correcting fake news

An interesting aticle in PNAS: https://www.pnas.org/content/118/5/e2020043118 / [DOI]([https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2020043118](https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2020043118))

## Objective
> Countering misinformation can reduce belief in the moment, but corrective messages quickly fade from memory. We tested whether the longer-term impact of fact-checks depends on when people receive them.

## Conclusions

> Providing fact-checks after headlines (_debunking_) improved subsequent truth discernment more than providing the same information during (_labeling_) or before (_prebunking_) exposure.

> (debunking) reduced misclassification of headlines 1 wk later by 25.3%, compared to an 8.6% reduction when tags appeared during exposure (labeling), and a 6.6% increase or 5.7% reduction when tags appeared beforehand (prebunking).

This is interesting. My guess would be that labelling would work the best. I thought that when the information is "baked into the memory" of a person, it's harder to change.

Perhaps, post-fact debunking/knowledge revision actually has a more profound effect on an individual because if it works, it probably does not only fix the incorrect information received, but also stains the source from where the person received it.

Still, it's notable that while the effect of fact-checking was significant, by far it did not have the effect most people would hope for: once you learn that what you believed was wrong, you fix yourself - i.e., 100% success rate. For false information, debunking it later fixed only a minority of misinformation cases.

They used Amazon Mechanical Turk for the experiment, so it might also be there are some biases stemming from self-selection of the participants.

# Salamander growing from a single cell

> Filmmaker Jan van IJken's Becoming reveals the fascinating genesis of animal life. A single cell is transformed into a complete, complex living organism with a beating heart and running bloodstream. Observe the stages of development that occur within an Alpine newt embryo (Ichthyosaura alpestris) in this fascinating six minute time-lapse captured over a three week period.

A direct Youtube link to the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SEejivHRIbE&feature=youtu.be

# To Fight Misinformation, We Must Think Like Scientists

> Logical reasoning and theory testing can protect against fake news.

Here I can't stress **theory testing** enough. The world is full of theorists (including myself!), but we are not checking our ideas against reality often enough. Even in small ways, like this article reminds us, just against one's own recent experiences. Most snake oil gets revealed that way.

> 1. We must be empiricists, not ideologues
> 2. We must create tests
> 3. We must encourage others to be empiricists

My speculation is that why people don't engage in such little experiments is due to 1. their laziness;
2. this sort of stuff is difficult to do on your own. It's way easier to do this in a conversation with [oneself, or with others](https://qoto.org/@FailForward/105531544314397677).
3. when the findings of such a process do not align with one's own theories and ideologies, it's better to close our eyes and just move on. Partly this is because of fear of losing face - once we espouse our favourite theories to our social circle, it might be embarrassing to retract them when they turn incorrect.

All this is because we all love neat worlds. Ideas and theories around them are pure, clean and "just work", while the reality outside is messy, colourful and complicated.

@Pat

# Vacuum cleaner for earth and sand

In the street where I live, the city is replacing water pipes. This is a standard digging operation, no surprises expected.

Now this morning they brought in a huge vacuum cleaner [like this](https://youtu.be/6872V30F12M) using which they sucked out the earth around roots of trees - instead of using shovels, or maybe just carelessly going in with an excavator.

Technology advances never stop to surprise me. I find the idea quite cool, yet so obvious to every child.

# Floor Jansen - Let It Go (Frozen) REMASTERED

https://youtu.be/plFqA0NMzds

And now old farts and Metalheads are going to discover the joys of Disney.

#music

HAEVN Live in Carré - 06 Piano Interlude + Sinner Love

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kqX1O0lk3i8

#music

# Pain Is Inevitable; Suffering Is Optional cont.

> When it comes to how we respond to physical and emotional pain, we have a choice
> -- [Psychology Today](https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/some-assembly-required/201401/pain-is-inevitable-suffering-is-optional)

> Suffering in general, as well as specific to chronic pain, is a function of imbalances in physical, mental, emotional, and/or spiritual functioning.

> Suffering is both a cause and an effect of the catastrophic cognitions and distressing emotions

> For people with chronic pain, there is a direct correlation between negative thinking and the level of pain they experience.

> Pain leads to negative thoughts/self-talk/beliefs lead to feelings of frustration/anger/anxiety/fear/sadness/depression/hopelessness lead to suffering leads to muscle tension and stress lead to more pain leads to increased negative thoughts/self-talk/beliefs lead to increased frustration/anger/anxiety/fear/sadness/depression/hopelessness leads to greater suffering, and so on. The longer such a cycle continues, the more out of balance a person becomes.

> Suffering can be modified when people become consciously aware of this chain reaction and learn how to respond differently to their pain.

# Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional

> “Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional. Say you’re running and you think, ‘Man, this hurts, I can’t take it anymore. The ‘hurt’ part is an unavoidable reality, but whether or not you can stand anymore is up to the runner himself.”
> -- Haruki Murakami, [What I Talk About When I Talk About Running](https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/2475030)

# Wicked Game

* [Daisy Gray's cover](https://youtu.be/L4VU-AwxzSY)
* [London Grammar cover](https://youtu.be/Wo80bXyEbkE)
* [Chris Isaak's original](https://youtu.be/4vKsSGyQf-M)

# Make Boring Plans

https://skamille.medium.com/make-boring-plans-9438ce5cb053

A recent blog post continuing the trope of _boring is good_. This time it moves a bit away from technology into team management and tech team processes. I like this shift, it well complements the [choose boring technology piece](https://qoto.org/@FailForward/105618393533273455).

## Novel Technology Deserves Boring Plans

> When we don’t attend to the boring parts by making our plans predictable, the interesting parts turn into extra stress on top of the overwhelming anxiety of juggling these moves.

1. turn vision into boring plans
2. start small
3. execute a change; observe; make notes; learn
7. iterate

## A Strategic Plan Is Obvious and Simple, Even Boring

> Good strategy provides the clarity that enables boring plans.

> Your teams need more than a clear idea of the end state and the hope that smart engineers will inevitably get you there. Plans that are formed around hope are failing plans; hope is not a plan. Plans that change constantly are failing plans. When your plans are constantly changing, it is a sign that you either are making plans that express a certainty you don’t have, or you haven’t done your research to get the right certainty in place. Either of these is a waste of time and an unnecessary stress on the team.

Yes, of course.

Now there's something to add. Once upon a time when I was a junior high-flying and invincible programmer, I would spend nights coding and debugging some project shortly before the deadline, just to beat it into submission and drag it kicking and screaming to the delivery. Proud I was. And so were my managers. I do not know whether they considered it right, or not back then, we all felt somewhat powerless in the face of the unknowns we faced developing something nobody attempted before (because such is the nature of fun projects, right?) and at the same time proud of what we achieved.

Fast forward about one and a half decade later, as a lead of a severly understaffed and underfunded team delivering yet another _interesting_ project (read: with a lot of uncertainty in feasibility and execution). Before the dealdine where you just feel to be a step from everything falling in place and yet everything starts breaking down, my team worked hard a few evenings and nights to beat the project into submission. We of course made it. Then, a couple of days later I apologised to the whole team for all of that and promised to myself never to get into such a situation again (which is of course a fallacy, but one needs to have ambitions, right?).

Apology from a tech lead, or a manager is in order in such a situation, because such situation should never have happened. Because _boring is good_ dictates that to be on time, we shall have worked 9-to-5 and have all the integration and validation test done 2 weeks before the deadline. And we didn't. Because the planning failed. Because the project was not planned to be boring enough.

Keeping learning...