My BS,updated

I know I am quite open to new ideas and thinking, and I am not afraid of changing my mind in the light of new evidences or findings.

My diet has changed a lot over the years. I did not used to care anything about my diet, then I moved on to be calorie conscious -- reading labels carefully before putting into my mouth. At one time I became obsessive with staying away from any sugary stuff, which I still do, but not acting like a Puritan. My view toward starchy foods also changed over the time, from my staple food to now days occasional intake mainly for pleasure.

The way I exercise also evolves. I started as a swimmer -- I used to swim for a few hours every day to lose the weight I put on after quitting smoking. Then I started running, mixing up with wight lifting along the way, but still aerobics was my main goal for a long time. Right now I spend a lot less time in the gym, seeking mostly intermittent high-intensity workout while cutting down a lot on aerobics. Playing basketball, short sprint, jumping and sometimes vigorous swimming are the way to go. I still go to the gym for aerobics classes a few times a week, and I attend my Yoga session every Friday religiously(This is probably among the few things I've stuck around for a long time). I pick what works for me and ditch what does not, and I feel I am in the best shape ever in my life: my body fat sits at 5% level and I don't have to be a gym rat to achieve this.

Compared to my philosophy of fitness, there are more vacillating of my views toward this world. I was brought up with a strict sense of moral values and discipline, I was instilled with reverence toward teachers, parents, authority, and experts. But deep inside there has always been the rebellious nature, suppressed and potent. After coming to the States, I've come more under the influence of libertarianism, with Bill Maher playing an important role in this regard. The studies of economics prompt me to look at things from a utilitarian perspective, which actually does not click with me naturally -- I've never been a cynical person: as a matter of fact it's just the opposite, having a quite cynical mother has shaped my instinct aversion to cynicism.

Karl Weick's sensemaking has had by far the biggest impact on me. The quintessence of his idea is that you can only start with a general direction of your life, and with forceful actions things will make sense to you retrospectively, and there is nothing wrong with self-fulfilling prophecy. Don't over plan, leap before you see, improvise along the way but be heedful to what's going on, seek plausibility over accuracy.

In Black Swan Taleb also touches upon the idea of self-fulfilling prophecy, but in terms of a negative tone, i.e., narrative fallacy and conformation bias. Maybe my pendulum has swung a bit too far toward Weick, and I need to pull back somehow. Weick, as a social psychologist, tries to understand social phenomena, while Taleb as a trader has a strong empirical bent. But the most important point I take from Black Swan it's the skepticism: too often it's harder to doubt than accept.

Having said all these, I don't see signifcant changes or departure from the BS I put together back in January. The overarching theme of my BS lies in my evolutionary perspective toward pretty much very thing. we, as the citizens of this modern world, are trapped in an archiac mind and body which are suitable to a primitve environment, but are ill-prepared to the modern world. Our dualistic nature of human and animal, something we can not deny or change, lies in the roots of the struggling of the civilized and educated men and women.