Jimbo Rants

Friday, August 22, 2025

5k Warmup

I've been very focuses on my running the last several weeks. For the first time in over 15 years that I have created and followed a training plan. I have not missed a workout or run in the last six weeks. Now, that I finished my last quality workout yesterday, I have transitioned to my tapering. And I'm focusing on other aspects of the race. I made this warmup routine specific to me. My usual warmup for workouts includes more lunges and a few other mobility/yoga poses. But I cut everything that isn't directly preparing me for running a 5k. Here is my sheet if anyone wants to copy and paste it.

Thursday, August 21, 2025

Fact Checking Ep 45 Rereading Zen in the Martial Arts with Brendan Howard

The following is a fact check by ChatGPT 5 of my Jimbo Radio episode "Ep 45 Rereading Zen in the Martial Arts with Brendan Howard." Here is a transcript of the conversation.

1. Healing Visualization and Ellen Langer’s Research

Claim in transcript: A martial artist healed his broken hand much faster by visualizing “little workers” fixing it. This is linked to Ellen Langer’s “counterclockwise” study and to the idea that mindset can shorten recovery time.
What’s misleading/wrong:
- Physiological limits: Bone healing requires biological processes (osteoblast activity, mineralization, vascular remodeling). The timeline (6–12 weeks for most fractures) isn’t just mindset—it’s constrained by biology. Visualization cannot dramatically accelerate this beyond normal variation.
- Langer’s research: The “counterclockwise” study (elderly men in a retro 1959 environment) is often criticized for weak methodology (no clear controls, small sample, possible experimenter bias). Later replication attempts haven’t confirmed the dramatic “looked younger” results.
- Expectation effects: Patient expectations do affect pain perception and subjective recovery, but evidence that belief alone accelerates tissue healing is weak. Placebo can improve reported outcomes, not necessarily objective healing speed.

2. Qi / Ki and Supernatural Martial Arts Powers

Claim in transcript: Aikido masters can make themselves “unliftable” in a chair or knock people back without touching them, explained as manipulating universal energy.
What’s misleading/wrong:
- No empirical evidence: Demonstrations of “no-touch knockdowns” and “unmovable chair” stunts have been repeatedly exposed as stage tricks, compliant students, or biomechanics (using leverage and balance shifts). In controlled conditions, these effects disappear.
- Physical test issue: If weight was actually increasing, a scale would measure it. It never does. Claims of Ki altering mass or force output violate physics and have not survived scientific testing.
- Groupthink/placebo: Believers and students often unconsciously “go along” with the demonstration. It’s similar to hypnosis or stage magic. This explains why skeptical outsiders (e.g., MMA fighters) can easily dismantle supposed “masters.”
- Comparison to psi research: You referenced telepathy card-guessing experiments. Parapsychology research has decades of statistical noise but no robust, replicable findings once bias and poor controls are eliminated. It’s misleading to connect this with martial arts demonstrations as if they reinforce each other.

3. Willpower Depletion (Preview for Next Episode)

Claim in transcript: You plan to cover “willpower depletion” (ego depletion).
What’s misleading/wrong:
- The classic Baumeister “radish vs. cookies” study (1998) did inspire hundreds of papers, but large-scale replication attempts failed to confirm ego depletion as originally described.
- Current consensus: Self-control isn’t a depleting fuel tank; it’s more about shifts in motivation and attention. Framing it as a literal resource that “runs out” is misleading.

4. Dark Matter, Dark Energy, and “Everything is Energy”

Claim in transcript: Because most of the universe is made of dark matter/energy, maybe Ki fits into that mystery.
What’s misleading/wrong:
- Dark matter/energy are scientific constructs to explain observed gravitational effects and cosmic expansion. They aren’t blank checks for “mystical energy.” Equating them with Ki is a category error: unknown ≠ supernatural validation.
- Saying “we don’t know what dark matter is, therefore Ki could be real” is a God of the gaps fallacy.

5. Animal Telepathy / Universal Consciousness

Claim in transcript: Some animals learn from distant animals, suggesting a web of consciousness.
What’s misleading/wrong:
- No solid evidence supports animal telepathy. Observed behaviors (e.g., bird flock learning, dolphins coordinating, cultural transmission in primates) can be explained by imitation, communication, or independent discovery, not extrasensory fields.
- Rupert Sheldrake’s “morphic resonance” ideas (which this resembles) are popular but scientifically rejected for lack of evidence.

6. Tracking Devices and the Habenula

Claim in transcript: Tracking recovery (sleep, readiness, etc.) may harm habits because it programs the habenula to associate failure.
What’s misleading/wrong:
- Habenula function: True, it’s linked to negative reinforcement and processing failure/reward prediction error. But the idea that tracking devices inherently harm habits via habenula over-activation is speculative extrapolation, not well-established neuroscience.
- There’s limited direct evidence connecting commercial trackers to habenula dysfunction. More accurate claim: over-monitoring can create anxiety and undermine motivation, but the brain mechanism is still debated.

7. General Overstatements

Bruce Lee mythos: You correctly debunk the idea he could defeat anyone regardless of weight class. The myth persists, but it’s good you flagged it.
Zen = Performance Drug: Framing Zen as a “drug for performance” is catchy, but misleading. Zen practice can reduce stress, improve focus, and aid resilience — but its purpose is not utilitarian performance hacking, and overstating effects risks turning philosophy into pseudoscience.

✅ Summary of the biggest misleading/wrong ideas:

Visualization/mindset can’t radically speed up biological healing beyond normal variance.
Ki/no-touch martial arts powers have no scientific basis and collapse under controlled testing.
Ego depletion is not supported by modern replication studies.
Dark matter/energy ≠ mystical energy fields.
Animal telepathy / universal consciousness claims lack evidence.
Habenula explanation for habit tracking is speculative, not proven.

Monday, August 11, 2025

Fact Checking Ep 44 Knowing about Knowing and Evolution

The following is a fact check of Jimbo Radio Ep 44 Knowing about Knowing and Evolution with Brendan Howard. ⁠Here is a full transcript of the episode.⁠ The following was performed by ChatGPT-5.

Fact Check

Eyewitnesses vs. “closer in time = better”: Being near in time to an event does not guarantee accuracy; eyewitness memory is highly fallible and malleable. The National Academies’ review recommends caution and specific safeguards because misidentification is a leading contributor to wrongful convictions. ✅ Accurate skepticism; good nuance to prioritize objective evidence (DNA, video, etc.). CDCEverytown Research & Policy
Risk perception: planes vs. cars: People routinely misjudge these risks (availability/recency effects). Lifetime odds tables show motor-vehicle crashes pose vastly higher risk than passenger air travel. ✅ Claim aligns with data; the cognitive-bias framing is standard. NEJM CatalystFreakonomicsStatistics By Jim
School shootings, fear, and base rates: High salience events drive fear, but the per-student risk on any given day is extremely low even as incidents with casualties have risen in recent years. At the same time, firearms became the leading cause of death for U.S. children and teens starting around 2020, which contextualizes broader risk beyond schools. ✅ Mostly right with important context. AACN
TSA lines as “security theater”: Experts (e.g., Bruce Schneier) use that term for visible-but-low-yield measures. Government covert testing has repeatedly found detection shortfalls; GAO and DHS IG have documented significant problems over the years. ✅ Directionally right; the system also relies on less visible layers beyond the checkpoint. AACNKFF
“Poor people buy TVs instead of food” (from Poor Economics): Banerjee & Duflo document that poor households sometimes allocate limited income to festivals/entertainment rather than extra calories; boredom/pleasure matter and choices can still be “rational” in context. ✅ Example reflects the literature (book + earlier paper). cdgi.edu.ininequality.stanford.edu
“Free-will/ willpower depletion” at day’s end: The classic ego-depletion “willpower as a fuel” model is contested. A large registered multi-lab replication failed to find the effect; meta-analyses that adjust for publication bias find little or no reliable depletion. There are newer “process” models (motivation, attention) that can explain late-day lapses without a glucose-like resource. ❗Needs revision/nuance. National Center for Education Statistics+1Education Week
Evolution’s testability: Darwin worked pre-genetics; later genetics (Mendel → modern synthesis) and DNA phylogenies, biogeography, fossils, and observed evolution (e.g., Lenski’s long-term E. coli) independently corroborate and test evolutionary theory. ✅ Sound. Injury Facts+1
Evolutionary psychology— A) BMI often predicts attractiveness better than WHR. Tovée et al. (1999), Proc. R. Soc. B — “Visual cues to female physical attractiveness.” Finds BMI is the primary determinant of perceived attractiveness; WHR plays a smaller role and earlier work likely overestimated WHR due to covariation. PubMed. Tovée et al. (2002), Proc. R. Soc. B — “Human female attractiveness: waveform analysis of body shape.” Again shows BMI correlates more strongly with attractiveness than WHR, even when shape is analyzed more holistically. PubMed. (Background/contrast: Singh 1993 is the classic WHR≈0.7 paper.) PubMedlabs.psych.ucsb.edu.
B) An “optimal WHR for easy childbirth” isn’t established; pelvic/obstetric trade-offs are complex. Betti & Manica (2018), Proc. R. Soc. B — “Human variation in the shape of the birth canal is significant and geographically structured.” Shows large population-level variation in bony birth-canal shape, cautioning against simple external proxies like WHR for obstetric ease. (Free full text.) PMC. Grunstra et al. (2023), Am. J. Biol. Anth. — “There is an obstetrical dilemma: Misconceptions about the evolution of human childbirth.” Reviews evidence that childbirth difficulty reflects multiple, partly opposing selective pressures; the mechanics aren’t captured by a single external ratio. (Free full text.) PMC. Mitteroecker et al. (2024), Am. J. Obstet. Gynecol. — “Evolution of the human birth canal.” Updated review tying evolutionary, biomechanical, and clinical data; emphasizes complex, multi-factor pelvic constraints rather than any single “optimal” external measure. AJOG.

Self-deception to better deceive others: This is a prominent theory (Trivers; Von Hippel & Trivers). There’s suggestive lab evidence (e.g., overconfidence aiding persuasion), but the empirical base is mixed and mechanisms remain debated. ❗Plausible but not settled. Bureau of Justice StatisticsNational Center for Education Statistics
“Species evolve” vs. human-behavior claims: Your split is fair: biological evolution is strongly evidenced and testable; many adaptive stories about specific human psych traits are harder to test and should be held with greater skepticism. ✅ Good epistemic stance. Injury Facts
Public intellectuals straying outside domain: That’s an opinion claim about discourse, not a factual one; it’s fine to present as commentary (Richard Dawkins is indeed a biologist famous for evolution and for The God Delusion, but “how much theology he’s read” is not a checkable fact here). ✅ Treat as viewpoint.
Opioids/corporate incentives: Purdue Frederick pled guilty (2007) to misbranding OxyContin; later federal actions continued, and reporting has documented push for 12-hour dosing despite problems. The Supreme Court struck down Purdue’s proposed bankruptcy plan shielding the Sacklers in 2024. ✅ Accurate in substance. Injury FactsCDC
Tobacco companies & addictiveness: Internal documents and litigation (1990s) revealed knowledge of nicotine addictiveness and marketing strategies; CEOs’ 1994 testimony denying addictiveness is infamous; the 1998 Master Settlement memorialized state lawsuits. ✅ Accurate. Stephens Law Firm, PLLCInjury Facts
Special interests/factions (Madison): Yes—Federalist No. 10 squarely addresses factions (what we’d now call “special interests”). ✅ Accurate. Amazon
“People are less informed now” (media, civics): Evidence is mixed. Trust in government/news has declined; volunteering dipped during the pandemic and rebounded in 2023 but remains below some pre-pandemic levels; political knowledge appears surprisingly stable over decades. ❗Call this unsettled and domain-specific. PMCAmeriCorps+1Pew Research Center
Negativity bias & 24/7 news: Research shows people attend more to negative information; in news, negativity draws attention—helping explain “if it bleeds, it leads.” ✅ Broadly supported. CDC

Bottom line

Your episode’s skeptical/empiricist posture is well-grounded. Where you’ll want to tighten claims: (1) ego depletion (treat as contested), (2) WHR → childbirth “optimality” (avoid overreach), and (3) “less informed now” (point to mixed indicators rather than a blanket decline). The rest is largely solid—with good instincts about base rates, incentives, and how stories can outrun data.

Sunday, July 6, 2025

Notes from Episode 41: Knowing about Knowing

In my recent episode, Ep 41 Knowing about Knowing, with Brendan Howard, we continued our discussion about knowing. Our conversation was based on a survey about epistemology I created with the assistance of GPT. We also listened and discussed an episode of Theories of Everything with Professor Jennifer Nagel.

Human Memory

In the episode, I slightly misremembered a study on memory related to the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Below are the main ideas related to my episode reference brought to you by GPT:

1. Memory decay slows after one year: Flashbulb memories (the personal context: where you were, who told you, etc.) and event memories (facts about the attack itself) both show a forgetting curve that flattens significantly after the first year.

2. Emotional details fade more than factual ones: Emotional responses associated with flashbulb memories (e.g., how shocked or upset you felt) are remembered less accurately over time than non-emotional details like location or the person who told you.

3. Subjective confidence remains high despite inaccuracies: By multiple follow‑up points (1 week, 11 months, 35 months), many participants recalled different details from their original reports—and yet they continued to express high confidence in their recollections.

After the initial decay, both flashbulb and event memories tend to become more stable—though not necessarily more accurate—over time.

Cumulative Selection

Cumulative selection can explain how a small advantage can build over time through natural selection. Ronald Fisher, a relatively unknown genius and polymath, developed mathematics that explain how small mutations that increase fitness, even with a very small advantage, can survive over time.

Using population genetics, a gene with a 0.1% selective advantage can dominate a population of 10,000 within 20,000 generation. That would be about 500,000 years for humans.

In the podcast episode, I generally explained why babies should look like their fathers. In theory, if babies, who looked like their fathers, had even a very small advantage, like 0.1%, that advantage would dominate human populations after 20,000 generation, or 500,000 years. If the advantage was larger, it would dominate faster.

Links

Wednesday, June 11, 2025

Top 500 Companies with Time

Background

I referenced the top corporations longevity, or lack there of, in a recent podcast episode, click for the episode link.

I wanted to express how the top companies change and die off over time. Here are some links, quotes, and visuals. Here is my GPT searching for the topic.

Introduction

The Fortune 500, not the S&P 500, is a list of the top 500 US companies by revenue. The magazine Fortune has been publishing a list since 1955.

As of 2024's list, 49 companies have been on the list every year since 1995.

The S&P 500 is an index fund of top US companies. The S&P 500 was created in 1957. Today, 53 of those original companies are still in the S&P 500.

Main Idea

Companies come and go. Less than 10% of the top 500 companies in 1955 were top 500 companies in 2024. A little over 10% of S&P 500 companies in 1957 are still top 500 companies.

There are lots of factors and disruptions, but over time, it is hard for companies, even if they buy out smaller companies and merge with other large companies to stay on top.

The image below shows the changes in S&P 500 companies over time. At times companies stay for a long time, and then at other times they quickly disappear. If we averaged and leveled off the trend, we'd see a steady and slight decrease with time.

For More

https://www.axios.com/2019/07/22/fortune-500-corporations-extinction

https://www.visualcapitalist.com/how-the-top-sp-500-companies-have-changed-over-time/

Friday, May 30, 2025

Rereading Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison

Rereading Favorite Books

I've been slowly rereading my favorite books. My friend AJ has joined me for most of them.

Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison is one of favorite rereads so far. Here is a lightly revised review from when I first read the book in 2020.

This book had me hooked. I read Beloved and liked it, but it was a tough read. This book is easier to read and follow, but one can also dive deeper and be jealous and amazed at how skilled Toni Morrison was. I'm going to binge her work for a while (and I did).

The dialogue is excellent. I don't always pay close attention to dialogue. It's easy to notice when it's bad. But I can't recall a book or movie with better dialogue. The characters' voices are unique and funny, and their conversations are fresh.

The plot and drama builds and reveals. I was content the whole read. And then every other chapter or so there were surprises I never expected. Everything connects and comes back. The craft is perfect.

Rereading Song of Solomon

As much as I liked it last time, it was even better this time. Knowing the story and characters had me especially attentive to all the details Morrison puts into her craft, seeing more clearly how characters are formed and evolved throughout the story.

The plot is full of action and suspense.

It's a male centered point of view, but the female characters stand tall. The main character Milkman is finding his way through two opposing extremes of his day. Milkman is born into a rich northern black family. He journeys to the rural south for something and if you want to find out if he finds it, you'll have to read the novel.

Here is a taste of the dialogue:

“Like a riverboat pilot?” Macon asks.
“No not like no riverboat pilot. Like a Christ-killer Pilate. You can’t get much worse than that for a name. And a baby girl at that.”
“That’s where my finger went down at.”
“Well your brain ain’t got to follow it. You don’t want to give this motherless child the name of the man that killed Jesus, do you?”
“I asked Jesus to save me my wife.”
“Careful, Macon.”
“I asked him all night long.”
“He give you your baby.”
“Yes. He did. Baby name Pilate.”
“Jesus, have mercy.”
“Where you going with that piece of paper?”
“It’s going back where it came from. Right in the Devil’s flames.”
“Give it here. It comes from the Bible. It stays in the Bible.”
And it did stay there, until the baby girl turned twelve years old and took it out, folded it up into a tiny knot and put in a little brass box, and strung the entire contraption through her left earlobe (19).

Here are a couple other quotes that stood out to AJ and I:

A glimpse at the theme of love:

“Gimme hate, Lord,” he whimpered. “I’ll take hate any day. But don’t give me love. I can’t take no more love, Lord. I can’t carry it...It’s too heavy. Jesus, you know, you know all about it. Ain’t it heavy? Jesus? Ain’t love heavy?"

Milkman's feelings toward Hagar:

She was the third beer. Not the first one, which the throat receives with almost tearful gratitude; nor the second, that confirms and extends the pleasure of the first. But the third, the one you drink because it's there, because it can't hurt, and because what difference does it make?

Guitar trying to comfort Hagar:

“You can't own a human being. You can't lose what you don't own. Suppose you did own him. Could you really love somebody who was absolutely nobody without you? You really want somebody like that? Somebody who falls apart when you walk out the door? You don't, do you? And neither does he. You're turning over your whole life to him. Your whole life, girl. And if it means so little to you that you can just give it away, hand it to him, then why should it mean any more to him? He can't value you more than you value yourself.”

The opening of the book:

The North Carolina Mutual Life Insurance agent promised to fly from Mercy to the other side of Lake Superior at three o'clock. Two days before the event was to take place he tacked a note on the door of his little yellow house:

At 3:00 p.m. on Wednesday the 18th of February, 1931, I will take off from Mercy and fly away on my own wings. Please forgive me. I loved you all.

(signed) Robert Smith,
Ins. agent

Wednesday, May 28, 2025

Knowledge (Epistemology Step 1)

These are visuals for my podcast episode Knowledge and Self Deception.

According to traditional philosophy definitions, knowledge is based on three criteria: belief, truth, and justification.

I found the following visuals to be helpful in understanding the concept of knowledge better. I put the visuals in order by simplicity.