On a Lighter Note

09:51 Thursday, 2 April 2026
Current Wx: Temp: 36.91°F Pressure: 1028hPa Humidity: 98% Wind: 4.88mph
Words: 116

I've been wrestling with deciding how we're going to heat and cool this new house. I'm reluctant to buy two systems that can do the same thing, so I'm looking for examples where people have done so already.

This video came up yesterday, and while it's not a completed system, it did offer me a great deal of insight into the design considerations. I've since watched nearly all of the videos in his series, and it has been very valuable. He's at a high elevation in central Arizona, so vastly different climate in terms of humidity. But again, I think we're building in a robust humidity control system so the dew point issue should be manageable.

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Chaos

09:21 Thursday, 2 April 2026
Current Wx: Temp: 35.83°F Pressure: 1028hPa Humidity: 98% Wind: 2.08mph
Words: 417

People, in general, aren't stupid; but they are often foolish.

Intelligent people aren't immune to being fools. Indeed, it is their very intelligence that often makes them foolish. A recent case in point is Marc Andreessen and his foolish comments about introspection.

The opposite of foolish isn't "smart," it's wise. Of the two qualities, one is earned the other is intrinsic. There can be elements of temperament that lend themselves toward more readily acquiring or earning wisdom, but we're not born with it. Likewise, there are elements of temperament that lend themselves to foolishness, because foolishness is often more rewarding than wisdom, at least in the short term. Most vices fall into that category.

I was fortunate enough to grow up during a time when our culture had accumulated a certain amount of knowledge, which is a prerequisite to wisdom, but isn't wisdom in and of itself. My choice of career exposed me to certain areas of knowledge, like war and conflict; and my temperament and interests exposed me to certain other areas of knowledge, like math and science, and more particularly for our purposes, chaos theory.

I'm not so foolish as to believe I'm an expert on chaos theory, but I believe I have become acquainted with the broader principles and some of the features like, "sensitive dependence on initial conditions," and "phase space." Most of us grow up with a rather Newtonian, deterministic, "cause and effect" view of the way the world works. Our culture has also indoctrinated us in a zero-sum view events and interactions. This, rather impoverished, view of the world lends itself to foolishness at scale.

War is chaos. Violent conflict is often the result of either foolishness, or the failure of institutional systems, pushed beyond the boundaries of stability. In either case, the outcomes are difficult to predict, the effects are often not anticipated or immediately apparent. Knowledge of this should make the wise very reluctant to go to war.

Donald Trump is chaos. As a personality, his internal "dynamic system," isn't configured the way most of us would recognize. Inputs that might result in one output in an "ordinary" person, yield wildly different outputs from Trump. He's unpredictable. To fools, that's not a bug, it's a feature. To the wise, it's a catastrophe.

We are well and truly fucked.

At some point, our culture is going to have to get serious about education. Teaching people the difference between wisdom and foolishness.

I don't know that we'll get the opportunity.

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