Functions of Running

Punched in 10.8km over two runs at 8.5 minute pace. Poor, but a good start for the first day back on running. Now to double the pace. 

Surreal. Literally on the roads where I started running in primary school. New training route. Tripped once on uneven sidewalk. Situational awareness not quite on point.

I learnt that running and driving seem most similar to me in terms of how much data is run through short-term memory. Highly visual, a lot of situational awareness loops. Hormonal cascades follow. Can't get that in a swimming pool or on a treadmill, I guess.

Road running in quiet areas creates a high ratio of activity in the sensory sit-ops loop, to the activity in the scientific methodical loop. So it provides one with good stimulus for scientific thought. I see how it fits together very well, now.

This season of running is my first, under a dietary regimen. I think breaking up daily distance into multiple runs per day makes sense in terms of reducing stress. I have some AMS, but that could just be fascia. Short-term memory baseline actions-per-minute are up, perhaps due to hormonal stimulation. But it's hard to say, without technical observability, what is endocrinal, neural, or vascular.

Toxicity : Cybernetics and Evil

Toxicity is subjective. What is clear is that [ not everyone ] thinks that [ everyone who could possibly exists ] belongs in the their own ideal society.

A majority of people seem to idealise an exclusive society. Good in, bad out. The problem then arises when people don't agree on what is bad, then we have war.

Some believe that the ideal society allows everyone including those who would seek to destroy that ideal. I am in this group. For me, civil society is about moderating two rates of control, the rate of admission for factors of mutation, and the rate of reproduction of mutations which jeopardise the enterprise.

It's just cybernetics.

Pathological Regret as a Cognitive Error

Regret is the association of present pain with the expectation of future pain, based on the false association of a past pain with the present pain, but without addressing the present pain directly. Once diagnosed, it becomes fairly straightforward to redirect attention to the present pain, and once the present pain is resolved, the association between past pain and present pain is realised as a false association, and the expectation of future pain can be dealt with rationally according to a theoretical risk management framework.

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Reflecting on how I deal with pain.

I grew up with parents who were quite sensitive, that is to say, pain averse, often dramatically pain averse. So, it is a performance I am quite learned in. However, I also found their whinging to be quite annoying, and their low pain tolerance to be quite wimpy. They tended to interpret pain as a matter of illness, rather than merely as an ambiguous signal of more complex physiology.

( Perhaps I just imagined that they were whingy and wimpy, whereas it has been a projection of my own whingy wimpiness. I don't intend to press the remaining parent to find out. )

One of my favourite gym poster aphorisms has been, "pain is weakness leaving the body". I believe the most pain I have been exposed to as an adult is urethal catherisation. These two ideas don't necessarily fit together.

I remain privileged enough to deal with pain mostly at arm's length. It is physical conditioning that keeps me distracted by pain in the present. That is a rich man's game.