What Pete is thinking

I train soft skills as my day job and am lucky enough to feel consistently engaged and challenged by it. Recently my class was on critical thinking and so I came to the topic of some thinking traps we humans fall into as well as certain fallacies. In particular, I was recently struck by the sunk cost fallacy. The sunk cost fallacy is quite interesting once we run into it for ourselves. In essence, we stop thinking logically or critically once we have invested money or time (the sunk cost) into something. For example, we buy tickets for an event or show then feel obliged to go, or keep watching, even if we are no longer interested. “We should go; we’ve spent the money after all and there are no refunds.” For me this struck while playing the video game Bioshock Infinite. This game received very high acclaim and great reviews overall, marking the third game in a series where the first is widely considered among the greatest games of all time I’m not having too much fun i...

I don't know how well versed you might be in the Swedish heavy metal scene, but Meshuggah have quite a reputation. Their style is somewhat unusual in that they play with the rhythms and timings of their songs. It's an acquired taste to enjoy when the band is playing with polyrhythms, polymeters and syncopation etc. The music definitely pulls at your mind in different ways. Here is them playing the song " Rational Gaze " live. You don't need to like it, but check out what they offer, just to understand this mixed timing. The song starts properly at 55 seconds. What struck me about this band was in an interview I watched where they said something along the lines of: " We know we'll never be big like Metallica playing what we do. If you like what we play, you'll like us, if not then it's fine. " My music is very far from the style and speed of Meshuggah. At best, the idea of switching timing is something I bring in occasionally but t...

I just finished a really interesting horror video game called SOMA. Without spoiling the plot too much, you explore an abandoned/infested underwater facility that's the last place on the world where humans live after a comet hit the earth. While it was originally a science and research station, the growth and expansion of a controlling computer program with some kind of nano-technology has rendered things into a twisted fusion of organic and mechanical, including some of the inhabitants. The core of the game is about trying to launch the ARK to space. Its' a virtual reality machine that stores the brains scans of the last surviving humans on earth and the hope is that by launching it into space, humanity will live on, in some form at least. What was so moving for me is that the game asked over and over what it means to be alive. Your character, Simon, is no longer in his own body, but rather is hosted in a robot chip inside other bodies. At some points in the game you t...

I just finished Seth Godin's book The Icarus Deception and, while I found it written in a mixed up way, really enjoyed it. The book made me feel inspired with the idea of creating art, as Seth puts it. Not in the traditional sense that people think of as art but in the sense of creating something new and exciting that speaks to me. Whether or not it succeeds I find this a more exciting way to live. Where this has had the most impact on me recently is in my music writing. A couple of pieces that I came up with recently are a strange blend of major and minor, melodic and non melodic. I've played them a couple of times to people and they said they were interesting but not really to their taste. Now that response doesn't matter as much to me. The fun is in creating that art and playing it the way I would like to. Not everyone will like what I do and that's actually fine for me.