Arctic explorers carry a couple of kilograms of butter, because it contains many calories per gram. Some of them eat a stick of butter for breakfast as well as dinner. Me and Martin also bet on fat when we went to Kebnekaise: we brought butter, goose fat, coconut oil, sausages, bacon, frozen meatballs and almonds. I counted at least 3 kilograms of fat but we probably had more. You have to do this if you want to be considered cool in the Arctic circles.
Kebnekaise is a mountain area located beyond the Arctic Circle and Kebnekaise is also the name of the highest mountain in Sweden. I have been there two years ago and wanted to come back as soon as possible, despite the horrible weather we have experienced. There is something about the Kebnekaise area that draws me there and it's hard to explain.
Sunday
After arriving to Kebnekaise fjällstation, we went for a short ski ride just above the hut. The snow was horrible, as is normal for the very windy Láddjuvággi valley. It was then easy to convince Martin to go to Tarfala valley in search for better snow. It turned out to be the right call.
Monday
In the morning we went up to Tarfala mountain hut in sunny weather.
Tarfala valley, Storglaciär and Isfallsglaciär
Martin took a nap in the afternoon, so I went alone for a ski ride just above the hut. The snow was much better than yesterday but still very tricky. Thanks to a lot of wind, icy parts mixed with deep pockets of powder. I fell because of this in the bottom flat part and later learned that the whole hut watched me fall through the window. I'm always happy to provide entertainment.
After dinner, the whole hut gathered again at the windows to watch a group of guys skiing with headlamps. I told Martin: "They are either complete idiots or professionals".
There is no water or electricity in the hut and you have to fetch water and wood from the outside in −15 degrees Celsius. After the arrival of the group with headlamps, the hut was packed to the last bed and had the right Arctic atmosphere. The fat in our stomachs also only amplified it.
The Moon and a hairy mountain. My best guess is that wind is blowing snow over the mountain and creating an illusion of hair.
Tuesday
Two years ago me and Kolo unsuccessfully tried to climb Kaskasatjåkka (2076 m), the 4th highest mountain in Sweden. We turned around because of high winds. Me and Martin made a second attempt and the weather was much better this time with clear blue sky. However, it was very windy and cold, so we had to cover our faces regularly to avoid frostbites. We were rewarded with a view that is even better than from Kebnekaise sydtopp, the highest mountain in Sweden.
Western panorama includes 3 of the top 5 highest mountains in Sweden: Kebnekaise sydtopp, Kebnekaise nordtopp and Kaskasapakte. And it's taken from the 4th highest mountain, Kaskasatjåkka.
Wednesday
We woke up to a typical Tarfala weather: very low visibility, snow and strong wind. No wonder this is the most windy place in Sweden.
Luckily for us, the wind was blowing into our backs and it was actually making moving easier. We wanted to go back to the Kebnekaise fjällstation, but also check out the glacier cave inside Pallins halvjökel.
You can make a couple of ski turns in the glacier cave
The glacier cave provided a nice shelter, but we had to leave it and enter the white world.
Man on the Moon
We arrived at Kebnekaise fjällstation just before noon and then didn't do anything for the rest of the day.
Thursday
Two years ago I have been ogling Tuolpagorni a lot but we didn't have time to ski it, so I made it my main goal of this vacation.
Tuolpagorni has a bowl on the top, a very unusual formation
The conditions looked awesome: clear blue sky, no wind and a lot of powder snow. Our only worry were avalanches, but a snow pit only showed a dangerous layer more than a meter deep.
It felt very strange to be in Tuolpagorni's flat bowl up in the air. We went up to a saddle below the top, enjoyed the view and then skied down the obvious path.
Our downhill route
It was our first time skiing such a narrow and steep couloir (38 to 40 degreees), but in the end it was easier than expected. The deep snow was very forgiving and the couloir wider than it looks at first.
Our piece of work in the couloir
Wow, what a day! No wind is a once-in-a-lifetime experience in this area and skiing Tuolpagorni is also something we won't forget. Watch Martin's video summarizing the whole day.
Friday
I woke up feeling bad, so I stayed in the hut while Martin went for a short ride near Jökelbäcken. It was time to leave Kebnekaise and head home. I'm sure we'll be back soon.
As usual, a small selection of my photos is on Flickr and a full album from multiple cameras is on Google Photos. Martin also made a video from the whole trip.
Why do cultures in Europe differ a lot from north to south, but much less from east to west? Does it have something to do with temperature? Why are societies that are surrounded by more bacteria and viruses less tolerant and more xenophobic? And why are symmetric objects considered beautiful all over the world?
To answer these questions, we need to look into our evolutionary makeup. The mind is not just a product of culture, but also a product of evolution and environmental factors other than culture.
Massive modularity of our brains
Many families have children as well as pets, for example a dog or a cat. Even though the pets and children live in the same environment, only one species learns the language spoken in the family. Some people claim that it's because of an all-purpose learning device in our brains, but that is false (see here and here). We have pre-programmed mechanisms (also called modules) in our brains that are designed to learn a language.
We can think of the brain as a computer that is loaded with many useful programs and libraries that learn from the environment. We have mechanisms for face recognition, short-term memory, naive physics, cheater detection, incest avoidance, naive psychology, food disgust, general intelligence, etc. If you lack a module in your brain, you can't circumvent it by learning; the same way you can't fly or breathe under water, because you lack important body parts. Cats and dogs won't be able to talk to us unless their brain evolves and after a stroke you might lose the ability to talk coherently. Malfunctioning brain mechanisms are also the root causes of disorders like Down syndrome, Asperger syndrome and prosopagnosia.
Rider on a elephant
A very useful metaphor about our brains comes from Jonathan Haidt's excellent book Happiness Hypothesis. Our brains consist of a rider controlling an elephant (Daniel Kahneman uses System 1 and System 2 for essentially the same thing). The elephant is responsible for our emotions, intuition, bodily functions, etc. The rider is responsible for rational thought, self-control, etc. The elephant has very old parts that we inherited from reptiles and mammals, while the rider is very young and is also present in higher mammals.
Ironically, the rational and younger rider thinks that he has full control, while it's often the elephant who makes the big decisions. The rider has only a limited power against the strong elephant. Imagine you heard about an excellent work opportunity, but later decided that commuting 10 more minutes to work is not worth more salary and better work conditions. The elephant was very scared and wasn't going anywhere, so the rider came up with his own story where he has everything under control.
The first principle is that you must not fool yourself—and you are the easiest person to fool. – Richard P. Feynman
Nature versus together with nurture (and randomness)
You know the classic question: is behavior X determined by biology or is it determined by the environment? This question gives the impression of there being only two alternatives, a notion now recognized as a false dichotomy. Robert Sapolsky said it well.
To an overwhelming extent, the age-old “nature versus nurture” debate is silly. The action of genes is completely intertwined with the environment in which they function; in a sense, it is pointless to even discuss what gene X does, and we should consider instead only what gene X does in environment Y. – Robert Sapolsky in Peace Among Primates
An important, but often overlooked, factor is randomness. We have chemical processes running in our bodies that are inherently random and those random events affect our behavior. There is also randomness in people's lives—two people will never go through the same experiences. Randomness is one of the reasons why identical twins raised by the same parents in the same environment end up being slightly different. Another overlooked factor is prenatal environment. What your mom ate and whether she was stressed out during pregnancy affects your behavior forever.
An example of how all this plays out is our status-seeking behavior. We all have a brain mechanism that scans the environment around us, measures our own social status and tries to increase it. Entrepreneurs improve status by starting a successful company, professors by getting their papers published and a hunter-gatherer perhaps by killing a big animal. A basic behavior is provided by nature and then culture and environment shape it into its final form. Note that there are also gender differences, men and women on average seek status differently.
Many people have small jaws these days and therefore problems with teeth not fitting in. It is unlikely that this is caused by bad genes, since only 10 000 years ago people had bigger jaws with better teeth. Scientists theorize that it was because they chewed harder food, while these days it's mostly soft food, so the jaw doesn't develop properly. Our brain is much like the jaw. Overprotected kids suffer a deficit of play and they grow into less creative, less social and less happy adults. Even if a behavior is influenced by genes, the genes need input from the environment for the behavior to develop properly. Nature and nurture are truly inseparable.
Evoked and transmitted culture
Have you ever wondered why nations in colder areas have tasteless food? The classic explanation attributes this to cultural differences. This politically correct answer is completely useless: cultures are different because they are different (although it would be appreciated in the tautology club).
People in warmer regions used spices, because they had to. The commonly used spices have very good antimicrobial properties, so they protect food from spoiling when it's too warm.
Let's now move on to a much more difficult topic than food, namely xenophobia. What you read next might be upsetting, so watch a video of a cute duck first.
Our brains are also pre-programmed to be xenophobic and intolerant, but it seems to be very dependent on the environment around us. Suppose you are a hunter-gatherer living in the mountains. The spring and summer were surprisingly cold and the food is scarce, so you descend from the mountains where you meet another tribe. The tribe has been living in an environment with different pathogens (bacteria, viruses, parasites), so you are not immune to them but they are. Exposure to those pathogens might harm you and even kill you. What might evolution do? It makes you avoid strangers, because they might carry dangerous pathogens. It also makes you avoid new things and be more conservative, because your old ways of living are proven to be safe. Remember that evolution is an amoral process that only cares about transmission of genes, so it sometimes leads to such unpleasant results.
There is also good news, though. People living in areas with fewer pathogens are less xenophobic, more tolerant and open to new experiences. If you live in a safe environment, it's less likely that a contact with a stranger or a new experience will harm you. Rather than avoiding strangers, it's more beneficial to meet them and perhaps trade goods with them.
All of this sounds reasonable, but did we really evolved to be this way? One can do experiments to confirm the theory. In one experiment, people that heard news about a recent disease outbreak were less open to immigration. Unfortunately, it's hard to do experiments with whole cultures, but we can wait for a natural experiment: different parts of the world get rid of pathogens quicker than others, so we can compare how their levels of xenophobia change over time.
Wait, there is more! Countries with lower prevalence of pathogens also value physical beauty less, have puberty earlier, are more individualistic, have higher IQ, are less violent, are more democratic, have fewer kids, etc. The list is never-ending and it remains true even after controlling for factors like wealth and temperature. Prevalence of pathogens might be the most important factor behind cultural differences. It will take decades to prove causality and not just correlation, but it's very intriguing nevertheless.
In the last 100 years, humanity made a lot of progress; many countries ended racial segregation, gave voting rights to women and are now even considering gay marriage. What if this increased tolerance happened due to progress in medicine, vaccination and better hygiene? This social change is often attributed to our rational selves, but perhaps we only tamed the elephants in our brains.
Other environmental factors that correlate strongly with cultural differences include: temperature, abundance of resources, ratio of men and women, whether they have a nomadic lifestyle, etc. When elements of culture are shaped by the environment, they are called evoked.
People in warmer cultures don't need to use spices anymore, because they have fridges, but such recipes are still used by new generations. Old information is being transmitted, so we call it transmitted culture. It is unclear what elements of culture are evoked and which are transmitted, though. The understanding of our brains is limited, so anyone claiming they completely understand culture is lying.
Improve your personal life
We could apply evolutionary theories to social problems, but I like to use them to improve my own life. Most people who tried public speaking felt nervous about it. Someone then told them to just relax and not think about it. However, this well-intentioned advice only focuses on the rider and completely ignores the elephant in the brain.
What if I told you that a better strategy is to stand straight instead? Your body will lower the level of stress hormones, the elephant will feel less scared and the rider will calm it down easily.
Other life improvements are about the new media: celebrity tabloids, video games, TV, novels, movies and porn. Recall that our genes react to the environment around us. What happens if you spend your free time fighting fictional creatures or watching lives of attractive people that are 5 000 kilometers away? Your behavior in the actual culture you live in will be inappropriate and suboptimal.
I'm not saying you should avoid all the new media completely. For example I read novels and watch movies from time to time, but I try to pick the more realistic ones. However, you should avoid porn and celebrity gossip like the plague. On the other hand, feel free to gossip about the people around you or have sex with them—science has shown that both behaviors are beneficial.
There are plenty of other ways to apply evolutionary theories to your life and if you want to know more, see the reading list at the end of this post. The possibilities are truly endless: you can improve your happiness, make better decisions, lower your stress, become a better writer, become healthier, be more efficient or understand your own gender better.
New theories
Evolutionary psychologists have come up with interesting theories that try to explain many facts of human existence.
Why toddlers are almost indistinguishable from each other.
Why women put on make-up and why men take large risks.
Why parenting style has almost no effect on a child's personality (parents affect child's personality through their genes instead).
Why a small fraction of people is born left-handed.
What if some of the theories turn out wrong? We move on and try to find better explanations. However, some of the theories have already amassed substantial evidence, so they are very likely to be correct.
Interestingly, scientists have failed to provide good evolutionary explanations for humor, male homosexuality, female orgasm and music. Music might be just a by-product of evolution that presses the right buttons all over the brain. Think of it as a pleasurable drug.
Some (flawed) arguments against evolutionary psychology
If behaviors like aggression, psychopathy and xenophobia are encoded in our genes, people think this will give others excuses. You can't kill a person, blame it on your genes and skip going to jail. Since the science can be misused, some people try to stop this line of research. Their flawed reasoning reminds me of my favorite quote.
Numerous studies have shown that at least 98% of murderers were born after a heterosexual intercourse. That's why the European Union should ban people from having sex. – Martin Malý
We could ban sex to end all human suffering, but it would come with at a big price: all the good things human would be gone too.
Mentioning evolutionary psychology or neuroscience often leads to very heated discussions, comparable to those about politics and religion. The new scientific findings affect every single mainstream ideology; it doesn't matter whether you are on the political left or right, an anarchist, a feminist, a Christian or even a vegetarian. Each ideology got something wrong about our minds and bodies.
Some people devoted their lives to an ideology, built their whole identity around it and it's hard for them to admit they were wrong the whole time. Cognitive dissonance then kicks in and people get upset. Many arguments against evolutionary psychology have more to do with emotions rather than objective facts.
Rationality is costly. It prevents us from believing what we want to believe. – Michael Huemer in The Irrationality of Politics
Conclusion
It has been 150 years since Charles Darwin's book On the Origin of Species and people are slowly accepting that evolution is real. However, most people have still trouble accepting that evolution affects our brains too. Many religions have accepted evolution and it's time for the rest of the world to do the same.
I would like to end the post on a positive note, so let me quote Daniel Dennett.
Every living thing is, from the cosmic perspective, incredibly lucky simply to be alive. Most, 90 percent and more, of all the organisms that have ever lived have died without viable offspring, but not a single one of your ancestors, going back to the dawn of life on Earth, suffered that normal misfortune. You spring from an unbroken line of winners going back millions of generations, and those winners were, in every generation, the luckiest of the lucky, one out of a thousand or even a million. So however unlucky you may be on some occasion today, your presence on the planet testifies to the role luck has played in your past. – Daniel Dennett in Freedom Evolves
Further reading and watching
Videos and lectures
The easiest way to start with evolutionary psychology is by watching videos and lectures. It's possible to watch them 25% faster by using the gear button on YouTube.
The Uniqueness of Humans, by Robert Sapolsky. We think that we are the most unique species on Earth but we are actually not that unique.
Darwin's Strange Inversion of Reasoning, by Daniel Dennett. A beautiful connection between biology, evolution and computer science: we are made of trillions of mindless little robots.
Stress, Portrait of a Killer. A document about stress, its origins and consequences. Stress works the same in animals as in us, so we can learn a lot from animals.
A Darwinian theory of beauty, by Denis Dutton. Why do we consider some things more beautiful than others and why are many things considered beautiful all around the world?
Hjernevask, a 7-part Norwegian documentary covers a lot of the new research and features many prominent scientists.
Books
These books take into account evolutionary psychology and neuroscience. Many of them aren't solely about evolution, but they are based on the newest research.
The Naked Ape: A Zoologist's Study of the Human Animal, by Desmond Morris. Even though we think of human species as superior to everything else, underneath everything are we still animals. This is a very old book and it's interesting that many theories have been falsified since then.
The psycho gene by Philip Hunter. There is growing evidence that there is a gene for psychopathy.
Feminism and Evolutionary Psychology by Buss and Schmitt. Feminism is one of the ideologies most affected by evolutionary psychology, but the authors also note that evolutionary theories predict more similarities than differences between genders.
I often go to www.epjournal.net, an open access academic journal, meaning that the articles are accessible for free. It's much more useful than reading the news or mindless browsing the internet.
Recently a couple of friends started a mail discussion on where to live. Some people like to choose places with interesting work opportunities but I think that approach maximizes the wrong thing. I think that happiness should be the ultimate factor. When it comes to happiness the more important question is how to live instead of where to live.
So how should you live? I think science, namely psychology, can now offer an excellent answer. In the last couple of decades psychology evolved from a "quackery" into a solid science. The Happiness Hypothesis book by Jonathan Haidt does an excellent job of presenting the latest research on happiness. I particularly like Haidt's thorough scrutiny of known facts. For example, it is known that married people are happier. But are they happier because they are married or are they married, because they are happy and thus more attractive to others?
Here is my short summary of the book.
Perhaps the most important factor is how well socially connected you are—your family, friends or local community are very important. When it comes to a local community, I have been a member of various sport clubs or volunteering groups and many of my happiest memories come from these communities. And don't let me started on all thememorieswith friends.
Some people mistakenly equal comfort and pleasure with happiness, but it doesn't work that way. If you derive happiness from drinking wine, after a while it wears off and you would need to upgrade to a more expensive wine or find something else instead (see hedonic treadmill). Stoics and Buddhists were right: go ahead and take a cold bath!
Nietzsche was right when he said "That which does not kill us makes us stronger". In the last 4 years I have struggled with health problems, but I think I'm happier as a result. I really appreciate ordinary things like a good friend or a day without pain. Also, lack of adversity is one of the reasons why overprotected kids end up being less happy adults.
Money only buys you happiness until a certain level of income and then they don't matter anymore. If you want to use money to increase happiness, use them on other people or buy experiences instead. There is also new evidence that saving might be the best option.
Altruism is a great source of happiness. Giving a gift is more beneficial to the person giving the gift rather than the one receiving it.
Work is not as important as most people think, but it has a measurable effect particularly if you have some autonomy in your work. Also, many people experience flow when they are immersed in a challenging exercise. I remember countless nights when I barely drank or ate until a particular math or programming problem was done.
Genes and early environment are an important factor in happiness but they are the thing of the past, so there is little you can do.
The place where you live is not as important as people think. You'll be as happy in sunny California as in cold and dark Tromsø. Although there are some environmental factors that stress you out and make you less happy, like commuting or high noise levels. Stress in general is a bad thing and not just for happiness.
Some sense of morality and meaning of life are important too. Traditionally these have been provided by religions but atheists also need them to be happy.
If I were to sum up the book in one sentence, it would be "Relationships matter the most and career, money and comfort are overrated." Your grandma would probably tell you the same thing, but it's good when scientific findings agree with reality for once.
Live like my parents
My parents have lived their life as preached by Happiness Hypothesis even though they haven't read it. They have very strong social ties, spend money mostly on travelling and don't work a lot.
For example, my father is a doctor but he is better known as the head of an orienteering club. He doesn't have an impressive professional career but he has a spectacular career as a volunteer. Did you know that Pezinok once hosted the World School Orienteering Championships? Alright, you have probably never heard of the small town Pezinok, but still...
When it comes to money, they spend most of it on experiences. My brother and I didn't have a lot of fancy things while growing up, but by the time I was 10 years old I have been to half of Europe. They still travel a lot with their small community of 20–30 people, doing things like biking for a week in the Alps. Most people my age wouldn't dare to go on the bike tours these almost retired people manage to do.
Economic systems
Do you know what is absolutely essential in capitalism? Reputation and trust. When you buy a meal in a restaurant, you trust the employees that they will not serve you spoiled food that makes you sick. If they did that, you wouldn't come back and you would tell all your friends to stay away from the restaurant. The reputation of the restaurant would get damaged, people would trust them less and the restaurant would get fewer customers. They might lower their prices as a result.
If this happened repeatedly, you would mistrust restaurants altogether and stop eating out. This would then lead to an inefficient outcome: you could be doing your normal job instead, get a higher salary for that and then use it to buy an excellent meal. Instead you forgo your salary and cook a mediocre meal at home, while the restaurant decreases its revenue. When people don't trust companies, everyone is worse off—the regular people as well as the companies. By the way, high level of trust (and capitalism) is one of the secrets behind the Scandinavian success.
Sometimes capitalism doesn't lead to good outcomes. People near a major tourist attraction just come and go, so the owner of a restaurant might not care about reputation and serve bad food (word of advice: don't shop near tourist attractions). In a closely knit community you can't afford cheating like that, because people would gossip about you and maybe even exclude you from the community. Evolutionary psychologists theorize that our obsession with gossip makes a community well-functioning. Gossip is a great tool, you quickly get to know who's a cheater and who's honest.
When you are doing transactions in a community, you rarely pay the market price, if you pay at all. When you help a friend move, you might get a lunch as a reward. Even a friendly outing to a bar is a transaction: you trade your time and company in exchange for theirs.
Being a member of a community gives you access to goods that capitalism is bad at providing. Only a friend's hug feels like a friend's hug. Only your grandma can cook a pork knee exactly like your grandma. Only your friend can plan a vacation tailored for your small gang taking into account everyone's preferences. No company can ever do those things, although the Japanese would disagree.
The economic system I just described is very similar to socialism. Socialism and capitalism have both its place in a society and both have advantages and disadvantages. Once you start applying them where they don't belong, you'll get into trouble. If you charge your partner each time you have sex, your relationship won't last long. If you make a whole country use socialism, it will also end in a disaster, because it takes enormous brain power and gossip to track reputation in a huge community. The people who founded the Soviet Union overestimated the capacity of our brains by a factor of about one million.
A small community has a cultural advantage in addition to an economical one. You can ignore your country's culture, since you spend most of your time in your own subculture. You can also ignore politics to a large extent. When a politician messes up unemploymeent benefits, you stay calm, because you have 10 people who would help you if needed.
Work is less important
Apart from work not being the main factor in happiness, I see many other problems with prioritizing work over everything else. For example, if you move to a different place solely for work, you severely cut your social ties. Most people think they will find new friends in the new place, but that rarely works out. Most expats end up befriending other expats and only integrate with the locals very slowly. If you really want to prioritize work, choose a place with more expats.
I also realized that where and what I work with doesn't matter that much. I like to do many things and most of them can be done almost anywhere.
I really enjoy writing and people seem to enjoy reading my articles. My most successful post I wrote for Spotify has been viewed 49 000 times until now.
I also like to organize vacations for my friends and they trust me that I pick good places. In the summer I can barely focus on regular work and I often procrastinate by planning vacations.
From the jobs I have actually been paid to do, I have enjoyed teaching the most. That is another option that can be done almost anywhere.
All jobs mentioned above—writer, travel guide and teacher—usually don't offer high salary, but that is not an issue if you don't care about money, as I explain below.
Early retirement
My life turned around by 900 degrees (that's 360 + 360 + 180 for the mathematically inclined) when I started reading about saving, investing and early retirement. Did you know that you can retire in 17 years if you manage to save half your salary every month?
What happens when I save enough to retire? I won't start laying around doing nothing! I might just do something else than before, like starting a travel agency specializing in bathing in ice-cold lakes all over the world. Perhaps I could write books or teach courses about bathing in those ice-cold lakes. These ideas might not be very profitable but that doesn't matter, since my investments would provide enough income anyway. Interestingly, I achieve flow more often when working on hobby projects than in regular jobs, so doing this should also increase my happiness. And I would also like to work less than 40 hours a week to have times for activities and people that make me more happy.
You might think that saving 50% is impossible, especially in this economy. This is nuts, because you have it 10 times easier than your great-great-grandmother. People in the US spend less than 13% of their income on food, while in 1950 it was 30% and I bet similar development has happened all over the world. A couple of centuries ago sometimes even 100% of your income wasn't enough during a famine. People are so poor that whenever I go to a shopping mall in any modern country, it's always full of people. With such enormous economic prosperity and wealth people still have trouble surviving from paycheck to paycheck and happiness is not increasing. Everything is amazing right now and nobody is happy.
Buying expensive things doesn't make you happy, so why would you waste money on them? If you imagine yourself retiring in 15 years and having more time to do things that make you truly happy, getting rid of your expensive habits becomes a piece of cake.
The rise of the robots and artificial intelligence is also a very good reason to save as much as possible, because we will all lose jobs sooner or later.
Conclusion
The message of all the knowledge about economics, stock market and the science of happiness is crystal clear to me. Use capitalism to get wealthy, retire early, embrace the power of socialism and increase your happiness in the process. Marxists used to say that socialism is the next step after capitalism and I guess they were right. I still think that Marxism is a dangerous ideology that killed at least 100 million people, but deep inside of it lies a bit of truth.
A good place to look for wisdom is where you least expect to find it: in the minds of your opponents. – Jonathan Haidt in Happiness Hypothesis
After 5 years of ski touring me and Martin finally mustered some courage to try High Tatras in Slovakia, our highest mountain range. Their unpredictable weather and rough terrain make them very dangerous. To top it off, a couple of days before our planned arrival the weather was awful—freezing rain followed by snow and very strong wind. Thanks to an icy base layer, there was very little snow but high avalanche danger. Our plan was to go up to Zbojnícka chata chalet and assess the local avalanche danger ourselves. There must be at least one good slope to ski!
Wednesday
Poprad in –21 degrees Celsius.
We went up to Zbojnícka chata as planned. Suprisingly, the amount of snow was decreasing with increasing altitude. The last bit below the hut was very icy and we both hated it, because we took our skis off at least 5 times. After a short nap at the hut we went outside to exercise avalanche rescue and dig some snow pits. The first snow pit was completely safe which we couldn't believe, so we dug another one in less deep snow. A column of snow failed before we even started an avalanche test.
A snow column fell even before we started executing a test.
I jokingly said that I'm staying in the hut tomorrow, but I was hoping we would find a safe slope the next day. It started snowing in the evening and I was really happy. At least the annoying ice will be covered by snow.
Thursday
The safest slope in the valley was below Svišťové sedlo (marmot saddle). I was expecting a cloudy day but the sky opened as we approached the saddle.
The Sun finally reached us. Or did we reach the Sun?
When the slope exceeded 30 degrees, we decided to dig a snow pit and make another avalanche test. The snow was deep and the slope safe! The conditions in this particular valley looked perfect and nobody has been here for a couple of days. We left the skis and climbed the last meters with ice axes.
Martin climbing the last few meters.
Rovienková dolina
Happy to be in the saddle.
The view was great and the Sun was shining. Time to ski down.
Safe route choice. All other routes were either steeper or more wind-loaded.
We skied down to Zbojnícky spád which had a lot of blown-in snow. Perfect! After skinning back to the hut, Martin swore that he'll either end with ski touring or buy new skis, because his skins were slipping a lot on a steep slope. It was still only about 1pm, so why not practice self-arrest? This is a useful technique to stop a fall on a slippery slope with your ice axe. We survived even this exercise.
Friday
The weather forecast predicted high winds on Friday. Some parts of High Tatras got winds of speed 100 km/h, but the valley was calmer. This is no weather for ski touring, so we decided to head back to civilization early in the morning.
High winds up in the mountains
It was mostly alright, although sometimes we had to stop to let the wind gusts disappear.
All in all, it was a great trip. It turned out to be very educational besides all the skiing and climbing. For the first time I saw a snow pit test failing and we also did some useful avalanche and mountaineering exercises.
Small selection of my photos is on Flickr and an album merged from 2 cameras including some videos is on Google Photos. Martin also made a YouTube video in Slovak from the trip (just don't take inspiration from the first avalanche test, it was poorly performed).
Last year a doctor told me to take histamine antagonists every day and I lowered the dosage almost immediately to about 20%, because taking it every day was too much. This worked well for about a year but I was slowly acquiring debt that I had to pay back later. Histamine is essential for the body and if you start messing with it, the body fights back. I tried to get off the medication, but then I couldn't sleep instead. At the same time my stomach problems got worse. Sometimes I had to give lectures and I could only do a good job if I didn't eat for 18 hours. Paradoxically, my stomach didn't like food.
I started taking too many sick days. It reached a point when I felt truly powerless and I cried for the first time in ages. But as one of the best amateur psychologists Louis CK says, you are lucky to live sad moments (the important bit starts at 1:11, but you should watch the whole video).
When you have the three basic F's—family, friends and
F-You money—you have absolutely nothing to worry about and the sadness will quickly disappear.
After this moment I went on a sick leave for a couple of months. My suspicion for stomach problems turned out to be correct when I received a new stomach diagnosis while visiting my parents in Slovakia. I don't see a point of revealing this one, so I just call it diagnosis X. After starting the treatment, I have immediately gained 4 kilograms, although there are still some unresolved issues and I have a suspicion that there is a deeper problem causing both histamine intolerance and diagnosis X.
I am still taking very cold showers and try to exercise, but I have to agree with the guy who once said:
Cold showers are a great tool, but they are not a solution to all your problems. – Lukáš Poláček
I know, I know, I'm quoting myself, but that is not the first time I have done that, so you have to deal with it.
It was time to go back to Sweden. This time I came back prepared for the Swedish doctors.
Professional patient
A few years ago a private company mailed my blood to Germany for a histamine intolerance test, because the diagnosis is mostly unknown in Sweden. In the next couple of years I got used to explaining the diagnosis to the Swedish doctors. This year after getting my diagnosis X in Slovakia, my general doctor told me that Sweden doesn't have a tradition of treating it. Cool, now I can educate the Swedish doctors about 2 diagnoses at once!
Even though I have read quite a lot about my problems, I decided to do much more and become a professional patient. I started by reading some medical books as well as various internet resources. Recently I have also started to read scientific papers in medicine. If you ever plan to be sick, don't be scared of medical textbooks, they are quite readable and often have nice pictures.
The doctors of course don't like patients who self-diagnose themselves and I'm not encouraging you to do the same. When you are in a restaurant, you don't go to the kitchen and show the cook how to sear a steak; but when you order Château Lafite year 1869 and get 1898 instead, you immediately recognize the difference in taste and complain. A doctor once tried to give me medicine that would not work. After telling him that, he admitted I was right and referred me to a specialist instead.
I think most doctors take this self-education well. One time I couldn't recall the Swedish word for a certain body part, so I used the Latin word instead and the doctor asked me if I study medicine. I think that actually helped my interaction with him.
I want to thank my friend Miro who has been a professional patient for a long time and has been an inspiration to me.
Misaligned incentives
When it comes to saving for retirement, I advise my friends to manage the savings themselves, because whether you leave it to the government or a private company, they will not act in your best interest. The problem is that their incentives are not aligned with yours (except for Vanguard, whose founder should get a medal). If you don't want to get screwed, you should educate yourself or ask a friend whom you trust.
You will encounter misaligned incentives in the health care, too. For a doctor paid by the government you are an expense, so they might make as little effort as possible. A private doctor might keep you sick, so that you return many times and keep paying. And then there are various scammers trying to sell you expensive placebos. Believing that the government will act in your best interest is as naive as believing that a private company would put your interests before their profit.
So far the only solution I found to this problem is self-education. This is not the first time that reading about economics and game theory helped me solve some real life problems. That's why you should read non-fiction books too.
Swedish health care
Sven C. Larsson in the book Remaking America mentions examples of patients treated badly by the Swedish health care system. He compares some situations with the removal of life boats from Titanic, because not enough are available for all the ship's passengers.
A sure way to achieve equality is to make everyone suffer. But once people know about it, they start to cheat. They would bring inflatable life boats on Titanic in their baggage. I brought my inflatable life boat by getting a diagnosis in the Slovak health care system and educating myself. This is to be expected, since equality is an unstable equilibrium.
I'm not saying private doctors are perfect; they have made mistakes too. Two months ago, I borrowed a medical book that was co-written by a private doctor that I visited before. Apparently he's an expert on the topic and he is often interviewed in the national media. Despite all this he also didn't find diagnosis X.
Experts will continue making mistakes, but the government-funded system does very little to counteract them. You might meet a doctor that can't help you and then you need to wait 2 more months for another one, while you continue to suffer. If you are in Sweden, buy private insurance; it's cheap and worth it.
There are some positive things about the government-funded system, for example it's world-class when it comes to preventing people from dying. However, people who are not in the immediate danger of dying need to wait for a long time and are often given a bad service.
After 4 years of lousy treatment and low quality of life, I don't trust the Swedish doctors anymore whether they are private or government-funded. I would appreciate any tips for other countries with a functioning health care system.
My PhD
With all these health problems and uncertainty, I decided not to finish my PhD. The sick leave that I accumulated over the years and working 20% at Spotify would still give me about a year to finish, but health is a top priority now. I am still taking a couple of sick days every month and I am slowly writing a small thesis to finish with a smaller degree called licentiate (the degree is almost unknown outside of Sweden).
Even if I won't finish with a degree I wanted, all the scientific education has proved useful when reading scientific papers in medicine. And I have probably read more medical than computer science papers this year, so I already feel like I switched fields. Recently I have seen some exciting studies done on rats, guinea pigs and cows that show that some of my problems might be treatable. It's time to replicate these studies on humans.
In the previous year, I have given advice to many people about saving and investing, so I thought I would put some useful tips into one post. I don't consider myself an expert on the topic, so it's mostly links to other blogs and books. Enjoy!
Introduction to F-You money
Having F-You money brings your stress level down and makes you happier. Once you have enough of it, you can say F-You to your boss and do nothing for the next couple of months. Or say F-Everyone and retire when you are half the age of other retirees, but getting there takes longer. Just don't say F-You too often, most people don't like it.
It’s a big beautiful world out there. Money is a small part of it. But F-You money buys you the freedom, resources and time to explore it on your own terms. Retired or not. – Jim Collins
By having F-You money, you are becoming one of the bad rich guys: your savings help some companies create new jobs, expand or innovate. While doing that, you are refraining yourself from consumption and helping our poor planet.
How do you do it?
Forget your bank's mutual funds where you get a worse product for higher price. Real (wo)men buy cheap index fund ETFs on the stock exchange. Every couple of months I take some money and buy ETFs on Berlin or New York stock exchange, while ignoring the price. I also own some bond funds. I buy mostly Vanguard. I never sell and I don't keep an eye on the stock market. Trying to outsmart a random walk is very risky.
The most bulletproof strategy for saving each month is to take money from your salary on the pay day and move it to an account that is not connected to a debit or credit card. You might have been told that you have already made a good investment by buying your house, but that might have been a huge mistake.
One of the typical Slovak pastimes is complaining. Slovaks are so poor that when you go to any shopping mall, it's always full of people. And for them I have one message: as shocking as it sounds, the only way to get richer is to save. The politicians tell you the opposite – they tell you the economy needs more consumption. But what they mean is that they get richer from your consumption through taxes. What your (and my) country needs is capital. So instead of complaining, go ahead and do something about it; save 20% of your salary each month, that's a good start.
The Nordic championships in programming (NCPC) and UK/Ireland championships (UKIEPC) 2014 took place last Saturday. For the second time I was the head of the jury together with Michał Pilipczuk from University of Bergen (now at Warsaw). This was one of my most memorable contests as a jury member, so I wanted to share some things that happened behind the scenes.
First some interesting facts about the contest.
We had 257 teams in NCPC and 68 teams in UKIEPC. Most teams had 3 people, so we had almost 1000 people participating in 7 different countries!
The jury could solve the whole contest (11 problems) in 463 lines of code. Something to brag about: 4 of the shortest solutions were mine.
The winning team, Omogen Heap, solved all 11 problems 80 minutes before the end, when the second team only had 9 solved problems. These are the guys I have been coaching since high school and I have mentioned them in one of my previous posts.
The hardest problem Basin City Surveillance had 33 solutions from the judges: 11 correct, 9 wrong and 13 slow ones. There were 76 test cases, most of them hand-crafted.
Now let me talk more about the hardest problem.
Basin City Surveillance
The problem: check if there is an independent set of size k in a bounded degree graph, where each vertex has at most 4 neighbors. See problem B here for the full problem statement. Initially, the upper limit on k was 11, which allowed 5k algorithms to pass.
On the last Sunday before the contest, I sat down to write a random solution that seemed too simple to pass: it adds a random vertex into the independent set and erases its neighbors, and repeats this until there are no vertices left. If it fails to find k independent vertices, it restarts from the beginning with an empty set.
I was expecting such algorithm to require too many restarts, but only 100 restarts were enough to solve all the current test cases. I constructed some test cases that required 300 restarts, but my solution was still the fastest by far.
At about the same time, Per Austrin sent an e-mail suggesting that we raise the upper limit on k to 15, because he wrote a 3k solution and thought the whole contest was too easy otherwise. Interesting! Per's and mine solutions were intriguing enough that falling asleep on Sunday took me too long.
Michał was against raising the limits at first, but at Monday lunch we decided to go for it to make the contest more interesting, even though there were only a few days left. The next couple of days we were all busy writing all kinds of solutions and test cases killing those solutions; that's why we had 76 test cases and 33 solutions. In the mean time, we also managed to prove that my random solution needs on average at most 3k restarts.
Why the random solution needs only 3k restarts?
First we need to prove a lemma that is important when you want to speed up the 5k algorithm to 3k. For a vertex u we have two options: either it is in some maximum independent set or it isn't. If it isn't, at least two of its neighbors are. One can prove this by contradiction. If only one neighbor v is in an optimal set, then we can substitute v for u and get an optimal solution with u in it – a contradiction. And if none of u's neighbors are in an optimal set and neither is u, then this can't be an optimal set: we could add u to it to make it larger. Again a contradiction.
Using this lemma one can write a 3k backtracking algorithm, that either picks a particular vertex or two of its neighbors. With a little more insight this can be sped up to 2.31k.
By the way, this been the first and probably the last time I have written a program with complexity 2.31k. The slides contain the recurrence that leads tosuch complexity. If you want to be able to solve such recurrence, Concrete Mathematics is the recommended reading.
With some more work, the lemma above also implies that my random algorithm has 1/3k chance of succeeding. The following proof is by Per Austrin. We call a vertex good if it is in some maximum independent set and bad otherwise. Let G be the fraction of good and B be the fraction of bad vertices, so we have G + B = 1. The claim is that there is at least one third of good vertices: G ≥ 1/3.
Let us count the number of edges L that connect good with bad vertices. By the lemma, a bad vertex has at least two good neighbors, so L ≥ 2Bn (n is the total number of vertices). We have a bounded degree graph, so each good vertex has at most 4 bad neighbors, 4Gn ≥ L. From these two observations, 4Gn ≥ 2Bn and 2G ≥ B. Since G + B = 1, G ≥ 1/3.
At each step my algorithm has 1/3 chance of picking a good vertex, so in total it has 1/3k chance of succeeding. The average time complexity is therefore 3k when an independent set of size k exists.
Omogen Heap's solution is also 3k
Omogen Heap first submitted a slow 2n solution with a very small optimisation. In the next submission, they randomized their choices and added a cutoff: after 50 million iterations exit and print "impossible". They got accepted, solving everything 80 minutes before the end.
At first I thought the solution was too slow and our test data too weak, because I have overlooked the randomisation part. I told them that they got lucky. But with randomisation such solution actually has the same running time as my random algorithm, since the chance of stumbling upon a solution is high, 1/3k.
