I bring this up because Steve Jobs passed away the other day and it had to do with complications with his cancer. I spent last night trying to remind myself that Steve's story is not my story (obviously). But yes, I guess it's a reminder of mortality.
Other things I tend to be somewhat superstitious about are things like foods or smells that I smelled or ate once and had some effect on how sick or well I was feeling. Chemo, like a sports event, has many times you can do something and get a good result so you do it again and again without any kind of basis in reality for it being a cure. (like "lucky socks" or something)
I've seen this in an IT capacity as well. If I do x (touch the monitor a certain way, mount the server with gold pins, etc) then it has fewer errors. Maybe nothing as blatant as the gold pins, but I am sure I do some things simply because it worked once.
Think about it. What things do you believe that aren't based in truth? And how do you combat them?
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I've never seen more superstitious people than group of highly educated and intelligent men sitting around a table of dice. People that deal with numbers and logic for a living are suddenly reduced to comments like "This one's cursed, hand me that green one" and "This is my night, I just can't roll a low number". I have no idea why.
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