Interesting post. As a counterpoint, a famous cycling coach in the UK spent a lot of time talking about “marginal gains”. Essentially the exact opposite philosophy, chasing down all of the tiny improvements. (Random article I found on it: https://jamesclear.com/marginal-gains , although it kind of goes off course at the end into self help stuff.)
Aside, I always assumed the salt in pasta water was for some kind of osmosis thing. My vague reasoning was that water can diffuse in or out of the pasta and the concentration of non-water things (like salt or starch) on the inside vs. outside will control how much the water ‘likes’ one side of the barrier or not.
Interesting post. As a counterpoint, a famous cycling coach in the UK spent a lot of time talking about “marginal gains”. Essentially the exact opposite philosophy, chasing down all of the tiny improvements. (Random article I found on it: https://jamesclear.com/marginal-gains , although it kind of goes off course at the end into self help stuff.)
Aside, I always assumed the salt in pasta water was for some kind of osmosis thing. My vague reasoning was that water can diffuse in or out of the pasta and the concentration of non-water things (like salt or starch) on the inside vs. outside will control how much the water ‘likes’ one side of the barrier or not.
Something like your 3% improvement is another example of epsilon gains working.and perhaps your Realistic expectations for disagreement fit here.