Early Retirement Extreme Forums

Update:

I decided to do a half-ERE instead of full ERE.

Next month I will start working only 25 hours / week (3 days)

I will still make enough money for a savings rate of 50%

This makes more sense to me than to continue working full time for 6-7 years and then stop working.
(also I don't trust ...

I have a tough decision to make.

If I continue with my early retirement plans, I have to work 6-7 more years for 40 hours per week, and then I would have enough to stop working.
(or at least, do only minimal work)

Or I could go to university, and study physics (or maybe molecular biology), which I ...

"Why Buddhism is true" was a very interesting read.

It's about evolutionary psychology, fear/desire, the ego illusion, nature of conciousness, meditation,
basically a lot of concepts from buddhism scientifically analysed.

@Riggerjack & BRUTE:

this thread should be more about how you avoid becoming lazy / fatalistic if you believe in hard determinism


why would brute avoid becoming lazy and fatalistic? isn't that the whole point of believing in determinism?


I believe in determinism/no free will because I ...

I was just thinking... what is the point of being conscious, especially if you have no free will ?

If we are just biological machines and the brain a big biological computer, 100% determined by physics, what is the point of being conscious ?

Science seems to have no fucking clue what creates ...

Most of the books I read just seem to reinforce / confirm what I already think.
Confirmation bias is a bitch, I really need to focus on reading more books that might change my opinion... constantly challenging the mind
So I would be interested, what books did you read that really changed your mind ...

@Riggerjack & BRUTE:

this thread should be more about how you avoid becoming lazy / fatalistic if you believe in hard determinism

false.

atheist programmers create an atheist universe in which there is no god. now the chances are 50:50. there are infinite other possibilities, lots of them contradictory, so the chances of "hitting" the universe one hopes for are practically zero. any action that would provide positive ...

I want to improve my English skills, which I consider as not very good.

Mainly my writing but also my speaking, but writing is more important.

But I don't want to pay for classes, because that would infer with my ERE goals.

Most of the apps (e.g. duolingo) are too basic, and focused mostly on ...

I think it is only a matter of time until we have very realistic sex robots and also virtual reality simulations.

my personal estimate is the next 10-20 years.

Now if you consider that sex is by far the biggest motivator for almost everything that humans do, I think the impact on society will be ...

A related question.. how do you get rid of old books ?

I don't just want to throw them away (maybe this is irrational, because it's not like the information will be lost to future generations.. an argument that could have been made in the past).

selling them on ebay/amazon is not worth the time ...

Let me attempt an entirely different tack. Prove to me that you have no conscious purpose by initiating no conscious behavior for the next 10 minutes.


How would you evaluate if my behavior was conscious or not ?

I just got a coffee. But to even have the idea to drink coffee:

- you need to ...

A good argument can be made that we are living in a computer simulation:

https://www.simulation-argument.com/simulation.html

Now consider this scenario:

In the future some remaining christians are pissed of from all the rational scientific atheists, and to punish
them create a "christian ...

Thanks for the advice! Will try that out... this possibility never occurred to me for some reason.

I would have to attempt and master some coursework on the topic of Non-linear Dynamics in order to best answer this question, but I am not going to do that right now, because I have other things I want to do first that I feel are more in alignment with my self-interest.

However, I believe that ...

I don't believe in free will.

I think my brain is just a very advanced biological computer and the output (muscle movements) is 100% determined by
the input (everything in the environment, past things that happend to me) and genetics.
There could be some randomness involved because of quantum ...

Seppia wrote: ↑

Thu Nov 02, 2017 4:04 am

Ever heard of the library?

Most of the books I read are not available in the library. For example jacobs ERE book.
Even a big library won't even have 1% of the books available on amazon, there are just too many of them today

I had quite an easy time cutting down on most expenses, but I have this habit of buying 3-4 books on amazon
each month, and then maybe reading 50% of them at best.

I just like to read a lot, and somehow I prefer physical books over eBooks, but I still don't want to waste so much money.

Anyone had ...

My target for end of 2018 is to have 50000€ savings, ~4 years of expenses.
And to be completely debt free (have a 30000€ mortgage still open)

Status update:

In the last few months I had a hard time because of a almost-breakup with my girlfriend.
(she lives in another country now, so we can only see each other a few times a year, she said in the future
she wants to come back, but I don't want to put my hope into that, so in my mind I see ...