Early Retirement Extreme Forums

@jacob Most social change starts from the bottom up, reaches critical mass and then gets mass implementation via the top-down (state laws and policies). I don't think we're in disagreement here. To reiterate, apart from spreading the word, I think there's still theoretical work to be done. I really ...

The majority of people are still financial illiterates, which is both sad and ironic given how much importance society ascribes to money. Like, here's literally the most important piece of paper/slices of metal in the world. You can buy almost anything with it. It's what people give you for working...

Imagine if humanity had used capitalism to realize what Keynes wrote about his letter to his grandchildren. Instead of becoming reliant of buying and replacing egg cookers every time the last one went out of fashion or broke from deliberately bad construction [in order to solve Borsodi's distributi...

But the tech is there, right? The fact that there were x-million human caused accidents last year is overlooked. Every single robot caused accident get publicity. The current FSD is much better than actual human drivers, just not perfect. Will it ever be perfect? Mercedes got their car actually app...

@Sclass yep, it's pretty cool for what it is. However, Musk's sales pitch back in 2016 or so was for people to pre-pay the extra $10k (or whatever it was) for FSD, because once it lands, their Teslas will be able to work as autonomous taxis 24/7, and will only appreciate in value. Obviously, 8 years...

As of 2024, Tesla Full Self Driving is still a lie. It's still not certified as an autonomous vehicle, because it's still not safe. So, the so called FSD is still just a glorified driver assist tool. As far as I know, the only car on the market with actual (but very limited) FSD is Mercedes, where y...

At the meta level one would also have to consider the positive and negative aspects of performing a WOG analysis, and then the positive and negative aspects of the meta-level consideration, etc. etc. infinite regress. This is why at this juncture in my life, I would seriously consider trading 10 IQ...

There's a good amount of ex-Starcraft pros who became poker pros.

-Visceral reminder that you carry all your old baggage with you wherever you go. Sometimes I'd wonder why I'm not happier sitting in paradise, doing what I've dreamed about for years. Sitting at a picture-perfect Thai sunset or Vietnamese beach and not feeling that much more content than I did back...

There is a car price guide here called Parkers which just celebrated 50 years in existence. As part of that they compared the price of the median car when they started to the modern equivalent. The price had increased by twice the rate of inflation, approximately inline with the increase in earning...

They are always available, cheap, fun, no hangover. Once you know that, you are doomed. I don't think it's that much of a problem. For me personally, it's almost impossible to find a new game I'd enjoy. Most are simply in genres I never had interest in, or are a reskin/ripoff of a game I already kn...

@jacob I'm around five years younger than you, so I missed the entire BBS thing. I got on the relatively early stages of Internet though (from 1996 onwards IIRC), and I think it greatly expanded my horizons. For one thing, I participated in discussions with people much older and mature from me on va...

I'm struggling to come up with something that cellphones+computers+internet have added other than convenience. Most humans don't use computers as computers ... Internet made knowledge universal, which disproportionally helped people who can take advantage of knowledge being available to them (i.e. ...

@Scott, if you don't mind me asking, how did you manage to do well in a demanding tech executive job with both ADHD and autism? It seems that either one of them would be a serious obstacle for such job (autisms makes it hard to read and influence people, while ADHD hinders general execution).

Full size truck from the 80s or 90s with a v8. An ERE peak-oiler in a v8 truck would be quite a sight. However, one could argue that, if not driven often, taking the v8 off the market would be actually doing the world a favor, as it would minimize the waste (vs a counterfactual scenario, where some...

ETA: I have sometimes wondered about the tradeoff of getting a much newer vehicle with low mileage and keeping it alive for as long as possible versus a treadmill of used cars at 8-12 year old range. Tough to analyze even when considering depreciation schedules…newer vehicles have better safety fea...

Let's keep an eye out for an increase in bear maulings.

I'm not entirely sure if this story is an inspiration or a cautionary tale, but nevertheless it's interesting. It's about a guy relentlessly pursing his art while making little to no money:

https://thebaffler.com/odds-and-ends/it ... man-wilson

Nearly done with my last assignment. I still feel I owe this subject (Mathematics at large) more attention, too much skimming the surface the last year and a half. In particular, this module I am doing now is a brand new one and the amount of 'we state this without proof' makes my heart sink. I did...

Thanks for suggestions. It's not that easy to be cat-like while weighting 95 kg (I guess tigers are gracious even at 300 kg, but humans aren't tigers :). I think my downstairs neighbor is working 7-to-3 during the week, I can fit the excercise then. I have a lingering, chronic shoulder and Achilles ...