Early Retirement Extreme Forums

I also jumped on the train super late. Peterson's self help stuff seems like sharpened versions of ideas I came to on my own after much derping around. 10-years-ago me would have been truly amazed and possibly saved some time. That being said, beyond the self help I get the vibe that he is the guy w...

I disagree somewhat with the characterization of this system as nepotism. Parents seem to be paying for skills to a significant degree, and unless we are saying those skills are only signalling competence rather than actual competence, the yuppie kid probably would in fact do a better job than the p...

I'm wondering which social engineering mechanism we can use to bring back the folksy wisdom. Also, technology seems to have created a set of jobs with an extremely wide variation in cognitive and conscientiousness requirements. Sometimes the pay does not always match the requirements, but I would sa...

FIRE seems to dovetail pretty well with the aspirational class ethos (The Sum of Small Things), as long as, as the other thread mentioned, a certain aesthetic minimum is maintained. If Jacob would only spring for a new jacket, the New Yorker's the limit.

@Stahl, I think you might have extrapolated too much from what I said. My point was that discussing UBI, or any social program, is often made more difficult by the tendency for some of its proponents to wrap it in moralism from the outset. That is an unfalsifiable position and pretty darn sneaky giv...

@Solvent: I'd say an additional issue in the debate is the tendency for there to be no upper bound on social justice-iness. "[insert whatever] is a basic human right" is, for some people, an unimpeachable invocation. Incidentally, that article seems to indicate more that there is public op...

As a kid who didn't see a classroom environment until college, I got to experience this kind of situation from the third perspective. My parents are extremely conservative Christians and didn't think even the local church-run schools were of sufficient quality, theologically or otherwise. Our crowd ...

Speaking as someone with an undergraduate degree in MSE, it's a pretty weird degree for getting a job. Hiring managers often don't see the point, so you have to explain it to them. By extension, a lot of jobs that could be done by MSE people are not necessarily labeled as such, so typing "give ...

@Jacob Ya, they will definitely work you like a dog, but they need reasonable papers to come out of the effort. One of the big failure modes I have seen in grad school is PIs, through busyness or favoritism, letting some of their students labor pointlessly for months and years. An assistant professo...

@Sclass Getting intel before joining is kind of hit or miss in my experience. I did all the things in terms of pumping the senior grad students for information and it was not particularly informative. Some weird code of silence. On the second run I was able to get accurate information from friends o...

@TWS: The United States. It is my understanding that things are bit more relaxed in Europe. But my experience has definitely been confirmed across multiple departments at my current and undergraduate institutions. I also have second-hand information that it is the same at most other universities in ...

Not surprising. I'm finishing up year four in an engineering program, and it has been a nightmare since about the second month. 80 hour workweeks, advisor consistently getting bored of a project and dropping months of work in the trash, people crying in and after group meeting. I ended up switching ...

Another millennial reporting in. My thoughts (speaking for what an individual can do, not society): Regarding overall outlook, "the system" is not and never will be your friend. You can fight it, subvert it, and bargain with it, but never just go with the flow unless you want to get screwe...

If someone armed with a gun walks up to you with intent to kill and you are on day 10,000 of "no one tried to kill me lately," it doesn't matter if you have the auto-kill particle cannon 3000 holstered. There is a good chance you are going to die. Second, since school shootings are driving...

If you are interested in segueing from geology to something materials science-ish, you could do pretty well with a master's being some kind of tool owner (e.g. semiconductor manufacturing processes or characterization such as SEM). My understanding from people who know is the starting pay can be pre...

Not to say that Ruby Ridge was a victory for freedom-loving people everywhere, but it is somewhat of an illustration of how guns can maintain the balance of power. The feds were being a bit sneaky with Weaver and also decided to go heavy when they arrested him (owing to the existence of guns, I imag...

Any reason you can't make the move without living solo? Do you need to move in the first place? Your effective rate of speed implies you might be driving through a high traffic area at least part of the way. Maybe biking and public transportation is possible from your current location if you don't w...

Assign utils to every point in time under various scenarios, determine your discount rate, and npv it.

Stanford swimmer Brock Turner is appealing his conviction. Apparently the prosecutor was prejudicial in indicating Turner was behind a dumpster when in reality he was next to a three-sided garbage can, i.e. not trying to hide what he was doing. I guess running your reputation through the gutter a se...

@rref: Fortunately, I think talking is a large component of the solution. Also, I am confused about the implied negativity surrounding moralizing. Using an only slightly loose definition, it is one of the primary activities of this community. The fact that it is so successfully done is why I come he...