I'm glad this worked out amiably and that the forum didn't explode overnight. A bunch of things ...
The Wheaton table was originally designed because it was a recurring problem that someone figured that all they needed to do to solve "their friend's financial problem" was to point them towards ERE. Failure inevitably obtained. That's the eco-scale equivalent of telling someone who is worred about climate change that they should sell their McMansion and move into a wofati and grow a garden forest and all will be well. (And yes, people sincerely recommend this as a first step all the time!) Instead the table was intended for people familiar with ERE to meet people where they are. Much similar to having discussions about morality with children using the Kohlberg scale: When Johnny bullied Bob, it's better to have a talk [with Johnny] about how he thinks that made Bob feel and the importance of being nice to each other (Kohlberg3 vs Johnny's Kohlberg2) than to start a Kohlberg5 discussion about "how the decision not to hit each other has been codified into law under democratic principles". The ERE wheaton table worked very well for this. Spouses and friends would be given a copy of Dave Ramsey, Bogleheads, or JL Collins depending on their understanding using the table to effectively gauge their understanding.
The first uninteded side-effect was that some began to use the table to rank themselves. Sometimes this worked---in cases where people were used to dealing with "loose tables". Other times it failed spectacularly when people came in from other "table usage cultures".
The second unintended side-effect was that some began to see the table as a personal development reference. This was okay because if you're WLn, the table was also constructed in a way that the WLn+1 descriptions made sense. This is like how if you're in the 8th grade math class and look at a 9th grade math book or sit in on a class, much of it but not all of it makes sense and seem within reach.
The third and worst uninteded side-effect was was that others saw it as a cheat-sheet or fast track to skip a grade or even multiple grades. "Why spend time on WL4->5 when I can just go directly from WL4->7". It seemed a short step to point out that those higher n+3 descriptions, for a given n, were "hard to understand" and that someone (read jacob) should figure out how to communicate e.g. WL7 in a plain-spoken manner so everybody could understand it, preferable on one sheet of paper to avoid having to spend all of one afternoon on it. The implication was also that if one was smart enough one should be able to edit the table accordingly. More questions about whether the table or even ERE itself was deliberately designed to be obtuse or overcomplicated. This is when my head exploded.
Look, I understand the attraction. There are things like this
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=P ... npAIlKgm3N ... please pick one, any one, that looks interesting to you and watch the whole damn thing and come back. I'll wait.
No, seriously!
I could do this for ERE. Maybe in yet another podcast. Maybe in another table. However, that table would be different from the ERE Wheaton table. Because THAT problem is not a Wheaton problem, that is, figuring out where to meet people to provide them with proper material. This new problem, lets call it the "ERE WIRED table" is about explaining a complex philosophy like ERE to respectively a child, a high schooler, an undergraduate, a grad student, and an expert. For the "ERE WIRED table" it would be different people; maybe the 5 people would be "CFP advisor", "Wall Street trader", "Permaculturist", "Survivalist", and "SAHM".
So basically, there's nothing wrong with ERE Wheaton table in terms of design or communication. It works just fine the way it's intended for those it's intended for. The issue is that some want a different table, which I suspect is an "ERE WIRED table" type of thing. Perhaps they want to "explain ERE to their parents"---but this is a very different problem than figuring out how to get their parents to set up a budget or realize that they could have a nicer home if they spent less on cars.
There's of course another side-effect that comes with an ERE WIRED table. It is quite conceivable that the proverbial high-schooler will conclude after listening to WIRED's youtube explanation that "Ahhh, now quantum mechanics is suddenly all clear to me. Let me have a Socratic debate where I challenge some of the assumptions of that expert professor over there. They should be able to withstand some of my criticisms."
That would be this:
https://xkcd.com/675/ Please click.
Again, I'll wait. Seriously!
And this:
https://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Chesterton%27s_Fence
I'll wait! It's just one paragraph.
To which I say fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck or something to that effect (pardon my sailor-speak). The problem here was experienced in several threads most notably the "climate wars" and the "index wars". Namely, the Mt Stupid effect. Once people know a little (enough to be dangerous) but not enough to realize how little they know, they become rather obnoxius. Worse, because this is the internet, other people (third-person), who often don't know anything themselves, can often not tell the difference between the "expert" and the "inquisitive idiot running google searches".
If I sometimes (or all the time) come across as condescending it's because I actually do know a lot about certain things and more importantly I know what I don't know and try to respect the limits of my knowledge. If this is arrogant, at least it's not conceited. But verily, if I was paid by the hour by those who initially thought they were watching a Socratic debate between people with equal knowledge but eventually realized and reluctantly admitted (some 200 posts later) that I knew 10x more than my "partner" or the level the debate was held at, ... I'd be rather rich. In my defense, I do think I'm rather quick to bow out against people who clearly know more than I do. I certainly converge towards teacher/student dynamics because two people very seldom come in with equal amounts of knowledge unless they both know close to nothing, which of course is quite common.
Basically Mt Stupid shouldn't really be drawn as a mountain but rather as an equally deep moat or swamp that prevents people who might otherwise learn from learning.
I really don't want ERE (the philosophy) to suffer the same fate as climate science because some insist it should be simplified enough for everybody to have an opinion.
Well, if you want "simplified ERE" just go and check out the "FIRE movement": "Spend less than you earn. Put your savings in stock market index funds. Repeat until you have 25x your annual spending. Then quit your job." That's the simplistic plain-spoken explanation of ERE. It obviously misses a tragic amount of nuance, depth, motivation, and direction, but it's in a language that "everybody can understand".
What oversimplifying does (to a learning culture) is to drag the level downwards. This is why you don't go to "Facebook Academy" to study quantum mechanics. Those who actually do know or insist on using math eventually leave, because they get tired of answering "race car on a train"-questions over and over. It's a question of forum culture. I've seen forums suffer Eternal September because they got too popular. I suspect this is why MMM doesn't bother much with his own forum anymore. In another FIRE group which used to be cool, maybe half the newbie questions are of the "Should I invest in Global Index Fund ABC or Global Index Fund XYZ?"-type. It's easier to ask than to use the search function.
That is this problem:
https://meaningness.com/geeks-mops-sociopaths
You don't have to read that one.
I've highlighted this one many times before:
Confucius wrote:
If I raise one corner for someone and he cannot come back with the other three, I do not go on.
That's Dennett in a nutshell as far as I can tell: I'm willing to put in my effort in answering a question exactly in proportion to how much thought I perceive the person asking it has put into preparing to understand my answer.
That's also my forum attitude in a nutshell: I'm willing to put in my effort in answering a question exactly in proportion to how much thought I perceive the person asking it has put into preparing to understand my answer.
I'm no classical scholar, but I wonder whether Socrates really had Socratic dialogues or whether the dialogue format was a result of a particular writing technique similar to how classical plays came to feature a person talking with a choir responding back and forth as a way to advance a narrative. Otherwise Socrates must have been driven absolutely bat shit by hundreds of people asking him if he could please explain "logic" again because the dog ate their clay tablet. Remember, Socrates would probably be fine debating Glaucos(SP) but it's a whole other ball game if Socrates is debating a sequential string of Glaucos1-15 doing the same conversation over an over because the other Glaucoses were off having fun elsewhere. I think Confucius understood this and used it as a sorting mechanism. I've been reading Confucius because I think his solutions were better than retreating into a mountain cave like Musashi who eventually got tired of continually being challenged to duels by people who wanted to prove themselves.
There might also be some unspoken contracts here, so to clarify my changing position. I used to think of the forum as a community/knowledge building project but the "account nuking"-crisis and the resulting commentary + a few other developments made it clear to me that I was mistaken and that a forum is not the best format to create this kind of structure. This is also why my efforts here have declined over the past few months. I'm no longer spending time tying up loose threads, filling out blanks, or trying to steer threads in productive directions (except maybe this one). So if the desire is to use the forum for bantering or sharing opinions on how weird Schroedinger's cat is, you can do so, but I'm not your huckleberry. Lifting the remaining corner of ERE-type questions is the only reason I still hang around here. Personally my focus is moving elsewhere although I haven't yet figured out exactly how/where.