The ERE Wheaton Scale

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Re: The ERE Wheaton Scale

Post by jacob »

Religions have also had very many people working at multiple levels for very many years. I'm not short on advice or suggestions but my time and energy is limited. I find that the more time I spend on re-explaining or teaching stuff, the less time I can spend on trailblazing.

I think we're back to the disagreement on whether it is the teacher or the student who need to do the heavy lifting if the student is to learn anything. I think Confucius had the right ideas here.

Perhaps I need to narrow the scope so that the material is only accessible to those who are willing to make the effort? This would free energy for me to explore more.

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Re: The ERE Wheaton Scale

Post by Alphaville »

sure, you can keep this a nerds-only club and move on to explore.

the point of the wheaton eco-scale was communication with the rest of the world, so i guess that biased my understanding of the purpose of your scale.

but paul is into "world domination," lol, and everyone has different pursuits.

blazing ahead keeps one free of the need for "saints" because there's no model to look up to.

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Re: The ERE Wheaton Scale

Post by Alphaville »

jacob wrote:
Mon Apr 05, 2021 10:26 am
I think we're back to the disagreement on whether it is the teacher or the student who need to do the heavy lifting if the student is to learn anything. I think Confucius had the right ideas here.

Perhaps I need to narrow the scope so that the material is only accessible to those who are willing to make the effort? This would free energy for me to explore more.
i don't want to get into a moral discussion about merit.

but consider that the people who do science write abstruse papers, and the people who do education write texbooks.

maybe that's the split. teach more? or research more?

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Re: The ERE Wheaton Scale

Post by jacob »

Communication is not the same as world domination.

Our strategies are also different. Paul uses a quantitative approach trying many different things hoping some stuff will stick and if not no worries. He has as far as I understand several people helping him full time too(?).

I use a qualitative leveraged approach of teaching the lieutenants(*) who in turn may teach the sergeants who teach the soldiers. This is slower but also deeper since it starts "from higher up". It's a little bit like writing economics books to influence politics compared to running for office.

(*) And in order to reach more, I'm looking to teach the captains, but this in turn requires me to become a major.

Eventually there may be someone who turns the ERE Wheaton table into a set of memes or some other thing so those who don't like reading books can also be reached. For a similar example note how the FIRE math from the ERE book was eventually turned into graphs and then an app. Someone did that.

But maybe I should approach this more like Paul does. For example, I could do a kickstarter for $100,000 which I'd say pays two years of my time. During that time, I'll turn the table into something that is understandable at a 6th grade reading level (so mainstream adult) and write it in a way that is context-free. Do you think I'd hit my target? How much of your own money would you be willing to plonk down for such an effort?

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Re: The ERE Wheaton Scale

Post by BookLoverL »

I don't think jacob needs to be the one bringing the concepts to the masses, necessarily. As more people get into related concepts, those people can focus on spreading the message more widely if they're suited to that work. For instance, MMM has done a great job at reaching the "medium to high income" crowd and getting them up to WL4-5. That alone results in a lot of reduced ecological harm from that crowd.

I don't think the ERE forum itself needs to bring people in from every level, either. If too many people from lower levels started showing up here, there would be no space for the more complex discussions because there would be a lot of energy spent on repeatedly answering the same novice questions. It's perfectly alright for beginners to begin in a beginner venue and for the ERE space to be the equivalent of advancing to university.

There's no reason that, say, Alphaville or anyone else couldn't do the work of communicating some of the ideas on a more accessible-to-the-masses level. I personally think jacob has already done a lot of incredibly valuable work by showing that the path is here at all.

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Re: The ERE Wheaton Scale

Post by jacob »

Alphaville wrote:
Mon Apr 05, 2021 10:40 am
maybe that's the split. teach more? or research more?
I think that's exactly the right way to see it. There's a preferred split and I have mine. The bigger the Wheaton gap, the more effort is required to span it. For example, a 2nd grade math teacher needs to reserve a lot of brain space for all the ways one can teach multiplication to children + all the ways children might misunderstand or get it wrong. This is also why a 2nd grade math teacher is better at teaching 2nd graders than a math professor even if the professor knows almost infinitely more about math than the school teacher. On the flipside, the school teacher having dedicated their brain to the pedagogical challenges of "reaching" children won't have the space to create original research in Egyption tensor algebra even if they had the talents.

So my personal split is that I'm willing to teach lieutenants (easy) but not soldiers (hard) because this leaves enough energy for research (becoming a major). Now, it may be that there are no lieutenants or that those who are there are not willing to teach the sergeants, but at least they had the chance.

In short, it seems that the table is fully understood by roughly half of the participants in this thread while it remains confounding and vague to the other half. How about instead of giving me suggestions on how to make it more comprehensible for WL1-6, you just make your own. It doesn't need to be a table. It could be memes or a movie. In the mean time, I'll figure out what WL9-10+ is.

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Re: The ERE Wheaton Scale

Post by Alphaville »

jacob wrote:
Mon Apr 05, 2021 10:51 am
But maybe I should approach this more like Paul does. For example, I could do a kickstarter for $100,000 which I'd say pays two years of my time. During that time, I'll turn the table into something that is understandable at a 6th grade reading level (so mainstream adult) and write it in a way that is context-free. Do you think I'd hit my target? How much of your own money would you be willing to plonk down for such an effort?
first ask yourself how much you'd hate your life for the next 2 years if you felt obligated to make good on that $100k debt by leading 6th graders by the hand while your interests lie elsewhere.

me, i'd pay nothing to subject you to such torment; first because i'm not a sadist, and second because i can handle your layers of abstraction without the need for fairytales.

the problem remains how to communicate your ideas if that's what you want to do.

if you notice in the corner, paul's graph was created not by paul, but by a designer with serious design chops. so maybe the question is not how much to pay you to descend from the mountain to the valley, but how much would you be willing to pay paul's graphic designer so that you don't have to be bothered with engaging the villagers?

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Re: The ERE Wheaton Scale

Post by jacob »

@Alphaville Okay, I think we're cross-talking/threading.

I have no desire to become the next Suze Orman and talking directly to the masses. I'm happy to be the one writing up the FIRE equations which inspired other people (MMM, he told me as much) to blog which inspired (I presume) someone to make a FIRE app which caught the attention of millions which eventually got Orman (herself likely a WL3?) to admit that one could retire without owning an island and having 5M in the bank.

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Re: The ERE Wheaton Scale

Post by daylen »

Here is an idea that has been floating around in the social sphere, something like humans have been playing "Game A" all along and we need to transition to "Game B". Game A is what emerges [nearly] whenever a group of humans exceed the Dunbar number (i.e. about 150) and is characterized by in/out groups, zero-sum sub-games, rivalrous dynamics, arms races, tragedy of the commons, war, and so forth that will eventual lead human civilization to its demise, unless we manage to transition to game B. This alternative game is the infinite game of all life on Earth where the collective interaction between humans and other life on Earth is mutually re-constructive, where the collective is not in any great danger of depleting a dire resource needed for its functioning.

Several people have peaked at what such a society might look like. Such a society is unprecedented so it is safe to assume that no one even knows if a society like this is even feasible without altering four-billion years of evolution. It seems as though once you get to a certain place in development (e.g. 8 on the ERE Wheaton Scale) you have internalized a strategy for keeping yourself afloat and now you might look to expand the boundaries of your territory to include more people, more cultural variation, less ability for consensus, more susceptibility to catastrophic mistakes, and so forth. Otherwise, it might be unbearable to be a fan on the side-lines watching a game knowing what the most likely outcome is going to be and that you can do something to change it (i.e. become a live player).

This may seem out of reach but consider that there might be an exponential effect working in our favor that will become more apparent as a certain critical density of such players emerge and start to communicate with others, leading to the expansion of spaces outside the "gated institutional narrative" as Eric Weinstein would say. These spaces could lead on to find synergistic relationships with the whole, perhaps slowly earning enough reputation to serve as a wisdom consulting service or as therapy for corporations. Leading on-wards to the emergence of stable game B bubbles in the center of corporate therapy spaces. Such bubbles link up around the world and billions of people manage to join in on game B. A decade latter everyone is [substitute based on culture] grilling zucchini, forging for mushrooms, sipping neighborhood-made blackberry wine, and planning on which fireworks they are going to set off during the next carnival before they leave their village to go slay a dragon or become one with a volcano. Everyone lives happily-ever after.. until .. entropy .. hopefully a long ways off .. then rinse and repeat.
Last edited by daylen on Mon Apr 05, 2021 11:15 am, edited 2 times in total.

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Re: The ERE Wheaton Scale

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

I agree that BookLoverL’s succinct take is excellent. If you want to make it even more Level 1 and less “sciencey “ just sub in “life sustaining” for “ecologically sustainable.”

OTOH, this has me thinking about something Michael Pollan wrote about the gardener (maybe subset of live players?) always having to exert dominance in decisions related to what will live within boundary and what will be banished or killed. Also some of what Shannon Hayes wrote in Radical Homemakers (more obviously a subset of live players) about partnership vs dominance society in terms of valuing life creation skills vs killing skills.

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Re: The ERE Wheaton Scale

Post by Alphaville »

jacob wrote:
Mon Apr 05, 2021 11:08 am
@Alphaville Okay, I think we're cross-talking/threading.

I have no desire to become the next Suze Orman and talking directly to the masses. I'm happy to be the one writing up the FIRE equations which inspired other people (MMM, he told me as much) to blog which inspired (I presume) someone to make a FIRE app which caught the attention of millions which eventually got Orman (herself likely a WL3?) to admit that one could retire without owning an island and having 5M in the bank.
cross-talking? no, i get it, and i said so before--you wanna do the science, not the science education.

i also get that the table is a rubric, not a spreadsheet.

or, if you're a social "naturalist"... a set of identifying criteria for each... subspecies.

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Re: The ERE Wheaton Scale

Post by Alphaville »

actually if you'd rather not attempt "social science" and then get complaints from people saying that this doesn't apply to them...

...you could ditch the wheaton paradigm and simply list each "level" as your own personal evolution in your own personal journey. i.e. don't speak for others. it's a good writer's strategy.

such approach would remove the need to translate things for others, it would remove the pitfalls of classifying others, but also would allow an approachable level of identification with "the hero's journey" as they call it--an inspiring story.

anyway, that's just a suggestion that might solve some problems (or not). i have no vested interest in any particular outcome here.

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Re: The ERE Wheaton Scale

Post by Scott 2 »

jacob wrote:
Mon Apr 05, 2021 9:13 am
To wit, I feel somewhat like you guys don't realize that this is/was a journey for me too. I have the same fog-problem as everybody else.
I think this is a very unappreciated point. People want an authority figure, someone who will determine right from wrong. In reality, the expert is often making it up as they go along. From what I've observed, 90% of the "hard" decisions asked of an expert, are solvable with some foundational knowledge and application of problem solving. Conversely, learning those problem solving skills, puts someone ahead of 90% of the people, in most domains.

I wonder about the intersection of people who understand the ERE message with those wanting to be lieutenants. The topic selects for people without much interest in following or having authority.

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Re: The ERE Wheaton Scale

Post by jacob »

Scott 2 wrote:
Mon Apr 05, 2021 4:52 pm
I wonder about the intersection of people who understand the ERE message with those wanting to be lieutenants. The topic selects for people without much interest in following or having authority.
There's no following orders implied in the lieutenant et al. metaphor. People do not sign up as much as they get inspired by N+1. In some cases, people want to give back and in turn start communicating their understanding which tends to happen at N. This in turn inspires N-1. Since one person typically inspires >1 other person one's reach is exponential the higher N one is able to inspire people at ... whereas walking around explaining stuff to individual soldiers one by one is linear.

There was a minor revolution in insight when a few of such "lieutenants" decided to talk about WL5 and WL6 in viewtopic.php?t=10897 ... I was happy to step in to give a few pointers. I did not recruit this discussion nor did I give it orders. It just happened because a few forumites took initiative and because the WL1-8 table had provided a starting point.

This goes for any and all forms of communication. There's much more reach for WL7 to find a way to inspire 3 WL6s ... because if 3 is the multiplier then the message reaches 27 WL4 in some form and 729 WL1. Of course some of the message is lost along the way---it gets watered down at the bottom level. In reality the multiplier is substantially higher than 3.

In short, insofar the strategic aim is to teach math to as many as possible, it's highly inefficient for a math professor to tutor a few individuals from K1 through K12. The professor should spend their time on grad-students to replace him and on undergraduates in the hope that some may become high school teachers. The high school teachers execute the same structure. And so on.

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Re: The ERE Wheaton Scale

Post by IlliniDave »

I think BookLoverL had the right approach in the sense it's probably best to go off as individuals (those who are so inclined) and come up with a personal "my understanding of ere" or "where I want to go with this" and chart a journey from where they feel they started through where they are now and beyond towards that point. There's really no way to make a chart/table/scale that is all things for all people. For my part I find the table interesting and have enjoyed the discussion, but it's not really a format that comes naturally to me as a navigational aid, and my aim is much more modest. If it were a book the title might be something like How to Make the Most of an ereWL 5-7 Life. Even at those relatively low levels there are many ways to go off and make a better neighbor of myself.

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Re: The ERE Wheaton Scale

Post by Alphaville »

IlliniDave wrote:
Mon Apr 05, 2021 5:48 pm
I think BookLoverL had the right approach in the sense it's probably best to go off as individuals (those who are so inclined) and come up with a personal "my understanding of ere" or "where I want to go with this" and chart a journey from where they feel they started through where they are now and beyond towards that point.
ok i made my full chart then, which also a handy meme

Image

😜

but seriously, i'm not trollin

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Re: The ERE Wheaton Scale

Post by Qazwer »

Alphaville - in a strange way you may be correct - I have totally misunderstood the table - it is Jacob’s journey - which is Ego’s point from the first page of saints of ERE
viewtopic.php?p=125843#p125843

There are no definite levels - as Jacob keeps saying it is a path not a map to a destination - so like any heroes journey it will be unique and zen like - the path needs to be found inside - the levels simply are

I have been thinking of this as a development stages - I should have been thinking more Joseph Campbell

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Re: The ERE Wheaton Scale

Post by Alphaville »

Qazwer wrote:
Mon Apr 05, 2021 9:13 pm
Alphaville - in a strange way you may be correct -
what's so strange about a good joke? :lol:

for appeal to authority (i don' need it, but some might require it for acceptance of jokes as reason) here be žižek https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gkptPb0gS_Y
Last edited by Alphaville on Mon Apr 05, 2021 9:23 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: The ERE Wheaton Scale

Post by Scott 2 »

IlliniDave wrote:
Mon Apr 05, 2021 5:48 pm
it's probably best to go off as individuals (those who are so inclined) and come up with a personal "my understanding of ere"
One of my favorite books on yoga is just this. 46 people describing their yoga:

https://www.amazon.com/Yoga-America-Deb ... 0557046335

Letting go of a comprehensive model, the individual experience tends to be accessible and relatable.

jacob wrote:
Mon Apr 05, 2021 5:32 pm
There's no following orders implied in the lieutenant et al. metaphor.
What you describe is appealing. The military metaphor evokes a much different vision. Maybe reflecting my own personal bias, it is off-putting.

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Re: The ERE Wheaton Scale

Post by Qazwer »

I actually strangely found it more insightful than you intended - a saint who was taught in the analytic framework would define his journey in tables and models - but a saint can also find truth in a zen like manner (the matrix movies having some philosophy but also more just good special effects) - I found that your joke crystallized the whole thread for me

I see a table like this and I default to my training. I think of it as either prescriptive or descriptive. If descriptive, then I want the psychometrics to show that is how populations progress. If prescriptive, I want to know that I can use it to have people progress.
But that is the wrong lens. It is that of either the hero’s story or zen master. Once I shifted my lens, thank you alphaville, this thread made sense.
If you try to use the descriptive or prescriptive view points on it, you get most of the comments except for the few where they happened to have a similar trajectory. But a master can have a different path than the student and still help elucidate part of the way.

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