The Education of Axel Heyst

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mountainFrugal
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Re: The Education of Axel Heyst

Post by mountainFrugal »

I like your expansion of the idea. Something I am actively working on to have more agency over is both going without (if it does not serve another goal directly) and happiness/contentedness. These are related but different feelings/emotions that I think can be trained over time to be recognized and cultivated. Perhaps they ARE the major emotions/feelings to be mastered for this lifestyle.

Your example of using a biner as belay device reminds me of Climbing Self-Rescue by Tyson and Loomis. Have you read through it? If not, highly recommended to increase your self reliance if something goes really bad on multi-pitch or you need to escape a belay for some reason. Used copies are ~$8 (an example that might serve your climbing agency goals directly).

AxelHeyst
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Re: The Education of Axel Heyst

Post by AxelHeyst »

I haven't, thanks for the reference, I will pick that up!

More grist, with everyone's favorite writer on the topic:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4P47UTF0tZA

"Be more risk-taking in thing that do not entail ruin. For the class of thing that entail ruin, worry."

Also his talking about "islands" - same as Jacob's instruction to create a WoG's modules that are loosely coupled.
comment under the video wrote:01:00 there is high economic risk, increase in debt
01:21 have increase in moral hazard, people gaming the system
01:38 there should be no risk management, you should study risk-taking
02:15 you have to worry about an industry that is dominated by non-risk-takers discussing risks
02:30 big data brings more risks than it solves
03:04 too much data yet our technical understanding has not grown
03:18 machine learning, AI will not help with fat-tails
03:48 psychologists shouldn't tamper with paranoia
04:18 have paranoia about ruin, leave risk-taking for things that do not entail ruin; volatile income + lower tail-risk > smooth income streams + higher tail-risk
04:54 opportunities in crises exist
05:24 the large majority of grandmothers' findings have been replicated and hold (unlike those of the majority of psychology papers)
06:16 (wrt globalisation) the world has lost its "island" properties
08:10 localism > globalism
09:00 what holds for 2019? well be talking about the same things next year, as we did this year

Qazwer
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Re: The Education of Axel Heyst

Post by Qazwer »

Taleb is an interesting choice. His big take is the world has more of a long tail distribution than a normal distribution. So bet on rare things happening. ERE is about making choices to smooth out distributional possibilities. Pick apparently uncorrelated skills to maintain a constant lifestyle. Lower expenses and with uncorrelated skills and a time of abundance you can live a good life.
The concern is how truly uncorrelated the skills are and the underlying system. Change in health status and societal changes both change the calculus. Correlations then increase. Aiming for stability makes a system more fragile potentially.

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Ego
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Re: The Education of Axel Heyst

Post by Ego »

AxelHeyst wrote:
Fri Aug 06, 2021 4:47 pm
Can my investing strategy not indeed be informed by the rich world of risk management I've gleaned from climbing?
Absolutely. But....
AxelHeyst wrote:
Fri Aug 06, 2021 4:47 pm
Grist:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e3EsCIjvrSw
That passage from Twilight of the Idols! The first sentence is the part that people often quote, "Danger alone acquaints us with our own resources, our virtues, our armor and weapons, our spirit, and forces us to be strong." The second sentence, the one that is often deleted from the quote, really hits home. "First principle: one must need to be strong — otherwise one will never become strong."

Need.

I say that as someone who was not particularly strong (nor weak) before meeting Mrs. Ego. I learned well from her example of how to need it.

AxelHeyst
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Re: The Education of Axel Heyst

Post by AxelHeyst »

Thanks @Ego. So I think what I'm getting from this is, be careful when dabbling with security. Make sure your strength of character is equal to whatever danger you expose yourself to. Know yourself, and build strength by careful selection of that level of danger you expose yourself to.

--

The new IPCC report came out yesterday.

About three weeks ago, I rode through this town. Fueled up at the gas station that no longer exists.

In other news, I'm toying with the idea of immolating my truck as a form of performance art instead of selling it...

Salathor
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Re: The Education of Axel Heyst

Post by Salathor »

AxelHeyst wrote:
Tue Aug 10, 2021 11:17 am
In other news, I'm toying with the idea of immolating my truck as a form of performance art instead of selling it...
Why not do both? immolate it and then sell the truck as an NFT.

EDIT: This is a joke but the more I think about it the more I think it could really be a pretty decent gamble with a non-zero chance of making bank.

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mountainFrugal
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Re: The Education of Axel Heyst

Post by mountainFrugal »

Bottle the smoke as "Essence of Serenity" to make a multi-sensory NFT box set with physical and digital components.

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Re: The Education of Axel Heyst

Post by AxelHeyst »

Ha! I can't even handle the level of irony of turning my truck's anti-carbon-footprint Final Act into a carbon-intensive digital token.

--

Back to the topic of risk, I ran across this highlight of mine from "The Rise of Superman" by Steven Kotler, which is mostly about how action-adventure athletes are tapping into flow states to boost their performance to insane levels.
The Rise of Superman, Steven Kotler wrote:Merely by plying their trade in a “high consequence” environment—with high consequence being the first of the external triggers we’ll be examining—extreme athletes rely on risk to drive focus, the requisite first step toward producing flow. Another way to think about this is “hacking.”
Which makes me think about this line from the forum's recent cameo appearance:
classical_Liberal wrote:
Tue Aug 03, 2021 3:04 pm
I'll double down on semi-ERE by saying I wish I had less money right now.
I'm joining up with my former employee to start an independent visualization studio. In many ways, it's the perfect platform to accomplish the goals I'd been struggling towards with my old visualization team that we both got laid off from. I'm really excited about what we can do with it.

And it occurs to me that I may have the *perfect* amount of money to be in this situation; 3-7yrs cash outside of retirement accounts (and about 12x in my retirement accounts), and obviously less if I lay out some capx for the homestead project I'd like to get rolling soon. In other words, I have enough runway to be able to take my time and not rush or cut corners, but not so much that I can afford to be lazy about it. There is a certain amount of "sting" to my financial situation that keeps the visualization project from ever fading too far from my mind, but not so much that when I think about it I'm mostly thinking "oh god this HAS to work or I'm hosed".

Of course, the action-adventure athletes in that book are optimizing for performance, not security. None of them have a death wish, but their whole shtick is playing on the edge of actual ruin*, and Kotler's point is that it's only when you get really close to ruin (when the consequences are 'ultimate') that you see this ability to drop into flow consistently. Two things occur to me:

1) I wonder what alternatives there are for driving motivation once I'm at a point where I consider financial ruin a very remote possibility. And - eyeing the WL chart - if howlies have decoupled "money" from "standard of living" in their minds, does it not also follow that at some point a howlie has to figure out how to decouple motivation from income? There are plenty of people out there who joyfully work really hard at something they're stoked on, even though they're either financially set or indifferent to the income. I like to think that I'd maintain pure motivation when I really truly and completely DGAF about $ anymore, but I've never been in that situation so of course I can't know with 100% confidence. It seems to me that many of the discussions around FIRE'ing inevitably deal with this loss-of-motivation issue. That is many pre-FIREd people's primary source of concern - "I don't want to just turn into a NEET once I quit" - and the internet abounds with stories of people who couldn't handle the lack of structure of retirement but a core issue I think was people lacking the motivation to do/figure out what to do with their lives. So yes, one tactic is to maintain juuuuust the right about of money to ensure one's motivation never runs empty, but I prefer the idea of having a long-term *strategy* that allows me to maintain high levels of motivation to get after the kind of life I want to live regardless of how much money I have.

2) We've been constraining our discussion about risk and ruin to the realm of "running out of money". To the extent that playing around the margins of ruin plays an important role in my life, I wonder about alternative forms of ruin to use as motivation-juice. For example, at the moment I'm trying to decide where to homestead. I studied the maps of projected precipitation, heat, and extreme weather event deltas in the latest IPCC report with extra scrutiny because I don't want to put down roots in a place that's got a solid likelihood of turning into Namibia soon, climactically speaking. I don't have much fleshed out here yet, I just meant to indicate that there are other playgrounds of risk/reward/motivation that don't involve money.



*I bet action-adventure athletes make terrible investors, because they're too comfortable with existing a breathe away from ruin, and also are used to being able to rely on their skill to keep them from it. Both of those traits seem poor attributes for investing.

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Re: The Education of Axel Heyst

Post by 2Birds1Stone »

Totally off topic, but are you still stoked for Lisbon in February? I was looking at flights today and they've skyrocketed in price (cheapest I could find for March/April was like $700 one way! How long are you planning on staying in Europe? We may end up crossing paths if things go well with my escape plan.

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mountainFrugal
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Re: The Education of Axel Heyst

Post by mountainFrugal »

Some thoughts to add to the discussion... While I agree that you could become so used to threats that you could take risks that others would not in other aspects of your life, but I suspect that if you are really pushing it and still alive, the athlete might know better than most people where their edge of their competence is. Not sure how much that would translate into other endeavors, but it could be argued that it would make them better investors. Keeping calm and not panicking when the plan is not going according to plan is a very good trait to have. Also, knowing what you do not know and being more keenly aware of the hazards of social pressures in small group adventure situations (especially on snow) might make for good investing temperament. I do agree that if these action-adventure athletes were at the top of their game in this realm where skill is proportional to safety (random events aside), then they might think that this would translate to other realms. This is the same with professionals that make a lot of money (think classic doctor/lawyer) might conclude that because they are smart and good at their profession (based on salary) that will translate well to investing when there is in fact a whole list of other skills that are needed.

The new IPCC is the strongest worded one yet. One thing I am now reconsidering is the extreme weather events. Sure maybe you can avoid a projected extreme dry place, but what if your chosen place had the same amount of average rainfall as today, but it came through 2-3 rain events a year instead of spaced out over 50? Hard if not impossible to know... :(

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Re: The Education of Axel Heyst

Post by jacob »

AxelHeyst wrote:
Wed Aug 11, 2021 10:26 am
*I bet action-adventure athletes make terrible investors, because they're too comfortable with existing a breathe away from ruin, and also are used to being able to rely on their skill to keep them from it. Both of those traits seem poor attributes for investing.
The trading industry likes to recruit from athletic departments. Some trading lingo even sounds like it came out of the gym, e.g. hit the bid, lift the ask, puke. The ability to remain focused in a flow state and using intuition to act instinctively on price patterns (based on hundreds of experiental rules) w/o letting fear creating second-doubt/hesitation, etc. People who are in command of their own gut-feelings and understand when others aren't. This is on a 2 second to 2 hour timescale/holding period. Very different from investing/investors who are more analytical and constantly doubt themselves.

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Re: The Education of Axel Heyst

Post by Gilberto de Piento »

mountainFrugal wrote:
Wed Aug 11, 2021 12:08 pm
Also, knowing what you do not know and being more keenly aware of the hazards of social pressures in small group adventure situations (especially on snow) might make for good investing temperament.
It's been years since I listened to it but at the time I really liked Slide: The Avalanche Podcast http://www.animasavalanche.com/slide-th ... e-podcast/ even though I am not a skier. If I remember correctly most of each episode is an essay on risk taking in the mountains. It translates to other risk taking besides skiing.

AxelHeyst
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Re: The Education of Axel Heyst

Post by AxelHeyst »

@mF, @jacob,

This makes sense. I think where my head was at with my statement was that athletes might underestimate the randomness of markets, or put into action-adventure terms, they might underestimate the objective hazards of investing. But it makes more sense that they'd put the required effort into building appropriate mental models of the real objective hazards and dynamics of the systems, and then dispassionately evaluate their own competency, and be able to manage the margin between the two while filtering out human factors (peer pressure etc). I've been working through a lot of "markets are impossible to time/predict/make consistent bets against" material recently, which, on that note, I found this delightfully sassy line from one of Warren Buffett's essays recently:
Warren Buffett, The Essays of Warren Buffet, 4th Edition (2015), pg81, emphasis mine. wrote:Most institutional investors in the early 1970s, on the other hand, regarded business value as of only minor relevance when they were deciding the prices at which they would buy or sell. [...]these institutions were then under the spell of academics at prestigious business schools who were preaching a newly-fashioned theory: the stock market was totally efficient, and therefore calculations of business value -- and even thought, itself -- were of no importance in investment activities. (We are enormously indebted to those academics: what could be more advantageous in an intellectual contest--whether it be bridge, chess, or stock selection--than to have opponents who have been taught that thinking is a waste of energy?)

AxelHeyst
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Re: The Education of Axel Heyst

Post by AxelHeyst »

2Birds1Stone wrote:
Wed Aug 11, 2021 11:24 am
Totally off topic, but are you still stoked for Lisbon in February?
On the fence, honestly! (And not really off topic, since we're talking about climate change and such...) We're both pretty weary of not having a home base, no roots, and no stability, for something like three years now. We're concerned that we might bring that weariness with us and not be able to fully enjoy the travels. Our thoughts have started to seriously converge on the goal of doing whatever is necessary to get that stability/rootedness, in whatever form is most appropriate. Traveling now could just feel like a distraction, yet another delay. Also there's the carbon footprint thing. Also, there's the open question as to how open the world is going to be come March - are many countries going to be locked down? We're not putting any effort into predicting the state of the world one way or another, just realizing that conditions may or may not be favorable.

The Plan, if we do go, is to slowtravel RTW. So we'd go at whatever pace we felt like - my guess is a month here, a month there, sort of thing. Europe could be 2-4 months before we head East.

Regardless, if there's any chance to intersect at any point, I'd love to meet up!

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mountainFrugal
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Re: The Education of Axel Heyst

Post by mountainFrugal »

As a specific example see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6ran_Kropp

Although he DID eventually die in a climbing accident so interpret how you will haha... but the following is a top notch example of knowing personal limits and not letting things like sunk cost and social pressure get in the way of his self-propelled Everest summit:
For his 1996 ascent, Kropp left Stockholm on 16 October 1995, on a specially-designed bicycle with 108 kilograms (238 lb) of gear and food. He traveled 13,000 kilometres (8,000 mi) on the bicycle and arrived at Everest Base Camp in April 1996. Following a meeting of all of the Everest expeditions on the mountain at the time, it was agreed that Kropp would attempt to summit first. On 3 May, Kropp climbed through thigh-deep snow and reached Everest's South Summit, a point 100 metres (328 ft) from the summit. However, he decided to turn around because it was too late in the day and if he continued, he would be descending in the dark. While Kropp recovered from the ordeal at base camp, the 1996 Everest Disaster unfolded. He helped bring medicine up the mountain. Three weeks later, on 23 May, he again tackled the mountain, this time successfully summitting without extra oxygen support. He then cycled part of the way back home.

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Re: The Education of Axel Heyst

Post by AxelHeyst »

Back to the idea of motivation: if "needing to generate income" is the primary source of motivation, then that's a lack of resilience or robustness. In the same way that a WoG that only has one source of money lacks resilience, a WoG that has only one source of motivation lacks resilience as well (because motivation might be thought of as the flow that must be an input into all nodes of the WoG. Lacking motivation, I'm just gonna blah everything).

And if motivation is harnessed to "income generation", that's a Big Problem of the heterotelic variety because I do want to become FI at some point. If going semiERE is just to maintain acceptable levels of motivation*, then I'm just kicking the can down the road. Eventually I'm going to cross some threshold of "enough", and if I haven't solved the "motivation is a rider on income generation" issue yet, I'll have to figure it out at that point. Better to sort it out now. I also suspect that multiple diverse sources of motivation is inherently more enjoyable than any single source. I'm not sure if this is the right way to be viewing motivation, but I'm just exploring this idea that motivation-tied-to-remuneration could be an L5 attitude I need to make sure I shed.


*It isn't, for me. The primary argument of semiERE is that whiteknuckling a soul-sucking job isn't worth it, I'd rather get a little FU stash and then semiERE and cruise up to FI while only doing things I want to do. But for the sake of argument...

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Re: The Education of Axel Heyst

Post by AxelHeyst »

@mF And the circumstances of his fatal fall seem to be of the "did nothing wrong; just rolled snakeyes that day" variety: "his protection pulled out from a crack, and the wire gate carabiner of the next piece of protection broke." Which goes back to Taleb's exhortation to not play games that entail ruin, but for serious mountaineers, they've made the choice to play that sort of game.

Edit: actually, no, looks like he was placing gear beyond his limit.

Edit2: and actually, yeah, this is why I suspect *action-adventure* athletes, as distinct from athletic disciplines that don't entail constant exposure to ruin, might be at some disadvantage wrt investing. Or rather, I suspect they might be fine investors/traders, up until they entail ruin. Because I think they'd be too comfortable running up close to the edge of ruin.

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Re: The Education of Axel Heyst

Post by AxelHeyst »

AxelHeyst wrote:
Wed Aug 11, 2021 4:45 pm
Back to the idea of motivation:
Today’s auto post: https://earlyretirementextreme.com/lack ... ation.html

classical_Liberal
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Re: The Education of Axel Heyst

Post by classical_Liberal »

AxelHeyst wrote:
Wed Aug 11, 2021 4:45 pm
if "needing to generate income" is the primary source of motivation, then that's a lack of resilience or robustness.
Money is a primary motivator for most in US culture. I will, unscientifically, make the argument that another primary motivator is time. Consider that early retirement removes both those motivations to a large degree. a Standard retiree at 67 or 70 has lived long enough to recognize that time left on this planet is limited. It's even further limited when physical and cognitive changes are making many things previously possible much more difficult.

IOW, if I "retire" at 67, I'd better start planning that cross country bike trip for next summer, because I may not be able to do it in 5 years. If I retire at 37, that's not really even on my mind (for most people, generally). I could do it next year, or in 5 years or maybe 2030 when this whole COVID thing is finally done :) . The point being, theoretically/statistically, having sooo much healthy life left is another big loss in the motivation department.

Edited to Add: Above I make it seem as if age is the only factor in this time motivation. It certainly is not. That was just one example. There is a lackadaisical approach to time the comes along with RE in daily life. The best analogy I can think of, that most have probably experienced, is if you ever go to visit a friend or relative in a different location. When you arrive, you are excited about visiting the interesting places nearby, only to find out your friend/relative has never been to those places either. Why not? Lack of interest? I mean, these places are world class and practically in their back yard... Well, probably because they can go anytime they want, so they never got around to it, interested or not.

Again, unscientifically, I would guess these two things (time and money) probably accounted for >75% of my pre-RE motivation. When both are mostly nullified, it requires a change in kind for motivation.

An important side note, in terms of the definition of motivation in this context. Motivation means to start something AND motivation to stick things out if it gets boring, loss of flow, stoke or whatever. I've found I have pretty good intrinsic motivation to get off the couch, so to speak. However, continuing something past the basic competence level is a whole 'nother beast. IOW, Playing chess for 6 moths to get to a 1400 rating vs 6 years to 2200. Riding bike 20 miles day/100 miles a week vs biking 70 miles a day for an entire summer across the country. etc.

I have also found, that due to money and time constraints above, there are far fewer people to socialize with who will help motivate me past the competence level in a given activity. Reminds me of an old @jacob comment where he talks about most things being a 1-2 hour a day or 5 hours a week commitment for most people. That's all they have to give. If I have way more than that, it's important to find a different measuring stick to maintain motivation.

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Re: The Education of Axel Heyst

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

I think time and money are suspect as prime motivators because they are so easily measured. I think the larger problem is simply constructing your environment as a too easy challenge. Women with 7 or more children are least likely demographic to commit suicide. Just taking care of yourself, or just taking care of yourself and a pleasant natured adult partner, is too easy.

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