The Education of Axel Heyst

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Ego
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Re: The Education of Axel Heyst

Post by Ego »

AxelHeyst wrote:
Wed Jun 30, 2021 5:31 pm
Ego, I watched the Viki Robinson interview you linked earlier. If I understand your purpose in pointing to it correctly, I’d say that my thinking around “not failing” vs “winning” at investing has to do with my sense that FI is only a step or an aid to having the human experience that is other-centered that I want to have.
Actually @jacob just recently listed that interview as the example of WL9 on the wiki. My reason for linking to it was to highlight the few words she said right after the video opens at the point I linked where she says, "You start to see privilege. You start to see poverty. You start to see people who are more capable of happiness than you are, living on nothing."

The interview made me think a few things:

1. I believe that what she is talking about there - people with very little who are more capable of happiness than she is - that is a skill. Or maybe others would call it an ability. There are several components to that skill. The obvious one is the ability to be happy with very little. Perhaps less obvious is the ability to be happy while being insecure.

Security is like heroin. Once addicted you have to have it. Tolerance and sensitization means you always need more to get the same effect. One-more-year-syndrome. And when you suddenly get a half dose, the world flips upside down. Contemplating the fact that it might go away entirely is, well, unthinkable.

Right now you are super insecurity-tolerant. It would be a shame if you were to lose that.

That is what I meant when I said above that I wouldn't like the person I'd become if I were to spend a lot of time becoming an expert investor. I believe there is a goldilocks amount of security. Too little and well-being is impossible. Too much and well-being becomes fragile and requires extreme effort to maintain. Security, for many, becomes purpose and meaning.

2. Speaking of meaning, for someone who is generally very good at cutting to the heart of the matter, notice how she struggles to explain what she calls the elder process and how she retreats to something quasi-mystical or magical. There is a compulsion for many Boomers to MAKE everything MEANINGFUL and to earn, as she says, her "little slice of eternity".

Investing, security, legacy, meaning, ... it is all jumbled together here: https://youtu.be/XpVkrIdz9-Y

And https://sive.rs/ml

IlliniDave
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Re: The Education of Axel Heyst

Post by IlliniDave »

Ego wrote:
Wed Jun 30, 2021 7:25 pm
... Security is like heroin. Once addicted you have to have it. Tolerance and sensitization means you always need more to get the same effect. One-more-year-syndrome. And when you suddenly get a half dose, the world flips upside down. Contemplating the fact that it might go away entirely is, well, unthinkable. ...
That was one of those posts that really got my gears turning. On balance, you expressed a few things I wish I could have pulled the words for out of my cranial stew.

Regarding the excerpt I included, I can't say I agree with the assertion as a blanket statement. From the perspective of being among the most financially conservative multi-year participants (maybe the most?) on the forum, I would tend to say this. "Security" isn't at the forefront of the motives I've acted on over the last say, 5 years. Back in late 2011/early 2012 it was at the top of the list. But after a few years I put a check in that box and turned my attention to other things.

If anything among the general list of potential character flaws, one could say my drive to continue accumulating was probably tinted by greed. It's ironic, but my experiment with finding my happy place on the continuum of "lifestyle spending" was a low number by conventional standards but high for ere standards. Something around $2,500/mo. Heading into retirement under circumstances that make punching the undo button and going back to work distasteful to the point of being unacceptable on a deeply personal level, I didn't want to close too many doors. People change through time.

I'm also a "legacy"-oriented person. Not because I want any sort of immortality in collective human memory. But my generations (I'm right on the Boomer/X line and identify with both) have racked up an enormous public debt (I'm thinking literal financial debt). That I used my vote as much as possible to support promises of fiscal responsibility doesn't exonerate me in my mind. So it's a weak attempt to give the people I voluntarily took an amount of responsibility for the means to pay back my fair share of it, to use the currently popular phrase. I get the sense people don't believe me when I say that, or maybe they think it is so preposterous it leaves them speechless, I dunno. My kids have no idea this might be coming, the home they grew up in, although solid middle class in income, was managed paycheck-to-pacheck and it showed. I don't want them to ever think I'm using money in a carrot/stick power game with them. Only my executor and a lawyer know about it.

I'm getting off track weaving in other ideas from the thread. I use a hat analogy. For a lot of years I had the dad hat on. Even though I was doing some saving/investing, it was way in the background. Once I got single again it was a sequence of hats: financially responsible guy -> preparing for retirement guy -> FI/transition to retirement guy. I'm about to throw on the retired guy hat. Although I intend to practice good financial stewardship, and security is a basic human need I'll never shuck, I'm pretty comfortable with "enough". Two wealthy people who served as role models for me clearly hit an enough point and turned to focus of their lives away from money.

Point is, I suppose, the only time I ever obsessed over financial security was when I clearly didn't have it, and when it was tenuous/debatable.

To touch a few other ideas in the thread.

I think some people are buttheads. Those who have a lot of wealth incorporate it into their buttheadedness. Those who don't find other ways to bring their buttheadedness to fruition. I would agree that wealth is maybe a little like alcohol in that it can interfere with people's judgement and you can see more of the true person when the person is under its influence.

I am also in the camp that it's unnecessary to become an "expert" investor, and for a wide swath of people, including some very smart and capable ones, it is likely counterproductive. No attempt I ever made to get rich quick panned out. Luckily I devoted very little effort to that. Life circumstances all but forced me into the patient, passive, long-haul cohort. I don't personally know anyone that has failed with that approach as long as they were sufficiently aggressive in their savings. The caveat being, while I did achieve FIRE, I fell short of anything approaching ere.

Sorry, AH, for the profuse vomiting in your journal. ;)

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Re: The Education of Axel Heyst

Post by white belt »

IlliniDave wrote:
Thu Jul 01, 2021 6:34 am
I am also in the camp that it's unnecessary to become an "expert" investor, and for a wide swath of people, including some very smart and capable ones, it is likely counterproductive. No attempt I ever made to get rich quick panned out. Luckily I devoted very little effort to that. Life circumstances all but forced me into the patient, passive, long-haul cohort. I don't personally know anyone that has failed with that approach as long as they were sufficiently aggressive in their savings. The caveat being, while I did achieve FIRE, I fell short of anything approaching ere.
I believe this perspective (which is common in the FIRE sphere) is a false dichotomy view of investing where you either are day trading or you’re index investing with nothing in between. It's either slow and steady passive investing or get rich quick active investing. The counter-arguments here are that reading a couple introductory finance textbooks to better understand investing is a useful pursuit, especially in the case that one wants to rely on their portfolio over very long time horizons. We’re talking just a basic level of understanding, the equivalent to what a business major might get in his finance classes or someone pursuing a CFA.

Not to beat the dead horse too much, but the reason that going all in VTSAX (as an example) might not be the best option is because most FIRE/ERE people have quite a large portfolio relative to living expenses. Therefore, as Jacob has pointed out, the goal should be portfolio survival. It’s quite easy to look at periods of US history when stock market returns were flat or negative for many years to understand why all in on VTSAX isn’t very survivable. Having said that, VTSAX could still have a place in a balanced portfolio with assets that will thrive in economic downturns, inflation, deflation, etc.

I guess the point I’m trying to make is I often hear similar sentiment as what @iDave wrote which presumes that indexing is some kind of foolproof strategy. It’s not and it has many associated risks just like other strategies, it’s just that most people are oblivious to them. You don't abdicate your responsibility for understanding portfolio construction and investing because you are buying indexes.

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Ego
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Re: The Education of Axel Heyst

Post by Ego »

white belt wrote:
Thu Jul 01, 2021 10:09 am
I believe this perspective (which is common in the FIRE sphere) is a false dichotomy view of investing where you either are day trading or you’re index investing with nothing in between.
Good point. It is important we are talking apples to apples.
jacob wrote:
Tue Feb 06, 2018 5:19 pm
Beating or not beating the market is a false dichotomy. The main goal as a FIRE-investor is to have enough cash on a day to day basis and not run out of it. Doing relatively better than the market (by which people usually mean the s&p500 proxy) is insufficient if the market itself is not doing well enough on an absolute basis to fulfill this requirement.
Would it be fair to say the definition is having enough investment skill and doing enough ongoing research to:

1) Beat the market
2) Read the tea leaves well enough to not lose in the downturns.

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Re: The Education of Axel Heyst

Post by jacob »

Understanding how other people think about investing is ultimately more useful than mathematical analysis. Any alpha-gains = (from price/=value). However, analysis is a useful framework to root this perspective ("are people crazy?"). There are other frameworks or forcing functions too though (excitement, trends, security, magic, hope, dogma, ... ).

Investment is a supremely rich field of study. Far richer than the detailed study of atoms or galaxies. It pertains to the exterior (what's physically possible, e.g. real analysis) but also the interior (what people believe wrong or right because this informs investment actions).

Investment is ultimately about beliefs being proved right or wrong within a time horizon. You take a position accordingly and then let time/reality force the issue via "false believers" getting clobbered. The greatest profits are found in wrong positions strongly believed to be right as they turn out to be wrong.

Unfortunately---as I eventually came to realize---it's not so much about fixing stupid. Rather profit comes from being slightly less wrong than wrong. If you're right and everybody else is really wrong, nobody is going to interact/trade with you (there's no impedance). You'd be too far off. Therefore, you have to act/take position in a way where the impedance is strong enough to matter. It's not about being right. It's about being less wrong than wrong and guiding the spirit (Mr Market) in the right direction.

(One example is profiting according to the belief that interest rates have to increase even if they can't. This has been working well for 5+ years. It'll continue to work well until a majority sees it at which point it will be priced in---this pricing in will create the profits while leaving the ultimate buyers with the bag.)

Understanding finance means talking and walking with [at risk] money and not just words. It is "a way" to change the world. You'd be speaking in terms of money which also happens to be the language "successful society" (orange meme) currently speaks. So there's wider reach if you speak money. It's what people understand at the current stage of development. The language of maximum impact.

For example, ... and here's the high irony of ERE promotion ... people take my ideas more seriously if I imply my spending is higher ("It's under $10k") than it actually is (It's $6.5k). You can also see this effect for the FIRE movement as a whole: People pay more attention the closer spending is to mainstream levels.

The same goes for NW. From a pure robustness metric having 150x annual spending is far better than having $1M at 25x. However, there's definitely a lot more cache to saying you're a millionaire in terms of people taking you seriously. 150x math math something something sounds like an excuse. "Millionaire" stops the argument.

In terms of assholy behavior, I can see how it's possible to take the "money on tap" so much for granted that one accidentally puts the foot in the mouth when commenting on other people's money trouble ("Let them eat cake"). However, as far as I can tell most douchebag behavior is associated with high levels of spending and not high levels of NW. Not sure if the newly rich (8 fig NWs) are different but at 6-7 figs, it doesn't seem to be the case?!

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Re: The Education of Axel Heyst

Post by Dave »

AxelHeyst wrote:
Tue Jun 29, 2021 12:04 pm
I am beginning to see investing related topics as inherently interesting. I’ve spent a lot of time trying to understand the world’s human, energetic, and materials resource systems, but I’ve almost completely neglected an understanding of the financial side
It’s not such a leap to have an interest in these topics to have an interest in investing. It seems to me that a lot of people think of investing as some sort of separate, discrete subject from this and everything else, that exists independent of human/energetic/materials resource systems and that money topics are distasteful “because capitalism”. I find this confusing because I’d say having a stronger understanding of those areas is extremely important to investing intelligently.

To tie it to a topic near and dear to the forums, if you believe CC/overutilization of natural resources/ other environmental issues have a meaningful impact on humanity in the coming decades, this should most definitely inform your investment decisions. The monetary and economic systems are nested inside the broader ecological environment, and understanding that layer up is essential so that you are aware of the full set of factors driving the cash flows of individual businesses. If you have a strong opinion on where oil use will be in 15 years, that will have a huge impact on your valuation of countless businesses.

It’s probably important to say that I actually do spend a plurality of my time doing active stock picking via "value investing". I do traditional, bottom-up fundamental research on individual (publicly-traded) businesses, I value them (what is the present value of their future cash flows), and then I buy them when I believe the current stock price is meaningfully below the value of the future cash flows. So what I’m doing is quite a bit more time intensive than what many here on the forums do, and it’s worth highlighting that so you know where I’m coming from and how what I’m saying is relevant more to one type of investing vs. another like traditional 100% long US equities/Golden Butterfly/PP.

Investing (in individual securities) is one of the most comprehensive disciplines out there because to be a good investor you often need to understand an extremely wide range of topics to an adequate degree. Of course you need to understand economics, financial statements, portfolio management, and all the other common obvious areas if you want to pick stocks. But you also need to understand how developments in science are driving changes in technology, behavioral factors of how people are going to use products/services, political/regulatory factors that can change things, environmental shifts that could cause sways, and how market forces and behavioral factors will drive security prices over your holding period. They all come to play in varying degrees.

An asset is always worth the discounted value of its future cash flows. To know those future cash flows, you need to know what the world is going to look like over the relevant discount period. I believe having my eyes opened regarding environmental issues has made me far better investor because it’s helped me see a wide range of risk factors that can/will impact future cash flows.

This ties in to your point that markets are going to “go down” due to ecological disaster – it’s easy to see how ecological disaster is going to impair economic growth and that means stocks will fall, but I believe reality will be far more nuanced. Some businesses will thrive during this period. And all asset prices will fluctuate around during this period, too. Investors with the right skillset can generate positive returns by finding mispriced assets even in a period of broad economic decline.

In other words, intelligent investing is relevant and important regardless of your views on the long-term economic direction the world will take, and arguably more so if you believe that economic troubles lie ahead.
Ego wrote:
Wed Jun 30, 2021 2:13 pm
I wonder if the goal of avoiding portfolio failure requires different investment savvy than the goal of winning at investing.
Traditional “value” investors would say no, because traditional value investing attempts to buy securities for less than they are worth. If a stock is worth $100 and you buy it at $50 instead of $75, your upside is higher and your downside is lower (in the event you've handicapped the situation incorrectly). We aren’t framing these situations through the model of everything with higher potential return has higher risk. At a given level of risk, paying a lower price relative to value is better on all counts.

With that said, most investment strategies are not value investing, and in that case I would respond yes. Which is what @white belt is getting at in his post on the prior page. Playing not to lose is a different game than playing to win for these strategies.

While value investing is “better” in this regard that you get higher return for lower risk, the cost is the vastly higher amount of education/research that must be performed to get it. No free lunch.

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Re: The Education of Axel Heyst

Post by Qazwer »

Ego wrote:
Thu Jul 01, 2021 11:27 am
Good point. It is important we are talking apples to apples.



Would it be fair to say the definition is having enough investment skill and doing enough ongoing research to:

1) Beat the market
2) Read the tea leaves well enough to not lose in the downturns.
Why do you care about a downturn if you do not need to spend then? More importantly you have to even ask why do you care if you break even. Start from first principles. I have income now that I want to spend later. I would like to be able to spend more later if possible and willing to take this much risk of not even having that amount to spend.
You are not competing against others. You are delaying consumption in the best way that you can find given whatever reality you live in

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Re: The Education of Axel Heyst

Post by IlliniDave »

white belt wrote:
Thu Jul 01, 2021 10:09 am

Not to beat the dead horse too much, but the reason that going all in VTSAX (as an example) might not be the best option is because most FIRE/ERE people have quite a large portfolio relative to living expenses. Therefore, as Jacob has pointed out, the goal should be portfolio survival. It’s quite easy to look at periods of US history when stock market returns were flat or negative for many years to understand why all in on VTSAX isn’t very survivable. Having said that, VTSAX could still have a place in a balanced portfolio with assets that will thrive in economic downturns, inflation, deflation, etc.

I guess the point I’m trying to make is I often hear similar sentiment as what @iDave wrote which presumes that indexing is some kind of foolproof strategy. It’s not and it has many associated risks just like other strategies, it’s just that most people are oblivious to them. You don't abdicate your responsibility for understanding portfolio construction and investing because you are buying indexes.
I did not mention the word Index, nor did I even know what an index fund was until I was 2/3 of the way through my accumulation phase (and then only because my employer's plan changed over to 100% low cost options and I was forced into it), so that is a similar false dichotomy. :D I do own some VSTAX, maybe 30% of my stash give or take. Now and for the last several years the whole game I am playing re investing strategy is about portfolio survival. There may be a 100% VSTAX from first job to death crowd out there somewhere, but that's a caricature of the type of investing I was referring to.

I also did not use the word "foolproof". I just shared a true observation. Nothing is foolproof.

It's important to remember a) there is more than one way to skin a cat and b) not everyone has the appropriate temperament to be a successful "expert investor". For those so inclined, it's fine for them, but an analog to your point is that I believe it is a bad thing for people to belive it is necessary to adopt an approach to investing that either they are temperamentally unsuited for, or simply uncomfortable with. My agreement was with the statement expertise was not necessary, which isn't the same as saying no one should pursue that path.

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Re: The Education of Axel Heyst

Post by white belt »

IlliniDave wrote:
Thu Jul 01, 2021 12:56 pm
It's important to remember a) there is more than one way to skin a cat and b) not everyone has the appropriate temperament to be a successful "expert investor". For those so inclined, it's fine for them, but an analog to your point is that I believe it is a bad thing for people to belive it is necessary to adopt an approach to investing that either they are temperamentally unsuited for, or simply uncomfortable with. My agreement was with the statement expertise was not necessary, which isn't the same as saying no one should pursue that path.
I’m not picking on you specifically. Of course everyone needs to consider their own situation. I totally agree that one should align their investment strategy with their temperament, risk profile, etc. My bigger point is that most people aren’t doing that because they don’t even understand the risks of what they are doing with their current portfolio. A common occurrence in the USA is for someone to be extremely levered up to the economic boom cycles in that they have a mortgage with 20% down (5x leverage), they earn all their income from a job (jobs and wages are cut during economic downturns), and they have their remaining assets in stock indexes (stocks decline during economic downturns).

My reference to the “all in VTSAX” strategy is because someone mentioned JL Collins’ work which specifically recommends that as the ultimate FIRE investing plan.

I will also say this (again not directed at @iDave specifically, more to the mainstream FIRE audience). The longer your time horizon, the smaller your portfolio in terms of annual expenses, and the further you are from traditional retirement age, the greater your risk of following conventional investing strategies that are in vogue without really having any fundamental knowledge. The risk profiles are just completely different. The further your individual situation is from the norm, the bigger your risk in just following a popular strategy without doing your own due diligence.

For example, I am ~40 years away from Social Security age (very unlikely it will even exist at that time). If I retired now, making my portfolio survivable for 40-50+ years requires more skill than someone who just needs to make it 5-10 years until they start pulling in SS benefits. Does a portfolio’s asset allocation that thrived in 1981 look the same as what works in 2021? Will today’s allocation still work in 2061?

Of course in ERE land we’re focused on all forms of capital. If my portfolio failed it wouldn’t be the end of my world since I have other legs on my stool, but I’d still like to give it the best shot of success. As @Dave pointed out, it’s hard to unsee the interconnectedness of complex systems the longer one spends exploring CC and ERE. In that way, I can’t just turn my analytical brain off and wave my hand saying “Well everyone knows markets always go up in the long term.” If things like living with low housing expenses, cooking, and repairing things are ERE 101 skills, then perhaps investing is an ERE 201 skill. It doesn’t need to be mastered during early skill acquisition, but at some point it will need to be learned.

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Re: The Education of Axel Heyst

Post by IlliniDave »

white belt wrote:
Thu Jul 01, 2021 2:59 pm
I’m not picking on you specifically.
Oh, I knew that. And even if I thought so, it wouldn't bother me. I'm at the end of the line and have essentially "won" the game barring some financial cataclysm I'd be powerless to avoid a priori anyway. It amuses me when people try to tell me I'm doing it all wrong and I'll never succeed. Typically they are annuity salesmen when you get down to brass tacks, haha.

I'm not familiar with the Collins book you mentioned, but it sounds like the author is giving advice that qualifies as better than not thinking about/planning for retirement at all, but otherwise is pretty bad. I suspect it was probably discussed over on bogleheads, and I'd guess the majority were critical of it. As a group, generally passive investors are a lot more sophisticated than they're (we're) given credit for.

I don't disagree that it is in an investor's best interest to at least understand what it is they are buying, account types, behavioral finance, and tax laws. Maybe you could call that a competent investor. I would roughly apply that term to myself.

I don't really know how to assign risk levels to a combination of age and use of a popular strategy versus an unpopular one. I could probably create the "logic train" behind it, but would need to see the data to support it. If I have an adventurousness as an investor, it's being a bit of a contrarian. So it sounds appealing, or at least interesting. But I've already got a risk mitigation strategy I plan on sticking with.

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Re: The Education of Axel Heyst

Post by Ego »

Qazwer wrote:
Thu Jul 01, 2021 12:26 pm
Why do you care about a downturn if you do not need to spend then?
I understand your point. I wasn't advocating it. Only paraphrasing what I believe @jacob was saying in the quote, though I may have gotten it wrong.

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Re: The Education of Axel Heyst

Post by AxelHeyst »

Ego wrote:
Wed Jun 30, 2021 7:25 pm
There’s a lot to this post, thank you. That Becker lecture was metal AF. I’ve had to make myself stop reading Zerzan books because I’m a little too sympathetic or inclined to agree with his ideas that consciousness is a mistake, and the only way to psychologically survive being aware of one’s existence is to ruthlessly lie to oneself. But back to Becker - it seems like Roszak’s Where the Wasteland Ends would be a decent complement, along the lines that religion becomes necessary.

Regarding security - it seems that really understanding my relationship between security, investing, risk, freedom, etc is worth much effort. Of the top of my head, my counter to “security is like heroin” is just that security is much more complex than that. If I believed that a massive stash / a bomber portfolio was my only source of security in this world, then I agree with the metaphor. But I happen to think that there are possible future scenarios that will obliterate or render irrelevant any size stash I may have, and any level of investing skill I may attain. So I’m going into investing with the perspective that it’s entirely possible it’s all going to burn anyway so I should just 80/20 it, not get greedy about it, and go outside and play a lot.

The sources of ‘security’ hedges against those scenarios of course is skills, human and social capital, etc. The stool legs of ERE. But no matter what, I’ve spent a fair amount of time coming to grips with the real possibility that I may die of famine, disease, heat wave (I’m writing this from just outside Portland, which was 116F last Sunday), or warboy, and there’s an 80/20 approach to security that I’m going to attend to, but otherwise I’m going to try to live a good life and die a good death.

Climbing still feels like a good metaphor here. Or rather, I keep finding instances where my time climbing has trained me to be psychologically fitter for life. Being overly obsessed with security is like sewing up a 5.7 route with gear every 3’ when I climb at 5.11. That’s no fun. It’s arguably not even climbing, more like a really time consuming temporary via ferrata. YOLO’ing my money into crypto feels like free soloing 5.10c when I’m a 5.11 climber. Totally irresponsible. Every climber is constantly dialing and tuning their personal relationship with risk, security, and “fun” or accomplishment.

When I climb, and I plug in a blue BD cam, I “know” I’m not going to have a catastrophe from here until I climb high enough above it to deck into that ledge down there. But I only “know” that because I’m discounting objective hazards like a fridge-sized boulder coming loose above me and flossing me off the mountain. But there’s nothing I can do about that besides not climb ever, so I don’t think about it.

re: that sivers article - he just released a book, How to Live, which looks like the All Grown Up version of that talk. Nice!

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Re: The Education of Axel Heyst

Post by AxelHeyst »

Dave wrote:
Thu Jul 01, 2021 11:45 am
Thanks for this, you nicely articulated some things I was grasping at.

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Re: The Education of Axel Heyst

Post by AxelHeyst »

Cal Newport’s weekly post today is Renaissance-Ideal relevant brain candy. Particularly so for people (points finger at own face) still coming down from the frenetic, panicked pace of status quo corporate “productivity” culture, which might be best thought of as the exact inverse of the scale Cal’s referencing: an enormous amount gets done quickly at the scale of days and weeks, but almost nothing gets done at the scale of years and decades. FI/semiERE seems, to me, a way of gaining access to this world of playing the long game.

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Re: The Education of Axel Heyst

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

Very interesting. I think this relates to what Peter Bane refers to as the “hodge-podge growth pattern” that results when attempting permaculture at systems level thinking. Roughly akin to holding more qualitative descriptions as aim of overall system strategy.

Or, another way of looking at it might be that productivity over time can always almost instantaneously be improved in any situation where most limiting factors could be removed simply by spending money and/or exerting power within boundary. Solutions that can’t be bought or powered up, because not yet invented, also can’t be rushed. Big business has spent a great deal of money trying to figure out how to spark true creativity or innovation with little success. Focusing on marginal efficiency gains can actually impede paradigm shift and/or intensify coming crash.

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Re: The Education of Axel Heyst

Post by AxelHeyst »

The Renaissance Report

Physiological
No formal training for the past two months, but lots of hiking and general body movement. Too much sitting, because a lot of driving.

I'm certain my body is sensitive to fast carbs, and am committed to adjusting my diet accordingly. I'm cutting out oats, bread, pasta, etc. For now I'm keeping a small amount of brown rice in there for post workout meals. My diet for now will be pretty close to the slow carb diet.

I'm building a training program based off Overcoming Gravity. Lots of prehab and mobility stuff, with high-rep strength movements to build joint/connective tissue strength. Lower rep work for strength and moderate hypertrophy to come later.

Intellectual
Studying investing, covered in next section.
Fantastic podcast: Charles Eisenstein interviewing Daniel Schmachtenberger. I get more out of this every time I listen to it. A beautiful analysis of the dynamics of human civilization and perspective on our current situation (which is desperate).

Economic
Actively reading Investing for Dummies and The Four Pillars of Investing by Bernstein.

I'm still sitting on all cash, not terribly happy about it, but can't think of anything obviously less stupid to do with it until I'm less ignorant.

My burn rate for two straight months of road tripping was about 1.5jafi, which I'm happy with considering I was whomping around in a 18mpg truck and had a few "solve problems with money" events. More on the road trip in another post.

Emotional
I continue to mature out of my codependent tendencies. I recognize warning signs early, and make conscious decisions to avoid pitfalls. As recently as a couple years ago I thought I was "over" codependency, and was therefore blind to the subtle ways I was still exhibiting tendencies. At the moment I struggle with subtlety -- if I see a potential situation where I could drop back into old patterns, I have a mildly violent reaction in the opposite direction. I'd rather err on the side of "whoa, what's that guy's problem?" rather than regress. I hope with practice to gain unconscious proficiency and grace with this soon.

In terms of values, I'm dropping in to the realization that I value greater stability than I've had, and also that my abilities to plan and strategize are valuable. My experiment with "not planning" over the past couple months was fruitful: the conclusion is "fuck that". Bring on the spreadsheets and decision matrices, time to dial this shit. I perceive a cultural value on being free spirited and "fun" and spontaneous. To the extent that this stems from a healthy aversion from cubicle hell, TPS reports, and conformity, I'm cool with the gist of it. But, dammit, I'm an INTJ, and so my only real choice is to use my powers for good or keep them in the closet. I'm no good at being a magic pixie dream boy. What works for me is to apply planning and strategy to how to live a dope-ass, nonconformist, authentic, etcetc life that belongs to no one but me. Now that I've come in off the road for at least the next month, I'm going to be dropping back into a deliberate-but-flexible strategic approach.

Social
I've been very social for the past two months. It's been really great. DGF and I have grown much closer and stronger (living in a tent for 1.5months with a person will do that), I hung out with Mooretrees' family for five days, and there were a bunch of other social interactions.

...and August is going to be a month of mostly delicious solitude.

Technical
In the past two months I got really efficient at setting up my tent, packing my motorcycle for camping, finding boondocking spots without the internet, and navigating without gps.

This month I'm going to build a stove cabinet that doesn't suck using Real Jointery, rebuild the shock on my mtb (so I can sell it), do some post-trip maintenance on my motorcycle, switch my computer over to Ubuntu, and learn to shoot a hungarian horsebow.

Ecological
Currently reading Ecology, by Odum et al, and Peter Bane's Permaculture book (thanks @7wb5!)
I'm tending mom's garden while they're traveling. Kale, tomatoes, peppers, squash, a few other things.
Reading (and thinking about) Gaya Herrington's report on how the Limits to Growth scenarios are panning out.

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mountainFrugal
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Re: The Education of Axel Heyst

Post by mountainFrugal »

Great update. Horsebows are amazing engineering. I have a larger take down recurve, but the limbs are pretty big compared to a horsebow designed for quickly changing sides while shooting from a horse. I am excited to hear how your bowman's journey goes. Clearing the head before shooting is one of the most meditative practices. Enjoy!

AxelHeyst
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Re: The Education of Axel Heyst

Post by AxelHeyst »

@mF Thanks!
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I've been on a road trip for the past month and a half. A few days after getting a clean bill of health post-surgery, I moto'd up to Truckee, met DGF, and we wandered up through Oregon and Washington with my moto sticking out the back of the truck. We didn't take Serenity, just tent camped. I wrote a blog post about one angle on it here.

We mostly camped for free on BLM and NF land, which is bountiful everywhere we were. In the past I've used freecampsites.net to find spots, but for this trip I mostly just got a sense for where NF/BLM land was and drove to it, then took whatever forest roads looked good. I had canceled my cell phone plan at the beginning of the trip, but every once in a while I stole DGFs phone to make sure we weren't going to accidentally camp on res land or something.

DGF got some inner ear thing and wanted to get checked out by a doc, so we spent two nights in a tiny house airbnb in Portland. For the Independence day weekend, we got a paid campground at the base of Mt Hood to hide from the crowds. Those were the only times we paid for camping/shelter for the trip.

I had a two-burner Coleman camp stove, and some refillable 1lb propane bottles. I couldn't find anyone to refill them (it takes a special fitting), and I'm loathe to buy disposable canisters, so I bought a 5lb propane bottle and hose. I needed another propane bottle for the shipping container anyways, so I was just solving that purchase early.

We met up with Mooretrees' family in Eastern Oregon and stayed with them from a Thursday through a Wednesday (iirc). It was awesome! They put us up in a pop-up tent camper in their yard, I helped out with the skoolie build, DGF went berrypicking with Mooretrees, I went on a forest road moto ride with Mooretrees' DH, we picnicked at a river spot, etc. Their kid is hilarious. It was really fun to spend time with another forumite, and a breathe of fresh air to visit friends and not have to navigate the "what are we gonna do if they want to go out to a fancy restaurant and spend a bunch of money?" question. DGF and I were also attracted to the area in general as a potential place to settle at.

That said, as outlined in my blog post, I'm done with road trips, at least ones in the form of "pack up self-owned vehicle with gear and hit the road." In ERE terms, it was a WL5 endeavor. We had a great time and spent a fraction of what most people spend on road trips, but I'm Dissatisfied (D*V*P=C) in general with the format. I'm dissatisfied with the carbon footprint (something like 156gallons of gasoline!!! god!!), how individualistic it can be (sealed up in own glass and steel cage, have to go out of your way to force interactions with other people), the amount of sitting involved, etc. It's a very consumptive practice - you go to the fuel store to buy fuel, you need to own a vehicle that you bought from the vehicle store, you have to get your cooking etc gear from the Outdoor and Adventure store, etc. I suppose the way to state it concisely is that I'm dissatisfied with how road tripping *in this format* is a consumer activity. With some more tweaking and planning I could get our carbon footprint and food costs down, and improve how much we socially engage, but there's a limit to what can be achieved with this *style* of travel. Hence, I'm over it.

The next concrete action here is to just sell the truck, which I'll do sometime between now and when we leave for RTW trip in February. Used truck prices keep going up and DGF 'needs' a car for the time being (ironically, so she can drive to work when the smoke is too bad to ride a bike, and so she can flee the area quickly if it's threatened by wildfire), so I'm just letting her use it until I pull the trigger on offing it.

Speaking of - DGF bought a electric-assist cargo bike, a Surly Big Easy. It had 90 miles on it. She's on board with going carless, and so the bike is her car-replacement strategy. She's already used it a bunch when the smoke isn't bad, and when we get to a place that's bikeable I see her using it as main form or transportation.

I'm now back in the desert, on the family land, housesitting while my parents are on a road trip. I'm loving the solitude and the stability of just being here, in one spot, with access to a kitchen and a fridge and a computer. I picked up RF from the train station yesterday (he'll be here for about a week?) and we've already gone DEEEEP with WoG / meta-crisis / gertitude discussions. Lovely.

--

Couple pics from riding near the Bootleg fire shortly after it started:
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7Wannabe5
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Re: The Education of Axel Heyst

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

I listened to the Schmachtenberger podcast and read the original paper by Herrington. I think the podcast did a great job of explaining the general problem set, but I was struck by the fact that it did not go further in discussing the ways in which humans convert or amend simple or complicated arrangements of commodities into particularly human forms of complexity. A forest is more complex than a tree, and a tree is more complex than a 2x4 or even a house, but is a tree more complex than the history of architecture or the network of social interactions that take place between the humans who occupy the house? Obviously, being blind or stubborn stuck in zero-sum game or optimization mode is dysfunctional and destructive, but how do we differentiate between human production which is most like frenzied extraction towards personal power vs internally motivated curiousity and creativity towards general enlightenment?*

IMO, the most important note regarding the Herrington paper is that it is more descriptive than prescriptive. Especially given the fact that she notes that we are very near to juncture where one or another scenario will likely manifest more clearly. I also wondered who most benefits from conclusion that most likely optimistic scenario is more energy availability applied to high tech.

*I should note that I believe recent research that indicates that truly novel invention is not highly motivated by financial incentives. Relative affluence is necessary precursor, but very much not sufficient motive.

AxelHeyst
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Re: The Education of Axel Heyst

Post by AxelHeyst »

Good point re: the Herrington paper. A question I had (which might expose my ignorance about the methods), was, doesn't the CT scenario necessarily involve a certain fraction of GDP going towards pollution abatement technologies, starting at some date and increasing over time? I'm guessing the model assumes some level of investment towards a CT-scenario level of technology, and I didn't see a comparison of that level of investment to actual global investment.

So per her paper, current trends of lag metrics (food, gdp/capita, pollution, etc) match pretty close with both BAU2 and CT, but the models diverge in the near future. Don't we have enough information to be able to compare *investment* in the technologies that CT assumes? (Tech investment is a lead metric I think?) And doesn't CT assume that investment has been happening for some time? So can't we take a stab at saying whether or not CT is more or less likely than BAU2 based on historic levels of investment in the kinds of tech CT assumes?

(I assume the answers to these questions exist, but I haven't come across them yet. Cheers if anyone knows.)

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