black_son_of_gray's Journal

[classical_Liberal]

@jacob
I like that explanation for many reasons. It both provides an easily identifiable reference point for personal bias/current understanding limitations and a path forward (ie learn from the other quadrants, not your own). Although, I would argue it is possible to think and live in terms of more than one quadrant, serially and/or simultaneously, without a brain transplant. I have done it anecdotally.

Would you agree with or modify the following?

Salary Man----> Intuitively thinks in terms of optimizing salary and spending. May understand how to expend nonfinancial capital to increase this optimization. Wheaton 5 ERE seems a natural barrier point. (middle to upper-middle class)

Working Man----> Intuitively thinks in terms of yields and flows, mostly other than financial. They use non financial capital to help satisfy basic needs. However, lack of understanding in optimizing finances is a barrier point to ERE. They see "optimal" finances as indebted middle class, generally something they either work hard to avoid or on opposite participate in as twisted thought of social mobility. (working class)

Business Man/Investor----> Intuitively attempts to optimize use of financial assets, understand flows but in terms of financial assets only. Uses nonfinancial capital to maximize capital yields. Barrier point to ERE is optimizing spending and/or understanding other life flow value. (low-mid upper class)

Renaissance Man----> Intuitively attempts to design system without use of financial capital. Often views financial capital as suspect for ethical, sustainability, or other reasons. ERE barrier point is learning to utilize financial capital as a tool or part of their system to enhance. (permaculture/bohemian/prepper)

[jacob]

Indeed! .. except .. maybe your last paragraph should have been "Permaculture/behoemian/prepper man"... which you hinted at in your parenthesis.

And "ERE man" would be all of them together at one point or another, visiting and incorporating all from time to time, often simultaneously, where allowed. So outside of the original quad-graph.

When the FIRE movement is talking about "side-hustles" (working man) and "investing" (investing man), they're kinda getting there.

Add: It's conceivable/plausible that the ERE Wheaton table is formed by data dredging in the sense that it represents the most typical trajectory rather than "a plan". I'd like to think it was that way all along, but I can see how alternatives would easily represent themselves. Imagine, for example, the "ERE Wheaton table" from someone coming from the voluntary simplicity or permaculture side. It would probably include a gentle familiarization with evil money stuff.

PS: Also sorry for the My Fair Lady link. I've been sitting on that for a while But these "leveling up"-threads sometimes feel like that even if it might just have been to summarize my previous post---which I realize I not easy, so kudos. It's a high standard which I mostly fail to live up to myself.
PPS: Also https://www.amazon.com/Budo-Mind-Body-T ... 0834805731

[classical_Liberal]

@jacob
My Fair Lady I'm honored to be the one you used it on, don't be sorry.

It's conceivable/plausible that the ERE Wheaton table is formed by data dredging in the sense that it represents the most typical trajectory rather than "a plan". I'd like to think it was that way all along, but I can see how alternatives would easily represent themselves. Imagine, for example, the "ERE Wheaton table" from someone coming from the voluntary simplicity or permaculture side. It would probably include a gentle familiarization with evil money stuff.

I think this is really what I am trying to get at, there are many paths to Rome and sometimes the best way to learn is from those who take the paths less traveled. Or at least from a path different from the one I've been walking. I'm not going into detail here, but I've hinted at a Working Man period of my life in my journal before. Although I couldn't/didn't classify it as such during that period, or even when I wrote about it a year or so ago. Interestingly, I feel the seeds of the later draw to ERE were sewn during that period of my life outside of Salary Man.

In the last few months where I've put some concerted effort towards "leveling up", I've heavily relied on the insights from the period of my life. Plus the insights from certain poster's here who are obviously not in Salaryman quadrant. I guess with a high enough Kegan level, one doesn't have to experience each quadrant personally, they simply need to understand where someone from each quadrant is coming from. That's the idea I'm trying to represent with the above. If J+G is correct and the absolute numbers of high ERE wheaton level achievers are so low, the odds of finding one IRL are pretty low. However, finding learning sources to compliment personal weak areas, to hodgepodge the knowledge together is much more likely. IOW, find high functioning folks in quadrants other than your own.

Edit: Taking it even a step further, it could be of use for people to identify themselves in these quadrants. For example, c_L came into ERE with 75% Salaryman, 15% Business/Investor man, 10% Working Man, and 0% Renaissance Man (or whatever other name you want to give this). This way the obvious points of need are immediately evident. I spent much of my extra energy over the past 3 years trying to eek out a little more from the quadrant I felt most comfortable in, the time would have probably been better spent in the others.

[7Wannabe5]

last paragraph should have been "Permaculture/behoemian/prepper man"... which you hinted at in your parenthesis.

And "ERE man" would be all of them together at one point or another, visiting and incorporating all from time to time, often simultaneously, where allowed. So outside of the original quad-graph.

Ding-ding-ding. Great suggestion to reference back to the quadrants, because suddenly it's very clear to me that the frustration I was trying to communicate is due to the fact that many people don't recognize that artists are usually very high form of "working man" and that this is also true of "true" scientists. They can almost kill themselves doing work that is never or not yet valued at scale. I am sorry I jumped on your definition of "aesthetic", I was just trying to get at the spectrum that differentiates 'artists" from "scientists" given that they otherwise have a great deal in common. I guess it's mostly just F vs. T. So, given that a Bohemian, like my INFP sister who practices piano 2 hours/day and once constructed a mechanical hydraulic electronic drum playing bear almost from scratch inclusive of reading taxidermy books to figure out how to make the "fur" work, is right on cusp of "high science" and "high art" , I would suggest that Bohemian would be where Working Man overlaps Renaissance Man, with zero to very little overlap into quadrant of "business sense."

OTOH, "simple living/back to the land" lifestyle is very practical and craft minded, but usually not efficient enough to compete at money generating level in modern market. So, it's like they are living too much in the past and the Bohemian artist/scientists are living too much in the future to make any money in the market in the present.

Anyways, the question that comes to my mind is why is my lifestyle currently such a mess given that I had the advantage of experience in all 4 quadrants (permaculture/home economics, created and ran small business, worked for corporation as mid-rung manager, etc.) prior to even reading "ERE" ?

[black_son_of_gray]

In 2019 I read 42 books (and about a dozen books partially, maybe another dozen for skimming [e.g. cookbooks*, gardening/plant guides, etc.]). I figure this journal is as good a place as any to share the details:

38% were fiction
31% of the authors were women
9 of the fiction books were short story anthologies = maybe ~150 short stories. (One of my favorites)
I got two of "The Great Courses" from the library, and found them to be pretty decent.
$0.00 in library fines
I actually bought ( ) 3 books, all from awesome local bookstores.

Most irreverent: When Will Jesus Bring the Pork Chops? by George Carlin
Most useful: Atomic Habits by James Clear
Most boring: probably The End of Alchemy by Mervyn King- even though parts of it were extremely interesting, it had some long stretches that were a total slog.
Most dense with "oooo I like that" parts: How to do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy by Jenny Odell (lots of ERE-tangential ideas in there on what it means to be "productive")
Most unlikely to have picked up to read, but still did anyway: Sex Object: A Memoir by Jessica Valenti
Favorite fiction reads: Circe by Madeline Miller, Beautiful Ruins by Jess Walter (I've enjoyed a couple other Walter books)

Before this year, I'd never really read anything from the modern "horror" genre, and had some preconceived notions of what I thought that would be... but the horror short story anthology I read was actually quite enjoyable. Looking to read other good stuff in that space.

*a special mention here for The Souix Chef by Sean Sherman, which is by far the most interesting cookbook I've read in years. If you are into Native cuisine, foraging, etc., it's a great read. You pick up a random cookbook, and you've likely seen or at least heard of most dishes. This cookbook was filled with things that were entirely new to me, so mad props for that.

I'd be interested in hearing about notable books anyone else has read this last year. 2020 is right around the corner

[ertyu]

No recommendations but I'm picking up how to do nothing now. Sounds like something I can use, thanks for the rec

Update: have had my first "ooooh I like that" moment, checks out

[black_son_of_gray]

Contingency planning for post-democracy America?

[Note: I'm posting this in my journal rather than as a thread topic because I'm treating this as an exercise to organize and share my thoughts. I don't have an answer. I'm not even sure I have a point. It's a long post- you've been warned . It's just my personal confrontation with the topic and ideas, trying to work through it. Comments are certainly welcome and appreciated, but if you want to debate or rabbit-hole or just want a separate record, feel free to start a new thread so as not to clutter up the journal.]

It's been an interesting last few years for me with respect to thinking about the world's "big problems". It feels like I've been through the Kübler-Ross stages several times now: for peak oil, mass extinction, climate change. Which sounds depressing, but honestly at this point I'm feeling pretty, well...ok about things. Which isn't to say I like the trajectories at the moment, just that I'm not put in an emotionally bad place by them anymore. They are contingencies that I've thought through, that I can plan for, that I've accepted in a way.

But there's another "big problem" I haven't quite worked my way through yet. The integrity of the United States of America has been on my mind intermittently over the last year or so, and I'm not even sure where I am in Kübler-Ross land. I seem to bounce around within the stages, although none of the emotions I feel about this topic are all that strong. My quality of life isn't affected. In particular, it has been interesting coming to terms with what I thought was true*, but certainly doesn't seem that way anymore (and maybe wasn't ever true to begin with). Just writing about it makes me oscillate between suspicions that I'm either incredibly naive or incredibly cynical.

Well, let's find out which one it is. Or both!

By "integrity of the United States of America" I mean two distinct lines of thought: "is it trustworthy?" and "is it structurally sound?"

"Is it trustworthy?"

About a year ago, I stumbled upon the following academic paper: Testing Theories of American Politics: Elites, Interest Groups, and Average Citizens by Martin Gilens and Benjamin I. Page (link from author). The authors and their team collected an impressive data set to answer the question: "Who in US politics really influences government policy?" You might think that the average citizens' preferences might dictate (at least partially) which policies are enacted… y'know-democracy. You'd be wrong. Check out figure 1.

When the preferences of economic elites and the stands of organized interest groups are controlled for, the preferences of the average American appear to have only a minuscule, near-zero, statistically non-significant impact upon public policy.

The TL;DR from the research is that basically, it's rich people who can actually influence whether policies pass or don't, and the average citizen only appears to get what they want when their interests are shared by economic elites. The authors call this "democracy by coincidence". These coincidences are apparently frequent enough that average citizens still believe they have some say on policies (*cough*) and therefore don't riot in the streets. Also helps to explain how incumbents can simultaneously have incredibly low approval ratings and still be reelected.

Whenever a single academic article is used as an argument, it's reasonable to object: "But black_son_of_gray, it's just one study. Don't be gullible and believe in everything you read!" I get it, and perhaps that's a fair criticism. However, the data set that the authors have generated appears to be unprecedentedly large and comprehensive compared to other studies in this field, and I can't find any obvious technical/analytical flaws that they themselves don't address. I'd actually love to hear cogent arguments as to why it should be dismissed.

And by the way, this conclusion (i.e. that average America voters have zero influence over policy) isn't a Trump, Obama, or post-9/11 development… the data set spans polling and policies from 1981-2002. This has apparently been a reality at least as long as I've been alive!

And of course, you could argue: "yeah, yeah, yeah...money influences politicians. That's always been the case. But we still get to chose who we vote for!" But that's not exactly true either, at least not at the federal level. Even excluding the overt meddling/influence campaigns of foreign governments, the electoral college, and gerrymandering, there is the problem of "curation" at the party level. The average citizen doesn't necessarily get a say in the nomination process - small groups of elites with lots of money do, though (Larry Lessig TED talk with some explanation). Or non-nationally representative primary/caucus voters (looking at you, Iowa and New Hampshire). In the end, you only get to choose from options you didn't get to choose.

So here I am, looking up the dictionary definition for "democracy", batting around the common knowledge that "Of course America is a democracy you idiot!" in my head, and remembering the various civics/government classes I had to take in school and ... well, let's just say that I'm disappointed, and my faith in ongoing governance of the country is now considerably lower than it was even a few years ago. There is a fair amount of discussion about "the decline/collapse of the American empire", divisiveness, partisanship (see below), and dysfunction of the government, but there doesn't seem to be much open questioning of whether the US is even a democracy at all. Is that because everyone already knows the US isn't really a democracy and I'm the last poor schmuck to find out? Or is it because most others cling to the idea that, while flawed, it still kinda sorta works for the common man? In any case, the answer to the democracy question seems to be a demonstrable "no". (This is the closest thread I could find here on ERE. Some pretty good points are made and @Spartan_Warrior appears to be the most vocal about the absence of democracy.)

"Is it structurally sound?"

This one is a bit more obvious, isn't it? Regardless of whether you root for one team (or neither), regardless of whether the average voter actually has a say in policy, there is a good case to make that the US is in the midst of either a constitutional crisis or systemic dysfunction that could ultimately prove fatal. Something ain't right.

Take congress for example. My harebrained theory is that partisanship exists in two different "stable states": 1) mostly bipartisan, and 2) mostly partisan (or "tribal"). Imagine if you will the policy stances off all members of a political party as a distribution along some imaginary "liberal<->conservative" axis. There is some spread, and it actually looks something like a bell curve. See for yourself with this Pew Data. Democrats are left of center and Republicans are right of center, but there is a good spread to the distributions, causing overlap. It's the overlap that is key, because when the two distributions mostly overlap (e.g. in a bipartisan regime), there is an incentive for members of each party to compromise toward the center, because the voters in a politician's party at the extreme tail are fewer than the voters from the other party that overlap at the center**. Bipartisanship reinforces itself in that way. The Pew data shows substantial, stable overlap throughout the '90s and early '00s.

The opposite is also true, though: when the two distributions have only a small overlap, then a politician is punished for compromising because they please fewer voters in the center from the other party than they anger in their own party in the extreme tails. This is also a stable, reinforced state, and the data up until 2017 show the trend worsening. (I've actually measured the areas under the curves/overlaps, and we are indeed past the "switch" point where it make political sense to be tribal and uncompromising.)

What does all this mean? Heck if I know. Presumably, if the "state" of the system has flipped down into partisanship/tribalism, it can flip back. But because these states are - best I can tell - stable/reinforcing, I'm not sure what it'll take or how long we'll be dealing with this. In the mean time, both governance and social cohesion suffers. And the country (and indeed, the world) has large-scale problems that require both strong governance and strong social cohesion to address, and the clock is ticking. A constitutional crisis, extreme wealth inequality, lack of evidence of "democracy" leading to desired policy changes of the masses, a gridlocked legislative body, and big global external problems/pressures ... all of that leads me to conclude that there is a non-zero chance of some type of fatal US government failure. That could be a revolution/revolt, a civil war, coup, disintegration. Now, I'm not saying it's imminent or even likely. Just that it seems to me like it could happen...

How to think about this?

...And I'm not sure what to do (if anything) about this possibility. The funny thing about the realization that "America isn't really a democracy, it just seems that way because sometimes the elite also want what the common folk want" is that 1) it's apparently been this way my whole life anyway, and 2) I can't really think of any way in which knowing this will actually affect my day-to-day life, or would have if I'd figured all this out decades ago.

The Kübler-Ross model is sometimes referenced in a joking way by saying "the first step is denial...", for example when teasing a friend who denies some embarrassing accusation. Over in this post, @jacob mentioned The Future Is Not What It Used To Be***, which is about climate change/peak oil, but nonetheless had an eye-opening chapter on the utility of denial. In certain circumstances (specifically, when the consequences are very bad and you can't do anything about them anyway), it actually makes sense from a happiness standpoint to just disregard the problem and carry on with your life. For whatever reason, I hadn't considered that angle before, which leads to some interesting places. For one, you cease getting upset/disturbed/confused by "deniers," because for all you know, they might be making the best choice (whether subconsciously or not). The focus then shifts to "can I do something about this or not," which is often arguable, and very Stoic , which appeals to me.

In my current framework for thinking about the future, which assumes that most things near-term (<5 years or so) will probably be very similar to the current trends (i.e. there is system inertia), the prediction would be that the US continues to remain fundamentally undemocratic and dysfunctional and that the tribalism/partisanship/breakdown of government mechanisms continues. Long-term (>10 years), who knows what will happen. It'd be nice if we ended up coming out of things (as Howe's Fourth Turning framework predicts), but that assumes we are just in a cycle rather than in an unprecedented and unusual crisis (i.e. "this time it's different"). And I'm just not sure.

So this is where I am right now, stuck trying to sort out contingency plans for a post-democratic America. The question "can I do something about this?" seems to have different answers. I probably can't do anything to fix the political mess (other than, y'know, trying to be a good neighbor, etc.). I'm not exactly sure if and how to plan for a "failure" of the government in future, because it's really difficult to predict what that would even look like (is there confiscation? conscription? are property rights maintained? does the dollar have any value?). How do you hedge for all the possibilities? "Just bug out to Canada!" I can't imagine that is a realistic plan - there's no way a country of 38 million people could absorb even a tiny fraction of the US population, even if it wanted to...

Maybe the Kübler-Ross model is the wrong tack - maybe the last step is denial.
_________
*It seems to me that one of the big challenges of adulthood is debugging all the gunk acquired during childhood without breaking yourself.
**Yes, I realize that a central tenet of this theory is that politicians are responsive to common voters, which seems to be in direct contradiction to the study I just cited. Everything's a hot mess.
***Although I think the book had many interesting and useful ideas, and I really appreciate that in a book, it was almost insufferably "academic" in writing style. That feature alone guarantees that it'll never appeal to the mainstream reader. By "academic" I mean: 1) it was boring prose, jam-packed with nominalizations, which I think are terrible for readability; 2) NEVER include integrals in the middle of your text, regardless of their accuracy in describing a relationship, when you can just state it clearly in plain language. Research has been done on this. The more math in a text, the fewer the readers, and the fewer the citations.

[classical_Liberal]

I haven't been under the delusion the the US was a real democracy on the Federal level for quite some time. Even if it was, my impact 1/327,000,000 doesn't really matter anyway. Frankly, this may actually be a feature for its structural soundness. That's probably an argument for a separate thread.

I do believe that there are some real democratic processes on smaller levels. State or local, depending on the size of your state and municipality. I live in ND now, and the state constitution has a feature where any citizen can draw up a law, if they receive 5000 signatures (state population 760K) on a petition, then this law must appear on the state ballot. If it receives a majority of yea votes, the State legislature is compelled to enact the law. Pretty neat, albeit sometimes messy, particularly if the legislature creates delays using poorly drafted laws to stop themselves . Doesn't California have something similar in the Prop system? Anyway, I get that even local elections are "rigged" against democracy to some degree by the local elites. Like School district tax increases that are voted down, but year after year they reappear on the ballot with ever more funding advertising the benefits. It's irritating. I guess my stoic point is that, if anyone is really wanting their "vote to count", these more local matters are where it's at from a circle of control standpoint.

Regarding the other point, I know of several theories or concepts that use history as a guide for the life-cycles of nations or empires. Not a single one of them, that I know of, would place the US anywhere but in a decline phase. Still, is this the worst thing? Seriously, are citizens lives better lived in the early days, or in the rough and tumble rising phases of strong nations? Generally there are great sacrifices, more wars, huge growing pains, ect. In the decline phase of empires, the people are generally doing pretty well... Until the decline reaches a critical mass anyway. That can take generations though, and even if it doesn't, plenty of nations have put themselves in a position to remain leaders in very specific areas to maintain a standard of power for the elites, and reasonable stability for its citizens. For the most recent it was the UK, still not a bad place to live, given the options in the world. From the rubble of the empire post WW I & II they created nation of trade and banking. I think the US tech economy could do the same for it. Or maybe a more regional break up of governance, which wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing. No matter how it shakes out, I think it's going be be very slow in developing, until very quickly it isn't. Not sure if there is much that can be done without creating so many Type II errors that they end up culminating in failure of preparedness anyway.

Either way, I place the odds of another power displacing the US in the next 50 years (my lifetime) at maybe only 10 percent. Completely unscientific guess, at least I can guarantee it either will or won't happen.

Edited to Add: From a "loss" standpoint, just because the US eventually will fail, doesn't mean everything about the culture will die. Successful nations were that way for a reason. The best parts of the system will likely be picked up in the future by another great society.

[jacob]

@bsog - Thank you for writing that. It's a process I've gone through over the past few years never expecting that the political situation and the trend towards illiberal democracies or oligarchies (some countries are already there; certain other countries have strong movements trying to get us there) would become one of my primary concerns. I agree with your bistable political model. I used to think that the US model was more stable [than parliamentary systems], but it's now clear that it's bistable(*) and that's scary (at least for the minority-party; whoever that ends up being).

It's not something one usually sees in parliamentary systems, because the Gaussian is divided into smaller parties and the fringier--the smaller, because Gaussian. Parliamentary systems only have one semi-stable mode (democracy) which usually muddles around between left and right. While such systems occasionally put extreme parties in power, they tend to mean revert at the next election because the fringe-parties also mostly only represent a minority of the people.

(*) Because any trend towards the center is now met with primary challengers from the extreme parts of the party with social media and disinformation making it a lot easier to break through. It used to be that the "fourth branch of government" put a significant damper on such efforts whereas now they seem to amplify their messaging instead.

This probably is our fourth turning (it certainly feels like it, but maybe we ain't seen nothing yet) but there's no guarantee that the next cycle will continue along the part liberal democracy/part liberal oligarchy like the previous(current) cycle or whether it will follow the current world wide trend towards illiberal oligarchy. (Are we currently experiencing the beginning of the end or the end of the beginning?)

Methinks enjoying life in a illiberal democracy or being in denial about the illiberal aspects of it really depends on whether one's personal politics is aligned with the permanent ruling party. If so it's not hard to pretend that one still lives in a democracy complete with elections and due process ... when one's side is always winning, one is probably rarely subjected to the power of the state, and one might even benefit a bit from being a party-member.

The dynamics to climate change denial is similar. Probably explains any kind of denial, really. When ideology differs from the scientific conclusions, then the best way to avoid cognitive dissonance is to declare there's a problem with how the science is done because the idea of science itself is still held in high regard---nobody would declare themselves unscientific. (One believes oneself to be "skeptical" rather than simply non-scientific.) Similarly, the way to avoid dissonance in a country that's sliding towards illiberal democracy slowly losing rights like due process or representation or incrementally losing structural separation between the executive, legislative, and judicial is to show that elections are still being held (despite e.g. permanently handicapping the minority party) or put the word "democracy" in the name of your country(**). In that regard it will be difficult to put one's finger on a specific point because one (or someone else) can always point to some other point and claim it's not as bad you think. It then becomes a moving goal post problem.

(**) Blatantly naming something for the opposite of its actual function or being is a tried and true political strategy.

[7Wannabe5]

In Iran they said "Before the revolution we drank in public and prayed in private. Now we pray in public and drink in private."

[Ego]

@BSOG, your post brings to mind the argument that while we don't have free will, we should pretend we do. To do otherwise would eliminate the moral underpinnings of our society.

So we pretend we have a democracy. To do otherwise would, as Harari put it, undermine the fiction that sustains social order.

Illusionsim may be the defining philosophical movement of the 20's.

[bostonimproper]

I recommend reading Astra Taylor's Democracy May Not Exist, But We'll Miss It When It's Gone. As c_l mentioned, there is also opportunity to get involved at a state and local level if you are interested in getting involved with and carrying on the traditions of democracy and civic engagement up close. While the federal government dominates headlines, most policy is local or involves federal-local coordination. I think the longer our federal government remains in gridlock, the more actual policy agendas are going to be pushed onto the regional level (e.g. around climate/energy initiatives).

[Mister Imperceptible]

Noble lie

[black_son_of_gray]

Thanks for the replies everyone.

@c_L, bostonimproprer: Yeah, I totally agree that the local level is the best place to focus. I actually have a decent amount of faith in local governance. There's just way more accountability when you have to routinely face the people you represent because you live on the same block or they show up to city council meetings and look you in the eye. To my mind, federalism is one of America's best features because it has a certain kind of darwinian robustness...but I wonder how hierarchy factors into this. For example, if the federal level is a robust democracy and locally there is systemic corruption, is that more stable than the opposite, where local governments are democratic but under the thumb of a sham federal system? My gut says that the latter is more problematic, but I can't quite put my finger on why. Federal just seems harder to fix.

@ego, MI: Interesting links. I feel like I have definitely softened my stance on "deniers" in the last few months. Partly out of just accepting how the world is, and partly out of acknowledging my own lack of certainty as to what is "reasonable" in chaotic times, admitting that the lessened pain of cognitive dissonance might be rational for some. Quote from @ego's link:

it is both of key importance and morally right that people not be disabused of these beliefs, because the illusion has benefits both to individuals and to society.

...Not saying that I know this is true, but it adds perspective to consider that it might be for any given global issue.

@jacob
Well I hadn't even thought of parliamentary systems (USA blinders on ), but that's a great point about dividing up the Gaussian among more parties. I've been thinking a little more about the bistability model and how it all might evolve over time.

A speculation: maybe it isn't so much bistable as it is cyclical?

Supporting points/arguments:

• Compatible with cyclical "turnings"
• Cycles look like bistability. E.g. if you make a histogram of a sine wave, you get two peaks around 1 and -1 where the function hangs out most of the time.
• Are isolated (i.e. partisan) peaks actually stable and self-reinforcing over the long term? Abstract theorizing: Maybe in the short term, when there is a distinct "enemy" to rally against, but once isolated, the skeptical eye turns inward on the group itself. This has a tendency to fracture the tribe. Concrete contemporary examples: even as the Pew data in my previous post has shown consolidated partisanship between left and right, there have been numerous schisms/infighting within left and right. For example, the recent history of the right has been that the Tea Party fractured off (and still has some influence)*, Trump and his supporters rose to prominence, and many moderate/old-regime Republicans are retiring or fracturing off as conservative Independents. On the left, you've got Bernie Sanders who is an Independent (but who caucuses with Dems), the old-regime moderates (Clinton, Biden), and the new wave of young and ultra-progressive (AOC and similar). The point is, neither silo looks all that stable when you zoom in. The next election could shift the power balances within-party on either side.**
• Bipartisanship is more functional and productive, so presumably the lack of productivity eventually leads voters to doubt the efficacy of their tribal views. Faith in Congress is so low now, maybe that spurs a reversal/changing of the guard? Counters: 1) Maybe that takes a long time and isn't a really strong driver back to compromise. 2) Maybe one tribe dominates the other so completely through shenanigans (gerrymandering, fraud, etc.) that they can railroad anything through. That is highly functional and productive, although a large step away from democracy.

Alas, I stared at these charts for a while to see if I could find some additional evidence of cycles, but came up blank (probably because they don't show how the parties themselves have been evolving over time). Nevertheless, they are interesting to look at:
Control of Congress:


Party votes for president:


*Remember when Boehner committed seppuku by compromising to keep the government funded?
**A counter-argument to this point is that, on a voting basis, both sides are nearly completely partisan...so these fractures haven't shown up so much in floor votes on legislation. But a counter-counter-argument to that could be that Pelosi and McConnell just don't offer up legislation that they know won't be fully supported by their party. There are probably lots of draft bills that don't make it through that filter.

[black_son_of_gray]

When whimpers become bangs?

For this post I'd like to hash out some thoughts I've been having on living with a system/web-of-goals, and where I see some challenges.

As a refresher, in a previous episode of our ongoing series, "black_son_of_gray's epiphanots", I waxed abstrusely:

[...] my mind has been kicking back against the implicit assumptions embedded in FIRE. There is no "financial independence" because I can't remove myself from any system (finance, humanity, nature, etc.—however those terms are defined). Independence implies that you've "solved" the problem of money, but because money is completely embedded within societal and cultural and natural systems, there is no "answer". It's only a mirage. It's thinking something is there when it isn't. It's a fundamentally flawed way of thinking.

Thinking I have the "answer" would also lull me into a false sense of security. It would be easy for me to stop paying attention to changing circumstances. To think of this in evolutionary terms, for example, it's worth remembering that there is no optimal evolutionary destination. There is only survival, and what it takes to survive is always changing as the environment changes. The master process here, underlying natural selection, writing, the science method, "kaizen" etc., is something like "iterative refinement"—always fitting the curves, which themselves are always changing.

[...]

More useful, rather, seems to be getting involved—actually participating—in the systems that are important (e.g. gardening, developing a community, creating something of value that others might find value in as well), rather than repeating some mantra of "financial independence" as being an end goal, an "answer". That way, when things veer off in unpredictable ways, you'll see it in the system immediately—because you're part of it—and will be able to refit your curve and keep on going.

Point #1: the world changes, and you'll have to actively keep up. This is maintenance. (You might even call it "work".)

Some time later, triggered by a comment from @7Wannabe5 and subsequently expounded upon by several others in this journal (thanks all!), I latched onto the idea that refinement of your own personal system/web-of-goals is really best accomplished "by feel". Why? Because it's really difficult to do accounting or quantification on certain non-quanititative or overlapping aspects of a lifestyle.

Point #2: refinement of your system/web-of-goals on some level is subjective, introspective, and highly personalized.

With those two points in mind, here are some thoughts I've been having...

Reference Frames

We've all experienced this at some point in our lives: you're staring out of the window or a car, train, or plane. Everything near you zips by but the features on the horizon barely change.

I've recently noticed a similar phenomenon in my life, but in reverse: tranquility up close to me but an increasing flurry of disorder and danger with increasing distance. A couple examples: 1) American politics at the national level is in dramatic decline, yet what I see locally in my community and everyday life shows very little change. Local institutions still seem to work, civic participation and pedestrian attitudes seem to be about the same as always. 2) The coronavirus outbreak is looking increasingly problematic at the global level, yet outside of the mask section of the hardware store being decimated, there is really no evidence whatsoever that there will be any issues locally. (Of course, at the time of this writing, there is very low risk of catching it in my community.) 3) Just about every day, a new study comes out documenting the increasingly dire environmental challenges ahead of humanity, yet I am completely unable to pinpoint any specific change I've noticed around my neighborhood. My senses, in my local environment, have registered nothing. 4) Financially, I've been doing really well, even as economic data keeps rolling in showing a huge fraction of those around me are falling further behind. (There are plenty of other examples, particularly financial ones, but I'll stop there. You get the point.)

In a weird sort of way, this "things around me are going to hell but I'm perfectly fine" phenomenon is sort of expected and perhaps even a goal of ERE. After all, it's evidence of resilience in challenging times, evidence that the system I've crafted for myself is working well.

All good, right? But it's at this point in the story, right when I feel like my system is begin dialed in (point 1) to my personal—local—preferences (point 2), that my hackles start to raise.

Maintenance "Issues"

"This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper."
T.S. Eliot

"How did you go bankrupt?" Bill asked.
"Two ways," Mike said. "Gradually and then suddenly."
E. Hemingway in The Sun Also Rises

Something is clearly missing from my patented Two Point Plan (TM) above, because it doesn't have a good answer to this question: "How do you tune a system when local is good and stable but global is bad or unraveling?" This is a problem because local is what is being used for tuning (point 2), but at some point global will spill over into local. Probably in a hurry too.

A somewhat similar evolutionary analogy: iterative refinement of a system/web-of-goals is perfectly acceptable if the world's changes are gradual, but completely inadequate in a world with unexpected, big events. See also, N.N. Taleb, problem of induction, etc.

Said yet another way, too much refinement of a system can actually become dangerous even as it looks safer than ever. In fancy technical terms, if you insulate yourself from smaller and smaller perturbations, you become paradoxically more vulnerable because the error signal that you are using to tune things becomes harder to detect. This is called feedback compensation, which is fantastic right up until the point where it blows up in your face. [See Ma! That six year post-doc was worth it!] In non-technical terms, complacency is greatest just before SHTF.

To which you might say "ah, well that's why you always have a well-diversified, uncorrelated plan B, C, etc." Yes, but then the overall strategy that you're describing isn't exactly a tightly connected web-of-goals, nor is it particularly efficient. You can't have it all ways. Trilemma, or something like that. It would seem that to play it loose and not have a super tight web-of-goals or highly optimized/refined system might have the best survival longterm. What's tragicomic about all of this is that the path towards ERE goes straight through optimization/maximization right before branching out into systems and networks, so the natural evolution of mindsets might predispose thinking this way. But it could be dangerous to combine the two approaches ("optimization" & "systems") without some careful consideration. Systems are simply different beasts, and the skills don't always "stack."

The disconnect I'm observing in my own life between local and global reference frames, the insidiousness of the changes that I need to "refit my curve to" is slightly unsettling to me. When do I start to listen to the whimpers, lest they become bangs? The best I can come up with is that one should periodically rethink their whole web-of-goals/system from scratch, although perhaps not every time you make adjustments. I'm not sure exactly how often to do that to best address the maintenance issues discussed above (any thoughts?), except to say that I know both global and local fits are important considerations. Hmm....

[Ego]

"How do you tune a system when local is good and stable but global is bad or unraveling?"

Make a hobby of (or better yet get paid to) watch the global for things that will invade the local. See how other localities &individuals have successfully dealt with similar invasions and adjust the personal web to incorporate the new lessons. ?

[daylen]

There is no rethinking the system from scratch. What you can do is partially differentiate your perception or model more finely and reintegrate again. Conversely, you can ignore some prior differences in favor of a "line of best fit" to free up attention elsewhere.

[Jin+Guice]

I wish I had the knowledge to put this in technical terms but I don't. I know your in the weeds on this, but from the outside, it reads like you're trying to design a system to reduce risk to zero. Now that your system is locally resilient, you're trying to make it globally resilient, but global resilience doesn't exist. Making your system resilient to certain things will make it vulnerable to others. Resilience and anti-fragility can certainly be increased and maximized, but like everything else there are diminishing returns and you can only take it so far.

Preparation and planning can only get you so far. After a certain point the most resilient thing you can do is be aware, focused and present.

[classical_Liberal]

"It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is most adaptable to change".

-Attributed to Charles Darwin, although it may be Leon C. Megginson's genius

This is my strategy, I literally practice flexibility. It's amazing what you can adapt to when you force yourself to adapt. Most of the fears of change go away when you're constantly changing things up. Although the confidence, at least for me, is limited to the realms in which I practice. So, it's an ongoing struggle.

Also, pay much more attention to the local, and much less to the global. Circles of influence.

[daylen]

@classical_Liberal The thing about that meme is that it is universalizing one thing, namely 'change' which is dependent on something more innate. If you are using Ti, then change is a minor grammatical difference. If you are using Ni, then change is one recurring pattern becoming slightly more probable than another. For Si, change is the addition or subtraction of a particular detail within a recurring pattern. For Fi, change is ... this one is hard for me ... ummm ... a tone of voice that indicates something about the internal state of someone .... or something like that.

Point is that it is not really any different from using 'faith', 'power', 'status', 'wealth' etc. as a chant to yourself that you are what you want to be.

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As for @black_son_of_gray, related to bigato's comment, external tensegrity of the system is great, but internal tensegrity of thought is even better(*). It is not really a zero-sum game either, the mind is very complex, so it is possible to utilize parts of it at different times in ways that are synergistic towards obtaining whatever you want in reality. This is highly biased, of course, but I think that whatever you come up with needs to have a bit of complexity. Otherwise, the model will serve your innate self as opposed to the self you need to become (to survive/thrive/whatever).

(*) Actually, they may be mutually inclusive.