Best of the ERE Forum!

Questions and comments
AxelHeyst
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Re: Best of the ERE Forum!

Post by AxelHeyst »

Not totally unrelated to the above link, here's BSoG on... it's amazing, just read it.
viewtopic.php?p=194073#p194073
black_son_of_gray wrote:
Tue Jul 30, 2019 7:28 pm
...most FIRE discussions I see are rooted in near-term or long-term time frames.
  • Near-term (~1 year): e.g. what's your yearly budget? Do you have a 6 month emergency fund? One time events like: I did X and saved Y dollars
  • Long-term (20+ years): e.g. tax/social security/pension strategies when elderly, perpetual withdrawal rates (25x vs. 33x)
In ERE as Chess terms, these are conversations about Openings and Endgames, which are typically either formulaic or foregone conclusions. Which is all well and good to keep studying and rehashing, but how you think about the impenetrable fog of the Middlegame matters way more. Near as I can tell, the medium-term (~5-10 years) is by far the most important time frame with respect to planning.

...

So within that context, 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.

candide
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Re: Best of the ERE Forum!

Post by candide »

Thread on decentralizing FI in ERE strategy.

Must-read for how to get to WL 6, and what makes WL 5 such a plateau for many.

viewtopic.php?t=12663

AxelHeyst
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Re: Best of the ERE Forum!

Post by AxelHeyst »

Dave on converging upon a relaxed 'exploit' balance in his lifestyle and ending regular journal updates. Link.
Dave wrote:And in the cases when I do stuff, journaling about it feels somewhat forced - it very well might just be a personality thing with me - but sometimes I feel sharing "projects" is somewhat obnoxious where I'm describing activities that are quite obviously wholesome and good in ERE lingo that really aren't that interesting (at the level I am doing them). Sometimes walking to the park to do pull-ups is just walking to the park, and picking up trash along a canal while chatting with strangers is just cleaning up the backyard. Throwing in words/phrases like yields and WoGs and homeotelic and stoke is just overcomplicating common-sense living principles of enjoying life while being a productive and contributing member of society.

Western Red Cedar
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Re: Best of the ERE Forum!

Post by Western Red Cedar »

For those who have any inclination to start hunting, this is a great source of information - Hunting for Food: A Primer

viewtopic.php?t=9531

For those interested in commercial (or personal) mushroom cultivation, check this out:

viewtopic.php?t=12655

A tip of the hat to @theanimal and @ffj for taking the time to share their experience and knowledge. One of the features that makes ERE such a unique place.

mathiverse
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Re: Best of the ERE Forum!

Post by mathiverse »

Check out FBeyer's journal for:
  • Entertaining posts
  • Emotionally open posts
  • A case study of decentralizing FI
  • A path to learn about active investing that one can copy or compare to. May be useful for those looking for alternative ways to get into active investing other than reading the ERE investment curriculum. (YMMV on results though!)
  • A case study of someone trying to focus on removing the distinction between work and play

mathiverse
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Re: Best of the ERE Forum!

Post by mathiverse »

If you are accumulating far more money that you *want* to spend, what do you do next? Here is a thread with a wonderful discussion about the options one has in this situation: Trying lifestyle inflation. Need to spend more.

Here is one quote which offers a sobering example of why this question might be pertinent even if you don't want to spend the money on yourself or consumer goods.
Sclass wrote:
Fri Jun 07, 2019 7:53 pm
Great topic. I’m currently talking to my father about his estate plan. He’s in his 80s. Terminally ill. And he hasn’t spent enough money yet (according to him).

He has lived frugally all his life and now accumulates money for the sake of accumulating money. He doesn’t need anymore cash. His income exceeds his expenses by 5x right now. When I pulled him aside in May and suggested we start getting things in order he said what he usually has said over the years “Wait, I think I’m going to start spending my money.” It has recently changed to, “wait, I’m going to spend some of it, but perhaps I’ve waited too long.”

Right after he said that he just fell over on the grass next to me. Knees buckled. I was showing him my freshly mowed lawn. I knelt down to pick him up and he said he just wanted to lie there and look up at the trees. His trees.

The guy has a few months to a year to live and he hasn’t spent an extra dollar more since we met. I’m staring at his balances on my terminal watching them go up, not down.

I’m mentioning this because the the guy is kind of my ghost of Christmas future. I too have lived frugally and invested my money. I live on a fraction of the income...not quite 5x but it will eventually get there if I live into my 80s. Always feeling I don’t have enough. Always sacrificing for tomorrow.

It’s kind of sad. I think it’s okay to save aggressively. People here get satisfaction from doing that. But to get a pang of regret at the end of the line that you forgot to spend your money is a sad place to be.

Something to think about before I get there. It’s kinda tragic.

I think FFJ mentioned recently that buying most things doesn’t give him the satisfaction it once did. I’m there. It’s really hard to find anything that adds more value. Yet I worry about a moment in the midnight hour when I realize I have a ton of unused wealth that I feel I need to spend while I’m wasting away in bed wheezing through an O2 mask on my face. And, all I can do is think about spending my money.

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Sclass
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Re: Best of the ERE Forum!

Post by Sclass »

Glad you liked that. Dad is still alive. He’s having trouble coming up with ways to spend his money given his physical state.

AxelHeyst
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Re: Best of the ERE Forum!

Post by AxelHeyst »

Ego wrote:
Thu May 04, 2023 11:52 am
Human beings have evolved natural responses to precarious situations. We feel distressed. If we are healthy, that distress prompts us to make changes. One of the reasons I am so adamantly against anxiety & depression medications for most people as well as alcohol & marijuana is because the distress these drugs dampen is the result of a million years of evolution screaming at them. Their subconscious mind is telling them that something is desperately wrong. Change is needed. When they drug it, they fail to heed the warning, continue further down the wrong road, then increase the dosages to cope, further exacerbating the viscous cycle.
(and the ensuing discussion)

mathiverse
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Re: Best of the ERE Forum!

Post by mathiverse »

black_son_of_gray wrote:
Fri Jun 16, 2023 5:11 pm
I have very strong, book-length opinions on this. I'll try to keep it brief.

I think art is so important that the discussion of whether it is "useful" is essentially nonsense - tantamount to asking whether "being a human" is useful.

Here's how I go about thinking what art is: it is a product, a process, a quality. It is ancient and integral to being a human, maybe nature itself. Sounds like I'm overselling it. Read on.

I cannot stress enough how valuable it is to think of art as a process rather than merely a product. I'll give an example, and then restate it conceptually.

You're painting a portrait. What is the process? (Every painter has differences, but just as an example...) You prep a surface for paint. You prep the model (pose, lighting, etc.). You sketch the model's features/contours. You examine the scene, mix up some paints, and block out the main colors over your drawing. You mix in complementaries or whites to get shadow and highlight values, you add those on top. You look at what doesn't look quite right. You make adjustments. You add the fine details until you determine that adding any more paint won't add to the painting. You wait for it to dry, maybe varnish it, hang it up on the wall. Done.

That's what you are physically, technically doing. But what are you really doing? At each step in the process of painting a portrait, you are making a manipulation in the world (e.g. drawing a line, mixing a color) and then testing it against some criteria. Over and over again, that is what you are doing. That is the process of art.

You know what else is a process? Evolution is a process. That's where living organisms, through the messiness of imperfect reproduction, bring new manipulations (oops, offspring...) into the world, and the world is only too happy to test them against the harsh realities of life.

You know what else is a process? Science is a process. That's where you come up with an explanation, make a few manipulations (oops, experiments...) in the world, and then observe how well those manipulations line up with your explanation.

My argument here is that there is a type of process that shows up over an over again...something I would call iterative refinement. A constant testing and retesting of something against a criteria.

Art is such a process.

With evolution the criteria is "fitness"; with science the criteria is "invalidation of the hypothesis"; with art the criteria is...what? I would argue that with art, the criteria is something like: "Am I communicating my experience?" That could be emotions, that could be where your attention is, and so on. @jacob's reply makes good points.

For our portrait painter, maybe they are painting their friend - a friend with the kindest eyes, a friend that always gives the painter a feeling of cozy warmth. A safe place. And that's what they are feeling as they paint the portrait. So now how is the image framed on the canvas? How is the friend lit? What kind of color palette fits that feeling? What even is that feeling? How could the painter draw a viewer's gaze to the eyes, so they could see that same quality in the friend? These are the questions. These are the criteria by which the painter tests and retests her painting. (Or maybe it's a photographer trying to capture exactly what the mood was like at the wedding party, or maybe it's a ....)

It's of course worth pointing out how little society apparently thinks about art, even though art is as old as humans and is literally everywhere. To the extent that it's ever addressed in US schools (probably also true in other WEIRD countries?) it's rarely treated in a serious way beyond elementary school ages*. To study it in high school or college makes you the butt of derisive jokes from the most artistically stunted STEM dullards.

Here's part of why the art process matters so much: because it makes you take long, difficult looks into your "criteria". If you are to make a piece of art dealing with grief, it makes you examine deep in your bones what a particular grief means to you, then reach out with your basket of techniques and communicate that feeling to another human being. It helps you work through out all the nuances for all the emotions or events that happen in your life - by the way, not all of which are bad! (the comedian Demitri Martin has a book of humorous sketches called "If It's Not Funny It's Art", pointing out how we idiotically only think of art as "serious") Art as process has a lot in common with introspection, although one could argue that because it has a criteria and is iterative, it is more likely to be productive than aimless introspection.

Here's part of why the art process matters so much: it allows you to figure out what has meaning and what matters to you - to learn that about yourself. Which is huge, of course, for just y'know living a good life. But that knowledge then forms the basis for how you construct your own systems, your web of goals. You know, ERE Wheaton Level 7 stuff. It's how you can approach the question of "What's it all for?"

Here's part of why the art process matters so much: because reasoning/logic is only a small part of what your brain can do. Doing visual arts makes you look at the world in very different ways, looking at contours, light/shadow, colors. It's not intuitive to many. It forces different states, attending to aspects of an object that aren't normally attended to. Same with music. Same with writing. You are forced into outside-the-box territory for a brief period of time, but the benefits to your brain extend far beyond that. Like physical exercise to the body, art to the brain**. And you do know that your ERE systems require creativity to create, right? And you do know that those ERE systems will need to creatively adapt and evolve over time, right? (They are processes, not products)

Art is not lesser than STEM, even though it is treated that way. Art is not lesser than farming, or bricklaying, or [your pick of manual trade]. They are cousins. They have the same type of process at their core, even if different criteria. They commingle. Anything that has a style has art embedded in it, suffused through it. That art enriches. It's not about "useful", it is intrinsic.

*If any of what I've written in this post is eye-opening or seems newly insightful to you, maybe consider the depth of your own art-related education. I know very little about art, but I know it has way more to offer than what I was exposed to during my education. I'm currently trying to make amends/emends to that deficit.

**And just like exercise, what you are doing matters. Are you just casually strolling? Are you just looking at pleasant pictures? Ok. But challenging yourself, at least somewhat regularly, will have greater impact.

AxelHeyst
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Re: Best of the ERE Forum!

Post by AxelHeyst »

mF's poster of ERE1 and 2.
viewtopic.php?p=277205#p277205

candide
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Re: Best of the ERE Forum!

Post by candide »

AxelHeyst wrote:
Mon Jul 31, 2023 10:13 am
I think coming up with what to do is only half the battle. The other half is coming up with what not to do, and then not actually doing those things, because there are activities that do harm to the practice of engaging in activities that are 'good'/durably interesting.

Getting sucked into netflix, doomscrolling, youtube holes, for example, makes it difficult to go deep on anything else. And so if you don't possess, cultivate, or protect your ability to go deep, your day will consist of shallow skipping which doesn't actually result in a day that felt good. String enough of those days together and RE starts to feel not so great after all. At least at w*rk you were 'forced' to go deep at least every once in a while when deadlines approached.

AxelHeyst
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Re: Best of the ERE Forum!

Post by AxelHeyst »

This whole thread collecting the thinking frameworks / latticework of mental models we use around here:
viewtopic.php?p=277410#p277410

AxelHeyst
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Re: Best of the ERE Forum!

Post by AxelHeyst »

peterlimberg wrote:
Mon Aug 14, 2023 12:56 pm
This "Quibblers of Virtue” phrase is staying with me; I’ll riff on it in a way that I hope informs how we can be friends of virtue here …

A distinction: Quibblers of Vice vs Quibblers of Virtue.

Quibblers of Vice are why I do not post much on intellectual forums. These people (aka men) pick on a person's premise, with the pretense towards truth, but are mainly motived by an ego game, either to display their own ego or thinking they are taking someone else’s ego down a notch, aka quibbling as a “leveling mechanism" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leveling_mechanism). Ultimately, I see this as “chimp politics” for nerds (https://www.amazon.com/Chimpanzee-Polit ... 0801886562). The phrase “bad faith” is appropriate here.

But then you have Quibblers of Virtue; they do quibbling as well, but to advance a line of reasoning, making it better, or gently pointing where it went off the rails. There is a sense they are not only interested in what is true but what is good and beautiful. You can say they are coming from a “good faith” place.

The thing in common with both quibblers is that they help people “guard their premises.” Premise guarding involves strategically weakening your premises to make them more resilient against refutation, bringing them closer to the truth. This is achieved by incorporating language in your premises that tempers the certainty of their claims. Philosopher Walter Sinnott-Armstrong on premise guarding in Think Again: How to Reason and Argue:

“To change the premise from “all” to “many” (or “most”) or “some” or from “definitely” to “possibly” or “significant chance” (or “probably” or “likely”) is to guard the premise. Other ways to guard premises include self-description, as in “I believe” (or think or suspect or fear)…”

For example, saying “all communities are terrible communities” has very little premise guarding, but it makes it sound provocative. To guard it, I would say, “many communities are terrible communities,” which sounds less sexy but presumably makes it more accurate.

A friend of virtue NEEDS to engage in the virtue of quibbling.

But something more is needed. To do some 2x2fu, they must also engage in Yes/And of Virtue rather than Yes/And of Vice.

Yes/And of Vice is being too agreeable, perhaps sycophantic, in a way that leads to masturbatory conversations—stereotypical Canadians, nice guys, polite office bullshit, etc. In Contrast, Yes/And of Virtue finds the signal in what someone said, then boosts it. Some call this the “omega rule” (https://youtu.be/rQA93ulyigg), or perhaps "wisdom improv" is the better term. For example, I did not know if I agreed with all that Jacob said above, probably because I did not understand it all, but the part I was resonating with, his 2x2fu, felt worthy of signal boosting.

I think both Quibbling of Virtue and Yes/And of Virtue are needed for FoV to have emergent dialogue, which is needed for emergent wisdom. But maybe not; please quibble away.


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grundomatic
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Re: Best of the ERE Forum!

Post by grundomatic »

Slevin's "freedom to" advice for newbies:
viewtopic.php?p=274459#p274459

AxelHeyst
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Re: Best of the ERE Forum!

Post by AxelHeyst »

JnG holding forth on art, selling out, passion, and bullshit:
viewtopic.php?p=279653#p279653

ertyu
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Re: Best of the ERE Forum!

Post by ertyu »

mountainFrugal's WOG infographic and explainer. Many valuable insights in the following discussion, too.

AxelHeyst
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Re: Best of the ERE Forum!

Post by AxelHeyst »

Suo's spider problems vs tiger problems (a new/nuanced take on 'money is a solved problem'.

sodatrain
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Re: Best of the ERE Forum!

Post by sodatrain »

Wow - such gold. So many open tabs... thank you to everyone for sharing! Great idea @Mathiverse!

AxelHeyst
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Re: Best of the ERE Forum!

Post by AxelHeyst »

The whole 'Bad Habits in ERE' thread, and in particular this post by Slevin about a metaphor for gaining competence, and the posts before and after it.

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