Damn it Feels Good to be a Gangsta

[jacob]

A minor "ah-ha" moment I had recently was realizing that Fe-Style Compassion could be spreadsheeted under the realm of Personal Finance in the form of a Non-Profit and this would make it easier to "sell" ERE to those with Fe further up their stack. Very similar to how somebody who is running a small business to provide the small cash flow they need to support extremely frugal lifestyle expenses (as I did) would segregate business expenses from personal expenses. Obviously, when somebody is deriving their income from investments, their business expenses still exist, but are integrated at a further remove. I was also thinking that the creation of such a Non-Proit could almost represent the imaginary transfer of resources (whether fish, fishing pole, or concept of a fishing pole) that would bring those who are currently below 1 Jacob/year in spending due to poverty (PPP= $12,000/capita if spent in the U.S.) up to that level. The Little Carl I currently tutor would certainly qualify, because there's no way in hell the family of 5 he belongs to brings in over $60,000/year. When I suggested that he might not be familar with coins, because his parents use a card at the store, he told me his family gets food from the free store.

My main lesson of 2011, when I naively tried to popularize ERE, was that I should stick to my sphere. Insofar I were to leave my sphere, I should understand not only the direction of departure but also how far away from the my sphere I was going.

When the ERE book came out talking about living well on $7000/year, a common suggestion was how this could be used to solve the "problem" of poverty. It took me six months to realize that not only was I not the right messenger (youngish privileged white dude, these days middle-aged white dude, which is pretty much the worst or least cute, as you might put it, category on the planet in this day and age, so still a hard no) but ERE in its inchoate form of a 10+ year DIY self-study in personal competence (the renaissance man trope) was not the right message for the poverty demographic to get out of poverty (even the word "man" in renaissanceman caused brains unable to abstract the principle from word "man" to any person to glitch, even to this day). IOW, lesson 1: the message---even if it a good one---often requires translation.

Another lesson that came several years later was realizing that whether some people agree with anything depends less on whether the argument is good but whether you're part of their in-group or their out-group. The whole Kegan experience, especially Kegan3 #mindblown In other words, I realized that regardless of how useful anything I say may be, if I'm deemed part of the out-group, my message will be overriden by some memetic crapola from the in-group. Conversely, if I was part of the in-group, I could say insane things and people would take it at face value. Like "did you know that free power can be generated by plugging an extension cord into itself as long as you plug another power cord into one of the free spaces?". (science: this does nothing other than make a mess and create a fire hazard. social: humans gotta human). IOW, lesson 2: even a good message often requires the right person to say it.

So I've long (for the past 6-8 years anyway) given up on the idea that some "grand theory of everything" can provide a universal solution to the metacrisis. Instead I see its resolution as an extraordinarily complex path-dependent process. The best I or anyone can do is to find the leverage points where THEY ARE THE RIGHT MESSENGER WITH THE RIGHT MESSAGE AT THE RIGHT TIME IN THE RIGHT PLACE. IOW, lessons 3&4: even if you found the right message and the right messenger, people have to be ready to listen and in a position to act on it.

I see the metacrisis as a sick ecology of ideas that requires point-by-point interventions in order to transform it into something more healthy. I'm not particularly enthused about any proposal that doesn't get all 4 "RIGHT"s right. Obviously, I can't always be in the right place and time. Becoming a different messenger is very difficult---I can't change my skin, age, gender, resume, ... So basically, that leaves me with trying to figure out where/when/who/why to insert the message(s) I do have.

PS: I realize that saying "can't change" is a strong word and that I can change some of that. However, the ROI of that kind of change may not be worthwhile. It might even be negative. For example, I could have a child in order to show that ERE is possible with children so as to shut up those who dismiss ERE for anyone with children. And so on. I think I've already done enough on that front in terms of "living" different situations. Much easier to find a "messenger with children" to convince those who prioritize the messenger over the message.

[7Wannabe5]

now middle-aged white dude, which is pretty much the worst or least cute, as you might put it, category on the planet in this day and age

I think of "cute" as being the functional (as opposed to dysfunctional) combination of juvenile feminine and juvenile masculine energy. The functional juvenile feminine energy on its own would be more like "vulnerable" (to be understood as the functional opposite of the dysfunctional "weak".) The functional adult masculine energy which commands respect is the other way of being opposite to "vulnerable." A highly evolved human should be able to convey vulnerability and command respect (more or less) as appropriate, but it's virtually impossible to convey vulnerability and command respect with the same gesture in the same moment. An affluent, authoritative grown-man in his prime has never been seen as particularly vulnerable (even cross species), what has changed recently within the downside of Level Green is that now this Character/Messenger is granted less respect and even less admiration. (Respect is granted to authority/dominance, Admiration is granted to authority/dominance combined with care/compassion (combined masculine feminine adult energy), Appreciation is granted to care/compassion (adult feminine energy).)

I am so bloated in my Fe, I actually often do find gristly older men to be cute/vulnerable (like old pitbulls abandoned at the dog pound), especially when I think about how they are the most likely group to commit suicide. Some of them will work their hearts out for you, if you just offer them the occasional "Thank you", some empathetic listening, or share a bit of your erotic capital. However, sometimes they really don't need as many fish as they have in their fish freezer, especially if they own a river and/or compulsively enjoy fishing, and Little Carl really would efficiently benefit from a fish right in that moment, because his brain is in an important developmental phase. So, an Intelligent Manager of Her Social System will be able to make that happen. And, if she also keeps it fun for herself, Win-Win-Win!

Anyways, my point is that I do agree with your 4 rights model. I never thought about it that way, but it makes total sense for humans who have less "role" fluidity for whatever reason. My worst capability is evincing physical/moral authority (Fi/Se being my 7th/8th) in the moment. That's why I much prefer tutoring to managing an entire classroom. I can do it with behavioral tricks, and I will auto-pilot do it in situations such as 3 year old running into road, but it feels very fake and it exhausts me. I would be a thoroughly unreliable, incompetent Messenger as a Police Officer or Drill Sergeant. IOW, in any situation where the message to be conveyed approximates, "You will do as I say, and the reason is because I said so, and/or that is the rule we all follow for reasons none of us really know."

[Jin+Guice]

@thef0x:

I'm not 100% sure what your question/ questions are? So instead you are getting a rant about what I want to talk about, haha. If we are talking past each other, please restate your questions!

I agree with @ertyu that finding the correct amount of storage capacity is about owning the correct amount of things that one can interface with and care for. It's also a matter of being realistic about one's space, though space is rarely the limiting factor in a modern world, unless one has intentionally chose a very small space.

I own to many things as a physical projection of my own fear that I am not worthy of being loved and will therefore not be cared for. I subconsciously convinced myself that owning a collection of the correct things would make people love me and also that owning an excess amount of things would protect me from death when people don't care about me. I am rarely proud of my collection nor do I care for it adequately. I feel embarrassed about it as it is a projection of fear. Parting with these collections will continue to be emotionally excruciating for me until I am ready to let go of the underlying emotional mechanisms, fully embrace my own failure and forgive myself.

This is why I do not own the correct amount of things and struggle with storage capacity. I also thrive in chaos, to a certain extent, because it is the internal state I am used to. This also makes organization difficult and disorganization feel safe (though if I can consciously notice my surroundings, organization, aesthetics and proper storage feel immensely better).


Though you are free to interpret it as you want, my idea of "needs of modernity" is that there are certain needs imposed on us by modernity that are difficult to escape. In order to fulfill these "needs" we must either cleverly subvert them or pay for them. I cannot build a car, a computer, dental floss, antibiotics or a pencil myself. It is beyond the possibility of my network of friends, family and lovers to build these things. While it is not beyond their means to acquire them, these things will ultimately come from the vast network of interdependent strangers known collectively as "capitalism." The joy and horror of modern society is that we fail to appreciate the technological wonder of anything we purchase to the point it is integrated into modern life as necessity.

The point of waking up to this is that it gives you options. One can live their life without a car, computer, dental floss and pencils. The techniques for subverting each item is unique to that item and ones relationship to that item as well as how it relates to ones social and cultural surroundings. One cannot live their life for very long without food or the physical safety of their body. Though it is up for debate, I do not think one can live for very long without emotional safety; loved ones; friends, emotional intimacy and expression; understanding and intellectual expression; and aesthetic understanding and expression.

Minimalism is a response to abundance. It is one interpretation of how to respond to a world which offers too much, where the life-enhancing response is likely not collecting and hoarding, but reducing and choosing.

Needs of modernity is another mechanism for recognizing choice options. One can minimize a computer to the point of non-necessity, in a way one cannot with water. Needs of modernity is important to me because it was unclear to me that while a car is not a necessity, it is an almost necessity in a world where I can only or almost only access my "original needs" by car. This peels back social reality in a way that was non-apparent to me.

Almost everything we do is influenced by a need of modernity. If we look at cleaning and maintenance, our needs have increased because we need to clean and care for more things as modernity has increased the amount of space and number of things in our personal domain. We may also outsource cleaning and care to people we pay or machines. It is my personal recommendation (and I think the recommendation of ERE) that we do not do this. I think we lose something important when we outsource something like sweeping our own floor. I'm less convinced we lose something important when we outsource care for something we don't understand, like repairing our own car or computer, though learning how to do this is a great source of joy for many*.

*Where again this is a mechanism of choice in a world of both material abundance and the increased maintenance that material abundance imposes upon us, often at the point of necessity.

[ertyu]

I own to many things as a physical projection of my own fear that I am not worthy of being loved and will therefore not be cared for.

ooooof did you have to call me out like that

Minimalism is a response to abundance.

Idk if it's abundance or if it's realizing that trying to meet psychological needs (eg for being safe and loved) with "stuff" 1. gets compulsive, because it can't work - the need was never for stuff, so the need never gets met, so the drive to acquire continues, and 2. not only does the need not get met, the piles we acquire end up being a problem of their own. Minimalism solves 2 and puts a pause on 1 so the person can take a step back and reevaluate, hopefully actually solving the actual need

I'm less convinced we lose something important when we outsource care for something we don't understand [/i]

I'd argue in those cases the fact that we don't understand the thing makes it so we don't know what we're losing.

I'm enjoying this new direction your thoughts have taken re: stuff and storage. Looking forward to see where it goes.

[7Wannabe5]

Due to my adult ADHD, or mild cyclothymia, or absent-mindedness, or just being an eNTP with almost no S vs. N in my makeup, I have had to train myself with various organizational and minimilization practices over the years. One tendency that will cause an eNTP to quickly accumulate too much stuff is making the mistake of using stuff as project-I-intend-to-complete-someday bookmark. For an eNTP, keeping many options open can be a means of avoiding staring into the abyss or reckoning with eventual death. Even if you become very good at organizational practices such as not keeping stuff as bookmarks, and instead just listing your potential "someday" projects in a Getting Thing Done spreadsheet, when you get to me my age you will realize that you may be avoiding the additional step of actually realizing that you will never have the time/vigor to complete all of the possibilities spun into being on your "someday" list. IOW, even if your sense of agency and autonomy is such that you are your own one and only Santa, you are never going to be able to fulfill such a long Wish List. And you also think of the chalkboard out of the imagination of Borges on which the last time you will experience any given potential or pleasure is clearly delimited.

[thef0x]

Appreciate the response and apologies for the lack of clarity.

Re "subscription" vs "ownership," what I mean is managing that some things have to be done for you (food, healthcare, transit, rent) vs owning as much of the process/thing as possible (garden, healthcare routine, bike, house), including the maintenance (having a floor and keeping it swept).

And I guess my questions with the needs of modernity are: how do we decide what to "own" vs "subscribe to" vs "quit entirely"? How do you think about those choices?

On a personal note, your humility and courage sharing your own struggles regarding your own collection of things is powerful. Like @ertyu, I felt at home in that sentiment. Appreciate your energy/time spent writing here; I'm learning & discovering a lot.

[jacob]

And I guess my questions with the needs of modernity are: how do we decide what to "own" vs "subscribe to" vs "quit entirely"? How do you think about those choices?

This decision can be complicated(vb) as much as you want, but here's a way to get started (also see ERE book). We'll do everything in dollar terms:

The rent price is clear. Keep in mind that just like with insurance, it wouldn't be offered at a loss, at least not for long.

To convert the ownership price into rent price: (new price - sold price) / time(s) used. E.g. if you bought a computer on ebay for $200 and sold it for $100 next year, then the price is $100 per year. If you bought it from the store for $1500 and put it in the closet after 5 years, the price is $300/year. You could also calculate "per use" if that makes more sense. E.g. you buy a $400 power rooter and use it 3 times and fail to sell it again: $133/use. (This is why homeowners should likely be renting very expensive power tools, like floor sanders and cement mixers, instead of buying them.) Instead of time of ownership, you could also use time of usage. For example, what counts in an airplane is not how old it is as much as how many hours it's been in the air.

Quitting obviously reduces the cost to $0 in both cases. That's the choice many minimalists make. The main problem with that is that a lot of minimalists are basically excluded from many activities for lack of stuff. They become utterly dependent on fulfilling short term needs from the rest of the economy---having to rent most things on the spot---as well as restricted to what the short-term-market offers---is everything even for rent? They would see that as a feature rather than a bug though or at least a worthwhile sacrifice.

As such ownership price very much depends on your dollar efficiency. A spending-clown will pay a lot more than a frugal expert who is well tuned into the market (like @ego) or someone who can fix everything (like @sclass). To wit, their "rent" for using stuff can actually be negative (e.g. buy broken+small fix+sell at a profit).

Once you internalize the above, you can start adding in hourly wage and other capital costs. You can also add in profits or other capital benefits. This quickly overwhelms the math (it would turn in a giant exercise in matrices and linear algebra if you were to write it out, so don't) but it's possible to have a good intuition AS LONG AS you use the system ask the right questions instead of trying to get exact answers.

For example, a lot of people buy $60,000 trucks just in case they need to haul a fridge or a bed frame some day. Lets say that happens once a year. They'd be far better off driving a $10,000 compact and renting a truck for an hour from Home Depot for $19.95 for those rare events. A similar example are people who buy oversized houses so they have a spare room for when family come visiting for a few days. A hotel would cost less.

Most have really poor intuition with this. This might explain a big part of the spending variation between consumers and anticonsumers.

[Jin+Guice]

And I guess my questions with the needs of modernity are: how do we decide what to "own" vs "subscribe to" vs "quit entirely"? How do you think about those choices?

Thanks to @jacob for his answer which I agree with.


I've developed the intuition for this, so I'm confirming that it works. Sometimes I go against it based on some new whim or circumstance... these are actually the only times I think about spending anymore. Everything else is automatic.


My initial reaction on reading this question was to respond from my WL. Post WL5 when one has the intuition, it's about the rest of the system. The question that haunts me is whether I'm pointing myself in the right direction because why do I even want what I want? It's a much harder decision for me to decide where to apply time, energy and attention. Money is never my limiting factor (I still have some money anxiety, but there is nothing I want to do that I can't afford to do).

In general I think people need a lot less modern stuff than they think they need, especially if they are willing to redesign their life away from it, but the stuff you do end up needing is really difficult to do without.

[thef0x]

Appreciate both of your responses. Going deeper:

The question that haunts me is whether I'm pointing myself in the right direction because why do I even want what I want? It's a much harder decision for me to decide where to apply time, energy and attention. Money is never my limiting factor

I'm also not as concerned with the money part of these questions but moreso the attention, energy, and "space" (figurative and literal) that the ownership of things takes up; put abstractly, their opportunity cost.

One can replace maintenance of "stuff" with "people" (or "attention" or "love" or "relaxation" or "creativity") and maybe get closer to the kinds of questions I'm pondering.

If maintaining my garden takes me away from fruitful social relationships or creative pursuits I'd like to spend my time on, how do I figure out those "across systems" benefits/costs?

It's challenging because we're weighing categorically different currencies*. <-- this is what I'm trying to systematize / learn from others.

The argument for subscriptions is that they free your time and attention from the costs of ownership as maintenance. The cost of subscriptions is being beholden to a recurring payment and its inflation, acknowledging that sometimes we have to subscribe to things to get enough of them (food, end of life healthcare).

Let's say that money is no longer the bottleneck in the system (post FIRE) and you can trade it away for other currencies.

Using the swept floor example, is there an argument to get a robot vacuum to save me time that I can spend elsewhere, doing the things I really want to be doing? I trade one currency (money) for another (time, relaxation) to get what I really want (more time with friends, lower cortisol).

Is a dishwasher bad? A washing machine? My annual physical? <-- trading money for time to do X.

If money is abundant, why wouldn't I try to own certain things that free up my time**, or even potentially subscribe to them***? The answer is that those things end up owning you, which circles back to my question: how do we balance these trade-offs?

Selfishly, I'm trying to think across systems in my life to create a more coherent, homeotelic web of actions, motivated by my values, that enables me to pursue my web of goals.

I see the benefit of a dishwasher as directly increasing my time for creativity. I see the reason to cut a toxic person out of my life to improve my mental health (cascading into improved kindness to my wife, more attention to friends, lower stress, on and on). The interconnections are infinite, seemingly, and it's a bit overwhelming.

Curious how you guys think about the non-monetary currencies in our lives, how they interrelate, how to weigh their benefits and costs, and when to "pay up" in money to "free up" life for other pursuits of personal capital.

Apologies if these questions are poorly stated; I'm navigating a bit in the dark here myself.



* Maslow's heirarchy of needs as a chart of human currencies seems fitting.

** let's ignore the ecological argument here for the thought experiment; I care about that, it's a good reason.

*** this grosses me out real hard but I'm trying to take thought experiment to it's logical conclusion.

[jacob]

If money is abundant, why wouldn't I try to own certain things that free up my time**, or even potentially subscribe to them***? The answer is that those things end up owning you, which circles back to my question: how do we balance these trade-offs?

[...]

Curious how you guys think about the non-monetary currencies in our lives, how they interrelate, how to weigh their benefits and costs, and when to "pay up" in money to "free up" life for other pursuits of personal capital.

It's ultimately a value-ranking problem.

It's not any different than asking what you value more: $10 in cash, $10 in burger, or $10 in movie ticket. Murray Rothbart's book Man, Economy, State (see ERE bibliography) has a very elaborate explanation about how "human action" (praxeology) creates these ranking lists.

The thing is that after WL6, you now have more than just a money list. You might have a separate list for time spent. One for energy spent. One for lessons learned. Some are directly measurable which allows you to avoid fooling yourself. For example, I like to believe that I like flight simulators, but in reality I spend 10x more time on arena shooters.

It's only once you have several ranked lists along different dimensions that you can begin to convert/trade between them. The time vs money is often possible. The market offers a lot of solutions here.

Harder trades are energy for money. You might have to buy time with money and then energy with time.

Just wait until you get to creativity. If you have paid with money instead of lessons learned (that's an important scale), you might end up with the boring life.

Again, though, this is not about setting up rotation-matrices, but about being aware of what the actual value rankings are.

[Jean]

Time spent might not be an 1:1 indicator of interest.
I really enjoyed playing souls game and the new doom games, but until I reached a certain level of mastery, it was difficult to play for more than 1 hour.

[Stahlmann]

@jacob
What kind of arena shooter do you play?

[jacob]

@jacob
What kind of arena shooter do you play?

The slowest one of the all: viewtopic.php?p=288420#p288420

[Jin+Guice]

@thef0x:

This is THE question for me and, if I understand it correctly, effectively THE question of WL8. To me it has to come from intuition, trying to solve it analytically quickly becomes intractable.

Technically WL5 would also be the same, except we already have a pretty strong intuition when it comes to money because we think about and interact with it so much. It's in our cultural zeitgeist and in our conscious minds and we ultimately use it to fulfill needs that we are very much in touch with. Ironically it's our more consumerist wants that hint at our subconscious desires. What were you really trying to purchase back when you believed that buying the right things would bring actualization and fulfillment?

Time, energy and attention are things we are much less used to making conscious decisions about. I think this is where the internal crisis begins for most of us. The choice of and afternoon of gardening or an afternoon with our friends begs the question of what we as an individual autonomous person actually want. What would you do if all of your economic needs were met? This is our proverbial lotto dilemma, but we get to see what happens when most of us eventually win.


And so the questions that fill my mind are: what do I actually want? Why do I hoard? Why do I have so many friends but no one ever helps me move? Why do my most important romantic relationships always end in disaster? Do I want to write a song or learn bondage knots right now?

I think people experience this as ennui, but, in my opinion, this is guilt leftover from the haze of hustle culture. A culture where industrialized schooling and working 40+ years pushing buttons for something you don't believe in are the norm. How is writing code for to optimize document scanning for a mortgage website not ennui? How is any job more meaningful than learning to listen to the secret song of your soul?

I don't agree with a world that's convinced us that selling each other bullshit we don't use is important, but exploring who we are is not.

Eat trash and ruminate.

[Western Red Cedar]

how do we balance these trade-offs?

Selfishly, I'm trying to think across systems in my life to create a more coherent, homeotelic web of actions, motivated by my values, that enables me to pursue my web of goals.

I see the benefit of a dishwasher as directly increasing my time for creativity. I see the reason to cut a toxic person out of my life to improve my mental health (cascading into improved kindness to my wife, more attention to friends, lower stress, on and on). The interconnections are infinite, seemingly, and it's a bit overwhelming.

Curious how you guys think about the non-monetary currencies in our lives, how they interrelate, how to weigh their benefits and costs, and when to "pay up" in money to "free up" life for other pursuits of personal capital.

I think it can be difficult to look at a binary tradeoff when you are applying a systems perspective, or when you have a fairly well defined system. In your example above, one of the big tradeoffs is probably mobility and movement.

This quote from Katy Bowman's Essays on Movement Science, Movement Ecology, and the Nature of Movement really started making me think more critically about my system:

"Our daily life is composed of a lot of seemingly innocuous ways we've outsourced the body's work. One of the reasons I've begun focusing just as much on non-exercisey movements as I do on exercise-type movements is that I feel that the ten thousand outsourcings a day during the 23/24ths of your time hold the most potential for radical change. Be on the lookout for these things. To avoid the movements necessary to walk around to all the car doors, or just to avoid turning your wrist, or to avoid gathering your tea strainer and dumping the leaves and leaning the strainer (in your dishwasher?), you have accepted a handful of garbage, plastic (future landfill), and a battery. To avoid the simple movements, you have -- without realizing it -- required other humans somewhere else in the world to labor endlessly, destroy ecosystems, and wage war...for your convenience.

Sedentarism îs very much linked to consumerism, materialism, colonialism, and the destruction of the planet. If you're not moving, someone else is moving for you, either directly, or indirectly by making STUFF to make moving not easier on you. You were born into a sedentary culture, so 99.9 percent of your sedentary behaviors are flying under the radar. Start paying attention. What do you see?"

Bowman basically takes a systems analysis but uses health and movement as the primary foundation for that system. Family, creativity, career, travel, living space, food, etc..., they are all considered with movement and health as the foundation. Something as innocuous as a sofa, acquired for free from my neighbors who were moving, could be a major disturbance in my WOG. Not to mention the television in my living room!

[thef0x]

Yeah. Even my own desire to "make it make sense" and "have a logic to my values" ends up a fools errand. I'm applying the wrong tool.

"The work" here might look more like therapy / peeling the onion than logic / writing the algorithm. Answers in this realm flow from a deeper sense of things for me. Unearthing those values and increasing their alignment looks like the way to connect these dots, as messy as it might be.

Appreciate both of your wisdom. More questions than answers, which works.

Jacob - thx for the recommendation, I'll try to hunt down that section (I think?: https://mises.org/book/export/html/132309)

JnG - lyrics in those words. Thanks again and good luck with the knots.

Addendum: WRC - added to my list and I agree that a binary comparison is not serving me well, as if somehow I could even reduce these categorically different values into some abstracted cross-system currency. Yes, money is a remarkably effective abstraction (book: Sapiens) but with "the most important stuff" it seems a hollow tool. I need to better understand my unknown unknowns (to your point, movement, mobility) to weight their price in getting what I want (relaxation, less chores). What an endless mindfuck and a fun challenge.

Second edit:

The jump from nailing down one system and it's inputs/outputs (WL6) to nailing down the system and its interconnections (WL7) seems like a logarithmic increase in difficulty. We can approach "the system" with a singular variable in mind (money) but this seems to not capture the spirit of WL7. This discussion has helped me temper my expectations in this regard. I wonder if I'm not alone.

[Western Red Cedar]

You are certainly not alone. I think hyper-focusing on COL and money is a significant hurdle for many here, myself included. The irony for me is that the more money I accumulated, the more I realized it doesn't really matter that much in terms of securing my freedom.

I also think it is easy to overcomplicate some of this by geeking out on the theory too much. Going back to the example above on health/movement/time-saving devices, one could have a pretty solid start to a robust system with some basic rules like make all/most of your food from scratch, walk or cycle for the majority of your trips, grow some of your own food, get rid of your television, actively play with your kids or pets (get down on the ground) and take them outside, always take the stairs, etc...

After that, if someone wanted to get a little more extreme (from a Bowman/movement perspective) they might get rid of much of their furniture and redesign their living space.

[jacob]

I also think it is easy to overcomplicate some of this by geeking out on the theory too much. Going back to the example above on health/movement/time-saving devices, one could have a pretty solid start to a robust system with some basic rules like make all/most of your food from scratch, walk or cycle for the majority of your trips, grow some of your own food, get rid of your television, actively play with your kids or pets (get down on the ground) and take them outside, always take the stairs, etc...

I agree. Theory has a time and place, but it's not everywhere. Theory is useful to communicate non-concrete ideas to those who can understand theory. Those who can't or won't can just copy someone else and follow tradition and rules-of-thumb. Specifically, theory is most useful in the beginning before there are other people to copy or rules-of-thumb. It is remarkable to me that the Roman Empire had little of what we know as science, yet still had a lot of advanced engineering. However, all their engineering was based on tradition and experience refined over hundreds of years.

One of my favorite FIRE anecdotes was how newspaper articles in the early years always included some consumer-specialist/personal financial planner to provide a counterpoint to my claims about extreme early retirement. Their response was the typical "people spend 80% in retirement", "you need a million dollars", ... They basically threw the old rule book at me. After eventually reaching my frustration tolerance, I finally insisted to the journalist that the journalist go back to their "expert" and have them actually check the math. So the expert did and actually started to rethink their own retirement plans. Score one for theory!

When I look at the FIRE movement today (I googled around for reactions after the fatFIRE article, otherwise I don't pay attention), I see most of the theory has been replaced by lots of new little rules. Every blogger or podcaster who is trying to make a name-brand for themselves seem to come up with a rule or some variation of xyzFIRE hoping it will catch on.

To me, almost all of these new rules are but a coordinate in some theoretical diagram from many years ago. Rules simplify more complex knowledge (theory) that is based on analysis and synthesis into "abstract-concrete" knowledge. Abstract-concrete thinking is one step above everyday living. Like "if you can't pay cash, you can't afford it" is an abstract-concrete rule that specifically tells people if they can buy a widget at shop'n'stuff w/o needing to understand theory. The "4%-rule" is an abstract-concrete rule that tells people how much to save without needing them to know or even know of the Trinity study.

However, if rule-users don't understand theory/analysis/synthesis, they have to rely on either social proof via authority or what "other people say" or personal experience. The reason why there's so much theory on the ERE forum is that we're the tip of the spear and "going where few have gone before". As such, we're more like the theoretical physics department of modern science and a lot less like the traditions of Roman Engineering.

[Jin+Guice]

to weight their price in getting what I want (relaxation, less chores).

But why do you want those things? If part of the price of something is maintaining it, then part of the price of ownership or even use of an item are chores.

Maybe it's just for me, but I think there is a certain pleasure in maintaining the things one uses and a lack of maintenance is a sign that one has extended their scope too far.

These are the kinds of questions I eventually reached when trying to actually have a web of goals and not just arbitrary nodes.

@jacob:

Interesting. I personally am more sucked in by a list of rules or something I can easily synthesize them from at first. If I'm interested enough I eventually want to try to build my own theory and if I'm then still interested go searching for someone who's built a better theory.

Is there a theory of this process or at least some terminology? Like I understand what you mean by "abstract-concrete" rule, but where did you get that term from? What are the other types of rules? Is there a theory behind identifying this kind of thinking?

[jacob]

Is there a theory of this process or at least some terminology? Like I understand what you mean by "abstract-concrete" rule, but where did you get that term from? What are the other types of rules? Is there a theory behind identifying this kind of thinking?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Model_of_ ... complexity
https://www.amazon.com/Listening-Societ ... 799973901/