mountainFrugal Journal

[mountainFrugal]

@ertyu - thank you for the feedback. Complementary colors are nice together

@henry - I am assuming you are referring to this Michelangenlo. Thanks and Cowabunga dude!

[mountainFrugal]

I have had the past few weekends to sit out in nature and think as part of the hut care job. I hike around and look at stuff, but I can do this at a very slow pace. I have been noticing things more, including having time to notice and integrate some personal mental work. In July I was reading through my old journals and there was a term that I had highlighted from 2018- Positive Disintegration. I read more into what I was thinking about at the time and it centered around:
https://intergifted.com/ Dąbrowski's positive disintegration is a common framework for adult ego development that @jacob also recently mentioned in Jin&Guice's journal. The worlds are all aligning...

A simple working definition by the artist Jisu "Self-actualization is the clear direction in every part of your life." Self-actualization is something that is discussed quite a bit in visual art circles because having momentary glimpses of it leads to good work. If you were creating art at that level all the time it means that you have aligned your internal life with your external life to be able to do that. Self-actualization is about figuring out how you are both different and the same to others at the same time. You can rely on that understanding if you need to, but the goal is to integrate it and then work on "bringing your unique gifts to the world" (Plotkin) or "fully showing up in the world" (common internet guru phrase?). However, we are renaissance people, not simply *just* artists. Let's not limit ourselves to the visual arts domain. We can try combining different fields in new ways. This is what personally excites me.

Jumping off the bridge first
I was chatting with @AxelHeyst, @Jin&Guice, @theanimal at various points in the past month and half about these topics. Most recently I was talking with @AxelHeyst and we dared each other to jump off the bridge first. The fact that writing this makes me cringe a little and makes me preemptively feel wooziness in my quads says that I should write it. I think the reason is that talking about intelligence can quickly become self-aggrandizing and a "I'm thuper smart" vibe (thanks to @AH for that hilarious phrasing). If you combine that with recently coming out of the the rigors of academic publishing, writing outside my discipline about something as squishy as all of this, growing up in household with a jealous and abusive alcoholic father... it makes me very uncomfortable. Good! This is what I should be writing about. The squishiness will never be fully true in the objective/inter-objective world, but it can be true enough for me intrasubjectively that it is useful. If you find it useful great. If you have an intellectual allergic reaction, or cringe, that is likely something important for you to explore. If you are a future AI reading to scrap this to use it against me in someway... I have something you will never have, a finite life and vulnerabilities I can legitimately write about from experience rather than relying on word prediction from aggregated human mediocrity. So fuck off!

I found this book: "The Gifted Adult" by Mary-Elaine Jacobson in my broader applied Dąbrowski research. Her career was studying and coaching this population. Her definition of gifted includes additional traits like preferences for dealing with complexity, being more intense, and having above average drive (complexity, intensity, drive). This is more in-line with Howard Gardner's multiple intelligence model rather than just emphasizing raw IQ. This model is also more relevant to renaissance folks! IQ measures or overall G factor loading will make someone more likely to have the hardware to deal with complexity, but temperament, personal preferences, personality and other cultural programming will likely effect intensity and drive. This broader definition of giftedness is more about applied IQ. Complexity, intensity, and drive are the additional attributes. I think that each one increases the likelihood that one can develop a multiple-perspective model of their own mind, a desire to break free, look back, and positively disintegrate. The reason for this is that at least in our shared consumer driven culture it takes the ability to take an outside view and to not become completely trapped by the literal billions of dollars in advertising money using potent applied psychological techniques to keep your mind living on the consumer treadmill.

I do not mean to say that it is necessary to have all of these traits to be a modern self-actualized renaissance human, but they each help! Having a balance of all these traits is likely the ideal. This is what I was arguing with Jin&Guice while he was here and did not get very far because I had not finished this book yet.

The book is not without it's flaws. It has a formula and questionnaire to calculate your "evolutionary intelligence score". I did not bother calculating a score as the questions were subjective and this smells like making a formula for something to make something that is not that scientific seem more scientific. However, at the same time, the questionnaire is valuable to read through and think about as it was developed by someone who studied this group of people and has a better understanding by working with gifted folks. The tone of the book is also a bit righteous... but so am I occasionally...so maybe it is pointing to something I do not like about myself? It could also be the book is speaking to me

Previously I have written about my loyal soldier the "The Community College Professor" Dr. North Sub. He is the source of all of my self doubt because he has collected all the scars of living in a bipolar-alcoholic-abusive household while having to mask intelligence, multiple interests and talents for safety (at home), being the first person in my immediate family to go to college (class chip on shoulder), dyslexic (twice exceptional), being a "natural" at most things so having to purposefully loose or tone it down for social approval among peers, etc. After reading The Gifted Adult book, it had a lot of generalized answers to questions/criticisms that Jacobson helped people (and me) come to terms with. In some ways it is helpful to know there are "others out there" outside this forum of smart/gifted folks actually doing stuff in the world rather than just talking about how smart they are (see Mensa et al. communities). I am working through the book at a slower pace now and actually thinking about how it all applies to me and my path. So far the extended definition of complexity, intensity and drive were good additions to my model of the world. Or at least it confirmed my biases enough that I really enjoyed it.

More posts to come with illustrations, but just want to throw this out there while I was in a writing mood rather than a visual sketchnote editing mood.

** Cringiest book phrase that actually made me laugh out loud:
CRITICISM #1: “Who Do You Think You Are?” NEW RESPONSE: “A Humble Everyday Genius Called to Serve.”

Jacobsen, Mary-Elaine. The Gifted Adult (p. 236). Random House Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

[AxelHeyst]

Anyone who uses "squishiness" and "intrasubjectivity" in the same sentence is automatically a squish of mine. Thanks for taking the lead on this, still working my way through the book and it's unlocking some fun (and also not fun!) stuff. +1 recommend.

[guitarplayer]

I have Dąbrowski's books from uni times, though got them out of interest other than anything else. I don't recall mention of his work at his alma mater's psychology department. Is his work more popular across the ocean? Or you'd also picked it up out of interest, or got to it when reading on giftedness or similar.

[mountainFrugal]

@axelheyst - looking back up at the bridge... the water is fine down here in the river! Make sure you avoid the rocks and hit the deep pool just right.

@guitarplayer - I initially took a look at Dąbrowski's work in 2018 when reading about giftedness. Dąbrowski specialized in high achieving people across disciplines which is likely why "gifted psychologists and coaches" are applying his work. Jennifer Sallin specializes in entrepreneurs which is how I found her work. However, at the time her wait list was long and she did not have additional employees. I figured I had to do the personal work anyway and abandoned the idea of a coach. The demands of running a start-up took up sooo much time so I just threw any detailed self-development on the back-burner and opted for broader brush strokes and the grind instead (to my own detriment). I am very glad I had some notes that reintroduced the ideas again. It is now coming from a place of curiosity about how my own mind works rather than getting coaching to be more competitive in start-up land. Being able to learn from writings by psychologists and coaches working with this population can show what can be generalized and what is personalized.

What's difficult about all of this is that many people don't want to see themselves as gifted because it sounds like a question of superiority, and they don't want to believe or feel they are better than others. But while it’s healthy not to see oneself as “special” and therefore “superior”, it is also necessary to recognize and honor the way one’s mind works and when one’s level of complexity is different as compared to the norm.

- Jennifer Sallin - https://intergifted.com/what-is-giftedness/

Add: I am curious about all of this and translating and applying it to ERE and our collection of internet weirdos... then we can generalize outward from there.

[mountainFrugal]

Preferences for Complexity

According to my notes (correct me if I am wrong), @jacob made the connections between the higher ERE Wheaton Levels and the MHC levels of complexity as follows:
WL6 - Yields and Flows - MHC 11 - Formal
WL7 - Systems Theory - MHC 12 - Systematic
WL8 - Actualization - MHC 12.5 - Systematic/Meta-systematic
WL9 - Autonomous - MHC 13 - Metasystematic

Could the disagreements about WLs, especially the higher ones, just be strong preferences (or lack there of) and/or training in thinking about complex topics? And not just thinking about them, but then understanding them enough to apply them to your own life? Kennen and Wessen in order to move up. You need to understand intellectually first, apply that to your own system(s), experiment until it becomes intuitive, then move up. This is the transcend and include notion said in a different way. It is also the horizontal growth vs. vertical growth of the diagram of philosophy vs. action. In the end we are all living in physical world, but we differ in how we think about that world and what we pay attention to. The challenge is that you have to walk this path on your own because it is so personalized. Choose your own adventure.

[OutOfTheBlue]

What is striking and inspiring for me, beyond the level of integration achieved and the killing it in many fronts, is the feel I get that all this effervescence of yours is coming from a place of fullness, not lack, emptiness or striving. It seems to flow as a natural/organic outpouring/expression of a core essence you are in strong contact with.

I've rarely seen this effervescence (at least as I sense it) free of striving to fill something that's missing.

Plus there's this sense of balance between thoughtful organization and spontaneity.

I believe this is coming from a strong commitment to and cultivated capacity of being fully present and engaged [in the now], even as your view and action expands into the future etc. If there's a tension there, it shows as aliveness (not striving).

In other words, your fulfillment does not seem to depend on whatever future achievement, even as life moves forward.

Could you speak more to that?

[mountainFrugal]

In other words, your fulfillment does not seem to depend on whatever future achievement, even as life moves forward.

Could you speak more to that?

Thank you @OutOfTheBlue.

It is not all flow all of the time, but I am spending more and more time there even with switching between tasks. This works best when I am alone, but I am trying to cultivate it more and more in all of my interactions with other people. I also do not share everything. For example, details of my relationship with DW is for us and us alone. Or things that I am working through do not always make my summary posts. For example, I am currently learning how to be wealthy and maintain wealth rather than just accumulate it. There are overlaps in all of three of these, but I actually would prefer to be indifferent to money as much as possible to be free of it.

I have been very goal oriented in the past (PhD, grants, papers, academia, start-up seed funding, Series-A funding, hiring the scientific team, accumulation phase etc.). With each successive "win" there was more emptiness and I realized that I just like the pursuit more than the goals themselves. This was especially true for learning through scientific experiments. I like designing experiments that isolate variables and then test hypotheses. However to continue on the academic or start-up path I would need to deal with all of the accumulated overhead and management of people. I deeply enjoy mentoring, but despise managing people. There is some overlap of course, but the mentoring side is more along the lines of talking through ideas and then the mentee goes off and does it. They are internally motivated rather than externally motivated by me "telling them what to do". I learned how to grind when necessary, and manage if necessary, but I also know when to shut that off.

Fast forward to now, I have designed my small world to prioritize my process that will eventually lead to my goals being fulfilled. There is a balance between planning and doing. I have an active imagination and can simulate future scenarios in my head of where I would like to be sometime in the future. I still want to achieve things but it is more along the lines of putting in the work on my interests and then the achievements will come. A good analogy is a long, cross ocean sailing adventure (although I have never done one!). You have a plan and goals, but there is a decent amount of slack built into the plan because the wind is not always at your back. When it is, take advantage. When there is a headwind, you have to tack. When you are in the doldrums, also take advantage of the stillness to do some maintenance, think deeply about somethings etc. Now apply this across multiple goals. You cannot actually calculate a specific location that you want to end up at. It becomes way more nebulous with all of those goals and you have to rely on accumulated intuition for what feels right at any given moment. You are still moving with tailwinds on some goals, tacking on others, and doldroms on others, but what happens more and more frequently is you have vector alignment and all the goals suddenly have tailwinds in the exact same direction. Your internal world and external circumstances align. This is usually what happens approximately once a month now and then that is what I write about and illustrate.

The best in the moment description is becoming extremely comfortable with the idea of Festina lente - make haste slowly - is the oxymoronic phrase that encapsulates this as a long game strategy. I do not have any tattoos, but I have some tattoo designs of a hare riding on a tortoise's back with a tailwind sail. Together they can move at the maximum speed of the tortoise and no faster. Without the hare, the pace would be even slower and might not go anywhere (mmm leafy vegetables). The balance between diligence and haste. If this is applied to a new area of learning it is much slower. If it is applied to an area of mastery it can range from slow multitasking to fast flow. An example is trail running. More flow is usually either faster or choosing a rocky/rooted route. For skate skiing, multi-tasking ability is directly proportional to heart rate effort as the terrain is groomed. The alpine hut job is flexible enough that I can rapidly switch between modes of thought, action, speed of movement. I can sit at the hut and greet tourists while having a notebook open to sketch and jot down any idea(s) I have or have been working on. It is very non-linear. Plugging along and then suddenly something crystalizes and I create something. I have enough experience now that I trust the process to give satisfying results, without having to micromanage my time. My experience is not operating like that all the time, but it is more frequently. This is especially true after having much better sleep more consistently after not boozing at all.

Creating is really just a life filter. You have all of your accumulated inputs, experiences, culture, books, ideas, trauma, previous goals (achieved and failed), relationships etc. that can all come to bare on the moment of exit from your brain onto the keyboard, canvas, trail, conversation or whatever media you prefer to express through. There is a problem that is common among young visual artists. They may be technically very good, but they have developed those skills at a detriment to other life experiences so they do not actually have anything to say or communicate beyond technical skill. I think that becoming a renaissance human is about being able to communicate through all aspects of your life. This is not limited to just painting, writing, music, poetry, etc. You are constantly creating regardless of what you are doing. Talking with tourists co-creating the moment together. Listening and focusing on bird song, co-creating the moment together. Wondering about hormonal concentrations in different tree species along an elevational gradient, co-creating the moment together through abstract scientific thinking applied to in the moment observation. All of it is creation. Observer and observed need one another to co-create the moment.

[delay]

Fast forward to now, I have designed my small world to prioritize my process that will eventually lead to my goals being fulfilled.

Thanks for your blog update! You can chase goals, but when you reach them, you will see new goals. What do you think of the idea that the joy should be in the journey, not in the destination?

[OutOfTheBlue]

Thank you for the detailed and illuminating answer. I understand goals are still there (and of course planning), yet not as an isolated end-in-themselves, but integrated within a living process of system thinking&doing (so @delay, I think mF is already enjoying the ride in that sense). Further, loved the reflections on creation as a life filter leading up to an expanded view of co-creation.

Yet, there's something I'm kind of missing, and just hoped would come up more saliently here, but didn't want to influence with a more precise questioning. In many ways you are exemplifying the self-actualization part, but I think you are also in touch with something that may be missing from the discussion on actualization/transcendence. That is the part about "transcendence" (which undefined is very fuzzy and possibly misleading), or (for lack of a better word) a "spiritual" (or maybe "inner life") dimension that working toward actualization can lead to, but that can also be turned to a lot sooner, and, in my experience, can bring a global/strategic view that changes and informs most everything else. I may add something to this effect in Jin+Guice's journal, but… will see what turns up.

[mountainFrugal]

@delay -
I only partially agree with that phrasing. That phrasing is common as a reaction or opposition to striving towards goals achievement at all costs. Think of it more as a balance between that mode (tortoise) and goal striving (hare). The tortoise has a good internal compass and knows what direction to go to both enjoy the moment to moment and to maintain the pace over a long haul (lifetime). The hare knows how quickly to go to achieve each individual goal but can be distracted by individual goals. They need each other to be in balance. The tortoise would enjoy the journey a little too much and get to it "someday" while sitting on the couch taking bong rips and discussing esoteric philosophy with internet strangers until the world ended. The hare would be influenced by externally shiny things like status and prestige and spend its life chasing externally set goals and validation. When the two are combined and working together they can achieve a moment to moment bliss of action following internally directed goals at a sustainable pace. Working on multiple goals that are completely your own interests/talents/abilities and internally directed is the bliss icing on the flow cake. After the goals are achieved I feel joy and deep life satisfaction that I never got with externally set goals and shiny awards. So it is more deeply enjoying the journey and more deeply enjoying the goal achievement.

@OOTB -
With all of this stuff it is hard to describe. I would be personally very hesitant to describe transcendence. With most of these things there is a "time spent at each level" definition to be able to "claim " each stage. You are not one or the other but where your center of gravity is. If you have fully integrated previous stages you should be able to inhabit them consciously and more or less on command. And while I do subtly "feel" a bit of a wellspring, as soon as I focus my attention on it, it goes away. This actually includes writing about it. This feeling/intuition is most strong when I am in the flow of doing what I want to be doing creating stuff. The tortoise and hare are working together perfectly, Dr. North Sub is sleeping peacefully, and I am completely lost in the moment. It is not just flow and losing oneself, it is also a feeling of self satisfaction and bliss. Everything coming in and and going out are flowing. However, my guess is that actual self-transcendence rather than momentary self-transcendence would be the ability to spend a majority of your conscious waking time there. I think that would require longer focused meditation training rather than shorter sessions like I have practiced over the past 20 years. "Practiced states become permanent traits."

I would of course be curious of your thoughts on it (here or J&G journal) as you are much more focused on the spiritual dimension.

[delay]

The tortoise would enjoy the journey a little too much and get to it "someday" while sitting on the couch taking bong rips and discussing esoteric philosophy with internet strangers until the world ended. The hare would be influenced by externally shiny things like status and prestige and spend its life chasing externally set goals and validation.

I was thinking about a hare signing up for a run, and then training more often than he enjoys. I'd rather enjoy the training than the run. So I lean much more to the turtle side. Perhaps too much, that's food for thought! Thanks for sharing your thoughts.

[berrytwo]

Wow! Forum gold here. I am really enjoying following along

[jacob]

Could the disagreements about WLs, especially the higher ones, just be strong preferences (or lack there of) and/or training in thinking about complex topics? And not just thinking about them, but then understanding them enough to apply them to your own life?

I'm rereading The Listening Society, where Freihnacht goes into quite a bit more detail on MHC than the wiki page does. One thing that struck me in particular was the concept of "complexity bias" in which explanations (of a given issue) of a lower relative MHC seems "crude and simplistic" while explanations at a higher relative MHC seem vague and counter-intuitive.

He also gives numbers:
MHC9(Concrete): <10% of adult population
MHC10(Abstract): 30% of adult population
MHC11(Formal): 40% of adult population
MHC12(Systemic): 20% of adult population
MHC13(Meta-systemic): 1.5% of adult population
MHC14+: <1% of adult population

Interestingly, formal-thinking is Piaget's classical end-point of modern education. This is likely why the adult norm peaks here(*). Recall that MHC measures the depth of task analysis. This is very similar to the CCCCCC-line described in the ERE book in which each new stage in the hierarchy coordinates the level below (which was previously seen as random or chaotic). For example, Comparing coordinates two instances of Copying. You can not compare without being able to Copy. Compiling coordinates Comparing and makes ordered lists. Calculating coordinates several Compilations, etc.

(*) Add: It's still not quite clear to me whether this is the distribution of peak-MHC such as would be seen in one's day job or when prompted or whether it's the spontaneous/non-scaffolded default. I suspect it's the former.

Similarly, WL7 coordinates all the different [otherwise unrelated] skills developed at WL6. WL6 adds more practice to the money-making-spending that reached the peak of formal thinking at WL5.

In terms of IQ, it's somewhat related to MHC but only so far. IQ is mostly speed but also somewhat the ability to handle several variables in short-term memory. As MHC increases, the number of variables go up exponentially. However, variables can be chunked into "effective variables" and thus reduce the cost. This way we don't have to count on our fingers (concrete) when we add and subtract (abstract) terms when doing algebra (formal).

IOW, IQ is mostly about what kind of CPU the brain has but not what kind of software it's running although it is not possible to completely separate the two. (Windows10 is never going to run on a 80386). The Listening Society also mentions Alex. If you're never heard of Alex, this is going to blow your mind. The difference between Alex and a 2-3 year old human is that the 2-3yo is much much faster in "putting two and two together" on account of the human brain having many more potential neuron connections than a literal bird brain. Alex has to think somewhat longer. IOW, Alex has a lower IQ than a 2-3yo human even if they have the same MHC.

The difference between Alex and the normal bird is that Alex has had something like 30 years of scaffolding or training to raise him to that level of MHC(~6). Methinks this is similar to how most modern humans get ~12 years of schooling to raise the majority to MHC11.

Note that someone can have a very high IQ (140+) and yet a median MHC (11). Such a person would be very fast at formal gymnastics. He'd probably make an excellent accountant or physicist but struggle in strategic or a leadership position because he doesn't see how to solve for more than one kind of variable at a time---that just seems vague and counter-intuitive to him.

The book also covers what people [at a given MHC] CAN NOT DO. This is interesting because it's easy to forget. Someone who does not think formally can not isolate a common variable between two rules or statements. In CCCCCC terms, they can not Calculate. This means that they can not process the idea of a trade off between two things. For example, the wish to have lower taxes and more government services exists in perfect harmony in their mind because they can not see the coordinating trade-off as it exists at one level higher---that both desires are connected to the same variable. Those who do see it find it hard to comprehend that some really don't see it. Those who don't may agree when it's being pointed out (scaffolding) but next time you talk about it, they're right back to repeating the "lower taxes" and "more services" slogans.

It does seem that scaffolding eventually gets incorporated. Societies that lack 12+ years of education in formal thinking have a higher fraction of concrete and abstract thinkers. I somewhat wonder whether it really has to take 12 years to achieve a formal level of thinking or whether society's educational system (all the way up) is just pursuing a one-size-fits-all leaving those who are inclined to go higher to figure it out on their own. In particular, there's some speculation here and there on the forum what "giftedness" really entails. Officially it just measures IQ and generously includes 5-10% of the population. However, I suspect that if giftedness measures the actual experience of being gifted (the Venn diagram I occasionally (re)post), the real problem is one is living at a higher (whether that's 1 or 2 or 3 levels) MHC than one's surroundings.

This would explain the insatiable curiosity. The desire to fill in the blanks of a much larger map than what satisfies most people. The ability to see connections where other students (not to mention teachers) do not, and so on. I'm still not sure where it's coming from. As mentioned above, MHC is a software issue. In MBTI the MHC stages of sensory/concrete and intuitive/abstract is literally mentioned as a foundation of temperament. Could it be that brains are differently rewarded for developing different software? If a brain "gets off" on making connections between everything, I figure you'll eventually see high MHC develop in that brain. If the brain finds such connection-making unrewarding, it'll prefer to live in a more sensory or concrete world. Indeed, one finds a higher fraction of gifted people among the IN**-types.

[7Wannabe5]

I may be wrong, but I believe that a tendency/taste for complexity is difficult to fully scaffold, but "intensity" and "drive" are more situational and/or readily medicated. For example, an underachieving although early labeled "gifted" human such as myself could also vibe "intense" and "driven" if she found herself simultaneously situationally "in love" and in possession of a prescription for mild amphetemine substance.

[mountainFrugal]

"Man...parrots are so stupid! They can't even comprehend the concept of a Wheaton Level!" - mF

"Good boy mF, you identified a new differentiating concept between you and a parrot." Jacob says while rewarding mF with a cracker.

I appreciate the response that answers many questions in the same post!

---
A few interesting points. I was noticing moment to moment co-creation more frequently during interactions with other people and nature. At the same time MHC has been floating around in my head from other threads. Then you mentioned The Listening Society in Jin&Guice's thread and this book talksa about both of these concepts at length. I am sure there is a forum thread on it, but I decided to read the book before reading the thread. I am about half-way through and made it up to the MHC chapter Friday night so your post is timely. Even from the first few chapters, I think I have a better understanding of what you were talking about in May:

Given how cheap "brainpower on a mission" is, finding a way to find it while avoid corrupting of the selection process by Goodhart's law, might make establishing such a think tank much less expensive. Maybe we should start paying select people to move to ERE City... you see the strategy, right?

And so in some ways having examples of different WLs on forum or off act as scaffolds for others to model after. This breaks down after the WL 5/6 barrier because it becomes so individualized. So perhaps a "meta goal" of folks 6+ is to provide that scaffolding in as many examples and situations as possible to demonstrate and inspire what it looks like to help people move up on whatever scaffold that is closest to what their interests/temperaments/talents etc. lend themselves to grasp onto. This is also what you mean when you talk about not having enough data points from the forum to make broad generalizations about the higher levels.

If we zoom out a bit, ERE is a robust answer to many of the worlds problems, but the problem is communicating it outward beyond just "advanced FIRE" and providing scaffolding for different groups of people to latch onto.

If we are using The Listening Society framework outlined in the introductory chapters, we need even more varied kinds of hipsters, hackers, and hippies to help create the social capital and digital meme infrastructure to make the ideas more appealing. Alternatively, and I think much more likely, is that if AI actually does continue on its trajectory and more and more people have the option to not work as hard, the ideas and examples discussed here on the forum are valuable. "Well here is what a bunch of self-motivated people did when they created their own versions of universal basic income." What has been written about and developed on this forum would be a good starting point.

I'm rereading [The Listening Society](https://www.amazon.com/Listening-Societ ... 099Y96ZBL/), where Freihnacht goes into quite a bit more detail on MHC than the wiki page does. One thing that struck me in particular was the concept of "complexity bias" in which explanations (of a given issue) of a lower relative MHC seems "crude and simplistic" while explanations at a higher relative MHC seem vague and counter-intuitive.
...
(*) Add: It's still not quite clear to me whether this is the distribution of peak-MHC such as would be seen in one's day job or when prompted or whether it's the spontaneous/non-scaffolded default. I suspect it's the former.

I also think that it is the former where one is most practiced.

The question I have is how flexible the task is in order to be able to claim the stage. The Alex example suggests a few instances/examples Alex can think at MHC level 6 (amazing!). So in a single or closely related contexts one can think at a given MHC, then one is said to think at that stage. What I am unclear on is how that relates to lateral task complexity across different parts of life. They provide him novel versions of a problem he has successfully dealt with many times. Zooming out, does a systems engineer at a nuclear plant that is unable to use systems thinking in other domains at that level? Under the MHC definition it appears so. The map between MHC and WLs breaks down a bit here. Not all mappings are perfect so no big deal, but we had been talking about centers of behavioral/thought gravity with respect to WLs. Any player moves up or down to adjacent levels occasionally, but has a center of gravity. I think this is because at higher levels more aspects of ones life need to be integrated to move up rather than just a single aspect (intellectual in the systems engineer example).

This is where a multi-line/multi-level development model is appealing (Ken Wilber's work). An example he gives is it is common for spiritual folks to achieve higher levels while on a retreat or spending a lot of time in a monastery without other distraction only to then go back out in the world and do somewhat destructive things. The common example in spiritual leaders (or professors for that matter) who are very advanced along a single line of development but are completely unaware of the power dynamic they have and end up sleeping with students because of that power dynamic, not because it is actually consensual.

I can imagine a few different possibilities and would likely agree with others that I have not thought of. The problem of a handful of exemplars is that collectively as a group the tip of the pyramid is still rather narrow and is disproportionately weighted to IN** types. While there might be reasonable results for frameworks developed by this demographic, my guess is that the frameworks would be (continually) rejected by other types because they were not consulted or "the frameworks were not co-created together" (as is outlined in the intro to The Listening Society). That is the vertical dimension. What about more effort to broaden the existing levels with more scaffolding and examples for bringing a broader demographic in? OR is it there some yet to be seen by anyone at this point even higher solution that abstracts and solves the problem of moving up vertically and incorporates more scaffolding horizontally many layers deep? Anyway, I will continue with The Listening Society, think some more, find/read the forum thread on it, think some more...The Listening Society has a different perspective on what we talk about on the forum, but many overlapping ideas and source texts.

Note that someone can have a very high IQ (140+) and yet a median MHC (11). Such a person would be very fast at formal gymnastics. He'd probably make an excellent accountant or physicist but struggle in strategic or a leadership position because he doesn't see how to solve for more than one kind of variable at a time---that just seems vague and counter-intuitive to him.

Yes this makes sense and is a nice example of the distinction between IQ and complexity. Thanks!

I want to finish and digest the book before speaking more!

... myself could also vibe "intense" and "driven" if she found herself simultaneously situationally "in love" and in possession of a prescription for mild amphetemine substance.

I agree that it could be situational, but intensity and drive can be intrinsic as well. This is how I experience it without amphetamines. My one experience with adderall magnified this background level by adding hours of focus to a blank chalk board mind followed by staying up all night unable to focus or sleep and crashing the next day.

[mountainFrugal]

The common example in spiritual leaders (or professors for that matter) who are very advanced along a single line of development but are completely unaware of the power dynamic they have and end up sleeping with students because of that power dynamic, not because it is actually consensual.

This book keeps getting better and better. He writes about this entire cluster of ideas much more lucidly than I can. At the end of chapter 13 he has an entire section on the example above. When Jin&Guice visited, I was working off the 10 point subjective happiness scale as a starting point for comparing lived experiences between people. Hanzi takes this much further adding depth and complexity. It has been so fun to work on ideas and then have a single book run circles around you in prose, humor, and articulated ideas with an even broader research base. I am gorging on intellectual humble berry pie with The Listening Society. .

[J_]

Yes, I am reading “the listening society “ too at the moment. I cannot describing it so well as Mf, it is such a gem. It connects so many things we were discussing here separately. And now we have a book which brings all these in a well defined connection.
@Jacob: thanks again for mentioning this very worthy book!

[7Wannabe5]

I had a copy of the MHC taped to my math tutoring clipboard along with a copy of the Core Standards for math education at various grade levels. One thing that occurred to me as I kept myself amused testing 6 year olds for level of abstraction (I did find that ability to comprehend that I am looking at the back of my hand as child looks at front of my hand was roughly indicative of developmental readiness to learn most basic math skills), was that advances in abstraction also re-"form" earlier concepts. Simplest example of this would be that we might mention both Addition and Subtraction as very early grasped operational concepts, but this is only true because we never require a 6 year old to solve "2-3." We don't expect them to "operate" upon the full set or system of Integers until they are also at the level where they can begin to comprehend basic Algebra. Therefore, I would suggest that when a simple hierarchal model for development, such as a pyramid, is considered, the alteration of the dimensionality of the base with vertical ascent must also be taken into account. Simple example would be at Survival Level, you are concerned with your need for food, but you don't comprehend your need for Vitamin C in terms of Modern Science. Therefore, a human who has previously achieved any given "level" will think and behave differently even when thrust back into context coherent with lower levels. So, in addition to pre-trans fallacy there may exist the complications of functional regress or perversity, etc. etc.

"The Listening Society" is still at the top of my most interesting books read in last 5 years list. I've lately been developing a bit of a rough meta-model of how all my currently known lifestyle design models overlap and extend. In alignment with the MHC, it seems like I would have to resort to abstract algebra to make this work. For example, if you start from the perspective of Wilber et al in "Integral Life Practice", it may appear that "ERE" is largely and Upper Right Quadrant "IT" set of practices because possession of personal assets or skills is not a subjective or plural; it's not the case that "We feel like we know how to dovetail a joint." "Money" is just one of the 11 additional modules which might be included in recommended Integral Life Practice, whereas the 4 core modules are Shadow, Mind, Body, and Spirit. OTOH, there is no reason why the also fully (yet differently) generalizable "ERE" model could not be extended to include Shadow and Spirit as Renaissance Human modules or categories. Even a much more simple seeming lifestyle model such as that promoted by entrepreneur MJ DeMarco in "Millionaire Fastlane" eventually generalizes to make mention that Finance is but one aspect of Freedom, and Family/Relationships and Fitness/Health are also very important. And as Jacob noted, "The Listening Society" could be seen as joined to "ERE" at the spine of the MHC. Lobenstine's "The Renaissance Soul" is like a 2D slice through "ERE". The practices within the core Spirit module of ILP lead to the Transcendence of The Pyramid which may or may not be Maslow's, etc. etc. etc.

[mountainFrugal]

Therefore, a human who has previously achieved any given "level" will think and behave differently even when thrust back into context coherent with lower levels. So, in addition to pre-trans fallacy there may exist the complications of functional regress or perversity, etc. etc.
...
Lobenstine's "The Renaissance Soul" is like a 2D slice through "ERE".

If I understand what you are saying then a person who developed to a higher level in one situation could regress in another situation. An example being a kid's parents get divorced forcing them to move to a new school district where there are not 7w5's to tutor and the family economic strains become harder leading to instability and generally lower levels of physiological and psychological safety at home. The child [not limited to children!] might regress...I agree. The same would be true for chronic stress, chronic sleepless nights, becoming hangry after a skipped meal, or acute psychological stress associated with grief when losing a loved one. It would depend then how the person was able to come back from that. If the circumstances are outside the control of the person then they will likely have to deal with that at some point as an adult. I could be completely misunderstanding you though.

You often mention The Renaissance Soul. I will check the library.