The Education of Axel Heyst

[AxelHeyst]

Interesting. Can you say more?

Possibly related: I'm about to give a webinar and it's blowing my mind. It went down like this:

1. I learned how to do a thing that not a lot of people know how to do.
2. I freely explained how to do some of the thing on the public internet and said "if you give me your email, there's more."
3. I emailed those people and said "I'll tell you everything I know about X if you give me $y.
4. Some of those people sent me $y.
5. Tomorrow I will explain to those people what I know.

My mind is reeling.

[Jean]

@7w5
I am very relieved to see that i am not the only person asking question. Why would anyone buy something from me when it's so easy to do it yourself

@ah
I really enjoyed reading the discussion here.
I agree with you that vlcol is magic, but it loses a lot of it's magic power when your partner isn't full on it. Like a few menial things you'de do with youre partner can amonth to week of normal expenses. It makes some cost cutting habits that would make a difference alone a bit pointless then. But it helps to differentiate beetween the diy that you enjoy, and the one you don't.
Anyway, having been pushed out of fi, i will now try to be fi again, (like family level fi), but i won't nescessarly optimize for speed. I'll keep expenses low but wont work full time, because i always hated working full time.
That leads me to an other nescessary condition for banging FI:
-Full time work doesnt turn your imagination exclusively toward way to kill yourself

@jacob
I once made a spreadsheet that would create mercator projection of a world map along any alternate axis you wanted I just started on a spreadsheet with some single thing, and just kept adding features. No idea if it would have been faster to code it.

[Ego]

Wanted to ask what the being phase brings.

Perspective. Renewal.

Now, someone with the sufficient ability to envision this can make their own program. Those who can't or won't can acquire a program from someone else.

Likewise, someone with sufficient self-discipline can enforce the program on their own.

Our positions really are the difference between the fixed and growth mindsets.

We can keep such a tight grip on our own plans for so long that we become vulnerable to anything that is not part of the plan, or we can use our freedom to place ourselves in situations that are not fun in the moment, but build important skills.

Skills sharpen with use and dull with disuse. Unforeseen circumstance, unexpected challenges and life's inevitable curveballs can take out someone who has only delt with their own self-directed challenges. Even small inconveniences can feel overwhelming and competence in navigating the world beyond personal plans can wane for those who use their retirement freedom to eliminate unplanned intrusions.

As someone smart once said, "No plan survives first contact with the enemy."

We underestimate the temptation to avoid the uncomfortable, especially when we have the means to do so with little or no immediate consequences.

[jacob]

Our positions really are the difference between the fixed and growth mindsets.

Seems like it's more the difference between the strategic and the tactical and/or the proactive and the reactive. Another smart person said "If you don't have a plan, you become part of someone else's plan". But yes, if one's life's focus on dealing with tactical situations rather than e.g. build a fortress or a monument, then it's best to plan ( ) some tactical training.

We all stand where we sit.

[7Wannabe5]

My mind is reeling.

It's interesting to me that you are finding success with the "freemium" model. When my book business was going down the tubes due to ever shortening S-curves, I spent a good deal of time attempting to research being an entrepreneur and/or the concept of innovation. I happened upon an article by a wildly successful entrepreneur in which he related anecdote about selling firecrackers to his boyhood pals on the playground and he related this to a very simple formula for "making money." Unfortunately, I don't remember his formula, but the gist would be something like confidence that others will want the things that you want yourself, or confidence that your vision will be valued. It is kind of magical when you make something that makes money. If FI is "money on tap" then entrepreneurialism is maybe more like wild-cat drilling a well, but what you are really drilling or tapping is basically human desire. The money is just the tool that makes the process easier than barter.

Also, I would back-track a bit on my initial statement, because it is the case that you have to at least ask the question, "Why would somebody borrow/buy money from me?" in order to FIRE. Although, the answer might only be something like "Because capitalism" if your investments simply tap into the economy as a whole. If you are an old-school type who types up a business plan and then presents it to a banker for a business loan, when your plan is approved that is also a moment of money creation.

I guess my point is that you can't really internalize money completely if you don't actually grok on some level how to create a productive asset, and you don't necessarily have to do this in order to FIRE. Although, of course, at Level Yellow creating Intellectual Capital, as you and Jacob have, would be the most common way of achieving this. Maybe the difference between picking apples, buying an apple tree (or orchard), and breeding an apple tree.

[suomalainen]

Interesting conversation the last few days. It sort of strikes me that this boils down to an expression of personal values, no? AH and ego and jacob’s dad all seem to express a kind of protestant work ethic value - idle hands are the devil’s workshop and all that. Even jacob seems to have a value in work (or “doing”) that is similar in some respects. It reminds me of those old “work, is it so bad” and “money is a solved problem” threads.

Perhaps there are (in my mind) minor differences in the personal connotations in the word “work”. Some prefer that it be something hard/they don’t want to do (as in it isn’t effortless recreation or “being” to them). Others prefer that it results in some tangible end result, i.e., “being productive”. Some focus on whether it is externally directed or self-directed.

Perhaps the heartburn comes as that “work” value intersects with other values or needs, some known, some hidden from us - social status or self-worth (or perhaps their intersection), perceived financial security and so on. It reminds me of those tropes about how we tend to expect so much from work, at least in American culture, that it provide a paycheck, an outlet for passion or at least engagement or meaning or purpose, social connection, etc. In that sense, there’s nothing stopping anyone with those values to consider themselves … happy? … living their workaday lives without a thought for the future - they are living a life they wouldn’t want to retire from. The focus on money or FI is therefore in some sense putting the cart before the horse. If FI doesn’t actually solve for anything in the real world, why are we even talking about it? I think the answer to that is that we don’t typically know what we want (see Dan Gilbert) and so we have to try a bunch of different things to figure it out. We also have the noblest blessing:

But the chief cause of both of these ills is that we do not adapt ourselves to the present. but send our thoughts a long way ahead. And so foresight, the noblest blessing of the human race, becomes perverted. Beasts avoid the dangers which they see, and when they have escaped them are free from care; but we men torment ourselves over that which is to come as well as over that which is past. Many of our blessings bring bane to us; for memory recalls the tortures of fear, while foresight anticipates them. The present alone can make no man wretched. - Seneca

And so those of us who spend a wee bit too much time evaluating the branches of time (whether forwards or backwards or both), tend to transform present intention into future if-thens. If I’m FI, then I’ll be able to … It doesn’t have to be that way, but it also doesn’t have to NOT be that way. If we can’t stop the torment, maybe better to embrace it and get it done and move on to chasing the next thing that may give us “stoke”, free from at least this one thing that occupies so much of our planning faculties.

[jacob]

In terms of "stoke", Schopenhauer famously said that "A man can do what he wants, but he can not want what he want". To unpack that, a man can not always do what he wants if he is not FI (or has other non-monetary constraints). This may be a feature (as per ego) or a bug (as per jacob). In terms of stoke, it's the last part of the sentence that's relevant: "he can not want what he want".

I find this partially true but only partially. One thing I learned in academia is that for a brain that gets rewarded when learning (this does not apply to every brain by far, but maybe the concept is still applicable to brains that gets off on other activities), any subject will become "wanted" once one gets into it. In other words, even the least interesting field of study will become interesting once one gets into it. Therefore, it is actually possible to steer one's wants to some degree. For the researching brain, it would require studying otherwise boring objects. For the conversational brain, it would require talking to someone else. Etc.

So lets try with: A man can do what he wants once he's FI after which he may find wants he didn't know he wanted before.

[suomalainen]

I guess for me it’s the idea that we think FI is one of those constraints that are in our control and therefore we MUST do something about it. Compare to things that are out of our control (say a congenital health issue) where we just have to accept it as a constraint and work within said constraint. I think it’s the MUST that sticks in my craw. Why can’t a person just choose to work within their financial constraint like they would a health constraint. Or a talent restraint, for that matter. I would LOVE to be talented at music, but I’m just not.

Edit. why not try:

A man can do what he wants … as he tries stuff out and he may find wants he didn't know he wanted before.

Edit 2. It’s like AH’s “the thing”. What if … what if there is no “the thing” that brings lasting happiness once experienced once? What if every “the thing” includes, I dunno, hedonic adaptation? What if “the thing” gets boring? Then you not only “over saved” to get to FI to do “the thing”, but you also “wasted” the years in pining for the thing and banging out FI when you could have just done a part of “the thing” from day 1?

[7Wannabe5]

I think the reason why VLCOL is key is that this is actually the process through which we can find what remains of our freedom within the current context/field. IOW, our core freedom may consist of how long/far we can go without spending any money, which will generally amount to how long/far we can go without coming into conflict with other humans or the natural environment. In order to establish any form of free realm for ourselves beyond this will also require acquisition of dominance/ownership/boundary through financial contract/exchange @ Level Orange OR appropriate means established by ones value-meme. For example, you might pillage and raid at Level Red or you might inhabit a Redwood tree marked for the lumber mill which you do not own at Level Green. Theoretically, at Level Yellow, you could/would inhabit any value-meme in appropriate context, inclusive of work-ethic at Level Blue. Obviously, ERE is somewhat inherent of work-ethic, because, for example, even a relatively impoverished aristocrat-of-earlier-era would not consider his income to be at the level of independence if he couldn't afford a servant or two to handle the housework. Or another way to look at it would be that ERE is designed in a manner that allows for Level Blue functioning to be adequate for achieving success. It does not encourage success at Level Red, beyond Libertarian-like respect for semi-legal realms such as sex work, although it just might be happenstance that, for instance, nobody has yet created a journal documenting their achievement of FI through jewel theft or tax fraud or zebra poaching. Level Red offers the jewels in his hand as the evidence that he was indeed free to engage in jewel theft.

[jacob]

@suo - In my experience (and I've experienced a lot of different "things") "my thing" is not in the cave, so I bought [the FI] ticket out of the cave to see if "my thing" is out there. Most people find their own thing inside the cave and have no desire leave the cave and/or no interest in what is outside the cave. People also have different set points in terms of whether "their thing" is "good enough" or "never good enough" (the hedonic adaption issue) as well as different set points in terms of which other "things" they can envision.

For example, when I talk to e.g. sd:orange who are still working, the only "things" they can imagine outside of their 9-5 careers are recreational activities like travel, restaurants, cafes, movies, and shopping. For sd:green the imagination is typically limited to gardening, art, writing (a novel), meditation. If that was the limit of my Vision (see above), I would probably have stayed on in my career/vocation as well. Jobs often offer a pretty sweet deal in terms of offering multiple "things" like e.g. meaning, money, social connections, ...

It would be great if the "the thing" could be revealed by a simple blood test. Since it can't all we can do is to accept that people have different "things" and different desires to find "better things" as opposed to sticking with "the thing" they already have or are comfortable with.

[J_]

In terms of "stoke", Schopenhauer famously said that "A man can do what he wants, but he can not want what he want".

So lets try with: A man can do what he wants once he's FI after which he may find wants he didn't know he wanted before.

Schopenhauer's quote/puzzle is a hindrance for real life if you believe it, it is a circular reasoning.

I live a life expressed in @jacobs (realistic and positive) quote. (bolds by me). Thanks for formulating it.
And further I am/feel free to want what I want!

[AxelHeyst]

Edit 2. It’s like AH’s “the thing”. What if … what if there is no “the thing” that brings lasting happiness once experienced once? What if every “the thing” includes, I dunno, hedonic adaptation? What if “the thing” gets boring? Then you not only “over saved” to get to FI to do “the thing”, but you also “wasted” the years in pining for the thing and banging out FI when you could have just done a part of “the thing” from day 1?

I don’t think it’s The Thing, I think it’s The Move, as in the Next move. After that there will be another move, and then another.

Similar to how when I was an undergrad I thought the Next Move was to graduate. I didn’t think that was the Final Move, nor did I think it would bring me lasting happiness. But for me, at that phase of life, that was the appropriate thing to focus on moving towards. (For some people, the right move is to drop out, or stay in school forever, or…).

So right now I’m focused on the FI Move (which on a day to day basis just looks like days full of stuff I mostly intrinsically enjoy doing, that I've arranged in such a way that eventually I'll cross a FI threshold and can think about re-tuning and re-directing my WoG from that stance).

Once I’ve executed that Move I’ll make another Move. And another. Etc. and then I’ll die. And that sounds like a fine life for me. Insofar as I even have A Thing, it’s the desire to keep making Moves. And so here I am, doing My Thing. #winning

Your comment also brings up a good point, which is that I’m not in fact optimizing for happiness. I’m not wired for it. As long as I’m not falling below a certain critical threshold of UNhappiness, I’m good. Instead, I optimize for something like interestingness, psychological richness, and exploration. These goals/ways of being are often contra to happiness, which is fine with me.

Anyways, I very much am not assuming that I’ll find happiness on the far side of FI, for a bucket of reasons. That’s one of the traps that this conversation is hoping to help steer people away from, so thanks for bringing it up even more explicitly.

I guess for me it’s the idea that we think FI is one of those constraints that are in our control and therefore we MUST do something about it...I think it’s the MUST that sticks in my craw.

Who said ‘must’? I think it’s important to let people know that they probably can do something about FI, to expand their Overton window for people who never considered it, but what they do with that information and depending on their circumstance is up to them. Some people are in a position to relatively easily bang out FI. Some people aren't.

--

h/t sodatrain for this clip, which I thought relevant to this theme:

"You get to live more intensely, becuase You're no longer making your full participation in life dependent on reaching some standard, of productivity say, or certainty about the future, or problem-free relationships. You're no longer making your participation in life dependent on some standard you're never going to reach in the first place."

[AxelHeyst]

It's interesting to me that you are finding success with the "freemium" model. When my book business was going down the tubes due to ever shortening S-curves, I spent a good deal of time attempting to research being an entrepreneur and/or the concept of innovation. I happened upon an article by a wildly successful entrepreneur in which he related anecdote about selling firecrackers to his boyhood pals on the playground and he related this to a very simple formula for "making money." Unfortunately, I don't remember his formula, but the gist would be something like confidence that others will want the things that you want yourself, or confidence that your vision will be valued. It is kind of magical when you make something that makes money. If FI is "money on tap" then entrepreneurialism is maybe more like wild-cat drilling a well, but what you are really drilling or tapping is basically human desire. The money is just the tool that makes the process easier than barter.

We think of it more as "organic content marketing" rather than 'freemium' but that might be splitting hairs, it is kind of both.

We're also fortunate in our market niche: we teach people how to use a bit of software that is very difficult to learn, and the cost and pain of not knowing how to use it well is very high, and not very many people do know how to use it well. For a small design firm (<5 people), the difference our assets and training can make in monthly revenue is in the five figures per month range easily. Insofar as we convince our customers that we actually know what we're talking about and our offering will do what it says it will (mostly via yt videos demonstrating our expertise and ability to transmit our expertise, and the quality of our assets), it's a no-brainer for them.

Our vision is "we help make Revit less of a pain in the dick" and most people who've opened Revit more than zero times are on board with that vision.

[suomalainen]

@ootb I appreciated the call-out. You actually spooked me a little bit because the overall pattern of moving from "this! THIS is THE thing!" is certainly one that's been present my whole life -- ….

This is what I was referring to.

@jacob - what is the cave in your usage here? Following society’s script? When you went to the hedge fund, what was the difference between you and the guy who sat at the next desk? You were already FI and doing it because you wanted to. What if he was doing it because he wanted to (and also he “needed the money”?)

Edit: oh and the MUST was implied in jacob’s if/then

Edit 2: what I’m trying (poorly) to get at / understand is that there seems to be an insistence on sequence (relating to external situations?) when what we appear to be talking about is an attitude - an attitude that can exist regardless of one’s external situation.

If instead, what we’re talking about is having a Vision to do A Really Big Thing that one can’t physically do when one has to work for a living, then I can sort of see that, but here is where I’d say “show me what you want, don’t tell me” so if you’re not working on The Really Big Thing I Just Have To Do while you’re also working some whatever job, yhen my bias is that you don’t really want the RBT.

And then if we’re talking about these grand visions, then I sorta feel like I’m in a Tony whatshisname seminar.

[jacob]

@jacob - what is the cave in your usage here? Following society’s script? When you went to the hedge fund, what was the difference between you and the guy who sat at the next desk? You were already FI and doing it because you wanted to. What if he was doing it because he wanted to (and also he “needed the money”?)

Plato's Cave, where most of humanity still lives, for reasons. Those reasons being for the most part not knowing that there's a way out and for smaller parts preferring to stay in the cave ("Just put me back in the matrix and please erase my memories about the real world."); or being afraid that they can't return if they leave for too long; with a relatively few living meaningful lives outside the cave.

The challenge with the last one is that it requires one to write one's own script since none are societally provided(*) and it's remarkably difficult to just copy someone else's. This in turn requires a capability for Vision which the schooling system does its damnest to train out of people and mostly succeeds at. I think this is why there are so few of us. I think part of what gives me an edge is that I started to realize that there was an alternative to "doing my duty" in the school system around age 15 which is pretty early to become aware of [at least part of] the meta-game of life. At that time, Plato's Cave for me was the school system itself. Someone showed me a way out in that I could take back control of my own education by switching from a diet of computer magazines to college textbooks. (This was practically anathema in Denmark at the time. In the US, at least if you choose your parents well, you can skip classes, etc. and other scripts can be provided for you from external sources.)

(*) Consider if there was an ERE class in the final year of high school teaching the students how to travel an alternative path and given them the choice between working 9-5 for 40 years to own a suburban stick house and couple of clown cars OR working 5 years to get the scary freedom of choosing their own deinstitutionalized path in life. The problem is that when someone has already spent 15 years in the school system, they're effectively a prison-lifer already---at least they have many of the traits. They don't know anything else than the regimented structure of doing work they don't really like in return for not suffering adverse consequences. They'll rationalize why prison is actually good for the soul, etc. If they're actually let out, they may commit a crime just to get back in the comfort zone.

I think a major difference between FI me and my hedgie coworkers was that they were hungry [for money] and I was not. Conversely, I would have shown up for $1/year salary and most of them would/could not, so my hunger was different in kind. There was some discussion above about not feeling any difference when hitting FI. In my case, I distinctly felt the chains come off as in "I don't actually need to be here. I don't need to take anymore shit. I can leave if I want to." This had implications for salary negotiations and how I thought about my job. I suspect I also gave off less of a slave-mentality both in the positive and the negative sense. The negative "if you lose your job, you're going to lose your home" as well as the positive "if you lose your job, you're not going to be able to buy a bigger clown car" both didn't work and began to feel like ridiculous/childish manipulation. Like a parent trying to withhold the pudding if the child doesn't eat their meat. This is a game most people play for all their life. The only difference is they've substituted parents for bosses and procedures.

Perhaps another difference was that I was the oldest guy on the team and one of the few who had tried other "things". Pre-FI I did "things" like working in physics because I wanted to and because I needed the money. At this stage I never really thought about the money. However, once I increasingly less "wanted to" work on "that thing", the money aspect became increasingly important. For example, why the feck am I working 80hrs+ a week for shite academic wages on something I'm no longer interested in when I can switch jobs and optimize a dollars/effort-variable. To me that kind of life is not worth living for very long. It's a terrible attitude for "being alive".

[AxelHeyst]

This is what I was referring to.

Oh, right. Fair enough. Well to reiterate, my Thing is to Make Moves forever and then die. I don't pin happiness on the far side of any particular Move (or even chase happiness at all because not wired for it),

If instead, what we’re talking about is having a Vision to do A Really Big Thing that one can’t physically do when one has to work for a living, then I can sort of see that, but here is where I’d say “show me what you want, don’t tell me” so if you’re not working on The Really Big Thing I Just Have To Do while you’re also working some whatever job, yhen my bias is that you don’t really want the RBT.

I don't know about my Vision being a Really Big Thing, but in my case I have spent a lot of time actually working on building the thing(s) I have in my mind, have repeatedly run into the constraints (mostly cognitive bandwidth and time availability to 'go deep') associated with needing to earn mo' money to live, and so getting the pesky need to earn money to pay bills thing over with is a really clear next move.

To be specific: I want to design and build ecopunk stuff (like my studio, serenity, TES tank, solar shade structure, various PV projects for neighbors, etc), to write (like my book, newsletter, blog, etc), and to work on post-consumer community organizing and cultivation (my podcast, Fest, road trips where I meet other Forumites, going and living with @mooretrees for two month to help them build their bus, other ERE/adjacent community projects I have in mind, traveling to various ecovillages and fablabs in Europe for fun and to learn and build...).

I can't get this job phase bullshit over with fast enough. (OR "I can't tune my job into an integrated node of my freedom-to stoke-directed WOG fast enough"... it could go either way at this point.)

--

If all I were after were 'an attitude', I imagine a job would be a perfect crucible to forge and refine my stoic philosophy. But that, also, is not what I'm chasing.

[suomalainen]

Fair enough. Fwiw, I thought this was a good restatement that melds the attitude / psychology (regardless of external circumstances) with the need to change external circumstances (in a particular sequence).

I think banging FI out is The Move For You if:
- You're strongly Vision oriented/have a very strong freedom-to
- Your freedom-to will require long periods of consistent focus
- You are unable to not think about covering your flank (aka you won't be able to switch off "but I haven't solved money forever yet, we can't afford to chase freedom-to for the next six years!")
- You are unable to concretely task-switch from bread job to freedom-to (aka you can't mentally turn work "off" when you clock out)
- You're committed to VLCOL as an aspirational and instrumental goal
- You're wired a lot like me (ask around, they'll explain it better than I can )
- A primary motivator is to decenter money and finances from your decision-making process, in other words
- Internalizing systems thinking / aka WL7+ (spinning up a WoG composed of several forms of capital, not just financial) is a goal

If none or not many of the above apply in your case, then I would not categorically say hitting FI is The Move for you. Long story short, I think knocking FI out is The Move For Axel, for reasons.

Anyway, really great conversation the last ~4 pages. Thanks all for the contributions.

[black_son_of_gray]

Some thoughts on the last couple pages of discussion:

It sounds to me like the conversation is swirling around concepts (sometimes voiced, sometimes not) related to 1) nature vs. nurture, and 2) where individuals feel they have a locus of control. Since a lot of MB-types are being referenced, I'll try (probably poorly) to explain my thoughts within that framework.

Premise statements, which I hope can generally be considered "true" enough for what follows:
1. There are lots of different "types" of temperaments/people.
2. One can express varying degrees of a quality (E.g. Introversion-Extroversion is a continuum rather than a binary)
3. There exists some wiggle-room or fuzziness in a given quality in which a person can operate. (I.e. "I'm generally introverted, but that can modulate a little bit up or down with situation/context".)
4. A quick clarification/elaboration: when I say, "nature vs. nurture", I'm thinking about it as 'the individual' and 'their environment'. Specifically, I'm thinking about their interrelatedness, which is to say that individuals have at least some ability to change their environment, and environments have at least some ability to change the individual.

Thought: How people think about nature vs. nurture or their individual locus of control seems to be closely related to 'temperament centrality'.

To demonstrate, let's first consider an extremely introverted individual. If the Introversion-Extroversion scale were 0 - 100, with 0 = 100% introverted and 100 = 100% extroverted, then this person might be, say, a 7. But that 7 is actually fuzzier (premise #3), so perhaps a range of 2-25 centering typically on 7. The issue is that most of the social environments this person encounters in contemporary society is probably centered around 30 - 70. This person, even at the extreme of their flexibility range, is still going to have a hard time adapting to the environment. So the best strategy for this person is to focus on control of their environment, focusing on the very peculiar, rare ones that allow them general comfort. A lot of effort is expended in adapting the environment so that less effort is spent on adapting themselves.

If we consider the opposite, someone squarely in the middle of the I-E axis, at say 53 (but with a range of 40 - 65), then the best strategy changes: Now, considering most social environments are 30 - 70, almost all environments encountered are within their flexibility range. The best strategy for this person is to focus on adapting themselves to the environment if possible.

Neither approach is wrong--in fact, both seek to minimize the overall costs (we could call this 'friction') that are inherent between the individual and their environment. There is a cost to crafting/selecting very specific environments. There is a cost (and a limit) to individual flexibility.

Another very basic way of framing this would be something like: "I'm not as happy as I could be. Do I figure out how to be a happier person (internal change), or do I need to change my environment/circumstances (external change)?"

I tend to align with @ego's views on personal growth, challenge, etc. - perhaps because I don't think I'm at the rarer ends of the various temperament spectra. I tend to think, as well, that with a bit of challenge/effort, I can grow/control my range (to some degree). For example, assuming I'm somewhere around ~40 (mild introvert) with a range of 30-55, I like the idea of challenging myself to increase the range to 25-60(!). To me, that seems well worth my time, because then I'll basically be comfortable in most (statistically) I-E environments (which: 1) opens up more opportunities, and 2) I will have further explored the boundaries of my true operating range--self-knowledge, yay!). I'm curious to hear if people think this is impossible/impractical, though.

Point being, where one sits on the idea of "FI first as The Move" has, I think, a lot of overlap with how one thinks about where their greatest control lies: in adapting themselves vs. in adapting their environment.

I'm sure I've probably completely missed the point, but those are my two cents.

[daylen]

I think perhaps self and reality/environment are best thought of as inseparable conjugates. The introverted/extroverted dimension alone may not always be sufficient to demonstrate this relationship. Depends on how deep you want to swim in [these particular] philosophical waters but one way to think about choice combines the cognitive functions with some of Forrest Landry's metaphysics on the relationship between self and reality.

The self can be seen as a series of choices characterized by consequences/causality. Choice and causality being yet another conjugate relationship bridged by immanent change(*). Instead of treating each function as a complete choice process, we can require that functions be paired together into axes [TeFi, TiFe, SeNi, SiNe]. So that each internally oriented [self] function can be revealed through an externally oriented [reality/environment] function.

That way even extreme introverts/extroverts loop between self and reality by necessity. This can be further compounded into conjugates of conjugates (like the INTP=Ti(NeSi)Fe type or people/pole oriented judgement = Ti(TeFi)Fe).

From my perspective, the change from not FI to FI has not happened, and so I don't know what the causal influences of that entire series of choices are yet. Though, everytime I save a bit of money I am in some sense making a small delta choice towards that particular change resulting in slightly more peace of mind with respect to potential contingencies. Being somewhat more leanient towards societal maintenance axes (TiFe as logical/ethical scaffolding of rules to follow, NeSi as narrative continuation/branching), I am more okay it seems with going with the flow of someone else's plan/ambition in context. Although, I like to think I have a choice in who/what to follow.

(*) I mixed up transcendent/immanent labels on this triple in another thread but decided not to edit because of the irony. #confuse_ai

[7Wannabe5]

@bsog: Yes, I think this is generally true. I can definitely rank my flexibility I/E high, T/F moderate, P/J low, N/S very low. Very low S means I loathe maintenance activities unless they are so habitual my brain is free while I accomplish them, and low P/J means that I very much dislike arbitrary rules and structures, and also that I am too easy-going to have the conviction to enforce them upon others or myself.

@daylen: Yes, and I don't think Te quite realizes the extent to which they externalize infrastructure/intra-objectivity. For example, when The (IXTJ) Grinch hauls away all their Christmas technology, he is surprised when the Christmas culture/intra-subjectivity of the Whos down in Whoville remains intact. And this is towards why I believe that capitalism (the externalized means) and consumerism (the externalized desire) are two sides of an indivisible coin or the sort of good-then-bad marriage that only ends in death.