Early Retirement Extreme Forums

Ye-ha, it was a pleasant surprise to read up on some shifts with the forum. I came to ERE already FI, did the later before it was a thing and found Jacob’s systemic approach enlightening.

I am an eNTp these days and my E and P fought hard to stick around. People energize me so more community is exciting! I struggle reporting stuff in a journal (because I know what I do and does anyone even care?), don’t quite get the MMG thing (or perhaps my group hasn’t been created yet?), and tend to prefer back and forth exchanges more than long responses (mine, I am cool with others’ styles). I always knew I was a bit out of step but sense the we-ness of ERE2 could actually be a positive development.

Theory vs. Practice

Most fields have a mix of both, with different levels of importance. Stats is nearly all theory, Finance is nearly all practice (any theory can be tested and either supported or refuted) while Physics can have both theory and practice (something like gravity requires both). ERE appears to be more like Finance where any theory can be easily tested. Jacob or someone interested could easily determine the efficacy of ERE theory by estimating each individual's ERE theory ranking and their SWR or similar FIRE estimate. My instinct is that ERE is much like Finance where theories can be entertaining, but practice (Net Worth) is often separate, otherwise theoretical Finance professors would be the richest people in society and presume the best ERE theorists are do not have the lowest SWRs or most robust retirement plans.

I don't see any value is using colors, personality tests, etc, as it does not seem to result in positive and significant changes in anyone's life. Kind of like sitting on a beach, categorizing different kinds of waves (theory) while others are just surfing (practice).

@WFJ If someone were to say there was a positive and significant change in their lives from learning these models, would you believe them?

daylen wrote: ↑

Tue Dec 20, 2022 5:46 pm

@WFJ If someone were to say there was a positive and significant change in their lives from learning these models, would you believe them?

What if more than one person raised their hand?

While sceptical at first, they have greatly improved my ability to understand other people/groups I'm communicating or interacting with, even being someone who probably understand 1% of what someone like daylen does.

I just read through this whole thread (pretty quickly, wasn't deep reading or anything), and I thought I'd try to offer some thoughts from a newcomer who hadn't encountered the blog/forum until three days ago, who hasn't read the big, and as a young person who has never engaged in a forum space like this before (for better or for worse).

I'm probably weird, because I made an account on the forum within a few hours of seeing the site, and often times when I encounter jargon I don't understand it kind of excites me. I suppose from the blog I reached a "these ideas are cool" stage and then when I see jargon I kind of assume that within the jargon are more cool ideas, and that may or may not be justified (I think and hope it is). This makes me anticipate gaining more understanding in the future through my time here, and thus I'm likely not as put off by jargon as others may be.

It really does feel kind of weird to be in an online group space without a sort of general chat, where anyone can pop at anytime and conversations can arise about basically anything, although that's probably since I mainly have used discord for any kind of similar group discussion. I don't know if that would ever be desirable/feasible here. In my experience that can be good for just general increase of activity in a space, some sort of low barrier-to-entry low cost-to-participate. Of course, I'm certainly biased towards more participation since I'm new and want more people to talk to/to talk to me and haven't experienced the issues and annoyances that come along with that.

Ultimately I don't know if anything I said here is really helpful to the discussion but I'd rather make my message and let you guys figure that part out (as only others can) without worrying about it too much (also I want to interact so people start interacting with me more).

philipreal wrote: ↑

Sat Sep 14, 2024 4:13 pm

I just read through this whole thread (pretty quickly, wasn't deep reading or anything), and I thought I'd try to offer some thoughts from a newcomer who hadn't encountered the blog/forum until three days ago, who hasn't read the big, and as a young person who has never engaged in a forum space like this before (for better or for worse).

[ ... ]

Ultimately I don't know if anything I said here is really helpful to the discussion but I'd rather make my message and let you guys figure that part out (as only others can) without worrying about it too much (also I want to interact so people start interacting with me more).

I appreciate your honesty, and wish to honor that you are sticking your neck and showing some vulnerability, but I first want to say this tends to be the kind of thing that doesn't get responded to here. And that sucks because you are showing passion and are clearly making some effort to read through the past and try to catch up. But I am just trying to explain the culture. The threads outside of introductions and the journals are not in practice noob friendly... Though it's rare that anyone will be rude. Instead, things just get ignored.

There are a lot of interesting things to read in this forum [1], but a mistake I made when I first joined and was playing catch up was not paying enough attention to the dates on the conversations and thus not seeing how large of a gap there often is between responses. Further, during the approximately 2 and a half years I have been on, I can say that other than the journals, the place often moves at a glacial pace.

For a failed attempt of mine to increase the pace of posting on the forum itself, check out the so-called WL 5 -> 6 Massive Mastermind Group
viewtopic.php?t=12584

As Axel put it, we learned that the threads are threads, meaning there is only so much we can do with this format. If we want other things, we have to switch mediums.

But despair not. Those other mediums do exist (but alas, I am cannot be your guide for them). There are ways to get involved in groups, or even meet ups across the nation, if not the world.
==

[1] Two accounts I recommend looking over to get a feel for the history of this place: Brute and Alphaville. A real contrast between them, as well.

philipreal wrote: ↑

Sat Sep 14, 2024 4:13 pm

I just read through this whole thread (pretty quickly, wasn't deep reading or anything), and I thought I'd try to offer some thoughts from a newcomer who hadn't encountered the blog/forum until three days ago, who hasn't read the big, and as a young person who has never engaged in a forum space like this before (for better or for worse).

I'm probably weird, because I made an account on the forum within a few hours of seeing the site, and often times when I encounter jargon I don't understand it kind of excites me. I suppose from the blog I reached a "these ideas are cool" stage and then when I see jargon I kind of assume that within the jargon are more cool ideas, and that may or may not be justified (I think and hope it is). This makes me anticipate gaining more understanding in the future through my time here, and thus I'm likely not as put off by jargon as others may be.

It really does feel kind of weird to be in an online group space without a sort of general chat, where anyone can pop at anytime and conversations can arise about basically anything, although that's probably since I mainly have used discord for any kind of similar group discussion. I don't know if that would ever be desirable/feasible here. In my experience that can be good for just general increase of activity in a space, some sort of low barrier-to-entry low cost-to-participate. Of course, I'm certainly biased towards more participation since I'm new and want more people to talk to/to talk to me and haven't experienced the issues and annoyances that come along with that.

Ultimately I don't know if anything I said here is really helpful to the discussion but I'd rather make my message and let you guys figure that part out (as only others can) without worrying about it too much (also I want to interact so people start interacting with me more).

We did have an IRC channel once (some 5-7 years ago?) but nothing much happened. I'm pretty confident that the forum-medium or alternatively the yahoo-mailing-list-medium (something that used to be popular before you were born ) is optimal for the communication preferences of the majority of the forumites. In some sense this is likely a function of self-selection + survivor bias.

Over the ~15 years I've been running the forum, I've tried to steer it towards the internet culture as it was in the 1990s. Fortunately, there are still some ancient websites around with the guidelines of how that works: http://www.albion.com/netiquette/corerules.html These are essentially the unspoken---actually they're spoken during moderation crisis times---rules that guide the forum culture. Here 4, 5, and 6 pertains. I suspect that dates back to the old usenet that was mainly frequented by researchers and students who could go online and connect with similar people (having a university account was the only practical way to get on the internet back in the 1980s). It was thus very much a culture of "sharing expert knowledge" and "knowing what you were talking about" and "only talking if you have something to add"---which was kind of the spirit of late 20th STEM culture. Thus unlike e.g. the culture seen on facebook or social media, in a Friday Bar, at thanksgiving dinner, or across the fence with your neighbor. This is really just http://www.albion.com/netiquette/rule3.html The @Alphaville incident is probably the most famous example of this culture clash with him breaking netiquette 4/5/6 enough times to aggravate enough people until it finally blew up.

I would say that "cool ideas" and "expertise" is the catnip that keeps people here. It doesn't really matter what those ideas are because when it comes to "lifestyle (re)design" pretty much any idea or concept might be relevant. Whether it's welding, existentialism, fermenting soy protein, or how to buy (or make) a nice suit. The only subject that's no longer welcome is "us-vs-them"-politics.

Discussing ideas at a high/complex level does eventually require jargon, theory, and long posts. The more complex the matter, the lengthier the posts. (I feel a Venn diagram coming up ). This does mean that threads do tend to exclude (more precisely, not include which translates into ignoring) people who don't want to learn the the theory, jargon, etc. from participating. (In order to participate in the chess club, one has to make the effort to learn what a rook or en passant is or means. Showing up wanting to play checkers is just rude.) In the past (and the present and the future), this has caused complaints. Given the length and complexity of the responses, the chat format is also not a great medium. Nobody wants to see a wall of 1000 words, which is 8 words wide and 125 lines deep, appear in their slack channel. Facebook deliberately discourages depth by chopping off responses longer than 50 words or so. Trying to say anything complex on twitter is an exercise in threaded contorting.

Thus the choice of the forum as the media-format very much follows McLuhan's concept that the "medium is the message". The medium of the forum selects for messages that gives people space to formulate and explain complex and complicated ideas AND it gives them time to think things through before they answer (hours, days, weeks, even months... feel free to revive any old thread). OTOH, it's not a great medium for one-liners, emoji-talk, and "hi, how are you all doing today??!1 ", ... -type talking. Also not great for people who temperamentally prefer to "think by talking" aka brainstorming. Or for those who believe that truth is something to be "co-created by a conversational dialectic". So, yeah, those preferences are hard to satisfy here (in a forum format) just like it's hard to reach any depth in a facebook comment thread or in a chat channel.

In terms of getting more feedback/engagement, read this: viewtopic.php?t=12578 It's specifically written for journals, but the strategy applies elsewhere as well. You don't have to start/run a journal for this to work. The key is to develop a reputation of "someone who says interesting things". This is done by posting interesting responses in various threads. Eventually, some will notice and start "following" your responses in other threads ... and now you have engagement. Now, this can be done out of your journal, but it can also be done out of starting fresh threads on other stuff. It can also be done by commenting on other people's journals. Some do exclusively that and don't have their own journal. As always posting something like "That's an interesting journal. I'll be following your journal in the future" is a nice gesture but it is NOT an interesting comment. It doesn't really scream "that person provided great feedback so I'm going to see what else they have to offer around the forum".

Having started a non-journal thread, it's fairly easy to see if a thread has traction. If it has [traction], keep engaging with it. A frequent mistake would be to start a thread and not follow up. E.g. someone starts a good thread but because they for whatever reason have decided only to be online or on the forum on the first Monday every month, those who initially responded forgot about the thread and so it never went anywhere. A thread basically needs critical mass in order to become self-sustaining. Typically the OP has to provide much of that critical mass, at least on the first page of the thread. It's like a snowball running down hill.

philipreal wrote: ↑

Sat Sep 14, 2024 4:13 pm

often times when I encounter jargon I don't understand it kind of excites me. I suppose from the blog I reached a "these ideas are cool" stage and then when I see jargon I kind of assume that within the jargon are more cool ideas, and that may or may not be justified (I think and hope it is). This makes me anticipate gaining more understanding in the future through my time here, and thus I'm likely not as put off by jargon as others may be.

I resonate with the feeling of excitement at all the jargon encountered on the forum. Reading posts about personality typing and at first not being able to decode the 4 letter typological combinations and upper case followed by lower case functions interested me in learning more about it. This allowed me to participate more fully in those conversations here. It also led to more self awareness and a greater ability to understand others.

It seems like the past few years, nearly all of my reading (of books and online) and perhaps learning comes back to here. Most of my booklist are recommendations I find on here. Or I experience coincidences of finding books on the shelf on the library and start reading them, only to find someone has started a thread on the book and later a MMG (this was the case for Plotkin).